Model, or portrait?
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Celestrian
- Ultimate Farming Fanatic
- Posts: 1250
- Joined: Oct 01, 2012 1:43 pm
Definitely the portrait, to me.
I tend to consider the character model "eh, good enough" for representing what my character looks like (with game limitations in tow) and then what they really look like may be quite different in my head or in a drawing. So I consider it the same for other, non-player characters.
/furrows/ Ludus is definitely a special case, though. As has been said, even Sanjay and Amir are more accurate to their models. Heck, based on the official art, it looks like Ludus could have just used the same in-game model skin tone as those two do and been closer?? which makes me think how dark the model is is just inaccurate...
I tend to consider the character model "eh, good enough" for representing what my character looks like (with game limitations in tow) and then what they really look like may be quite different in my head or in a drawing. So I consider it the same for other, non-player characters.
/furrows/ Ludus is definitely a special case, though. As has been said, even Sanjay and Amir are more accurate to their models. Heck, based on the official art, it looks like Ludus could have just used the same in-game model skin tone as those two do and been closer?? which makes me think how dark the model is is just inaccurate...
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OctavieKnite88
- Tubular Turnip Farmer
- Posts: 361
- Joined: Apr 03, 2015 4:29 pm
I prefer portraits over models and usually take that as how the character is supposed to look because portraits often show you the finer details of the character's appearance and let you see their expressions. Most characters start out as drawings, so it makes sense to me that their portraits are what they're meant to look like-in most cases.
I consider portraits a more accurate representation. A hand-drawn piece of concept art is just going to show a lot more detail than what a 3D model ever will, because there are just certain things that don't translate to a 3D model all that well. As such, you usually get a lot more information as to what the intended look was supposed to be for any given character by looking at a portrait. As to which I prefer them to use in the actual game?
Under most cases, I prefer a portrait. Honestly though, it depends on how much actual effort is put into the models and their animations.
In nearly every HM game, the animations for the models are generic emotes shared between nearly all the models in the game, where the character model waves or makes "talking" gestures with symbols flying around above them to give us some idea of what actual emotion they're actually trying to convey. In the meantime, their faces are usually stuck in the same emotion, though occasionally they swap a texture here or there to make the character frown or look overly excited. This is the type of modeling and animation that I don't want to see. If that's all they want to do, then just stick with hand-drawn portraits.
On the other hand, if they actually put effort into the models and the animations to the point where they look good, then I think there's a lot more potential for a CG model. A decent enough example of this is Rune Factory ToD. The models, while not incredibly amazing, are still stylistic enough where they are appealing to look at, and there was some real thought put into how each character displays their thoughts in their body language. Everyone had a different personality, it it was conveyed pretty well through their animations when talking to different characters. If they took the time to set up several emotion animations for each character, rather than sharing a set amongst all of them, I think it would make models a better choice.
-Edited because I forgot to actually answer the question that was asked-
Under most cases, I prefer a portrait. Honestly though, it depends on how much actual effort is put into the models and their animations.
In nearly every HM game, the animations for the models are generic emotes shared between nearly all the models in the game, where the character model waves or makes "talking" gestures with symbols flying around above them to give us some idea of what actual emotion they're actually trying to convey. In the meantime, their faces are usually stuck in the same emotion, though occasionally they swap a texture here or there to make the character frown or look overly excited. This is the type of modeling and animation that I don't want to see. If that's all they want to do, then just stick with hand-drawn portraits.
On the other hand, if they actually put effort into the models and the animations to the point where they look good, then I think there's a lot more potential for a CG model. A decent enough example of this is Rune Factory ToD. The models, while not incredibly amazing, are still stylistic enough where they are appealing to look at, and there was some real thought put into how each character displays their thoughts in their body language. Everyone had a different personality, it it was conveyed pretty well through their animations when talking to different characters. If they took the time to set up several emotion animations for each character, rather than sharing a set amongst all of them, I think it would make models a better choice.
-Edited because I forgot to actually answer the question that was asked-