Kruithne posts
Posts: 20
Files: 40
Behind the Scenes: Rendering Azeroth
Chapter 1: IntroductionIn my last guide, I delved into the process of importing an entire continent from World of Warcraft into Blender using wow.export.Patreon Post - WoW 3D: Importing ContinentsAfter releasing that guide, I found myself wondering if I could take it to the next level and render the entire world (of Azeroth). As it turns out, the answer was yes.Unlike my normal step-by-step guides, this post is going to serve more of a documentary to provide insight on how I achieved this. If you're interested in doing it yourself, you shou...
WoW 3D: Importing Continents
Have you ever wanted to take an entire continent from World of Warcraft and stick it into some 3D software? You're in luck, as this in-depth guide is going to focus on just that.As with most of my 3D guides, I'm going to be using Blender since it's free and widely accessible, however a lot of the concepts will be applicable to other applications and workflows. Additionally, you'll also need the latest version of my wow.export toolkit as well as the Blender add-on that comes with it installed.Chapter 1: ExportingThe first thing w...
WoW 3D: Tabletop Props
In this guide, we're going to look at using World of Warcraft assets as tabletop props. This will primarily be aimed at Tabletop Simulator (TTS), however a lot of the methods covered will be applicable to other tabletop platforms, 3D printing and beyond.Before we begin, you'll need the latest version of wow.export, as well as a 3D software of your choice. I'll be using Blender, since it's free (and awesome).Chapter 1: Basic PropsLet's jump straight into it with something simple. Open up wow.export either with a local install...
Patron Art Piece
Hey!At the start of the month, I surpassed 100 patrons! To celebrate, I recently reached out on here and on Discord for all of your characters to include in a piece of commemorative art... And here it is! Thank you to everyone who sent in their characters, I know this isn't much, but I thought it would be a nice milestone render!I've included links below for the 1080, 4k and 8k versions of the render! Once again, I'd like to say a massive thank you to those who support me; you're awesome.1920x1080 (1080p) → https://www.kruithn...
WoW 3D: Recolouring Assets
Chapter 1: IntroductionHave you ever found an item or prop that was otherwise perfect, but you wish the colours were different? In this guide, I'm going to show you how I quickly and easily recolour things for artwork!There are many different ways to do this and everyone has their own preference, but for this guide we're going to be doing everything in Blender as it's free, open-source and means we don't need any external editing software.Chapter 2: Recolouring Models (Basic)To start out, export a model that you want to recolour...
WoW 3D: Texture Baking
Chapter 1: IntroductionWhen creating or importing models, especially buildings, it's common to use a wide range of materials and textures, rather than just one that maps over the entire model, with floors, ceilings, walls and more all using different textures.Take this world/wmo/azeroth/buildings/castle/castle01.wmo for example exported from wow.export, it uses eleven different textures.This works great for the game when players are up close, as multiple buildings all sharing the same textures can use much less VRAM, load quicker, and provi...
WoW 3D: Guild Emblems
Overview:- Introduction- Chapte
Blender: Python Macros Made Easy
If you've followed any of my guides before, you'll know that I often include snippets of Python code to help automate certain tasks. My experience with sharing these - especially with people new to Blender - is that it's not a very user friendly experience.Some users run the scripts directly in the Python terminal, some users load them into the Text Editor and execute them there, and some people even create custom add-ons to aid with key-binding.In this guide, we're going to be throwing out all of those solutions. Introducing: M...
Behind the Scenes: April Fools
For the past six years, it's been a tradition of mine to take part in April Fools by posting a fake secret to my Twitter and reddit, only to watch people desperately attempt to find it. Naturally, I like to use places that don't exist or cannot be accessed, resulting in further chaos.Every year, a lot of people are very angry with me. At the same time, a lot of people also ask how it's done. So, in this post, I'm going to break down how I create these fake secrets and show some of the tricks involved in the process.First, let...
WoW 3D: Beginner's Walkthrough
Chapter 1: IntroductionIf you've read my previous guides on Patreon, you'll know that while I try to make them accessible and straight-forward, they're generally aimed at users who already have experience with WoW 3D art and the tools used, while focusing on a single topic.People frequently ask me if I have a tutorial for beginners that covers the entire process of making artwork, so that's what this guide aims to be: a step-by-step process on how I make artwork.This guide is not a definitive "this is the way" walk-throu...
