I suspect there will be a choice to play female characters. Based on the files names of the character portrait, its listed as 'Player character Asian Female Agent' and 'Player character Asian Male Agent' followed with series of armor upgrade looks for both male and female counter parts.

 

So its definitely some sort of character creation involved similar to KOTOR rather than Mass Effect in where you could choose names and face models instead of self-customise.

I have also seen that. I hope there will be character creation.

 

I wonder what the alien virgine queen is. Maybe ome kind of pre-stage of the queen.

 

 

Edit: I searched and found that.

I know we would love to talk about our character creation system.

 

However sometimes we can't talk about it because the system is still under development or in question.

[...]

Seems like there will be character creation.

Edited February 21, 200916 yr by Xen0

Maybe you just get "White male" or "Asian Female" or "Blue alien" templates and you edit them afterwards ala ME.

Onyx uses FaceFX for facial customization. One thing we found with some other facial customization systems is that we disliked the "one size fits all" approach to adapting a head and skin texture to fit any given race. We use "ethnic heads" with strong features that are then manipulated using FaceFX sliders for facial morphing. We don't use tinting, but instead allow the player to pick an "average" "light" or "dark" skin tone for the character's ethnic group. Because we don't use tinting, we avoid the washed-out appearance that often accompanies such systems. And of course we support swapping out hairstyles. We use the same texture swapping system for hairstyles to avoid the look of a single hair texture that has to support hair ranging from black to light blonde. Hair textures have 8-bit alpha and blend to the mid-tone of an ethnic group skin tone, avoiding the harsh line that can be found in some systems. It probably goes without saying, but Onyx also supports changing eye colors.

 

Overall, I think the system produces very nice results. Special characters are not required to use the facial morphing system (though they can be assigned to do so in our editor). Their heads can be made directly in XSI without requiring any set-up for customization. While the facial customization system is very good, using it on all of the characters who surround you all of the time can start to look bad.

Onyx uses FaceFX for facial customization. One thing we found with some other facial customization systems is that we disliked the "one size fits all" approach to adapting a head and skin texture to fit any given race. We use "ethnic heads" with strong features that are then manipulated using FaceFX sliders for facial morphing. We don't use tinting, but instead allow the player to pick an "average" "light" or "dark" skin tone for the character's ethnic group. Because we don't use tinting, we avoid the washed-out appearance that often accompanies such systems. And of course we support swapping out hairstyles. We use the same texture swapping system for hairstyles to avoid the look of a single hair texture that has to support hair ranging from black to light blonde. Hair textures have 8-bit alpha and blend to the mid-tone of an ethnic group skin tone, avoiding the harsh line that can be found in some systems. It probably goes without saying, but Onyx also supports changing eye colors.

 

Overall, I think the system produces very nice results. Special characters are not required to use the facial morphing system (though they can be assigned to do so in our editor). Their heads can be made directly in XSI without requiring any set-up for customization. While the facial customization system is very good, using it on all of the characters who surround you all of the time can start to look bad.

 

 

AS long as you're not using Facegen, I'm happy.

 

Not that facegen is neccessarily bad as a standalone application, but its use in Bethesda's games has not been impressive. Especially with the way skin tones get really weird.

I don't know if you can or wil answer this, Josh, but I'll ask anyway:

 

Does facefx limit how badly you can screw up a face?

 

One of the things that makes facegen difficult is that most of its settings create really hideous monstrosities that bear no resemblance to a human face. It would be nice if facefx could limit the amount of damage that could be done to the base head model. It would make it easier to use. I mean there's no reason why a face generation system needs to allow you to move the eyes up into the forehead.

 

Also, in Bethesda's game, ambient light plays a huge role in the way you percieve the skin tones on the faces. What looks OK in one light, looks absolutely hideous in another. The only way I found to avoid it is to try to create the face in as close to a neuteral light as possible. But Bethesda's facegen opportunities only occur in places where the light is really extreme in one way or another.

 

So my wish would be to allow access to facefx at any time during the game, so I can make adjustments as I go along rather than having to labor to get it as close to tolerable as possible right at the start.

I presume Mass Effect uses FaceFX? Need to get a rough idea how it works.

Edited February 21, 200916 yr by Zoma

FaceFX's parameters are entirely within the control of how the rigger sets them up. So yes, it can limit your ability to screw things up. We have a randomize button in the engine that just randomly sets all of the sliders and it usually produces goofy faces, but doing it by hand can produce nice results.

 

Relying on an ambient value in the absence of lights will tend to make a face appear to lose all of its geometry and the diffuse texture to lose any dynamic range it appeared to have. This is especially true in the case of a face that relies heavily on normal and/or specular maps. We mitigate the negative effects of ambient lighting in our engine by using low-power character lights at all times. I can honestly say it's pretty rare that I get any of the characters into a situation where the default character lights don't give the characters' faces enough definition and the skin the appropriate tone range.

I presume Mass Effect uses FaceFX? Need to get a rough idea how it works.

