Update #43: Pretty and Technical

[Falkon Swiftblade]

cool art!!! interesting about rigging, but one critique — can you guys try to take into consideration gear and weapons when your rigging and have body's flex and swell under attacks? Big guys may take a couple smaller steps in between big steps while swinging big weapons. Similarly little guys may need to run a few extra steps to build momentum to swing attacks. Since I know you guys use zbrush, your team may want to check out this video to make encounters even cooler! It seems to do a lot of work for you

 

http://vimeo.com/52668394

[BruceVC]

I didn't understand a word of this update. Can we have one about pie?

 Yip same as me, it all got confusing after the "Hello everybody it's me again, Rob Nesler, Art Director on Project Eternity"

 

But I did see some pretty pictures and thats good enough for me

[Flow]

Love this nuts 'n' bolts stuff. Keep it coming.

[Badmojo]

I actually hope some characters are a bit overpowered.  Having everything balance out kind of takes some of the fun out, especially when a character is something called GODlike, I would expect it to be a powerhouse, it should have a weakness obviously, and not something insanely rare like superman kryptonite, but it still should be a being nobody wants to mess with.

 

On a side note, I notice all the female characters that have been shown lately are kind of covered up.  I can understand armour reasons, however I do not expect every female character to be like this, nor should they.  I really hope this is not a over reaction to all the drek posts all over the internet we had a few months ago.  There should be variety of characters.  Ok, off soapbox.

 

Still, the art is nice. 

[Monte Carlo]

The God-like is clearly an attempt at compromise. She's clearly stacked, but covered up.

 

I say Chainmail Bikinis all round.

[GhoulishVisage]

Oh man, I love that godlike concept.

I was half-expecting something a little more 'traditional', like a tiefling, but that is so much better.

 

Will the "godlike" races have their own names (like tiefling and aasamir instead of half-demon and half-angel in DnD) or will they simply remain "godlike"?

Edited February 20, 2013 by GhoulishVisage

[Rob Nesler]

I really like the concept of the godlike.

 

I hope Godlikes recieve an XP penalty if they're turbo-boosted like the planetouched of D&D.

 

Are you duplicating all animations across all characters or will you make a few alterations?

For instance, it would look a little silly if a tiny dwarf and giant whatever-you-have-that-is-big swings 2h weapons the exact same way.

Once the meshes are stretched in the "stretch rig," they get their own "control rig" and then they can be animated or tweaked in ways that are appropriate for their character.  Otherwise, by default they borrow from existing animations.

[Rob Nesler]

Wow, beautiful faun inspired?

 

Great job 

 

 

I will not be able to address all those other questions. There were many other versions of this concept thread.  She evolved out of them and probably had some faun influences.

[Rob Nesler]

Oh man, I love that godlike concept.

I was half-expecting something a little more 'traditional' looking, like a tiefling, but that is so much better.

 

Will the "godlike" races have their own names (like tiefling and aasamir instead of half-demon and half-angel in DnD) or will they simply remain "godlike"?

 I hope so.

[Rob Nesler]

Thanks for the update!

 

I like how the ears of the first Godlike are animal-based, yet they also evoke the look of flower petals. It's a good way of reinforcing the nature theme of that particular Godlike from multiple angles. The other three designs seem maybe a bit too extreme, unless that's the point. It's certainly difficult to imagine any of the three having remotely normal lives when their heads constantly look like they'll come apart into fire/water/lightning. I look forward to seeing some Godlike with either subtler, weirder, or less element-based features in the future, but this is a good introduction to them.

 

For a future art update, could you show us something that required lots of experimentation and revision (such as maybe the final design of the Orlans, Aumaua, or Godlike) and show the various iterations and rejected versions, with an explanation of why certain designs were accepted or rejected? I always find that sort of stuff interesting.

I'll see what I can do.

[Shadenuat]

Dat estoc is so hot.

 

...oh, right, there's furry woman too. Okay, I guess? Proportions seem to be off.

 

I thought they were going to be "touched" by the pantheon that existed in the world, not by the "elements."

This is a ton more interesting than fire/water planetouched. Does PE even have Planes?

 

Make Godlike look like they were cursed or blessed by gods unique to PE. How would somebody cursed or blessed by Woedica would look like?

It would be much more interesting than any genasi.

Edited February 20, 2013 by Shadenuat

[Rob Nesler]

So we have fire, water, earth, lightning (air?), air (talons?). 

 

I thought they were going to be "touched" by the pantheon that existed in the world, not by the "elements." (Not that I mind). Unless the pantheon aren't really gods and these guys are touched by "natural gods"... Or it could be that there are these gods (elements) in the pantheon.

 

Great update in either case. Thanks! Keep up the good work. 

These were just some possibilities. Yes, these might be extreme and it's possible that the manifestations will be more subtle, but the goal will be to make certain that they are interesting, in-game.

[Aedelric]

Thanks for the update Obsidian! It is good to see things shaping up nicely.

