PC Gamer - New Zerg

I think it's supposed to be an exoskeleton, the same stuff its' armor is made of, so if you think of it that way it's not quite as ridiculous as hitting the enemy with giant hunks of flesh. Still, I much preferred the bone white coloring of the cleavers because it made them look like specialized weapons, not just limbs.

 

Meh, my eyes arn't that awesome today. I'm pretty tired. I just hope they will not have to read silly insults anymore today. -wink wink, just joking- And by the way, what the hell is that horn even supposed to do there?

The Ultralisk is a massive creature with huge claws in front of it. Seriously, I find it strange that such a creature can even eat with all that in the way, let alone ramming stuff with a horn. It looks like somebody with no knowledge of anatomy designed that. -which is a bad thing, since all Zerg are organic-

 

They have a erm.. special animation for when they attack buildings - a ramming animation - i think blizzard are going for the idea that their head and crest is designed for maximum ramming damage, while their claws for more precise slice n dicing.

Also - i think it would be perhaps more appropriate if the Ultralisk texture had some of that red/brown that the mutalisk has, perhaps in various points between ligerments - just for some extra colour differentiation.

I hope they updated the animations for the ultralisk too... Its run animation was absolutly terrible xD. They would shuffle towards the enemy instead of charging like a mad beast!.

While im at it, some larger claws or a more inventive burrow animation would work also, its kinda funny how they just jumped into the ground and shuffled around.. Ultralisks size really wouldnt work out properly there.

 

Last I saw/heard (it also says so on the sc wikia), the Ultralisk use that horn for a special attack animation, so it's not without purpose (also, it looks badass). It does a head thrust vs buildings for additional damage, as well as the attack counting as one single hit (the kaiser blades do x times 2 (or is it 4 now? ) damage) to minimize armor bonuses.

EDIT: D'aw, Renatus beat me.

 

Well the zerg take creatures and morph them into weapons right? Well maybe thats an evolutionary design needed to increase its armor? Maybe DT's and zealots sliced that part of their heads so much they adapted a horn there for a counter.

 

Before the zerg got to the ultralisks, they probably didn't have the giant cleavers and looked more like a cerapod. The head spike would be used for, well, headbutting things, and all those horns and plates behind the head probably were used to show off how healthy they were to attract mates.

Then the zerg came, threw giant cleavers on them, and made their armor thicker. They don't have to worry about the cleavers being impractical because they grow them in controlled batches and have some regulated way of feeding and maintaining them, all that matters to them is being able to crush an entire squad of marines with one fell sweep of the cleavers (obviously this doesn't actually happen in-game).

Or the zerg just aren't that smart to make more practical creature, just like the terran and protoss forces can't seem to figure out how to fill gaps in their army roles (that are there for balance purposes).

 

Lets tone it down a bit will you guys?
I will have to lock this thread up (which I don't want to because this is a good find and worthy of a discussion) if you guys continue on. Please let it go.

Back on topic, I love the Mutalisk new look. Looks much more realistic. As for the corrupter, I can't really say whether I like it or not because I need to see it with a better angle. I'm kind of neutral with the Ultralisk's cleavers at the moment. The new one makes it look more realistic to be honest. But in terms of the "cool" factor, I actually prefer the old one.

Overall, I really like the direction that Blizzard is heading regarding to the Zergs.

 

I think the best job has been done over muta.. It's really awesome!

 

Yeah, i like the new mutalisk - it has more polys and way more details than the older one, while looking even more realistic and cool looking because of the new texture.

The Ultralisk and Corrupter both look appropriatly more realistic and less cartoony - thanks to the new texture and... Is it a normal mapping? Or specular highlighting? Not quite sure, but the way they reflect the light here looks a lot less cartoony. Love it!

You could argue that the changes to the corrupters texture has lost it some details, this is true, but you must remember that a lot of those details were barely noticable in game, and overall the games lighting system is going to work better with their shiny new textures.

 

I wish the corrupter looked more like the concept art they released, but other than that I like how everything looks, the lighting makes them look much more biological (slimy).

I think it's specular lighting but it could be that and normal mapping really. Good to see they are adding some pretty effects (that don't detract from game play). I suspect the game will play on a really wide range of machines with the various levels of detail.

 

Like the new look. They look less like statues and more like something that might actually send a handful of tauren marines running for their lives. I have to say at first I thought the ultralisk's new cleavers were not very cool. But the more i look at it the more appropriate it looks. My only real complaint is the one i've held since I first saw the new ultralisk model, and that is that it looks a little too bulky to me. I always loved the way the ultralisk looked in SC1. Just looks like a big beetle now.

