Quality of 3d character models and animations

[Karkarov]

I think that's brigandine, or plated, coat of plates, or whatever it's called.

Basically those leather "stripes" have a bunch of metal plates inside. Flexible, resonably comfortable, good protection.

(and then mail shirt below, will there be layered armor, I bet not)

More than likely it is just a simple leather gambeson over a chain mail shirt or "coat" if you prefer. Nothing in either image implies metal plates are attached to or covered by the leather itself. Especially when you factor in the visible wrinkles in the concept art, the lacing that would have to go through the "plates" in places, and the over all shape and curved portions of the gambeson.

 

Brigandine (which I am pretty sure is just a fantasy armor to begin with) is typically metal plates worn over leather it is then sewn into with another leather armor worn over that sometimes. His armor is no where near bulky enough for all that plus a chain mail coat and a padded shirt underneath.

[Hassat Hunter]

I just hope they got for more facial detail and go the route of letting us see the characters faces sometimes. Seriously, doing a solid character model is not that hard, or expensive, these days. There is no excuse to skimp on the quality of the character models.

It's an isometric 2D RPG. Why would they need facial animations again? They can't really close up on the character, or you'll see how flat the background is. And having animated heads talking in a box on the screen always works so good... (note; that's sarcasm).

[Tychoxi]

i heartily agree on good looking combat. Having the charecters actually hitting and parrying would look real nice, and while all those animations would require some effort, it's doable, unlike with the sprite based IE games of yore.

 

Of course this ain't no priority of mine, but good and varied animations can work wonders on the general feel, coolness and prettiness!

Edited January 7, 2013 by Tychoxi

[Tauron]

Hope they put some time in adding some different animations for casters. BG was nice but i would like bit more diversity. Also finishing moves are not that bad, that would be nice to see from time to time. If people think that some of the "extra" animation like finishing moves, parry, dodge and other movments that add to illusion of more "realistic" or immersion, than having an OPTION button for it to disable would be great thank you. Instead of replys like : no, its lame..go play skyrim or DAO infidel...having OPTION for these visual effects would be appreciated.

[Luridis]

I don't think they'll disappoint with the models, Unity makes a lot of that stuff a whole lot less work for them. The video below was someone's first time making anything game related ever. Though, I suspect the person had programming experience already.

 

[Chippy]

Shogun 2: Total War is one of my favourite games of all time, the combat animations in that are amazing.  All this crap you hear about next generation leaps really shows in that game, to see something like that in PE would be ... perfect. 

Of course, if it costs a fortune then forget it.

[Sensuki]

Something like the PS:T models but not sprites would be good, but I have a feeling we'll get very ToEE influenced avatars at least.

[Co0n]

About finishing moves:
I agree that they have to take the same amount of animation time. For example Skyrim or even Dragon Age always made you feel like you lost total controll over your character.

For example a melee fighter could just turn 360° around and chop the head of his enemies shoulders, or stab his enemy with his dagger and quickly kick him away afterwars.

 

A nice bonus would be to have a slow motion effect (which you of course could turn off for all the haters :-P ).

 

1 big mistake about finishing moves I see a lot in games is, that they just happen too often.

If you have 4 different moves and in every major fight you see at least 1 of them it gets boring after a few hours.

I dont need an awesome finishing-move to slay a cat or a rat or even a goblin.

Slaying an awesome and powerfull wizard in the heal of the battle may get a better atmosphere with a finishing move.

A finishing move should be something like a critical critical hit -> throwing a 20 right after a 20!

 

A finishing move should not be a oneshot ability like in skyrim (if you deal a certain amount of  damage to your enemie while below x% health you get a finishing move and kill him instantly)

[Frisk]

Are special moves and such really that relevant when you just have a group of small characters?  (As opposed to Skyrim and Dragon Age, mentioned above) where your character can take up most of the screen, and you can really observe the details)

 

Just asking.....

[Sensuki]

No finishing moves, that's gay and totally unnecessary for this kind of RPG. A few different death animations per model would be better.

[Falkon Swiftblade]

Maybe I'm getting old, but I'm tired of gore in games. I couldn't even make it through 10 min review of Tombraider because the brutality just seemed obnoxious. I don't want to play anything that celebrates massacres, especially with the wackos out there imitating what they're seeing in movies and games. These theatre and school shootings are getting ridiculous. We don't need to place any more seeds in sick peoples minds. 

[forfs]

Why do people hate finishing moves so much? If done properly they can really improve the game. Let's say they are only executed when all of the below conditions are satisfied:

1) Proper position (to avoid weird teleporting to face an enemy)

2) It is the last enemy standing

3) game rolls 20 on d20

4) you didn't see it in the last 30 min

And you don't lock camera in any way during the move and you don't slow the time down. What could be possibly bothering you about such finishing move? 

[mestylowe]

Does this game even need a trailer now?

 

Hmmmm... :/

yes it does... why not?

[Hassat Hunter]

Because it already got a bunch of attention (had to re-read a bunch there, such an old post).

