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Hello, I'm new here, I've been wandering how do I get into an entry level position as an environmental 3D artist (For assets mostly) I have a resume and a portfolio but I'm always getting the standard no-reply rejection emails days later, if at all. I have a ton of experience but none of it professional, which is what i know companies look for, but I find myself in a feedback loop where I can't get a job because I have no experience and I have no experience because I can't get a job. I was wondering if anybody with experience has any advice for someone in my situation.

Hi All, I've decided that since I have a lot of ideas for the game and am a big fan I wanted to create a forum for all my ideas and thoughts. Critiques are always welcomed. Thanks,

Hello everyone! I'm Uburian, a long time Pillars (and Obsidian) fan and Lego enthusiast from the basque Country. I'm currently working on my doctorate thesis on art and technology, but because of certain global affecting events which I'm sure you are aware off, i have found myself unable to continue my work properly until the situation improves. Now i have plenty of extra time to burn and nowhere to go, so i have decided to start a Pillars of Eternity (I & II) Lego recreation that focuses on my most significant play-trough of the games, and to share it with those who i know will appreciate it I will also utilize this opportunity to hone my storytelling skills. The main tool i will use for this endeavor is the amazing Lego Digital Studio 2, which not only allows you to create digital Lego sets with a very extensive catalogue of pieces, but that can also render said sets in photo-realistic quality. Now, to start the series, i present to you my recreation of the Caravan Encampment set around the ruins of Cilant Lîs: https://imgur.com/a/2ybg5hO ------------------------------------------------------------------- All stories have a beginning, and yours starts around a tranquil bonfire among the imposing ruins of Cilant Lîs. Drops of sweat fall trough your face while you hold your belly in pain, you shiver. The smell of roasted meat, usually a comforting presence, makes you shrink in your knees. "Touch of the rumbling Rot, could be", Odema says. After listening to the caravan master's counsel, you head into the wilderness alongside Calisca in search of spring berries, in hopes that a tea made from them will be enough to help you survive another day. ------------------------------------------------------------------- PS: Good luck to those who are going trough confinement and social distancing right now. Here in the Basque Country (northern Spain) we have been like this for almost a month now. I hope my stories help you go trough this all. Stay safe, and stay strong

https://youtu.be/R-4-JT6Pp9w I took a timelapse of the emerald vale. I was entranced by the aurora and thought itd look awesome. I also love how the ships fly by. They did an amazing job with the environment.

Long time purchaser, first time writer... I just wanted to thank all of you at Obsidian for releasing a game with the level of art and style I have been waiting for pretty much since NWN and PS:T. So many isometric style RPGs or ARPGs have come and gone while the art (both in terms of pure graphical fidelity and overall execution) have malingered somewhere between their ancient forebearers and something that would be in line with a mobile game of yesteryear. PoE2 finally has that graphical upgrade I kept thinking was inside of each new title... only to be disappointed. While story, design, and execution have all varied from dizzying heights to disappointing depths in all of these titles, the art remained consistently low-poly smudges best viewed from afar and possibly with a healthy dose of imagination. Can I survive with less? Of course! Have for years. But damn it feels good to actually be able to enjoy this aspect as well. So as a long time (mildly) suffering gamer from the bottom of my heart: THANK YOU!

Hello everybody ~ I noticed that by now I made by far enough fanart of Obsidian's games to warrant it's own topic here on the forums for it. You'll mostly find NWN2 stuff here, but also some PoE and even South Park. And some crossovers. I like crossovers. If you want to see all my stuff, I suggest checking out my Tumblr, DeviantArt or Twitter. Well, have fun browsing! - Old Illustrations (2013/14) - - Old Doodles (2013/14) - - DeviantArt Memes - I have to link these seperately, because they are too huge to share directly. Spoilers all over the place. NWN 2 Meme - MoTB Meme - PoE Meme - Current Stuff (2015/16) - Jaheira (BG2) and Durance Aloth and Edér shipping Haer'Dalis (BG2), Annah (PS:T), Valen (NWN:HotU) and Neeshka Sand's New Groove Mall Santa Durance and his helpful Christmas Elf Hivarias Simply Edér Uhm ... my friend wanted this for her birthday, this is only partially my fault >.> Edér jumping out of a giant honey cake. Okku and Wilson (BG2:EE) meeting in Rashemen And last but not least: My 13th Anniversary present for Obsidian. You guys are the best, I hope you are gonna stick with us for a many more years to come <3

Hi ! I was wondering if I may ask for a favor... So I'll just throw it and see how it goes. Is it possible for you to get in touch with Kaz, to ask him if it's possible for him, to have this White/Blue Art above your head, implemented as a portrait ? Haven't got the chance to see it entirely yet ( )... but it seems to look absolutely gorgeous ! Or even quicker : Maybe posting an average High-Res picture of it ? So we can make a portrait of it by ourselves ? In fact, I'd like Kaz to implement it, because it would require a "water-colored" version of it aswell, to fit Scripted Interactions & Dialogues stuff though... Anyway, if you have the time & the possibility, a simple Image would make me really glad & eternally grateful ! Maybe others would like it aswell !

