3D Modeling Question

Hi all. I hope this is the right forum to be posting this in, but I've just begun studying 3d game design at school.Im learning how to model 3d weapons, amor, etc for video games.Now, I love Guild Wars 2 and learning how to code and model for video games has actually made be better at playing it.

Of particular interest to me are the animation for the set of Legendary Amor.I find their transforming properties extremely COOL!

How could I go about creating transforming models using 3D software?

I understand the basics of animating and rigging models, but what really perplexes me is how they have parts of the amor appearing out of thin air!For instance on the set of Light Legendary Amor an expanding collapsable tail appears out of thin air, upon entering combat.Are they simply shrinking parts to microscopic sizes and hiding them, making them seemingly invisible to the player? Or, perhaps, there is some masking happening that I do not know about?

Would love to hear your answers & feedback,

Sincerely,An inspiring 3d artist

There's many ways to skin a cat on this one.Watching a video of the legendary light armour at a slowed down speed my bet is the steps are:

1. A surfacing toggle to make various parts glow bright, some geometry has its visibility toggled on (the beginnings of a mask)
2. A 2D purple circle animated graphic transitioning into particle effects
3. Lightning particle effects with more 2D animated shard graphics, blend shapes are used to make the mask form along with its and the shoulders shards growing. The shards also seem to be animated too.
4. The collapsable tail is another blend shape but because it looks like more of a transparency reveal I'd say it's blend shapes with a boolean masking the geometry. Similarly the legs' shards are animated more economically than the mask or shoulders. Another surfacing change to do the minute details like small dots of light and fabric changes. It seems like there's about 4 different textures it flips through.

Hope that answers your question.

@Antivillian.1250 said:There's many ways to skin a cat on this one.Watching a video of the legendary light armour at a slowed down speed my bet is the steps are:

1. A surfacing toggle to make various parts glow bright, some geometry has its visibility toggled on (the beginnings of a mask)
2. A 2D purple circle animated graphic transitioning into particle effects
3. Lightning particle effects with more 2D animated shard graphics, blend shapes are used to make the mask form along with its and the shoulders shards growing. The shards also seem to be animated too.
4. The collapsable tail is another blend shape but because it looks like more of a transparency reveal I'd say it's blend shapes with a boolean masking the geometry. Similarly the legs' shards are animated more economically than the mask or shoulders. Another surfacing change to do the minute details like small dots of light and fabric changes. It seems like there's about 4 different textures it flips through.

Hope that answers your question.

Thank you very much for explaining this. I've recently begun researching more into masks to be able to create cool things. TY