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Ice Queen (Terraria)

"The Ice Queen cometh."


The Ice Queen, the frosty monarch that finalizes the onslaught of the Frost Moon. She glides about the battlefield on her icey wings, throwing waves of pure cold energy and sharpened icicle shrapnel. Her form is largely mysterious, and her origin unknown. Why she reigns over the Frost Moon and its minions is anyone's guess.

It's been a slow month, and most of my time went solely into this model. There were a lot of technical challenges here, primarily in the arms and back. Up until now, despite literal years of experimentation, the best arm I could make was about as functional as two pieces of bacon nailed together. I was unsure if I would be able to pull this model off, largely because I figured her arms would end up being garbage.

But... as if by miraculous chance, I had an epiphany. With that, I solved the issues with all of my arm/body test rigs. Ice Queen's arms turned out really nice and smooth, and suprisingly flexible. I even worked in some extra bones in hopes I could get VRD support working, but I decided to pack it up and submit now while there is still time before Christmas.

Concept-wise, I tried to stay as close to the sprite as per usual. Despite how detailed she is in sprite form, it left a lot of gaps I had to fill when transitioning to 3D. There are a handful of places on the model where I had to simply invent something new to go there. Example: the back of her head, her wings, and the interior of her waist bucket.

Her skin and ice effect turned out really nice. I wanted to avoid doing a bare blue skin like the sprite, as I was afraid she'd turn out looking like some kind of blue elf sculpture. The effect is surpisingly simple, it's just a basemap alphamask that's textured with snowflakes.

She's not without flaws. Her wings suck. Managing a full bat-wing on a biped model is a pain, both in model form and in rig script. I probably could have done more for the flexibility of the wings, but it was getting a bit complex. I might improve this part on the next pass. The waist bucket is also pretty dumb looking, but I resisted the urge to chop it off and replace it with legs or bat talons. I'm not going to do another Twins, I swear!

One last thing. It was pointed out to me several times that Ice Queen doesn't "feel" like a Christmas boss. After breaking her down and analysing her, I found her features to be very odd for a ice-themed boss. Bat wings, a pumpkin-like face on a waist "cauldron", spinning icicles(which look somewhat like flames) at the base, and branch-like horns, similar to Splinterling and Mourning Wood. It almost feels like she had originally been designed as a Halloween boss, but was scrapped before she was finalized. I wonder if that was the case, as there seems to be enough evidence to support this.

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-Each arm has a set of corrector bones(bicep, ulna, and shoulder). These are holdovers from when I was trying to implement VRD. Bicep and ulna are largely useless, but shoulder can still be used to tweak her upper arm.

-She has some very primitive facial flexes. I finally figured out how to use the DMX HWM scripts, so I had a bit of fun implementing some basic expressions. She can flex her eyebrows, nostrils, and squint/open her eyes.

-Her wings are a bit buggy. I made several passes at it to reduce clipping and improve flexibility, but it still tears up near the shoulder area when doing complex arm movements.

-Her "ice tails" on the bottom can be spun to simulate the same effect found on her sprite.

-Because the wings are buggy, I've setup a bodygroup so you can turn them off if you don't like them.

-Each wing has 4 helper bones. When correcting the wings, start by tweaking the elbow wing bone first, and then rotating the other bones to match.

-Her crown is bodygrouped, and can be turned off. Her crown is also a separate model, in case you wanted to use it for something else. She contains a hat_bone attachment for binding the crown back onto her head.

-A rig script will be provided to help manage her rig.

-As it turns out, I screwed up with Pumpking's scale. After rescaling Ice Queen to match up with the player character, I realized she was actually more the size of a "mini-boss" rather than a full size one. Pumpking is huge by comparison. I'll have to go back and correct this in Pumpking when I get the chance.

-Before I forget, there is an issue with the facial flexes. For some reason, the left/right channel bleeds into the other side. Despite what I've been able to do with the HWM scripts, I can't for the life of me figure out what causes this behavior. You can replicate it by sliding the L/R slider to one side when facial flexing. You'll see some bleed over on the other side. If anyone knows how to fix something like this, please contact me. I'd greatly appreciate it.



The original concept and design of "Ice Queen" is the intellectual property of "Re-Logic".


Includes:
terr\models\bosses\boss_ice_queen.mdl
terr\models\props\prp_ice_queen_crown.mdl
terr\models\props\prp_ice_spike.mdl

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