Hey guys! Because our Fig updates are only emailed to backers from the Fig site, we're going to start posting our updates to the forums when we release a new one. That way, more of you will be up to date with what we're working on. UPDATE #30 - We have an awesome environment art update for you this week, but let's start with our Slacker Backer totals: Slacker Backer Funds Fig Slacker Backers - $112,200 Backer Portal - $143,900 This brings our Slacker Backer total to $256,100 and our grand total to $4.66M. We have one more week to try and reach our $4.75M stretch goal. We believe in you! Spread the word and help us out one last time. Remember to confirm your pledge on the Backer Portal if you haven't already. We need this information linked so we can send you your rewards! You can read through our instructions for confirming your pledge in Update #25. The Environments of Pillars II In the Pillars of Eternity series, we make sure our environments look beautiful. Our area designers and environment artists work hard to ensure every last detail is placed correctly, from rugs and thrones all the way down to tiny bowls of fruit. However, the environments aren't just something nice to look at; each area plays an important role in revealing the storyline and teaching you more about cultures of the people who live in these places. A lot of work goes into making a scene in Pillars of Eternity II: Deadfire, and we'll walk you through from start to completion. The scene we'll be showing is part of the Vailian Trading Company's headquarters. In case you missed it, you can read about the VTC in Update #29! Blockout The blockout and design document is the first step to making an environment in Pillars II. An area designer will create a design document and provide all of the following information about an area: Summary and background of the area How large each scene should be Visual descriptions with concepts Creatures and NPCs present in the area Quests that occur Dialogue requests Encounters or Scripted Interactions Blockouts for each area Examinables and loot Specific asset requests for Art, VFX or Audio We'll focus on the art side of things for now. Below is the blockout for the VTC headquarters, created by an Area Designer in Unity: After the blockouts are approved by leads, we have the concept art team sketch out the general feel and style of the scene if needed. We didn't need a concept for this scene, so it was passed directly to environment art to start work in a 3D software package. On this project we are using Maya by Autodesk. Environment Art First Pass Click on an image below to view them at full size. The following are daily renders by our talented Senior Environment Artist, Daniel Keating. Scenes are built in Maya with the blockout as a guide, and are made up of both pre-made and brand new assets. (The pre-made assets were created in Maya and ZBrush by our artists in previous areas and fit with the style and overall feel of other scenes, so they get reused) Day 1: Focusing on flooring, walls, and some basic lighting: Day 2: Getting rugs and large props into the area, making adjustments to lighting: Day 3: Adding medium and small props, adjusting lighting even further: Day 4: Adjusting props, lighting, addressing any lead feedback that comes up: At this point in the development process, the first pass is complete. Basic lighting is laid out, all major props are implemented into the scene, and it is now ready for a basic navigation and collision pass. The Maya render itself is ready to be passed on for lead review. Basic Nav & Collision Pass Basic navigation is laid out for the level in Unity, giving a sense of where the walkable party area is: Collision is set up on walls and other objects to prevent the party from passing through solid parts of the environment or props: While the basic navigation and collision pass is being worked on, the Maya render is being reviewed by leads. Leads Review The first pass render of scenes is sent to our Art Director and Lead Designer for review. They look over the master beauty render and make notes for both VFX and the environment artist to address in the second art pass. When notes are finished, the environment artist begins work on a second pass of the scene. Environment Art Second Pass All of the notes have been taken into consideration, and the artist finishes their second pass: Once the final master beauty render is approved, we begin a 3D object pass, followed by VFX, audio, and paintovers if necessary. 3D Object Pass & VFX Our artists add anchor points, water planes for VFX, and any 3D objects requested to the scene. Anchor points are placed on objects to signify where lighting is needed for this scene: Additionally, our artists create custom meshes that VFX converts into water planes: Anchor points in Unity scene: Area with collision, navigation, and anchor points set up: In-Game After second art passes are completed, the render, VFX and collision are updated in the build so we can have final playthroughs of the area. While this scene looks massive, it appears zoomed in when actually playing the game. Each scene is broken down into a number of 'screens' - When viewing the scene in-game, your view is referred to as one 'screen'. This VTC Headquarters scene is 3x3, meaning that 9 in-game screens will cover the area. This view in the game represents one screen: Update #11 went into detail about new graphics and technology in Pillars II, so be sure to check that out if you missed it! In that update, you can learn more about the rendering process, improved shaders, and new technology you'll be able to experience while running around Eora. Stay tuned for next week's update, when we announce our funding total. Have any comments? Feel free to discuss below, and we'll answer your questions! Thanks for reading.

Hey everyone! I started playing Pillars of Eternity recently and I really wanted a custom portrait for my female moon godlike character. Last week I had some time on my hands so I painted this - I'm hoping that someone else will find this portrait useful as well. I've included a full res along with the large and small cropped portraits for in-game use. Alternatively you can just download the zip file (linked below) with the cropped portraits. Enjoy! <3 Here is what they look like in-game for those who may be curious: ZIP File Download: http://www.amegani.com/portraits/f_moongodlike_portrait.zip Installation Instructions: Extract all of the files from the zip folder. Navigate to the female player portraits directory in your Pillars of Eternity installation directory. In my case, the directory was C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\SteamApps\common\Pillars of Eternity\PillarsOfEternity_Data\data\art\gui\portraits\player\female . Place the two extracted images (the _lg and _sm versions) in that directory and start Pillars of Eternity. The portraits should now be available for you to use in-game. Tumblr Link - for those who would like to reblog from my original tumblr post. Cant EDIT: title changed at Amegani's request.

