Number of posts : 6401 Age : 45 Location : Southampton, UK Registration date : 2009-02-23
Subject: Re: Species & Character Creation Thu Apr 08, 2010 11:21 am
Agreed.
And being an MMO, only some of the main content will be released at launch, within 6 months will come the first major update and you can expect a full expansion within 10-24 months.
Plenty of room to manaeuver
Guest Guest
Subject: Re: Species & Character Creation Thu Apr 08, 2010 11:22 am
Oh, PJK will be upset^^
PrioryJK wrote:
Link or in the spoilz, basically a conference at GDC showing how facial animation has improved including some aliens, no new ones apart fron the masked one probably but first time they've been shown!
Spoiler:
GDC: Facial Animation & More Aliens! Session Breakdown.
Just like good 'ol Saint Nick I decided to bring all you good little boys and girls a big 'ol bag of gifts from my trip to the Game Developers Conference 2010! Here's pictures from Bioware's lecture on Automated Emotion: Facial Animation in: Star Wars: the Old Republic
There were a lot of topics discussed, but the main focus was on getting all the facial animation for the dialogue to be generated by software, rather than completely hand-keyed. (If done by hand, it would take four animators TEN YEARS of work around the clock, 24/7, no breaks, solid work to get it all done for every bit of dialogue.)
However, there was also some slides on some more aliens and how their animations for dialogue could use the same system with just some tweaks to their animation rigs. From the pictures I saw (one of them not included) there were Bith, Devaronian, Abyssal, Gamorrean, Nikto, Arconan, Weekway and two I did not recognize.
Generally the dialogue they presented to us that the mmodels were animated from was alright. It wasn't the greatest voice acting I've heard, and I understand what I did hear was actually from the game. Most of the dialogue came from Sith or Imperial characters. In general it was good, but the voice actors didn't seem to know how to effectively pause during their lines to really make the delivery believeable. It felt like a lot of run-on sentances thrown at me. But it was just a demo, so there's hope anyhow. Any voice is better than none.
The animations produced for the dialogue were very lifelike and well done considering it is mostly procedurally generated as opposed to hand-done. Every character will be given a set emotion that determines their general mood, and beyond that every line they speak will be animatied on top of that with another layer of animation (are they disgusted, sad? happy? Over 27 emotive facial expression). Plus, in addition to that, the animations differ by if they are asking a question, making an exclamation, or just stating something (all three of these are different for each of the 27 emotions). Ontop of all THAT, there are three other variations of all the emotion combos that the computer selects at random to make sure there is very little similarity between two characters' dialogue animation.
Oh and there will be a lot of natural head movement and eye-darting to prevent NPCs from seeming like statues.
I gave the lecture an A+ overall, and I cannot wait to see some of this animation (and the aliens) in action!
Subject: Re: SWTOR Event of 2010 Discussion Thread Fri Mar 19, 2010 12:44 pm
But yeah, it was interesting news. Between PJK, Soude and Myself I think we identified all the aliens shown .
Sureshot Chief Operative
Number of posts : 5209 Age : 47 Location : Reading, England Registration date : 2009-02-11
Subject: Re: Species & Character Creation Thu Apr 08, 2010 11:23 am
I've added in the species names at the bottom of the post.
Harlequin2 wrote:
What we have to factor in though is that each race will have several different voices so with 30 races, that's a lot of voices for a lot of storylines... In all honesty, I can see them doing quality over quantity.
Yeah this could be a problem but I think I read somewhere that there will be a male and female voice for each class, so I hope they haven't left out the non-Galactic Basic speaking aliens for actual playable species. That would truly suck for all the Wookiee fans out there.
Sureshot Chief Operative
Number of posts : 5209 Age : 47 Location : Reading, England Registration date : 2009-02-11
Subject: Re: Species & Character Creation Thu Apr 08, 2010 11:25 am
Harewood wrote:
Oh, PJK will be upset^^
Ahem....DISCLAIMER:
Sureshot wrote:
I was meant to post it up ages ago but I wasn't aware if anyone already had.
Lunarwolf Chief Operative
Number of posts : 6401 Age : 45 Location : Southampton, UK Registration date : 2009-02-23
Subject: Re: Species & Character Creation Thu Apr 08, 2010 11:29 am
Harewood wrote:
Between PJK, Soude and Myself I think we identified all the aliens shown .
Correction, all BUT ONE!
Sureshot Chief Operative
Number of posts : 5209 Age : 47 Location : Reading, England Registration date : 2009-02-11
Subject: Re: Species & Character Creation Thu Apr 08, 2010 11:30 am
LOL!!!!
Guest Guest
Subject: Re: Species & Character Creation Thu Apr 08, 2010 11:59 am
LMAO
I stand corrected .
Sureshot Chief Operative
Number of posts : 5209 Age : 47 Location : Reading, England Registration date : 2009-02-11
Subject: Re: Species & Character Creation Fri Apr 16, 2010 5:05 am
Some of the actual facial animations here guys, enjoy!
Tue May 24, 2011 5:56 am by 
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