Nazgûl (31 July 2007) 2016-10-05

[Plotinus]

Wraiths on wings!

(The animations play at quite different speeds in-game, so some of them don't look so good in this preview.)

This unit can be used as either a ground unit (although it flies), or as a true air unit. I used the Bomb animation and sound from aaglo's Bat unit, so thanks to him for that.

Get it here.

This unit won Unit Of The Month July 2007!

And it also won Unit Of The Year 2007! Thanks to all those who voted for it.

Oh, and it was also voted Best Fantasy Unit ever.

And Unit Of The Decade. Not bad!

 

[bigdog5994]

awesome unit plotinus

 

[Olorin0222]

Sweet Awesomeness! (Even though I had a sneak peek )

 

[Rob (R8XFT)]

Nicely done! I bet you're glad to have finished it .

 

[NavyDawg]

Plotinus,
Those animations are really amazing, great unit! How did you make the flame sword?

 

[rifleman]

 

[Yoda Power]

About time.

No seriously this is one of those "better than usual" units. Outstanding work.

 

[KingArthur]

It's a masterpiece. How are you going to top that?

 

[Mirc]

Wow... this is a simply fantastic unit.

 

[Wolfhart]

All English superlatives I can think of actually seem too insufficient and inadequate to describe how much I like this unit. Wow..! And that flaming sword too... Wow..! This is art.

There's a minor glitch in the NW direction of the Attack B flic: at the bottom of the frame a palely civ-coloured line appears when this flic is playing.

 

[Virote_Considon]

Nice!

 

[Plotinus]

Thanks for the comments. Glad people like it!

[NavyDawg] I made a "Flame" prop myself out of primitives (flattened cones), in a variety of fiery colours (in the Ambient box as well as Diffuse, so it looks like it's glowing). I exported them as a 3ds object and then imported them again, so they were a single prop. Then I parented it to the sword. It's scaled to 0.1% when not needed, and then grows or shrinks as required. I made it flicker simply by rotating the prop by 180 degrees every frame. Having it cast a flickering red light on the unit was harder, because if you use downward-pointed lights, it screws up the shadows on the ground - especially if the lights are coloured. I had to render the unit without the light first, and then render it again with the light and without ground shadows, and then superimpose the second set of renders upon the first. No doubt there's a clever way of achieving this effect that's much simpler, but I couldn't think of one.

[Wolfhart] That was stupid of me, so thanks very much for spotting that. I've corrected the download.

 

[Stormrage]

.. those animations.. it looks so alive! Thank you!

 

[Bjornlo]

Just a brilliant unit. Very well done.

 

[TopGun]

This unit will haunt me in my dreams! Well done. Very well done!

 

[Synobun]

Everything is absolutely great, and what a coincidence that I watched 2 LOTR films yesterday...

 

[Ozymandias]

Nice going.

-Oz

 

[Heretic_Cata]

Looks like the Asian Dragon will have to fight this guy.

 

[Keroro]

Wow, that is good. Glad to see you sorted out that problem with the flics. It must have been a pleasant change from workers and settlers making something so unusual. The flame sword works really well as contrast against the generally very dark unit. The anims are fantastic, especially the death. I love the way the rider drops the sword then the wings slowly flail around before hitting the ground. Wonderful.

 

[WildWeazel]

Wow, this is really excellent. The animations are even better than I had expected. Now we just have to agree on how to implement these things!