Yes, though we are applying it in a somewhat different way. Mass Effect appears to morph a single head per sex and tints its diffuse maps (skin textures) to achieve the light/dark range. ME hair uses tinting, and has a one-bit alpha.

 

EDIT: Whoops, I suppose I should clarify: textures and hair don't really have anything to do with FaceFX, but I wanted to clarify that our heads don't really look like Mass Effect heads.

I can honestly say it's pretty rare that I get any of the characters into a situation where the default character lights don't give the characters' faces enough definition and the skin the appropriate tone range.

 

 

That sounds great. A little variation in tone due to the effects of ambient light is fine, of course. But it just is kinda weird when your character face looks sorta normal in one light, then has a really washed out pale center in another light, and then has these super bright red flushes all over in a third light.

 

edit: Is it possible to have access to facefx other than at character creation? Or does that create problems for the game.

Edited February 21, 200916 yr by CrashGirl

Need . . . pics . . . need . . . pics . . . . NEED PICS!

That sounds great. A little variation in tone due to the effects of ambient light is fine, of course. But it just is kinda weird when your character face looks sorta normal in one light, then has a really washed out pale center in another light, and then has these super bright red flushes all over in a third light.

 

edit: Is it possible to have access to facefx other than at character creation? Or does that create problems for the game.

The ambient light should provide a tint to the diffuse, but definition of the character's features should come from scene lights or, in the absence of scene lights, character/rim lights.

 

Allowing access to FaceFX wouldn't necessarily cause problems, but it's our responsibility to help the player create characters that look appropriate in a range of lighting conditions. If players are futzing with facial features out of frustration/annoyance, we've failed. That said, I think Fallout 3 gave players a cool tool in the facial reconstruction guy you can find.

Allowing access to FaceFX wouldn't necessarily cause problems, but it's our responsibility to help the player create characters that look appropriate in a range of lighting conditions. If players are futzing with facial features out of frustration/annoyance, we've failed. That said, I think Fallout 3 gave players a cool tool in the facial reconstruction guy you can find.

 

 

I think you've got a good take on it, and I basically agree. I do think it would be nice though to simply have an unobtrusive little button somewhere on your character screen that would allow you to call up the face program if/when you wanted.

 

 

I understand your take that having players fuss about with facial features during gameplay isn't really desireable from a design standpoint (talk about breaking the mood), but having to fuss about with facegen for a long time before I can even start the game is even worse. ANd then being totally disatisfied with my characters face for the whole rest of the game is even worse and worse! Anyway, you could just think of it as taking a break to put on some makeup!

 

But as long as the team is aware of some of the skin tone and facial feature problems that can occur with face generation and works to make them less of a problem, that sounds good, too.

The real question is: will there beards and will they be awesome?

 

 

I mean real beards, not the ME handlebar moustache or lame 5 o'clock shadow.

Former lead character artist on Aliens RPG

 

 

 

 

Thank you so much, SEGA. Thank you.

 

Flippin' hell, that is nice!

Is there a way to obtain the password for the gallery? I mean apart from kidnapping the artist and putting hime/her in my basement.

 

 

 

Hi, I'm a newbie here, I already went through my initiation: http://www.treasonnation.com/images/sup/ss...Initiation2.jpg

Edited February 22, 200916 yr by PoziomyPion

The real question is: will there beards and will they be awesome?

 

 

I mean real beards, not the ME handlebar moustache or lame 5 o'clock shadow.

To be honest, we haven't done much/any work on beards outside of ones for specific characters. Facial hair geometry on facial geometry that can move around is... tricky.

Do we have physics for hair this time? I mean, it does waver slightly and such when moving head unlike Mass Effect's or NWN2's hair which is like a heavily waxed geled look hair.

The real question is: will there beards and will they be awesome?

 

 

I mean real beards, not the ME handlebar moustache or lame 5 o'clock shadow.

To be honest, we haven't done much/any work on beards outside of ones for specific characters. Facial hair geometry on facial geometry that can move around is... tricky.

Good point. I guess that's why Fallout 3 had so many (awesome) beards, you don't actually have to animate the character's face.

Oh I realize that actually you can see the description of the thumbails.

 

And what's Alien Virgine Queen? Because that's the name from all the alien's 3d models there

 

 

Also it seems that there are 2 ships, one called WY-Cargo Ship Samburan and another one called WY-Cargo Ship Almayer.

Edited February 22, 200916 yr by ikarop

I bet 20 bucks they collide in some sort of epic scene at some point in the game.

Maybe, And also most of the characters seems to be androids lol.

 

That was in one of the thumbs NPC Female Marine : From Ship Crash

Edited February 22, 200916 yr by ikarop

I'm waiting for the first game that provides PhysX accelerated beards.

 

Like there's nothing more important.

real-time shaving mechanics

So either the Aliens project is still going, or they are using onyx for another unannounced project. Personally I hope for both.

Yes they said they're using Onyx for future projects as well, except for a possible AP2, which would use Unreal again.

http://www.linkedin.com/in/michaelzimmerman

 

Concept Artist

Obsidian Entertainment

February 2007

Edited February 27, 200916 yr by funcroc