Old Carrier vs New Carrier

[GnaReffotsirk]

Boss, is this what you mean?

It's kinda like a compromise. Now without the mustache and horns, and a little angle tweak on the ribs:


First one:

[ArcherofAiur]

GnaReffotsirk you are my new hero. I am so impressed I even bothered to learn you name spelling instead of copy paste whenever I want to refer to you.

[GnaReffotsirk]

GnaReffotsirk you are my new hero. I am so impressed I even bothered to learn you name spelling instead of copy paste whenever I want to refer to you.

I always will take a bullet for you boss.

[mr. peasant]

Boss, is this what you mean?

It's kinda like a compromise. Now without the mustache and horns, and a little angle tweak on the ribs:


First one:

Nice and neat editting. Quite seemless. Unfortunately, not the biggest fan of the changes. Firstly, as a result of the edits, there's not much by way of team color anymore. This would make identifying them in multiplayer somewhat difficult. Secondly, by removing the 'superfluous' horns (and assorted extensions), I find it somewhat boring in its design. It resembles an ellipsoid a little too much. Perhaps if you kept the side extensions and they were a little bigger as well as kept the whole 'boomerang' shape instead of removing its lower half (this is especially important with regards to team color).

In other words, I like the new head but without the side horns, it's a tad too plain.

[Nicol Bolas]

Over at TL someone brought up the issue of silhouettes. game designers go to great lengths to differentiate model silhouettes. They do this so that it is easy for players to quickly tell what model they are looking at. Here is an example.

It's good to know that they spent some time looking into how non-Blizzard developers do things. But they forgot to read the part from Valve about why this was necessary.

In Team Fortress, you need to be able to instantly determine two things about a character: what class it is and who's side it's on. The sides are determined by color. And because you need to tell sides even at long ranges where the characters are very small, the color needs to take up a substantial portion of the model.

This doesn't leave you with very much to tell what class a unit is. So you don't have much choice except to go for silhouettes.

SC2, as an RTS, doesn't have that limitation. Models will be viewed from approximately the same distance. So you don't need to fill them up with team color in order to tell what side they're on; 30-50% team color is all you need. Because of that, you can now use color in addition to general shape to distinguish between different kinds of units. So while the Void Ray and the Carrier have similar silhouettes, they have drastically different base colors. So you can't really mistake one for the other.

[mr. peasant]

SC2, as an RTS, doesn't have that limitation. Models will be viewed from approximately the same distance. So you don't need to fill them up with team color in order to tell what side they're on; 30-50% team color is all you need. Because of that, you can now use color in addition to general shape to distinguish between different kinds of units. So while the Void Ray and the Carrier have similar silhouettes, they have drastically different base colors. So you can't really mistake one for the other.

That's correct. In fact, I half suspect this is why the Void Ray was switched from a HT color theme to a DT one.

[ArcherofAiur]

It's good to know that they spent some time looking into how non-Blizzard developers do things. But they forgot to read the part from Valve about why this was necessary.

In Team Fortress, you need to be able to instantly determine two things about a character: what class it is and who's side it's on. The sides are determined by color. And because you need to tell sides even at long ranges where the characters are very small, the color needs to take up a substantial portion of the model.

This doesn't leave you with very much to tell what class a unit is. So you don't have much choice except to go for silhouettes.

SC2, as an RTS, doesn't have that limitation. Models will be viewed from approximately the same distance. So you don't need to fill them up with team color in order to tell what side they're on; 30-50% team color is all you need. Because of that, you can now use color in addition to general shape to distinguish between different kinds of units. So while the Void Ray and the Carrier have similar silhouettes, they have drastically different base colors. So you can't really mistake one for the other.

Samwise talks about this exact silhouette concept in one of the Blizzcon Art panels. I think he even uses TeamFortress models as an example. I also believe its also referenced in the Blizzard technical animation article that appeared online last year.


Seriously Nicol, do you just make this stuff up as you go along?

[Nicol Bolas]

Samwise talks about this exact silhouette concept in one of the Blizzcon Art panels. I think he even uses TeamFortress models as an example. I also believe its also referenced in the Blizzard technical animation article that appeared online last year.

However much they may talk about it, it's clear that they aren't designing their models solely around silhouettes. You yourself provided a perfect example of that.

Actions speak louder than words. And Blizzard's actions say, "Silhouettes matter, but they aren't everything in unit identification."

[ArcherofAiur]

However much they may talk about it, it's clear that they aren't designing their models solely around silhouettes. You yourself provided a perfect example of that.

Actions speak louder than words. And Blizzard's actions say, "Silhouettes matter, but they aren't everything in unit identification."

Again your making stuff up. Samwise said it was one of their biggest design priniciples alongside colors.

You act like you know what your talking about but really dont. Go watch the Blizzcon art panels to find out how Blizzard designs their models.

[mr. peasant]

Again your making stuff up. Samwise said it was one of their biggest design priniciples alongside colors.

You act like you know what your talking about but really dont. Go watch the Blizzcon art panels to find out how Blizzard designs their models.

That simply means Blizzard places the importance of silhouettes on par with color. Therefore, they're using both, color and silhouettes in combination to differentiate units. Where units have similar color themes, they use different shapes. Where units have similar silhouettes, they use different colors. Specifically to differentiating Carriers and Void Rays, aside from having a different color set, the latter also has moving parts to make the difference obvious even to the color blind.