 

As for finisher moves, I personally hate them since;

1) They're stupid.

2) They're too long, watching something, which is stupid.

3) They're completely unneccessarily and just prevent me to move on

[Failion]

Finishers can be appealing. Impaling your opponent with a broadsword. It is rewarding if you finish a enemy with a critical they die in a spectacular fashion. Death animations alone are good enough for me but do they fit the style of the game? Game is not exactly diablo 2. What looks best for a game is not the same for every game.

Edited April 21, 2013 by Failion

[Frenetic Pony]

Errr...

 

there are always options to turn off gore? Yeah. That's solved.

 

The only thing not solved is if it would be worth it to enough fans to create such things in the first place. Someone make a poll, otherwise I'm pretty sure there's no reason to continue the argument.

[Hassat Hunter]

You can still have the "take action out hand, be extra-ordinary long and repeat way too often" finishers without gore.

Sadly enough.

[Sensuki]

They have said the game will have gibs. That's enough for me

[Ninjerk]

Idc much about takedowns.  I like them in Dark Souls from a tactical standpoint when outnumbered, but I tire of them in games like DX:HR and FO3.

[Falkon Swiftblade]

Holy Crap, yesterday there was a huge software update release for one of the main 3d tools used to create characters. My friend showed me a very high poly model ~ 1.1 million poly's just in the face and within 40 seconds it now is a game ready asset of his target range of 7k poly's while still keeping most of the detail. For grins he did another at 3.5k and didn't notice any issues. Since Obsidian uses the same software for PE, the characters will look even more fantastic and could easily look as good as the concept art with no performance or visual issues and the characters and environments should look even better. This example below required no additional modeling or sculpting and only took 40 seconds to modify. (It's the Predator face if you're wondering.)  In addition, I suspect this technique could carry over into clothing, capes, and highly detailed models for weapons and armor. The Sky's the limit. 

 

Edited June 27, 2013 by Falkon Swiftblade

[Falkon Swiftblade]

just to clarify why this is such a big deal since I can't edit my post anymore, is not only is it a huge time saver, it also makes things like animation way faster and easier and help remove that paper doll look on human faces with minimal work.

[Orogun01]

just to clarify why this is such a big deal since I can't edit my post anymore, is not only is it a huge time saver, it also makes things like animation way faster and easier and help remove that paper doll look on human faces with minimal work.

No, Qremesh is a great tool for quick retopology but its in no way better than actual retopologizing. The Qremesh guide brush is pretty much a guesstimate for were you want to put your quads and small geometry such as fingers or hair is lost because of lack of structural integrity. 

This in no way makes anything better for the animators who still have to work with a fairly high poly model that has uneven quad distribution and a lot of poles which cause bad deformation. Which makes it difficult to rig the character and screws up the animation completely.

In short, that Predator head on your pic still needs to be rettoped before being considered a game ready asset.

[Falkon Swiftblade]

 

just to clarify why this is such a big deal since I can't edit my post anymore, is not only is it a huge time saver, it also makes things like animation way faster and easier and help remove that paper doll look on human faces with minimal work.

No, Qremesh is a great tool for quick retopology but its in no way better than actual retopologizing. The Qremesh guide brush is pretty much a guesstimate for were you want to put your quads and small geometry such as fingers or hair is lost because of lack of structural integrity. 

This in no way makes anything better for the animators who still have to work with a fairly high poly model that has uneven quad distribution and a lot of poles which cause bad deformation. Which makes it difficult to rig the character and screws up the animation completely.

In short, that Predator head on your pic still needs to be rettoped before being considered a game ready asset.

 

 

Have ya tried out the new patch? The time it saved to use zremesher  versus to redo the topology by hand was about 8 hours from what he told me. You can still use the new brushes to quickly fix edge loops on complicated faces and make adjustments super fast. This is not Qremesher. 

 

 

 

If you wanna see more why it's a big deal ya can read the post by Swizzle here. http://www.polycount.com/forum/showpost.php?p=1868999&postcount=66

Edited July 2, 2013 by Falkon Swiftblade

[Orogun01]

Wow, I guess that's the disadvantage of not allowing automatic updates. I'll have to check it out and see how it handles, though now I feel kinda like an idiot since I've been doing a retop on Max for the past few days when I could had it done with Zbrush. I also was under the belief that they weren't going to launch more updates until the released Zbrush5 when did that change? 
At any rate thanks for the tip.

[Semper]

[...]now I feel kinda like an idiot since I've been doing a retop on Max for the past few days when I could had it done with Zbrush.[...]

 

to be fair zremesher is still way behind manual retopo, though it's very good and produces usable meshes. in today's world poly budget ain't that troublesome anymore and i can see where such automatically calculated retopo is pipeline ready. the downside is that zremesher can't handle tris and that there's no real precise control of the edgle flow, which is crucial for animation - at least in low poly modeling. retopo is a chore, but within topogun or modo it's also very fast if you know your tools.