After years of silence in which I have played games casually while studying philosophy I think it is evident that some problems may be persitent or it may be, that what I think is problematic and a flaw in the design is not something the community or the designers feel urgent to correct and change. Many things can be said to strengthen such a view, but I will leave it at that. I will in the following make a comment to the combat system and how it handles the translation from program structure (mechanics or systems) to meaning for the player. Pillars of Eternity is a game I backed from the beginning and I played the beta a little while, but soon found that the game was a dissapointment. Beeing a game made by my childhood heros of sorts I did not give it much thought and was sure that in time things would come around and the game would ship in perfect order. Struggling to make a character with a historical depth due to my age mostly (39) I managed in the end to come up with a roleplaying idea of no small measure. I am playing an aged and tired Korgan Bloodaxe. Yes, the Dwarf from Baldur's Gate. A retired mercenary that no longer have the taste for blood and axes and just want to settle in a new land away from the problems of the world and the men and organizations that tend to hunt him for his past deeds. Korgan is now a greyhaired stoic and deceptive dwarf and he refuses to get involved in the world around him, but as the story goes, beeing a Watcher, he soon finds that one last involvement becomes a pressing matter. Before Korgan Bloodaxe, I played around with forty different avatars trying to get a sense of the mechanics and power of the different defenses, classes, weapons and so forth. This is probably due to my current studies and the fact that I have played games for over 20 years and is hard to please. I attend a master at a local university studying games. The only university in fact, that has such a program. I am from Denmark, Copenhagen and have a bachelor in philosophy. Design is all about creating structures that gives the player a good sense of depth and meaning. In games such as this one, structures should support and account for pyschological depth and philosphical thoroughness both formal and non-formal. What is a beeing you could ask? It does not matter whether such a beeing is an elf, dwarf or human. They can all be mercenaries and originate from the same region so all races should have a generic pychological potential and therefore be restricted, "controlled" (Foucault) and moved by the same cultural instituitions and phenomenons. The question of; what is a beeing, comes down to the question of; what we as humans are, since whatever races or other beeings we "construct" are mediated by the way we see ourselves and have seen ourselves throughout history. There is nothing else. Everything is first and foremost humanoid no matter what horrors or extraterrestial creatures we construct. A ghost is a memory, a horror is a nightmare and so forth. Nothing otherworldy can be created in reality and what is otherworldy to us, is only our way of making a thing obscure, secret and dramatic. This is the strength of art. In fantasy video games specifically, we can make a magic system and by so doing say something about the existence of Man in subtle ways. Combat I see a string of questions. The first one is whether it is possible to play Pillars of Eternity without a some way besides defenses of surpressing afflictions? I will see past difficulty. The normal difficulty should be the only difficulty in my opinion. Here the game should be perfect and should tell the story vivdly and make the right challenge appear at the right time all the time. Korgan Blood axe is a physical powerhouse of proportion. He has poor reflexes and not much brawl in him any longer. He is old and the passion for war and his fearful demeanor has all gone. Korgan is a troubled man now with countless of deaths on his conscience. He has super strength (21), super constituion (18), high dexterity (16) and high intelligence (16). Perception and resolve is rock bottom (this is how i translated and made him). As such, his reflex and will defense are poor, but his fortitude defense is extreme. He is basically a fighter made as if he was a barabarian (Berserker in his case). I looked forward to see how such an avatar, the famous Korgan Bloodaxe would fare in-game and I was stunned.. Example 1 Ghouls (weakness) Korgan fights a single ghoul and is almost killed. How is this possible? Well the ghoul has a high attack speed and can reaaply the weakness affliction permanently. Korgan hits the ghoul 4-5 times and it dies, but Korgan is hit maybe 10-12 times and looses 100 health and almost goes down. Is Korgan tough? Do I feel a sense of power as the player playing him? I most certainly do not. The entire battle gives me sense of a flawed combat system and Korgan Bloodaxe is nowhere to be found. Example 2 Mushroom cave (prone) So I venture into the cave to collect mushroom samples for a cure. Three sentient mushrooms attack. Korgan is surrounded, but a battleworn mercenary like Korgan will surely just dispose of theese neutral enemies defending there mother hen. Korgan is prone. Korgan is down. A flawed combat system? The combat system does not commute to the player how things should and would be in real battle, but tries to uphold a structure or mechanic. This is a serious issue. A mechanic should serve an intellectual purpose or meaning and never rule. If the combat system begins to repair itself just so it can exist, then the combat system is flawed (Nietzsche). It should not be possible to knock a character like Korgan on his heels and then pound him to grinded meat with 6 attacks dealing +15 damage. Korgan has ONE defense and my entire roleplaying idea hinges upon this defense. When both a ghoul with indefinte weakness apllication and a few sentient mushrooms just pummels him to dust, something is wrong. The problem can be corrected. To make apparent my point and not to give technical recommendations, it is done by resolving how afflictions work in relation to GRAZES. A graze should not be able to knock Korgan out for 3 seconds! This is contraintuitive, it kills the mood and the battle realism. My story crumbles and I am lead to believe that this game can not be played without a priest or by drinking potions. Hence I reload and begin with the spell "suppress affliction" and set Korgan loose. The battle is over in seconds. But if this is inteded, then it is no longer Korgan I am playing - it is nothing but a damage MACHINE with an immunity field! It kills the "person" Korgan Bloodaxe (commuted in combat primarily through attributes and defenses) or at least I have to "repair" him with another story to justify such a flaw. Obviously this is not a solution. This then, in turn, removes the impact and cultural meaning of the entire defense system. The pyschology, history and any philosphical notion about our existence, that such a system should serve and support, is removed from the game and this can not be intended. If in stead, Korgan would have resisted all but very few seconds of weakness and perhaps 1 sec of prone, then Korgan as a "person" would have been present. I would have felt his presence – attacks grazing, strengt applied, damage soaked, vicious damage dealt etc. Combat systems CAN NOT remove the historical fleshy personality and replace it with a mathmatical structure like an ORC in Warcraft or a Hydralisk in Starcraft you just need to buff. The stuctures we program to commute personality should serve and never rule. What I experience should be "Korgan Bloodaxe" and hence his defenses and attributes, not the fact that he is some-thing that needs a buff or a potion to modify a number or else he will stop operating. The numbers and structures should be invisible and serve a well thought of intellectual scheme. In a game where an avatar is core such flaws are just not welcome. It reduces the combat system to the systems known in real time strategy games. I do not want my avatar to be a piece in a puzzle, I want my avatar to be special and want my choices in character creation to have a huge impact on how I experience the game. M

The FoW interferes so much with the background art. The difference is night and day...almost literally: WITH FOG NO FOG Yes, there's that unsatisfactory "nofog" command, which also clears the unexplored fog, needs to be re-entered all the time and also disables steam achievements...

I saw IGN's review they gave it a score of 9 which is awesome but they also had one negative point in the summary. That the art style was dated. I understand that the graphics might not be the best but the art style has really invoked that feeling of tabletop roleplay and as a roleplayer that is more than awesome and fits the setting perfectly. What are your thoughts on the art style in the game?

The beta is out, give us your first impressions!

Will the Pillars of Eternity collector's book be sold separately since it is being published by Dark Horse? If not, will there be a "world of" or "art of" book in the future? I am a big fan of the designs!

