Procedural random unit appearances

[:1]Someone linked this in another thread:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k9lPgCCN_jk
We see that every unit looks identical, which ends up being really wierd for biologicals.
I made the same post before DGs release.
Not only should units be randomly varied in height/width, there should also be a procedural texture of some sort (some sort of shader effect? Im not that familiar with advanced gfx), that applies random/variable patterns of blood stains and dirt, etc.
Bonus points if hair colour and skin colour varied too.
It'd be great to have a game that looks a bit more gritty, chaotic and less cartoony.|||I like this idea, but... Wont that hit the performance?|||Well, hopefully its something you can turn off in the gfx settings, since its some kind of effect.
The random variations in height/width probably is "for free" though.
Actually, I hope for the return of a usuable Cartographic Mode. I'm all about making extreme cuts to visual quality in order to get ridiculous framerates :)|||I think all the foot soliers and other basic units should be identical. You're not going to spend time examining each one because you're going to be dealing with so many. Because they're smaller on your screen, you also want them to look as similar as possible for identification. On larger units, like legendaries, this could be awesome, some small variation could add some nice detail, as long as it's still clear what unit it is|||chaosandwalls|||redmoth|||Do what Valve did with L4D(2). Create a selection of heads, bodies, and skin colors(somewhere around 15 of each, allowing 3375 versions). Thats how they did the Horde in L4d2. I dont think it would be too hard for them to make minor differences in models, so it would actually be quite awesome! The only issue I see is that the file size of the whole game would be raised. But if your going with digital distribution, you arent limited by the standard DVD size!|||Do what Valve did with L4D(2). Create a selection of heads, bodies, and skin colors(somewhere around 15 of each, allowing 3375 versions). Thats how they did the Horde in L4d2. I dont think it would be too hard for them to make minor differences in models, so it would actually be quite awesome! The only issue I see is that the file size of the whole game would be raised. But if your going with digital distribution, you arent limited by the standard DVD size!|||Grim Tuesday|||Well, you have your desired look in the video linked in the OP.
I think THAT looks wierd.|||AdmiralZeech|||They do it fine in the total war games, i see no reason why it can't be implemented.|||I'd like to see something like this - different colors for horses and mounts would be nice.|||Hazza616|||death1234|||redmoth|||redmoth|||If units look slightly different when zoomed in but you can still easily tell what they are, I'm completely for this. It's not like it will be hard to tell what is what at the strategic level, because you can just look at strategic icons.|||redmoth|||Honestly I'd rather GPG spend thier time doing other more important things, it'd be nice as a bonus, but on the other hand time spent on this might have been able to go to sometihng more important.
Mike|||OrangeKnight|||If they can't get to it then I think that it is unnescesary, however, some people said for exclusions on SC2 that they would rather they get to a mass conversion exclusion then an arty exclusion, but they delivered both. GPG seems rather diligent in it's work.
And as to the thing about the army looking wacky, think of sand. It looks white. But really, when you look close, you can see fragments of black, green, red, etc. They can still have the predominant soldier look relatively the same (color doesn't have to be the main difference: a change in the arrangement of how armor is could do the trick with the same colors), but still include some different looking soldiers.|||redmoth