Reaching New Heights – Hani rev 4 model test

Having been worked on off and on for over a week with conceptual thinking going back much further, the now much showcased Hani revision 4 model is finally at a point where I could actually start making use of it. There’s the odd morph I’m thinking about whether I might try to add or not, but so far it seems to work rather well without any major deformity issues. While it’s too early to tell whether the change will be a significant help to overall visuals, a minor tweak or something that ends up largely reverted over time remains to be seen. Thumbs are still a bother, but in a much different way – I think I simply need time and practice with it to decide whether it works better or not.

Not counting what’s essentially bug fixing, the main goal with the rev 4 model is to give Hani Foonmall a stronger and more feral impression – the earlier size comparissons show how much more bulk she’s gained, and it’s definitely noticeable. The new hands with very pronounced nails and a new, slightly more ragged tip to her ponytail all are intended to make her look more like a natural predator, as disposed to the hunt as any Nightsaber would be. Hani comes from a very different part of night elven society from Tiny and Te’len, and with rev 4 I’ve really wanted that to show.

For all the changes, the biped really didn’t seem like it needed much change – the shoulder bones had to be widened, the arms a little adjusted and the fingers lined up, but other than that there wasn’t really all that many issues present – just line things up, attach, adjust envelopes and done. To some degree, it seems like the added bulk might even serve to prevent, rather than create, catastrophic deformities. Seeing how I was worried it might have the opposite effect, that fact was quite welcome.

With a new model revision comes new morph targets – not because the old ones were faulty but because changes in the model invalidates the morph targets it used to have, excluding the fact that the polygon breakdown of the face has actually changed too. The difference between the rev 3 and rev 4 morph targets should be relatively minor, except for one little change. Hani now has a tongue. Why? I actually don’t know! If all else fails, I can probably blame the Legacy of Kain game series – Soul Reaver 2 and Defiance both had articulated tongues for the characters and it added a great deal to the overall impression, so I thought if anything, I could atleast try. The textures for the tongue I essentially took straight from Blizzards’ own interior mouth textures, so from that it seems like night elves might have tongues coloured a discreet black.

Bare, without meshsmooth, the new base rev 4 model weighs in at a full 2197 polygons, which goes up to a full 8018(!!) when Meshsmooth is enabled, which is another step up from earlier polycount, and not including additional models like hair, weapons, backpack and soforth. The skeletal structure is largely the same as before, with obviously the arms tweaked for the wider shoulders and new hands. There’s also a few added bones to articulate the added tongue that lay seperate but are otherwise attached to the head. Like this you can also see the plates I’ve added back in rev 3 to form bones for the ears.

The final thing I said I’d mention – envelopes. Envelopes are basically the area of influence around each bone so the model knows which vertices move with what bone. When I first initialize the Physique modifier, I do so with the Deformable bone type, though there are a few I change. Notably the lower arms, lower legs, feet, fingers and head I change to Rigid. There’s a few other details to take note – with females I generally change the one spine link that aligns with the chest to rigid, and extend its influence slightly lower (parent overlap) to make sure there’s no strange deformities when the model leans back and forth. I also have helper bones (hidden here) assigned to just influence the eyes and chin and nothing else, set as rigid with a very high strength (usually 20) to prevent those parts of the head from deforming during some morphs. Another minor detail to note is the upper arms and upper legs – these I usually have both bone types – Deformable at the top, ranging from 0.1 parent overlap to -0.5 child overlap, then Rigid at the bottom between -0.2 parent overlap and 0.1 child overlap. What this does is avoid a few odd deformation issues that rigid creates at the very base of the limb, while still using rigid for most of the limb to prevent it from bending in very fluid ways.

I’m not decided yet whether to phase in the rev 4 model as soon as possible or give it some time to fully test it out first. I guess we’ll simply have to see what happens there.