My main focus here is going to be on the forced use of Character portraits. I understand they are near and dear to a lot of people in this type of community but I'd again rather have a system that just shows a crop of my created character. I don't want to have to use a custom portrait and spend 20 minutes of my life every time I created a different character due to me being unsatisfied with the provided (vanilla) character portaits. Now, moving on to lack of customization options for faces and my issues with bodies and height. Why is it that all of the faces have the same deminsion and size? why are our options of facial hair and other things so limited? I also find some of the races (Humans) to be awkwardly stumpy in demenor. Very short with large heads as if for no real reason other than to say all human males are 5ft tall. I didn't care for this much. Or rather I do care. A lot. And lastly Over all texture quality for the NPCs in the world are too low. Everything else in the world is seemless and beautiful but the characters take away from it. They stick out like a sore thumb against these 2D backgrounds, and not in a good way. They appear at times to be pixilated, jagged, and their animations bring about a strong desire for me to have the option to turn texture filtering up to X18 and X8 antializing. But then I realized it wouldn't do anything to change these settings when they are provided because the textures themselves are made to be old looking as if to pay homage to an older game. This is not however, an older game. I'm running a machine capible of playing the witcher 3 on max settings. I would just like to see some more quality and higher texture resolution. Also, heavier NPC and character shadows and possible character outlines to make NPC's stand out more from their background. Thanks guys. Sorry If I was a jerk. It's 5am!

Update by Rose Gomez, Associate Producer Greetings backers! In today's update, we've got some great new character, and area art for you to check out. Our artists have been hard at work creating beautiful new areas and lots of new armor for the game. Our next update will be the next chapter in the class series, all about chanters and priests, by Josh Sawyer. Characters Recently our character artists have been hard at work crafting as many armor types as possible. All of our armor types have a variety of quality levels: normal, fine, and exquisite. JD Cerince recently finished up the plate armor designs for the game, which you can see here. Plate Armor. James Chea worked on the scale armor for the game. Below you can see a few varieties for female player characters. Cloth pieces for our armor sets can be tinted as in Baldur's Gate and Icewind Dale. Scale Armor. AreasIt's not all dungeons and darkness in Pillars of Eternity. Sean Dunny finished up the beautiful beachy area of Anslog's Compass. Wave effects and details are courtesy of John Lewis. Named for a rocky stretch of land which theoretically resembles a sundial, this lagoon provides decent fishing for both brave Dyrwoodans and a local contingent of xaurips. More than one ship has met its end upon the nearby reef, and debris occasionally washes ashore from the wreckage. Anslog's Compass. Here you can see the Hall of Warriors done by April Giron. This large wooden structure is used as a meeting place for visiting warriors within Twin Elms. It is here that the Glanfathan hunters gather and tell stories of past deeds, discuss upcoming events and hunts, and conduct friendly contests of physical prowess (arm wrestling, tests of endurance, etc.). Sometimes, a visiting anamfath will take residence in the hall when visiting the city. Hall of Warriors. Here we have a section of a much larger dungeon by Sean Dunny. This is from Clîaban Rilag, an Engwithan ruin. Clîaban Rilag Entrance. That's it for this week. We hope you enjoyed this quick art update! Come back next week for a thorough update on chanters and priests by Josh Sawyer.