WoW 3D: Item Components
If you've ever made 3D artwork for World of Warcraft, it's likely you've used item components before. These are (generally) doodads that attach to the player model in some way, such as shoulder pads, belt buckles or weapons. For simple items, this is an easy process. However, for many of them, they import as a complete mess.In this guide, we're going to take an in-depth look at item components and specifically how to rig them properly using in-game data.As with most of my guides, this is aimed at Blender users, however a lot of ...
WoW 3D: Character Models
When it comes to creating 3D World of Warcraft artwork, the center of a piece is almost always a character. Everyone has their own method of building character models, and people often ask me what method is for mass-producing them. So, that's the motivation for this guide. I'll be sparing no details or secrets as I deep-dive into my character model workflow.Some notes before we get started:- This guide is written explicitly for Blender and may not be useful for other software.- This guide is aimed at advanced users and assumes some fami...
WoW 3D: One-click imports from wow.export
The most important thing about any workflow is efficiency. Why press fives keys if you only need to press one? With that in mind, in this post I'm going to go over one of the recent improvements I've made to my 3D workflow which allows me to get things from wow.export into Blender in one click.While this post is written with Blender in mind, the concept is applicable to any software and workflow; although for non-Blender users you'll need to write your own code.wow.exportThe first thing you'll need to make sure is that you have ...
Plans for 2021
Hello!This is a little deviation from my normal posts to fill you guys in on what my plans are going forward with 2021. The first thing to mention is that I now have a little Discord server! If you have your Discord and Patreon linked, you'll automatically be given special ranks. Keep reading to find out more!Discord: https://discord.gg/KtcBSxhgnaMonthly GiveawaysWhen I first set up Patreon, I wanted to do a monthly artwork giveaway, but it's not allowed directly through Patreon. Instead, I'll now be running the giveaway every month...
WoW 3D: Generating Heightmaps
IntroductionWhen it comes to exporting terrain from World of Warcraft for use in 3D projects or beyond, the 3D mesh of the terrain exported from software such as wow.export is more than suitable for 95% of use-cases. However recently someone was asking me about heightmaps and how they could be generated for WoW terrain; so that's what we're going to do here today.For those unfamiliar, a heightmap is a texture (or often multiple textures) that defines the height of terrain. The implementation may vary between software and engines, but fo...
WoW 3D: Everything About Foliage
Foliage is an important part of most 3D scenes. Most people think of foliage as strictly plants and grass (as per the actual definition of the word), but when it comes to games (especially WoW) this extends to any form of ground clutter - rocks, skulls, etc.Use of foliage can often be the difference between a scene looking polished, or looking empty and unfinished. In this guide, I'm going to cover all of the bases with foliage, from how to export it, best practices, and the best methods for putting it into a scene.As with all my WoW 3D gui...
WoW 3D: Common Mistakes And How To Fix Them
A fair amount of people interested in making 3D fan-art for World of Warcraft have asked me for feedback on how to improve their pieces. While I'm hardly a guru on the subject, a lot of the time I find myself pointing out the same very common mistakes.To that end, I've decided to put together a list of the most common mistakes I see in WoW 3D art, along with my own solutions on how to fix them. This guide will primarily be for Blender users, as that's what I work in, however the general concepts should be similar.If there's anyt...
WoW 3D: Upscaling Textures
IntroductionWhen using in-game textures (from World of Warcraft or other games) to make 3D artwork, there's always going to be a noticeable lack of quality, especially the further back in the expansions you go. The reason for this is quite simple - it's efficient for games.Most people don't notice the limited quality of the in-game textures since it doesn't stand out as much in motion, people are often not zoomed close in, and the game doesn't revolve around you staring at your character. However, when you export these textu...
WoW 3D: Achieving In-Game Quality Terrain
Since releasing wow.export, people have been asking if we can increase the texture quality that it exports. In this post, I'm going to go over why the 16k terrain textures exported from wow.export are still "low quality", and how we can achieve 1:1 in-game quality.For this, I will be using wow.export and Blender. This can be done with other software, but this guide won't cover that, you'll have to translate as needed.Overview of Map TilesWhen using wow.export, we currently allow you to export terrain textures in 1k, 4k, 8k a...
Behind the Scenes: Where in Warcraft
Where in Warcraft is a location-guessing game based on the popular geoguessr that shows players a 360 panorama of a location from World of Warcraft and has them pin-point that location on a map. This weekend saw the launch of the Classic Edition of the game, which felt like the perfect time to give an insight look at how we created the game.Creating the PanoramasThe first step in gathering all of the panoramas used was to delegate the workload. For both versions of the game, all of the screenshots used were sourced by either myself or Falerian ...
