Dimitri Berman

I am going to revise some of the Godlike appearances based on your suggestions, Moon and Fire will get their hair along with other aesthetic adjustments, and possibly more variants. Because Godlike use a different system typical hair/tinting variation does not work well with them, so it would make sense to have more variants in general. We'll have to see how much time we have to devote to them vs. other updates. Right now new hair styles for males and females are being worked on, and then Godlike will be next.

Here is a really fascinating helm-evolution graph I found. Even though it's pretty simple, it is interesting to see how they have changed over the centuries and which designs have been dropped in favor of others.

That's indeed a russian-style helm. But there is also a definite cross-over between Russian/Byzantine cultures. I attached some reference examples. We do have a couple of the designs in the game! They are a bit simpler though, no chain mesh. But if we make any more variants, we will make them more elaborate.

GreyFox - No, all visible skin should match and be tinted appropriately with the face, across all races. It is bugged.

Sensuki - The breastplate for the females was using an incorrect shader, it has now been updated and brought inline with the males. We are now focusing on character art polish and revision, which should be fluidly updated throughout the beta. There will be art in the beta that is buggy and even ugly upon launch, but it is being addressed. Your comments are seriously appreciated! I will also gladly answer any questions you may have, time permitting. The "Fantasy" thing - In Eternity we err on the side of functional/realistic, with slight embellishment, for our armor design. THAT SAID, what you are looking at in character creation is the basic starting gear which will progress into a more fantasy and nuanced design. There are lots and lots of outfits that characters will find throughout the game. I promise upper-tier characters will look adequately decked out and stand apart from everyone else in the world.

Karr - I think a couple of female outfits have overcoats, but overall not yet. They should be though!

MasterPrudent - you are correct! Tinting of custom color is relegated mostly to cloth pieces (we do not allow tinting of metals), and on each outfit we try to create a section that players' custom color can be represented in. The issue in a lot of cases, however, answers Karranthain's comment - due to the size of the characters on screen, what Aragon is wearing can be confused with leather, we wanted to make it more clear to the player if they were wearing mail or leather, so all mail armor is clearly mail, etc.. This level of clarity is more important for gameplay quality. Not that we do not mix or layer outfits, but we still opt to make it as clear as possible to the player.

There is an immense amount of character content spread across many races, proportions, sexes, and creatures, and all of it has to play together nicely. Some of it is being polished for the Beta, but it is an ongoing process and you can expect it to improve throughout the beta and until the game ships. Your feedback is certainly appreciated !

rjshae, Falkon - you can expect to have a large variety of loot to find and attain, including shields, armor, weapons, and other stuff. I don't actually know the full list of stuff because that's something designers come up with and hand it off to us. Maybe Josh will make a post some time about it? As far as procedural damage on characters, that's something that we are still discussing. The difference between our game and Batman is the sheer volume of equipment your character will have, which changes things. It's usually a lot harder to do this sort of thing in an RPG with lots of loot, but not impossible.

No problem guys, glad to answer any questions!

Hello everyone! I'll try and answer your questions as best I can. Falkon - we will have dynamic physics and cloth objects, we are prototyping this right now. Expect capes, tails, and similar objects to behave realistically. Making a creature left-handed is not an issue on the art end, but it's up to design team whether they want that to be a significant factor for gameplay. Concept creation is fairly collaborative process and usually we try to make our asset as close to the concept as we can, although exceptions and revisions are made all the time. Even after something is in-game it will tend to be revised before the game ships, multiple times. Frisk - High poly models would be Zbrush high-detail assets (10+ million polygons) that are used to generate normal maps for our low-poly (read: in-game) assets. rjshae - It will be quite similar to NWN2. On character creation you will be able to pick from a number of races, male or female, various head types, hair styles, your skin will be tintable, and there will be a few other options. As far as how emotive the characters are, I don't think we have a final decision on it yet. The characters in this game are actually a lot smaller than they are in NWN2, so in a sense it would be wasted work to add any kind of facial animation and/or further customization options. Sadly, you'd simply never see them. We are going to focus our efforts on what players can appreciate as they adventure. Gumbercules - we haven't decided yet, but unlikely. I agree with you, however, in Eternity characters will be fairly small and it's unlikely you would see body shape differences beyond what we are going to do with the races themselves. As to the 2nd question... yes, it is a huge tech issue to have different races start with different body bases and shapes, especially for RPG's. That said, we think it's cool, and we're going to try to do it. Solviulnir - damn, I agree! We'll see what we can sneak in. I think the overall look for Eternity has been dictated by past Inifnity-engine games (fairly realistic), but we are certainly not limited by them. StraneCat - Luis Royo is my 3rd and Yosh*tako Amano is definitely an inspiration. Great artists all around. Archmage - Zbrush, Softimage XSI, Maya, Photoshop. Hardware, we all run PC's here, as fast and with as much RAM as we can get. Hormalakh - the hardest part about game dev is changing technology. Usually the characters you see in games are assembled out of many pieces, many layers, and many pipelines. Whole teams can work on a single next-gen character to get him into the game. If all we did was make art, it'd be a much easier job Thanks for the questions everyone! Now back to

