Lost Platoon - cinematic project

What is Lost Platoon?

Lost Platoon is an ambitious cinematic project that seeks to take warcraft 3 machinema to a new level. It is intended to be a single, long cinematic that will utilize all the good practices of warcraft cinematic making for a best possible technical result. It will feature quality terrain, custom unit models and animations, custom lightmodels, voice acting, custom music; all this being run by the next generation of my cinematic system.


What's the status of the project?

iNfraNe and I have been working towards the completion of this project for a while now, and anyone interested in helping has our guarantee that this cinematic will be finished and their work won't be in vain.

What we have so far is a completely functional cinematic system and a finished script for the cinematic - so now we are ready to start producing content. iNfraNe is starting to make the terrain as I am posting this, and I will start scripting the part of the cinematic that does not require custom models immediately afterwards.


Who does the project need?

Modeler(s):
Currently on team: Mc !, Celestea

Modeling is a field where both me and iNfraNe don't have much experience, so this is where we need the most help. We need a modeler to create the models for the main characters - a minimum of five models, but preferably more - up to about ten. Since the custom models should fit together with existing warcraft 3 models, we expect that to some extent it will be possible to reuse parts of existing models, but some degree of working from scratch will be required, especialy because the models should be more detailed. The level of detail on the heads should match or surpass that of standard warcraft 3 portrait models (so facial animations are possible) and the level of detail on the bodies should be raised accordingly. All the custom models are for humanoid characters, most of them are human.

Animator(s):
Currently on team: Chriz.

iNfraNe can do some animating, but due to the nature of the project we require lots of custom animations and iNfraNe already has a lot of other work to do (terrain, music), so we definitely need help here too. The animation work covers several areas: animating the new custom models (all sorts of animations, combat and non-combat, including facial animation for close-up shots), adding new animations to some existing models (for example non-combat animations for footmen where they have the sword in it's sheath and the shield slung over the shoulder) and special multi-model animations for a few select special events that require coordinated animations for two characters (for example the final duel). So we have all sorts of animation jobs to be done, from simple to difficult.

Texture artist(s):
Currently on team: Whitehorn

Textures are needed for the new characters, a bit of copy/pasting is possible but same as with models, because a slightly higher level of detail than is standard in war3 is desired, most work needs to be done from scratch. Same as with models, 5-10 skins will be required and they should blend in with normal wc3 units.
We could also use some custom tile textures for the environment since wc3 tiles are a bit too cartoony. As for other environment stuff (doodads), we should be able to find all we need in the vast resource section of this site.

Script Reviewer:
position filled by Captain Griffen

We need someone with good knowledge of the english language to assist us with polishing up the script, fix spelling and grammar errors, suggest words that could be replaced... A person studying english and/or an english native speaker is prefered.


We want to make this cinematic as good as possible so we need skilled, serious team members with enough time on their hands to complete the required tasks. Also, we want as little information about the story as possible to leak out, to make the cinematic a more enjoyable watching experience when it is released, we expect the team members to respect that and not disclose any informaton on what they're working on.

Intresting... what about the story\background? Is it still a fantasy setting?

It takes place in the warcraft universe. That's all we're giving out to the public ;)

Well, I'm going to do something similar for my mod: npc characters with a 9-12 of interaction animations such as talk, laugh, bow, kneel. The basic model is already rigged.
I don't think I'll go as far as giving them more than a few basic facial animations tho, it's not a cinematic and there won't be many close ups but that might still save you some time. I don't have the time to join actively your project, but I'm willing to share what I have. :)

Thanks for your support, Nasrudin, I've seen this model when you posted in the cinematics forum about it and I was impressed. I don't know if we'll be able to use it or not, not sure how easy it is to transfer animations between models and such, I guess it's all up to the people we recruit.

Again, thanks for showing an interest in this project and for the assistance offered.

When you have the script finished, E-mail it to me, and I'll proofread it for you. Looking forward to this. If it's made by you guys, it can't be anything but excellent.

[email protected]

I'l b teh prof reada i u wnt?

Sorry, Hyarion, but after such a display of literary mastery as shown by Griffen I can not choose anyone but him for the position. :)
As I suspected, this position was filled first. Now let's see if we can get a modeler...

Like I said in the PM, I'd love to help where and when I can.

Thanks, Chriz., your help means a lot to us especialy knowing how large your to-do pile already is. Welcome on the team.

I think I will model here.

What will the texture artist(s) be skinning:

1. The existing models already within Warcraft III ?
2. The custom created models for the project ?
3. Both ?

I assume that most of the users who can model (at this site) can skin their own models aswell. Would that be the job for the modelers or should the texture artists be skinning the modelers creations while they (the modelers) keep working on additional models for the project :?

That's a very good question. The answer entirely depends on what kind of artists we manage to recruit. If the modelers feel more comfortable skining their creations themselves, then there will be less work left for the texture artist. However, some characters will be only reskined normal warcraft models, so there is room for a dedicated texture artist either way, there's also the custom tiles we want for the terrain but I think we already have that position covered.

Mc !: Thank you for your support, welcome on board. :)

Just wanna say: Best of luck with this ambitious project lads. Your cins always turn out amazing, and with this description it seems you've set the bar pretty high for yourselves, so I hope you can meet my now even higher expectations, hehe.

Still looking for more people!

Anyone interested?