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Bluetracker

Tracks Blizzard employees across various accounts.

How and where can I learn to animate like Hearthstone?

Though the actual art of the cards itself is beyond me, I'm actually interested in the cool flowing, glowing, moving effects golden cards and special heroes have (Tyrande's eyes and hands, Medivhs' staff, Morgl's hand). It does look like you don't necessarily have to be a good artist, just know the proper tools and technique to smudge stuff around back and forth, and other effects, etc.

  • Hadidjah
    Posted 6 years, 5 months ago (Source)

    This guy got pretty close on the old version of our goldens shader (also he just makes good content in general), and it'll absolutely get you the look every if it's not an exact duplicate of our implementation: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OYjMnMZe1Vg

    The first part of this blog post briefly covers the RGBA masking system we use for all of our goldens, and goes into general philsophy a little as well: https://playhearthstone.com/en-us/blog/18053404/

    Hopefully those help! Feel free to hit me up if you have questions - I admittedly haven't worked on goldens since WotOG, but hopefully I can at least provide pointers.:)

    Edit: I don't remember if the Makin' Stuff Look Good video discusses flow maps or UV distortion (I think it does), but those are a pretty big part of our process, especially for the flowy magic parts.

  • Hadidjah
    Posted 6 years, 5 months ago (Source)

    I think it's kinda funny that my response as someone who knows nothing about the process got more attention than someone who is way more qualified to answer the question. oof that's how reddit works.

    Haha in a thread this size I think having just having the range of options is what's important. AfterEffects has a way lower barrier to entry, it's a good recommendation (and a dope video)!:)

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