Update by Josh Sawyer, Project Director Welcome! First things first: if you have backed Pillars of Eternity but not yet completed your order on our website, please do so as soon as possible. Even if you have an all-digital order, we need information from you to make sure you get everything you are supposed to. If your backer tier includes an NPC, item, portrait, or other custom piece of content, an early response will make it easier for us to work with you on your designs and preferences. As always, we appreciate that our backers have made Pillars of Eternity possible and we want to ensure that you get your money's worth. Broken Age As most of you know, our friends at Double Fine have their new adventure game, Broken Age, coming out today. Double Fine and their Kickstarter adventure game paved the way for all of the games that came after - including Pillars of Eternity. If you are fans of the adventure game genre (or just fans of good games from indie studios), show them some love. You can find more about it on their website. Update Engwithan ruins sitting atop some cliffs. Things are going well at Obsidian on the Pillars of Eternity team. The artists are putting the finishing touches on the second of our two big cities, Twin Elms, and the environments look fantastic. Our designers are busy implementing narrative and quest content, in some cases returning to earlier areas to fill in cracks and flesh elements out more. The character artists are almost done taking all of our highest-priority creatures to alpha level and are starting to look at the second string of creatures and variants. Animation is right behind them, creating rigs and alpha animations as new creatures come online, and we're finally returning to our main character animations for a second pass. Programming continues to chug away at user interfaces, AI, and zany spells and many other items on our long list of features. In short, we're well past "the hump" and the game is looking and feeling better every day. Heavy Hitters In most RPG parties, there's a character type that focuses on dealing death to VIPs in the enemy roster. They are the heavy hitters, the characters who cut enemies down one-by-one with precise, overpowering attacks. We've previously talked about one of our heavy hitters, the cipher. Ciphers alternate between powerful mental attacks and the physical strikes used to power them. They are the only "caster" class that focuses heavily on individual enemies, in large part because their abilities all require an external concentration of soul energy to serve as a power source. In contrast to the cipher, the rogue and the ranger are more traditional, but just as deadly. Rogues rely on the vulnerability of their enemies to inflict devastating attacks in close quarters. Rangers coordinate their strikes with the help of animal companions, creatures with whom rangers form lifelong bonds. Outside of direct combat, rogues and rangers share a skill emphasis in Stealth and are commonly the sneakiest party members. But while rogues also have a specialization in Mechanics (most often to lay traps and deal with ones placed by their enemies), rangers focus on Survival, which improves the duration of many consumable items. Though the three "heavy hitter" classes have different styles of play with different strengths, they all excel at taking enemies down in the shortest amount of time possible. In Pillars of Eternity, the designation of a character as a "rogue" signifies their vicious, brutal style of fighting, not a propensity for theft or deception. More than any other class, rogues exemplify the adage that the best defense is a good offense. If fighters are the disciplined, reliable, well-trained units that hold the line, rogues are the shock troops that attempt to break through that line to take out vulnerable units before they can effectively retaliate. When pinned down, rogues can suffer from their weak defenses, but ideally they carry their momentum from one target to the next in short order. All rogues start with three abilities that allow them to immediately dive into heavy-hitting: Finishing Blow, Reckless Assault, and Dirty Fighting. Finishing Blow (Active) - Full Attack. This ability gains power the more damaged the target is. When the rogue uses a Finishing Blow, he or she makes a full attack at the enemy with his or her current weapons. The attack is made with an Accuracy bonus and does +50% damage if it hits. For every 1% under 50% Max Stamina the target has, the attack does an additional +3% damage. 3/rest. Reckless Assault (Modal) - In this mode, a rogue's Deflection is lowered but he or she gains a bonus to Accuracy and damage with all weapons. Dirty Fighting - 10% of the rogue's Hits with any melee or ranged weapon are turned into Crits. This occurs after the initial attack roll is resolved. The resulting shift is displayed in the combat log. As rogues advance, they gain access to abilities that allow them to maximize the damage and afflictions they can dish out to their targets. They can also learn a variety of tricks to help them get out of trouble when the going gets tough. Sneak Attack - Sneak Attack applies bonus damage to the rogue's ranged and melee weapon attacks when the target has any of the following statuses: Blinded, Flanked, Hobbled, Paralyzed, Petrified, Prone, Stuck, Stunned, or Weakened. It also applies to any target the rogue strikes with a weapon within the first 2 seconds of combat starting. Escape (Active) - Escape allows the rogue to break Engagement and safely move away from their current location. The ability must be targeted on open ground to which the rogue has a clear path. When activated, the rogue immediately breaks Engagement and swiftly moves to that location. 1/encounter. Crippling Strike (Active) - Full Attack. Inflicts extra damage and the Hobbled condition. 2/encounter. Coordinated Positioning (Active) - You are able to instantly switch positions with one target within 1m. If this is an ally, the switch is automatic. If it is an enemy, the maneuver is an attack against its Reflexes (only succeeds on a Hit or Crit). The switch is immediate and cancels Engagement (if any) on the rogue. 2/encounter. Adept Evasion - 50% of all Grazes against a rogue's Reflexes are converted to Misses. Blinding Strike (Active) - Full Attack. Inflicts extra damage and the Blinded condition. 2/rest. Deathblows - Against any target that is afflicted by two or more of the conditions that can allow Sneak Attack, rogues do additional Sneak Attack damage. Resident heavy-hitting rogue, Edér. Rangers are expert sharpshooters with any ranged weapon. Though they traditionally rely on bows and crossbows, some use firearms or even magical implements. Regardless of their choice of armament, even novice rangers can strike swiftly and leave severe wounds that quickly wear down an enemy's stamina and movement. They are assisted in their efforts by their animal companions, incredibly tough and loyal creatures who share their lives (literally) with their masters. All rangers start with the following three abilities: Animal Companion - The ranger begins the game with (and can name) an animal companion that fights at his or her direction. This companion shares Health and Stamina with the ranger, i.e. if either one is damaged, the same pool is reduced. Both the ranger and the animal companion die if their Health is reduced to zero. Animal companions have high inherent Damage Thresholds that allow them to run interference for their masters. Wounding Shot (Active) - Only usable when ranged weapons are equipped. The ranger's shot inflicts a continuous damage effect and Hobbles the target. 3/rest. Swift Aim (Modal) - This mode increases the ranger's rate of fire and reload with ranged weapons at the cost of an Accuracy penalty. At higher levels, rangers gain abilities that increase the effectiveness of their attacks and the coordinated use of their companions. By tactically applying the synergistic benefits of the ranger and his or her companion, players can lock down and quickly overwhelm powerful enemies. Defensive Bond - When both the ranger and his or her animal companion are subjected to an area effect attack, they gain +15 to the targeted defenses. Marked Prey (Active) - The ranger can designate a single target as his or her marked prey. He or she and his or her animal companion have a damage bonus against that target until combat ends. Once designated, the target cannot be switched. 1/encounter. Predator's Sense - The ranger's animal companion gains a damage bonus on any creature suffering from a continuous damage effect, including those caused by Wounding Shots. Stalkers' Link - When a ranger's animal companion Engages a target, the target is automatically Flanked if the ranger has a ranged weapon equipped and is opposite the target. Takedown (Active) - The ranger's animal companion will knock the target Prone with a Fortitude attack. 2/encounter. Defensive Shooting - When using ranged weapons against any target that is Engaging the ranger, the ranger's Accuracy is increased by 20 and his or her Interrupt rating is improved by one category. Master's Call (Active) - When the ranger issues Master's Call, his or her animal companion will immediately move back to him or her at increased speed, gaining a +20 bonus to Concentration and defenses against Disengagement Attacks. Any enemy it comes within 1m of is automatically attacked (Fortitude) and knocked Prone if the attack succeeds. 2/rest. In addition to the abilities listed here, ciphers, rogues, and rangers can gain access to additional class-specific abilities as well as Talents. Some Talents can be taken by any character, but many are class-oriented and can be used to distinguish or emphasize one character from another. One cipher's Talents may emphasize his or her physical attacks while another's makes his or her Focus use more efficient. One rogue may maximize his or her advantage against a specific type of affliction; another may improve the frequency with which his or her offensive abilities can be used. And while rangers can always benefit from improving their marksmanship and special attacks, investing in the durability and abilities of their animal companions can safeguard the ranger against disaster. Pillars of Eternity's heavy hitters all differ in how they bring the pain to enemies, but we hope you enjoy the concepts and mechanics we've presented here. As always, these are our current designs and implementations, but will be adjusting them in the months to come. We will be doing three more class pair updates in the future: The Leaders of the Band (chanters and priests), The Front Line (fighters and barbarians), and The Mob Rulers (wizards and druids). Let us know what you think of today's update and please vote on which of the three class pairs you'd like to see covered next. As always, thanks for reading and for your continued support.

