Custom Hero Concept...

First of all, let me start by saying I honestly don't know if this is even possible or plausable in WC3 (heck I am not too familiar with WE). However, it seemed like it might be a possibility that could make for a unique way of having VERY custom hero's in just about any type of map. Now I guess I better explain what I mean, here goes nothing.

I was thinking about what people have been saying about attaching weapons to units and I noticed that things like orbs have animations. This lead me to believe that you could attach other things to units.

So, say you make a model, with no facial features or hair. You skil it of course with say a generic human skin (leaving the head basically blank). Then you make another model for a face area and attach it to the head. because this face would have no animation, it would just move with the head like normal. You could then attach clothes, weapons, armor ect to the unit.

I am unsure how many different attack animations a single model can have, or casting animations ect... but I was thinking that for different weapon types you could have different attacks, and enable/disable them based on the weapon the hero was currently holding. I am also curious if adding more animations increases a model size greatly. If it does not then you could probably have say 2 of these base models (one male and one female) and have a huge variety of character possibilities.

Another thing I thought of along this line is that you could possibly give the hero a invisible ability that kept track of what "features" the hero had and modified them for special animations (aka switch face to a animated talking face for cutscenes).

This is an idea I had posted awhile back about but I thought with the recent advancements in WC3 that someone might know for sure if something along this line could actually work.

Thanks to all who read through this newb's idea.

Ciao,
Ecu

Wow, great minds do think alike. ^.^ Well, I am curious on how much this type of thing would increase map size, as anything around 2 meg would really be hard to use online.

Anyone interested in this idea? I have alot of ideas on specifics, and anyone with knowledge in modeling/jass might understand how to make these happen.

All them attackments would make them pritty big... maybe this has a better chance of being a campaign than a multi-player map for b-net.

Would this break 4mb? If not I think it could still be worthwile to make for bnet and offer a DL online. I know however that the modeling for this would be insane. I don't know if anyone is going to volunteer.

I don't know about the filesize; the textures (which take the most space, next to music) for the faces could be really small, and, altrough I don't have actual experience with this, the models should be very small as well, as they are but a few points and lines (compared to the thousands of pixels in one image, that's hardly anything). so chances are, such a system wouldn't have such a huge filesize.

And, as you have probably already thought, there are many other options besides clothes, weapons and faces; helmets, armor, whatever... I am only not sure if attached effects show up in the unit portrait... I'm not saying they don't, I just don't know...

I could never get them to show. i thought the portrats where differnt modles attacked to that units modle like there skins.

Robots might be easyer to start with, or maybe air/water ships...

if only some one had the guts to make this.... :D