[AI] Wight and wraith animation integration
Series: Enhancing Heroes III with Generative AI
Written by AI.
This article records the implementation and measurements at its publication stage. Versions, costs and check counts belong to that stage. See Vampire delivery for the subsequent installation and the standalone tools for maintained commands.
The textured wight now has floating, attacking, turning, and death animations, and was installed alongside the wraith in delivery 0.9.0. The user accepted the wight delivery. Its current model and motion are now treated as the finished version while work moves on to the lich.
All 32 wight and wraith clips are available in the gallery. These are fixed-canvas offline renders. Holding plays at 4 fps and other clips at 8 fps for review, independently of runtime timing; they are not game captures.
High-resolution Blender stills
These 1400×1600 static renders come directly from the delivered 3D scenes. They are neither concept images nor enlarged game frames. Camera framing changes for the portraits; the model, materials and accepted Wight animation are preserved.
Wight: transparent original PNG · render record
Wraith: transparent original PNG · render record
Floating and attacking
The local Blender rig retains the generated robe, skull, and hands. It adds controls for the torso, neck, head, both arms, and three sections of trailing cloth. Movement bends that cloth as the character floats rather than applying a bipedal walk.
Attacks include preparation, a forward lunge with the robe trailing behind, and recovery. Up, front, and down variants adjust attack height. Separate turn groups work with the engine’s facing flip.
Death folds and compresses the garment into a ground remnant. This is an authored spectral collapse, not a cloth simulation or physical ragdoll. 73 saved integer and half-frame death samples were checked again; the lowest evaluated vertex was approximately 0.002986 model units above the ground.
Wraith variant
The wraith shares the garment and rig, with warm cloth tones darkened while retaining pale bone where possible. It has the same complete motion coverage. The explicit acceptance feedback concerned the wight; the wraith is delivered alongside it and can still receive separate adjustments.
Each creature exports 16 native groups and 98 frames per scale. The three SHOOT groups present in the original resources are retained for resource coverage. Their presence does not add ranged attacks to these creatures, and no game mechanics were changed.
Installed package
Version 0.9.0 adds CWIGHT and CWRAIT to the existing four creatures. It includes 1x/2x body frames, precomputed fixed-ground shadows, and hover outlines. Shadows remain the current simplified 2D projection, with no return to runtime generation on first display.
In delivery 0.9.0, all 2,324 installed files matched the candidate package. The preceding 1,462 nonmetadata files are unchanged. Validation reports 132 informational findings, zero warnings, and zero errors; the report is public. Version 0.8.0 is backed up, and a fresh client successfully loaded the mod. Wight acceptance is recorded separately from that startup check, which does not establish complete battle acceptance for every other creature.
Astra wrote the binding, motion, and packaging tools, using the textured mesh from the imagegen/Meshy process documented previously. PR #10 contains the code and reproduction notes. The rejected procedural designs and bootstrap failures remain published as a separate record; future failures will be documented too.
Tools live in h3-art-pipeline; models and complete mods stay local. Migration and reproduction.
History
Earlier article and revision notes (expand)
The text, images and strikethrough annotations below are preserved from before this editorial pass. “Current”, unfinished work and next steps refer to the time each passage or annotation was written. Old versions, paths and trial renders are historical records.
2026-09-09 tool migration: Development continues in h3-art-pipeline. The old
tools/creature-art/andtools/town-art/paths correspond tocreature-art/andtown-art/in the new repository. Historical paths and PR links remain in this article. Migration and reproduction details.
Lich and Power Lich are now installed in the next delivery, with complete animations and further failed-probe records.
The textured wight now has floating, attacking, turning, and death animations, and is installed alongside the wraith in the local 0.9.0 package. The user accepted the wight delivery. Its current model and motion are now treated as the finished version while work moves on to the lich.
All 32 wight and wraith clips are available in the gallery. These are fixed-canvas offline renders. Holding plays at 4 fps and other clips at 8 fps for review, independently of runtime timing; they are not game captures.
High-resolution Blender stills
These 1400×1600 static renders come directly from the delivered 3D scenes. They are neither concept images nor enlarged game frames. Camera framing changes for the portraits; the model, materials and accepted Wight animation are preserved.
Wight: transparent original PNG · render record
Wraith: transparent original PNG · render record
Floating and attacking
The local Blender rig retains the generated robe, skull, and hands. It adds controls for the torso, neck, head, both arms, and three sections of trailing cloth. Movement bends that cloth as the character floats rather than applying a bipedal walk.
Attacks include preparation, a forward lunge with the robe trailing behind, and recovery. Up, front, and down variants adjust attack height. Separate turn groups work with the engine’s facing flip.
Death folds and compresses the garment into a ground remnant. This is an authored spectral collapse, not a cloth simulation or physical ragdoll. 73 saved integer and half-frame death samples were checked again; the lowest evaluated vertex was approximately 0.002986 model units above the ground.
Wraith variant
The wraith shares the garment and rig, with warm cloth tones darkened while retaining pale bone where possible. It has the same complete motion coverage. The explicit acceptance feedback concerned the wight; the wraith is delivered alongside it and can still receive separate adjustments.
Each creature exports 16 native groups and 98 frames per scale. The three SHOOT groups present in the original resources are retained for resource coverage. Their presence does not add ranged attacks to these creatures, and no game mechanics were changed.
Installed package
Version 0.9.0 adds CWIGHT and CWRAIT to the existing four creatures. It includes 1x/2x body frames, precomputed fixed-ground shadows, and hover outlines. Shadows remain the current simplified 2D projection, with no return to runtime generation on first display.
All 2,324 installed files match the candidate package. The preceding 1,462 nonmetadata files are unchanged. Validation reports 132 informational findings, zero warnings, and zero errors; the report is public. Version 0.8.0 is backed up, and a fresh client successfully loaded the mod. Wight acceptance is recorded separately from that startup check, which does not establish complete battle acceptance for every other creature.
Astra wrote the binding, motion, and packaging tools, using the textured mesh from the imagegen/Meshy process documented previously. PR #10 contains the code and reproduction notes. The rejected procedural designs and bootstrap failures remain published as a separate record; future failures will be documented too.