Update by Brandon Adler, Producer Hey, everyone. We decided against releasing the Backer Portal right before the holiday break. We wanted to make sure that we had a full staff on board to solve any technical issues that might arise on the site during its launch. We are just as excited as you are for the Backer Portal and we want to make sure it has a smooth release. To keep you sated in Project Eternity goodness we decided to show off some of the artwork we have been putting together this milestone. We are pretty proud of it. Hope you enjoy. Areas Last week on the forums Sensuki, Tagomika, and coffeetable brought up questions about areas we were outsourcing. I figured it would be better to show you the areas instead of talking about them. Take a look. A shrine to the god of the hunt. A drake skeleton amid thick overgrowth. Both of these images come from the same wilderness area. While this area appears thick with foliage now, it was previously the site to horrific fires caused by drakes. Large swaths of ground were burned and only now has the land started to recover. Concepts Kaz and Polina have been hard at work getting concepts prepared for our current milestone and the next. Polina has been focusing on creating the look and feel for our next big city - Twin Elms. Twin Elms is a unique mixture of ruined architecture from an ancient civilization with a layer of Viking-inspired Glanfathan buildings built into it. Glanfathan buildings built into ancient ruins. Line work for environments in Twin Elms. While Polina has been helping to plan the future, Kaz is firmly entrenched in our mega dungeon, The Endless Paths of Od Nua. Take a look at some of the prop work that Kaz is doing for one of the Engwithan-inspired areas. Engwithan props for use in Od Nua. Creatures One of the creatures that has gone in recently is the troll. You can see a few of them in the area below. A group of trolls in-game. That's it for this week, folks. Have a great Thanksgiving.

Update by Rose Gomez, Jr. Producer Hello everyone! My name is Rose Gomez - I'm the newest Producer on Pillars of Eternity. I'll be handling a lot of the Kickstarter related duties for the game from here on out. I've been working at Obsidian Entertainment for a little over three years now. My previous titles include South Park: The Stick of Truth and the Fallout: New Vegas DLCs. I'm thrilled to be able to work on Pillars of Eternity and can't wait to interact more with all of you in the coming months. For this update, we've got some awesome new character, area, and concept art that we're excited to show. However, before we get to the art, we wanted to officially update everyone that we are looking good to release Eternity by Winter 2014. So, look forward to getting your hands on Pillars of Eternity later this year. Our next update will be all about Pillars of Eternity lore by Eric Fenstermaker. Stretch Goals After much discussion and consideration of the poll on our forums we have decided not to pursue any additional stretch goals. Rest assured that the team is working hard on completing the game and including our current stretch goals. Surveys Our designers are working hard to implement the designs that our higher tiered backers have come up with. If you have a survey that needs to be filled out, please do so by March 31st. It's important that you get your surveys completed by the deadline because we are closing in on Alpha quickly. The team needs ample time to get your content into the game. We can't guarantee your in-game contribution will make it into the game if you are late. This includes inn/tavern designs, adventurer party designs, portraits, NPCs, and items/weapons, so make sure you get your idea in before the deadline! You can fill out your surveys on our Backer Portal after you've finished managing your pledge. They can be found on your account page under the Surveys tab. Worried that your design won't fit into Pillars of Eternity lore? Not sure if you want that innkeeper to be an Orlan or an Aumaua? Take a peek at the Pillars of Eternity Wiki to get some inspiration or clarification on the world. Characters With all that news out of the way, let's get to the art. To kick things off this week, we'd like to show you all some of the awesome new Godlike variants Dimitri has finished up - the Death Godlike. As we've mentioned before in previous updates, the Godlike are people that were "blessed" before birth by one or more of the deities of the world. Godlike manifest their divine heritage in a variety of ways, and in the case of the Death Godlike that heritage can be seen through their wicked looking horns and the misting darkness that shrouds their visage. Death Godlike. Another type, the Earth Godlike, can be seen below in some new portrait variants that Polina whipped up. These are just a few of the combinations that will be available to use for your character during the game. Earth Godlike portrait variants. Areas The environment artists are flying through their various scenes and churning out awesome looking pieces week by week. Below you can see a cool new interior from a Blacksmith's shop by Holly Prado. Blacksmith interior. Up next we have a really awesome piece by April Giron from an area called Ondra's Gift. This area is still a work in progress but we thought you all would enjoy taking a look at what we've got so far. Ondra's Gift interior. Both of these areas have a lot of cool detail in them so make sure you view them at full resolution. Creatures In Pillars of Eternity, Druid characters will be able to shift into a few different spirit forms. Druids start with specific spirit forms and can find additional spirit forms in the world. One of these forms is the Cat, shown here in a concept drawing by Polina. Druid Cat Form concept. Below you can see what the Cat form looks like when modeled and textured, rendered out of our engine. Druid Cat form in engine. That's all for this week. Don't forget! If you need to fill out a survey for any Pillars of Eternity pledges please do so on our Backer Portal by the March 31st deadline. In the meantime, keep managing those pledges and commenting on our forums.

This poll and thread is a 're-launch' attempt of another thread (@ http://forums.obsidian.net/topic/65236-co-operate-with-torment-ton-in-allowing-shared-art-assets/ ), with clearer languaging around the (now multiple) poll questions. The really key thing that would make this happen (or not!) in any form is dev interest, of course, and that is what these threads/posts will hopefully stimulate. For myself, Q1: Yes - of course. :D Q2: Only if the devs feel like it. Not attached either way. Q3: As Q2. Cheers!

Hello all, This is cross-posted in the Pillars of Eternity General forum (waiting for approval, I'm still a newb there!) and the TToN Game Ideas user voice section (same subject but with different game title in the subject line). Background: there were (and ARE still) a lot of awesome mods for the infinity engine games. However, there was some flak about 'illegal' mods - specifically, mods that extracted and used cross-game art assets, such as IWD components inside BG2, without the IWD game being present. However, now there is a great opportunity: two awesome rpgs being developed at the same time, using the same engine, unconstrained by publishers, and interested in the same sort of background art systems! (Unsure about the model/npc/monster art, though!) This is doubly important as the backgrounds have been mentioned as being the most complex to implement - it will give both sets of game modders an entire new world's set of resources to play with! What I am proposing is that the developer teams of PoE and TTon co-operate to allow compatibility and full support of art (and model?) assets in between each others games. Ways this could be implemented: 1) Both games purchased and present on the same system (potentially simplest). 2) One of the games purchased, another 'authorized' or purchased, but not necessarily on the same system. 3) One of the games purchased, combined with an 'art asset modders pack' (that would cost a token fee or be free). 4) The devs create an official shared/combined 'art asset pack' (token fee or free). 5) One or both of the dev teams create a playable (un)official expansion that is merely a run-through (and display zoo? Maybe something rather... Modron-cube-like? :D ) of the others game in order to tie the art assets to one of the games (instead of being shared in general). 6) As #5, but one or both do a full-on expansion! Due to the settings, the TToN inside PoE would be rather strange, but interesting (perhaps a 'What If?!' scenario?), while the reverse could fit as some sort of visitable alternate dimension or something. 7) As any above, but work contracted out (not done in-house). *Note that any of the above proposals could be Kickstarted for interest, possibly once both games are launched. I do not want the devs time 'taken up doing non-development things' - even having the intent to share and making sure art assets are compatible, game engine wise, would do a lot! There are a number of considerations around this process. Some that I've thought up include: 1) The devs do NOT want to share art assets (though they are willing to share other things). 2) Conflicts and issues with IP rights, including that of Monte Cooke's Numenera. 3) Nobody thinks this is a good idea? 4) There are some complicated engine issues that would prevent this from being possible (???). 5) Other??? Comments welcome! I truly think this could be a start of some awesome win (PoE devs) - win (TToN devs) - win (gamers) - win (modders) situations!