WorstUsernameEver - good post, you are quite perceptive. I'll just throw it out there, anything can be nitpicked to death, but a lot goes into the design of something for a video game. Typically game companies do not like posting their art (unless it is specifically-made marketing art), because game characters and environments are very much tailored to the game - the game's camera perspective, post-process effects, how many characters are on-screen, how big they are, how well they read against the environment they are in, etc. In case of RPG's, the list is extended further because of swappable equipment and visual effects that go with it. It goes on and on, and we have to take all of that into account as we create assets. Honestly the best presentation for all this is how it is meant to be - from within the game. Our whole team is very proud of what we have accomplished and we can't wait for you guys to experience DS3.

A few extra renders for you... - First People are to be found in the swamps of Ehb. The Wahaika warriors are fast and deadly, you would not want to cross a group of them in battle. - The Shamans are the village elders of the First People. They have mastered unique arts that makes them a deadly adversary, should you chose to anger one. - The typical large spider you will find in caves and certain forests as you adventure. However, it should be noted he is not the biggest nor the most deadly of the spiders. - The worker Cyclops carrying a hammer that he uses in the Forge beneath the city of Stonebridge. - You will encounter many of the Azunite faith in your adventures. The Zealots are well-armed and armored, and are rarely encountered alone. Hopefully you will not have to battle any of these... - As you all know, all Archons, including Anjali, are able to shift into their natural form. In this form they often drop their material-world equipment and instead rely on elemental forces.

Sure can! Sorry guys, we've been busy finishing the game, but I should be posting more pretty soon. I should say these character renders are not really concepts, they are the actual game models, rendered from within our game engine, with some Photoshop manipulation. They are going to look very close to what you will be seeing in-game. I do intend to post more concept art as well. Katarina - the Lescanzi half-blood. Although her mother was a Lescanzi witch, her father proudly served the Legion, and now you, as the player, have a choice to make...

hopfrog - so he was! I edited the post to correct that error. I am just an artist! I don't go into too much detailed description about what you are seeing partly because it is best to allow the game to explain it in my stead, and the other is George would turn red and combust if I got the details wrong.

Here we have the 2nd character of our story, Anjali - the Archon whose destiny you, as the player, will take to it's resolve. And a stained glass painting of the champion Azunai.

SirPetrakus - Yes we do! As soon as Square gives us the OK, I'll ask the concept guys to post some of their work.

Thank you everyone for kind words! This is the Dakkenweyr, a king of the woods, an enemy you will find in deep forests of Ehb. Be wary of him, for he is rarely alone - often accompanied by other creatures that will do his bidding.

Hello everyone! Allow me to introduce myself. My name is Dimitri Berman and I am the lead Character Artist on Dungeon Siege 3. Along with our art director, Justin Cherry, I am responsible for the look and implementation of character assets in the game. We definitely wanted to focus on a strong visual presentation for this game, and we are really excited to share the work we are doing with you guys! So until the game comes out I will use this thread to post anything we can that is art-related, hopefully stuff that you won't see anywhere else. More to come!