[Skie Nightfall]

Really like Polina's art. Though the other godlike pictures looks kitch and unexciting.

[GhoulishVisage]

I have top say however, that I prefer how the first concept of the earth-godlike is inspired by animals of the earth compared to the other three who are directly inspired by the elements that are part of their heritage.

It would look incredibly unique if all of the elemental godlikes took this route.

Air godlikes would be inspired by birds, water godlikes by fish and fire ones by... er, salamanders?

They could still have whatever element it was that they are connected to as a part of their design in order to give them an "unearthly" feeling.

 

However, I'm not the designer and that idea may not fit in with what the godlike are in PE.

[Sensuki]

Nice update.

 

I mentioned in a few posts on the forums elsewhere that asset re-use would be a good idea. BG2 made good reuse out of recoloring a sprite model to get a few different monsters from the same original model (Ghoul, Ghast, Lacedon etc).

 

This takes it a step or two further.

 

Good concept art (or portrait) as well, although those facial dimensions (dementions? ) are wacked haha. It's probably meant to be like that though.

I think we're gonna need an in-depth Sawyer update on Godlikes as a playable race and what that entails. :D

I think the Backer Site update would be better. Hopefully that's coming along nicely. Edited February 20, 2013 by Sensuki

[BruceVC]

The God-like is clearly an attempt at compromise. She's clearly stacked, but covered up.

 

I say Chainmail Bikinis all round.

 

 

Now we are talking business, this game is going from amazing to incredible.

 

I like you the way you think Monte, chainmail bikini's can only improve the aesthetics

 

[IndiraLightfoot]

I guess that I go against the grain here somewhat: coz I loved those elemental god like characters!  :

In 3rd ed D&D and in NWN2 MotB I got to play genasis a lot and I adore them, and then especially the air genasi, and now I more or less get to play one, hooray! 

 

And yes, playing a dryad sounds really appealing. After having met them in BG1 and NWN1 vanilla, we knowe get to try them ourselves, hehe.

 

Also: Wonder which races those three figures of various sizes with magi-stretch armour are supposed to represent? Dwarf? Orlan? Human?

Or Human? Dwarf? Aumaua?

 

And the ingenuity behind these 3d animations and armor-fit-all mechanics is astounding! Thanks for sharing!

[Ladon]

I love the varieties of updates. This one was a great combo of technical stuff and info about a playable race.

How about spending an update on the artwork in game production. I would love to hear more about how the artists are thinking when developing the art work for a new game.

[Remus]

I found this update very interesting. I don't know about the rest of the backers, but I personally am not only interested in these updates to have some sort of "control" over the quality of the product I financed. I was really hoping to get some insight into the development of a game I potentially will love. This update finally gives some of these insights. I would be very interested in technical details like this in future updates - but also for the other areas of the game development. I mean it's always interesting to hear about the design of the game but it's as interesting to see how you bring these design choices actually in the game.  

 

I realize that these updates would not be very interesting for some users, so I think it is a good idea to pair them with some more eyecandy stuff. But I am sure there are also backers out there, who, like me, are programmers of one degree or another... So, give us some more details . Great update.

[DakkonZerth]

Cool update! Brings me to some animations questions: Torment had some very unique animations when it came to your NPC's attacks and also had special critical hit animations.  Will Eternity focus on having unique animation sets for each NPC? PC? Also, will you create specific animations for critical hits?

[Damascus]

Ahhh maya. Rigging with parent nodes, child nodes and 'spine splines'. What fun.... 

 

GJ, keep up the hard work!

[alanschu]

Nice.  I was helping set up some clipping tests with an asset that has all extremes so that no false assumptions will be made by cinematics (obviously not a concern for your project).  Silly pauldrons always get in the way.

 

My point?  I just got a crash course in this stuff from one of our tech animators so your post actually made some sort of sense!

 

 

Cheers!

[Frisk]

Exactly the kind of update I like - thank you.

 

One thing that is not entirely clear to me - is each godlike associated with one particular god, and manifesting a particular aspect of that god's portfolio, so to speak, or is it more of a "pick one look from a collective pool"?

 

The first case would be very interesting, but that would kind-of imply the need for one "look" for each god, and the need to pick that during the character creation process - the second would be more flexible - you might like a particular look, buit not necessarily a corresponding god.

 

Another question, which I have not seen answered - are any of the different races inter-fertile - that is, are there for example godlike/human mongrels in the world?

 

....and now I just hope we get the fulfillment site soon.

Edited February 20, 2013 by Frisk

[WorstUsernameEver]

Good update. I agree that some of the godlike variation are a bit EXTREMEEEE although those concepts could still be used for some sort of elemental/alternative form power.. not really sure what the lore/mechanics of the race will be in the final game, but just throwing it out there (I like EXTREME superheroes, sue me!).

 

Also looking forward to read the art style document, especially for what concerns armors. Still a bit concerned on those being a tad generic, but who knows, we've pretty much only see the standard leather-ish/adventurer outfits for now.