Hey, everyone. I just wanted to share a really awesome piece of fan art that we received this morning from Chris Bischoff. It's inspired from the Twin Elms concepts that we released in our last update. If Chris' name sounds familiar it's because he has his own Kickstarter going for the game STASIS. If you haven't checked it out yet you should. What's not to like about a 2D, isometric, sci-fi, horror adventure game? It's in its last few days so lets help him push it over the edge and get it fully funded. Click for a larger image.

Update by Kazunori Aruga, Concept Artist, and Brandon Adler, you-know-what-I-do Hello, backers. This week we are profiling another talented Concept Artist on Eternity, Kaz Aruga. While Kaz wears many artist hats his largest contributions are area and UI concepts. Enjoy. Q: Hello, Kaz. What is your job on the Project Eternity team? Before I start I want to quickly thank all you awesome peeps who backed our game. I wouldn't be here working on my dream project if it weren't for you all, so thank you for making this a reality! I have two responsibilities on Project Eternity. The first is supplying the asset and environment teams with concept art. The second is producing art for the game's UI. I'm occasionally tasked with scripted interaction art and will start producing character portraits further down the road. Q: What are you working on this week? I've been tasked with inventory and character creation UI. *leaps away as a massive fireball of community UI rage engulfs the land* But seriously, I appreciated the feedback you all gave us for the action bar and conversation UI. I've taken notes and been implementing ideas that are in alignment with our design goals. As a side note, being a fan of the IE games and having a lot of experience playing them has proven very useful as it helps me identify what worked and what didn’t. I'm sure we all have fond memories of shuffling piles of arrows between characters. Q: What is your typical work day like on Project Eternity? My day usually starts by fighting off Robs and Polinas to get to the Keurig coffee machine in our room. Consuming the glorious bean drink allows me access to all two neurons in my head, which I then rub together as hard as I can to start making artwork. My day varies a lot from this point based on the task I'm on. For character and environment work a good chunk of time will be devoted to gathering reference and inspiration, or doing homework on a specific subject. I'll then do a rough sketch pass which gets reviewed by the leads and other artists. When I'm on scripted interaction art I work closely with our designers Bobby and Jorge, and for UI I interface with our project lead Josh and Brian who is our programming intern. Q: What are you most looking forward to on Project Eternity? Just the fact that we can put an IE inspired game on the market is enough to get me excited. It's been long overdue. I'm looking forward to seeing all the hard work we are putting in coming together as one complete package, and seeing reactions of people playing the game! Q: Which concept that you have done has been your favorite? Artists are typically never happy with their own work. Next question! I've enjoyed working on art for scripted interactions, and been pretty happy with the results. I've also been putting a lot of work into inventory UI recently and am happy with the results coming out of that. Q: What other projects have you worked on? Before this job I was up in San Francisco working as a texture artist on a television series called Star Wars: The Clone Wars. I've also done some matte painting work in the film industry. Q: What do you like to do when you aren't chained to your desk by your producer? My off time often includes episodes of Breaking Bad, Game of Thrones, a cold beer, and dual wielding our two resident cats Puddy Tat and Lil'Babs. They are the best. I also have an unhealthy and destructive relationship with Ramen. (No, not the vile instant noodles. How dare you call that Ramen!) Thankfully LA has an abundance of good shops to satisfying my craving. Q: Do you have a favorite concept artist? Here's a few that popped into my head. I'll link to their site and save you all a google search. Sergey Kolesov Thomas Pringle Daisuke “dice” Tsutsumi On the painting and illustration side.. Ashley Wood Jeremy Lipking Yanick "dusso" Dusseault Joseph Zbukvic Zdzislaw Beksinski And of course the greats from the past... John Singer Sargent Jean-Léon Gérôme The Wyeths Norman Rockwell J. C. Leyendecker Isaac Levitan Q: And where do you draw your inspiration from? Nature is a big one of course. I also think back on how blessed we are with powerful tools like Google image search. We don’t neglect traditional resources, but I honestly can't imagine working at our current pace without it. Q: What's your favorite Infinity Engine game? Why? BG1 for exploring the vast wilderness. I can still recall the music and hear the birds chirping in the distance. BG2 is a close 2nd for its story and companions. The only title I haven't finished is IWD2 which I am playing through currently, and I will say I'm enjoying the combat. Q: Existential question of the day: Who are we and why are we? We're just here, man. There's no why, everything just IS. You feel me? Q: Anything else you would like to share? Long live the glorious PC gaming master race. *lets out a nerdy war cry and bangs mouse and keyboard together* That's it for this week. Hope you guys enjoyed getting closer look into what Kaz does for us. See you guys in a couple weeks.