@Renatus: It looks like anisotropic highlighting to me. Aside from the minor shape changes polycounts haven't changed much( I think), the filtering just accentuates the curves and corners.

 

Anisoptric highlighting? What? Anyways, anisoptric filtering has nothing to do with curves and corners. What you are thinking of is antialiasing.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anisotropic_filtering
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-aliasing

 

Indeed, anti-aliasing is there to make perfectly smooth edges, although it eats quite a lot of video card power. -which is why most games have diferent levels of the technoogy for you to chose from, or even to completely turn it off-

L3ttuc3: great metaphore. Ultralisks scaring Tauren Marines... XD

 

Yeah that's a new one to me

As TychusFindlay stated, antialiasing is the technique for reducing pixelation, and anisotropic filtering is a texture-filtering technique that makes textures appear cleaner further away at an angle than with older bilinear and trileaner filtering.

But I think what Renatus was talking about was the new lighting effects that have been applied to the zerg, the bumpy light reflections that make them appear more detailed and in some areas almost slimy looking, which as he suggested is probably normal (bump) mapping and specular lighting. It's a good effect for the zerg, imo.

 

The all look really good except the corruptor which would of been better if it stayed the same but maybe it was a bad take or something.

The purple on the ultra has been toned down to just its muscular structure and added a more armored tank look.

The mutalisk looks the best and the detail I would have to say looks spot on the the actual portrait.

 

I've never been a fan of the new Ultralisk, so really the only improvement I see here is in quality. Unlike the others, all the seem to be showing here is a new skin, and with some parts, perhaps they shouldn't have. The now brown claws, while they do look good on their own, seem extremely out of place, especially when the toes, teeth and spikes are all whitish. The same goes for its horn, too, which again, looks alright on its own, but ends up making it look like a scrapbook. I just gotta say, as a couple of others have so far, that I'm much more of a fan of the Ultralisk in StarCraft1 than this monstrosity, which is so oddly put together that it doesn't even look remotely plausible, and I'm disappointed with the general praise its gotten from fans consisting of "Awesome, it's got a big spiky head and four scythes! This makes it look cool!"

The Mutalisk is by far the best improvement of the three, and it just looks stunning. Its back, its head, the teeth and mouth at the bottom, the plating, even the wings have been vastly improved, and on a model I've been ecstatic about since day one!

With the Corrupter, I did very much prefer the harder, crustier look of the original, and very much think they should have kept a lot of that, especially around what I would call the 'mouth'. That said, overall, it, too, has been vastly improved.

 

Ya i agree that horn needs to go.

 

Well your right and your wrong. Anisotropic filtering is used to make edges sharper at distance. However anisotropic highlighting is kindof hard to explain. Think of a stainless steel pan. It has grooves in the bottom of it that are circular. Well to duplicate that in a 3d model without having to model those tiny grooves, you can use anisotropic highlighting to make light reflect appropriately from each groove without actually having those grooves represented in the 3d model. Think of specular highlighting, except instead of focusing the reflection from the exact point that light hits the object you reflect in an elliptical fashion slightly off from that point. In this way it accentuates curves. I don't believe what they used is specular highlighting as you can see the light reflects not from a single point but an ellipse along the curves of the model. The slimy look can be achieved with anisotropic highlighting much more effectively.

Anisotropy just means that on different axis the objects physical properties differ. Anisotropic filtering samples the image on all axis to determine if one has been blurred unnecessarily. When you look at something in the distance your looking at it in relation to the y axis, which has been stretched to give the feel that it is far away. the x axis does not need to be stretched, however as the y axis is stretched the x axis is also stretched. So anisotropic filtering will simply allow the x axis of the object to be displayed at its original resolution. It is system intensive because it has to sample every pixel of an image before it can determine exactly how to filter it appropriately.

I hope this is sufficient explanation >< to explain it completely would takes more than one post and it would be more than anyone wants to read lol. That being said, I could be wrong about that, just what it looks like to me. If I've made any mistakes, please correct me.

 

Here's what I found on anisotropic highlighting in relation to 3D modelling and CG, might help explain it better: http://www.neilblevins.com/cg_education/aniso_highlights/aniso_highlights.htm

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About the corruptor, it does seem to have lost a lot of detail now that you guys mention it. It would look awkward if they made all the zerg units shiny except for the corruptor, but it could still use better details.

The mutalisk looks absolutely amazing, I especially like that you can make out the six eyes.

 

It's not his fault but L3ttuc3 didn't state it in the best way (It's insanely hard to describe without knowing in-depth industry jargon) but through your post I think I know what he's possibly talking about. I don't think I could've explained it perfectly either.