Character Pipeline & Creation Steps
- The Pipeline starts with the Character Concept Artists who create the 2d sketch, art or outline normally based on a brief.
- Then it will get laid out in 3d on a base model, they will look at the purpose & feel of what the character is supposed to convey. What armor do they wear, what weapons and attachments.
- Then a High Poly Sculpt will get created, which will go to Chris for approval.
- If approved the game asset topology will start to get worked out, this is the start of implementation of the model into the game.
- The Model will then get rigged (throughout the process, they have checks to make sure the model is suitable for rigging and would physically work).
- They skin it & make sure it moves correctly.
- They double check it all works together then move onto to loadouts.
- Assets, Clothing & armor are added & fitted together. And the correct items, gadgets and weapons are installed.
- There are differences between the characters they create for Star Citizen & Squadron 42, in SQ42 characters may have very specific roles, outfits, loadouts & only need to do those functions & use those items.
- In the PU players have to be able to do EVERYTHING which requires a lot more work.
Armor, Clothes & Layers
- Some armor already incorporates fabric, like the sand nomads cloak, some armor might have a hood OR cape already as part of it.
- At the moment characters are layered with an undersuit, then armor, helmet, attachment points & laying more clothing on top of that separately does get complicated.
- In the future it's possible that you will be able to layer clothing over armor like a robe, but currently unless it's already part of the armor it's not allowed.
- Their loadouts systems looks at player characters in a certain way:
- They start with a naked body, attach a mobiglas and a head.
Then, are you equipping Clothing OR an Undersuit?
- The Undersuit will cover over all clothing & will allow you to equip armor.
- Armor is grouped into Legs, Torso,Arms & Helmet allowing you to customize your loadouts, Light, Medium & Heavy armor are very different sizes.
- Body parts have ports for the Clothing / Armor & more become available based on what you equip, holsters for pistols, gadgets, grenades, shotguns all for you to customize.
- So you'll have to choose between CLOTHES OR ARMOR, tho some armor will, incorporate cloth into it. They can have armor that kinda looks like clothing too.
- But you can wear various different clothing together and it will layer that clothing.
- Once a helmet is attached to an Under suit, that effectively makes it capable of EVA & surviving in space.
- Their armor & clothing culling & overlay system works out what it should show and not show when laying items. This helps with everything look realistic.
- Clothing and armor is simulated, they mark points where they want movement or weight, wrinkles & deformations. This makes it move correctly in EVA, zero gravity & when walking around and how it reacts to terrain.
Female Model & Hair
- The female model can have long hair. They are working on it!
- They are working on how helmets will work with long hair.
- Hair will be weighted for physics too, zero g, ragdoll.
- There will be dresses.
- They have worked on beards for in game.
- They are looking forward to show off the improved Bishop Speech.
- Characters have been OR are being updated for all the new improvements.
- They haven't really worked on other body hair, certainly nothing simulated.
Tier Heads | 0-3
- 0 has the most detail, 3 the least BUT still extremely high quality.
- Tier 0s are reserved for super important characters like Gary Oldman & Mark Hamill.
- T1 just has less blend shapes & topology than T0.
- The little things add to the performances of the characters.
They use wrinkle and blood maps to really bring them to life.
Tools & Pipeline
They are trying to unify the functionality of the in game loadouts with Maya, so that it's
much easier and quicker for artists to create and test things.
They spend a lot of time creating tools & making processes as efficient as possible.
Other Character Customization
- In 3.0 we will have lots of clothes, armor & colors to choose from.
- Multiple Heads & Faces, hair to customize.
- They are also looking at Color tinting on armor & clothing for the future.
- They don't currently have a port for a specific separate cape for clothing / armor.
- There will be scars and blemishes, tattoos are also being planned and worked on.
- The backend work of having a robotic/bionic eye has been done, so you could have
one in game, the same system could allow for robotic arms too.
- In the future there might be ports for concealed weapons.
- The Character Customization system uses the same topology for heads, it will moves the vertices around, but it allows them to standardize helmets and hair. The facial tech is some next level stuff! The system is called DNA internally.
- Environments may affect the look of characters in the future, they have a wear and tear system, BUT this is all still being worked on and developed.
- No Robots in SC at the moment - The Titan Suit is a big robotic suit they have been working on tho, but that is piloted.