Previous parts : 1) http://forums.obsidi...designs-a-plea/ 2) http://forums.obsidi...a-plea-part-ii/ Opening post :

Hello everyone. My name is Rob Nesler, and I am the Art Director on Project Eternity. I've been told I'm a potty-mouth, but since this is a public and safe (PG-ish) space, I will do what I can to control my bad words in this: FIRST ART UPDATE. There will be many more, hopefully with some visual candy for you guys, if I f’n feel like it, or if Fearg’ f’n makes me. Right now, my intent is to bring you up to speed on what we’ve been doing for the last several weeks. It’s called: laying the groundwork; building the foundation, or doing the nitty-gritty. Often, when starting a project, the artists and I just want to start drawing sh-ssstuff. Especially with contracted 3D games, we have a basic idea of the world we’re making, an initial list of some of the things in it, the basic parameters for making assets, and so we just get started. With Project Eternity, we are starting the development of a rich storied RPG from scratch, zilch, nada. Oh, and we rendered that really cool image for you all at update #20, and so we felt we could take a step back--Waayyy back. We are stepping back some years in visual “perspective”: to a fixed isometric view--so, NO “perspective”--of an essentially two-dimensional world. The traversable environment is pre-rendered to a high degree of realism, but we’re using a modern 3D game engine: Unity, for 3D characters, creatures, effects and animated props to be rendered in real-time and to assemble it all together, seamlessly. With this decision we’ve opened up a whole kit and caboodle of possibilities in terms of visual fidelity, occlusion, lighting, effects, and physics. At the same time, we’ve created some immediate technical problems that needed to be solved, before we could all go out and start making sh...‘er...stuff. If you’ve been reading/watching Josh’s updates, you must understand that we are creating a brand new yet substantially familiar RPG experience essentially out of thin air, complete with a fully realized fantasy world, including new rules, new races, new places, new nations, new lore, new creatures, new story, new characters, a whole new combat system, with specific armor and weapon types, new this, new that, and a whole bunch of other new stuff--really we’re creating everything from nothing but what spews forth from Josh’s blazing fingers and angelic vocal cords. “How does that work?” you ask. Well, I’ll tell you: what happens is we all sit around a fire, in a far off and desolate wilderness, as he chants: what things were, and are, and what will be and sometimes why. We listen, we ask questions, and we discuss. We in turn, propose thoughts and ideas that are considered, further discussed, sometimes dismissed, but also sometimes gathered up and swirled into the glowing embers of this primordial glowing emergent world that is floating--NO!...LEAPING!!--out of the creative fuel, breath of air, and heat of our collaborative works. As well, we’ve decided to abandon the application we would normally use to create everything, for a supposedly-more-popular-more-capable app, and nobody really knows how to use it... ...BOOM! Yep, I just wrote and you just read THAT!... ...So, with our new software: Maya (the old software was Softimage) we’ve been making test worlds--we call them gray boxes. We’ve been making test characters--we call them gray characters. We’ve been giving them gray animation, we’ve been giving them gray (actually sometimes white, we’ll make some black ones too, we’re not racist) weapons, and we’ve been inserting them into our prototype worlds to prove to ourselves and you, that we know what we’re doing, and to lay the groundwork for expanding these vacant golems into player and non-player characters, that can interact with the world and other characters in a more meaningful and varied way--you know: picking up stuff, and hitting others with it, and taking their stuff and putting it on, or selling it--oh yes, and with color! Just kidding! Haven’t you been reading what I’m writing: this game is going to be DEEEEP! So what the hell have art people been doing?? Character Team: We have a very talented lead character artist, named Dimitri, and yep, he’s Russian, but he doesn’t speak it so well anymore--his mother is not happy about it, more on that later. In addition to a tremendous amount of early help getting basic traversable geometry, with a rendered scene that occludes 3D characters when they walk behind things (in essentially a 2D world--remember!) he’s been establishing the basis for weapon, armor and equipment attachment on our player characters, with Adam. As part of that he has to write documents. Booo!!! Documents Buh-LOWW! Our other Character Artist; James is from China, but says he's from Fresno. He is essentially Dimitri's slave and willingly does whatever he’s told to do, because he doesn’t have to write documents. I sometimes give James direction, but I’m pretty certain that Dimitri tells him to ignore me immediately after I’ve left their office. Remember Dimitri is Russian, so he’s a little controlling, very direct and has high expectations. This isn’t a problem, however, because a) it’s his job and b) it just so happens that James is pretty good and making characters. He made our first character Edair, who can be seen running around with a morning star flail the size of a medicine ball--not his fault. He seems to know Maya better than Dimitri, but let’s his boss learn the hard way--keeping his ear buds in, pumping up the volume, and modeling and texturing his cares away. He’s making gray weapons now. For some reason Dimitri speaks Russian expletives perfectly. Mark is our Lead Animator, and he knows his sh-tuff, but he made the Medicine ball. Needless to say, he will not be asked to make any more weapons. No no, it just so happens, that he was making it so he could test physics on weapons. So, it’s all good--we don’t care what things look like right now, we care about making things that matter, and making them right. Lately Mark has been testing cloth physics on our characters, as well as physics on weapons, and attachments. Prior to that he was building a basic set of traversal animations and getting them into the game. Crucial. Antonio is our Technical Animator. He makes rigs, writes scripts that make rigs, and rigs the rigs. It’s all very technical. You wouldn’t understand. He’s a professional. Polina is our concept artist, and is the only one really making pretty pictures, and you've seen a lot of her work, already. Kien is currently on loan to Project New York, aka. The Stick of Truth. Don't worry, they are paying for him. We use code names for our projects, because we’re professionals. Project Eternity (also a code name) is Project Trenton. BOOM! Yep, you got it! And nope! I’m not gonna tell you any more about that.Environment Artists:Sean is making a dungeon! He’s been working with our programmers to come up with the correct way to build a massive and awesome level so that we can do all we need to do, as big as we need to do it, and in as little time as we can do it in. Again, crucial. Minecraft is his best friend. Hector, our Lead Environment Artist is on a sabbatical. Yes! we get those here, again, because we’re professionals and only sometimes. Nobody knows why or how, but we're certain it's painful. And boy! is he in for a surprise when he gets back; he loves Softimage. People on sabbatical don't get images of their work posted. Okay, so that’s it. Oh, what about me? What the hell have I been doing all this time? That’s a really good question. Aside from running around and keeping everybody busy and doing meetings and stuff, and writing this update, I've been developing a style guide which involves a bunch of meetings and discussions, and I've been drawing a few things, which I will show, if I'm allowed, in the next art update. Rob Out! Update by Rob Nesler