Star Citizen: Reverse the Verse 2.6 - LA

9 September 201600:41:531,172 linesWatch on YouTube ↗

Transcript — every row opens the video at that moment

00:00:10
[Music] hey everybody and welcome back to reverse the verse uh my name is Eric Karen Davis I'm the senior producer in the LA studio and I've got a special guest here Mr Josh Herman our character art director so while you get your character questions prepped I want to tell you a little about the show so reverse the verse is a weekly show we do where we bring content from the ATV into
00:00:59
RTV for all the acronym fans out there and the main focus is to uh really dig a little bit deeper into what you just saw on the show yesterday uh and expose a few things that you might have questions about uh remember we're only taking questions from the RSI chat on our website Robert Space Industries uh head there ask us questions and uh this is for you everything we answer is for you and it is live right now yeah so uh as we get started uh before we get started obviously thank you guys for joining us we uh love your participation and we're glad you're here with us so yeah excited to be here let's get this going with a few questions I think the first question we have up is uh Josh if you can kind of talk to us a little bit about the character pipeline since you've been here um kind of How It's been where it's going and and um you know just some updates it's been a little while since we've talked about the character pipeline sure um so since I've been here one of the big things we've kind of been
00:01:47
focusing on is some of the big things that we're going to do for 2.6 um and starmarine which we've kind of talked about and hinted at and all that kind of stuff but as well for the Pu other things we're going to focus on are the modularity of the characters uh getting some more you know differences in what the the variety what the player can wear but also making sure that armor can be modular which is something that we haven't really done before uh so it's something we're going to lead to where right now you can buy you know light medium and heavy choices uh but we eventually want you to be able to swap in and out of different types right so uh heavy chest piece light helmet and stuff like that so we can actually create more unique looks just within what we already have too sure one of the other questions we got uh just kind of peeling off of that in the modularity what kind of challenges have we come up
00:02:36
against on developing that kind of system right you know like when you just create one asset and it just goes into a pre-rendered cinematic or in something you've done in the past right it's one piece but what are the challenges you guys have been presented with in the character team and how you been overcoming those one of the hardest things with that is you know so when you do something that's modular you can't just work on it as its own piece like you were talking about right so we want to add in all these other areas so if you think of it almost like a car so we have a let's use a light we'll use like a little Miata car we have a medium like a fusion and then we have a big car like a you know a truck or a Hummer or something like that if I took off a door of a Miata and tried to put it on a Hummer it doesn't work vice versa right now the thing that we need to do is we need to make that work with on our characters so if we want to put our big Hummer door on this Miata frame we need to make that work yeah uh so making sure
00:03:24
that all the variations can work within the all the other variations is really really important for us yeah for sure for sure okay the questions are flooding in oh all right um one of the top questions we have uh is is the character we saw on around the verse a tier zero tier one or tier two kind of feeding off of the helmet or the the heads idea MH um I think it was a tier one I want to say it's a tier one uh some of the heads actually have multiple versions depending on where you're going to see them um but I believe it was a tier one sure and and I think that question uh also if we talk about the Marines right like are the suits teed as well so that Marine suit is not teed so if we talk about what Omar was specifically talking about or showing that's not teed that's just good you can get it clothing and armor doesn't have a tier it's basically just
00:04:11
it's what it is it's the default one uh tiers are mostly for heads actually exclusively for heads and it all is dependent on joint and blend count and all that kind of fun Tech stuff sure and poly count as well yeah okay next up um let's see will we ever see character model damage States we're definitely working on it and looking into it because the ship team does some really really cool stuff yes they do um and I want to make sure that we can implement the same kind of stuff yeah for sure um there is some things that are kind of overlapping right now so some of the tech that the ship team does is very specific to the way we work and it doesn't totally translate with how we work so we need to balance those out or shift around some ways that we do things to make it so we can do it uh but it's something we've definitely been looking into gotcha this is an interesting question it's kind of uh design related but you know in the conversation you've
00:04:58
had with our designor with Chris um concealed handguns or weapons under clothes is that a thing is that a thing we've talked about is that a thing we could do it's a thing we can do it's a thing we haven't really set up yet um the challenges you run into concealed things under clothes are for example first off to put it underneath clothes what does the animation look like uh and then from a design standpoint do other players know that you have something concealed and if they do how well should they know uh if it's like something that's like tucked into a holster underneath a jacket M um when you go to animate that does it lift the jacket up and then does it all of a sudden pull out or you know we want it to if we're going to do concealed we want it to look good and we don't want it to feel cheap that all of a sudden a player can just whip a weapon out of nowhere whereas all the other players would have to show
00:05:47
that they have a a weapon so you don't want it even though yes we can do it it's one of the things of if we do it it needs to look correct and not feel cheap and feel like everything else is going to work ITT fits right in the world uh going kind of back to the around the verse talking about Marines so uh the the visor specifically this is a question about those do the visors on the new Marines come down like in the concept art we've seen in the past mhm um they're built too uh right now they don't yet but they're definitely built to so everything we're designing is is planned and built to be you know flippable uh swappable all that kind of modularity stuff cool um so yes awesome awesome uh this is a pretty popular question female model can you give us any updates or tell us anywhere uh kind of what the status is of V model so we've as you guys have seen in previous videos we have finished the base uh
00:06:36
we're working on getting all the heads to kind of integrate with that also getting uh skin color that matches so if you choose uh whatever ethnicity it matches on the skin as well as the head um which is a little bit of a challenge in some ways um we are working on getting all the female clothing options up to date to match that uh I think I talked about that previously but basically when we make clothes for the male or female whatever one you start with you need to make the opposite version for that other gender sure and so it's just a little bit of a a Time investment to make sure that we have all the shirts that work on this all the armor that works on this and so forth an investment worth spending yeah absolutely yeah uh here's one for you I this happens to me all the time do you sometimes freak out when working with super realistic bodyless
00:07:24
heads when they're floating around the screen screen um oddly enough no I think you get used to it yeah at first it's like oh that's kind of creepy but I think I've when you work in like game development there's so so many other kinds of bugs and things that the creepy floating head becomes nothing and you just look for the the bugs and the other things that are more that are now more creepy than that you get numb to just heads floating heads interesting that's interesting um well different AR here's another question about armor the armor pieces um will different armor pieces fit almost all other pieces or will they have limited fitments or or or you know ways to put things together we talked about a second ago about being able to do it but will there be limitations do you see or is it just going to be like free-for-all everything can do everything I would say probably 90 to 80% will be freefor all and then there will probably be a very select pieces
00:08:12
that will be custom or bespoke or whatever you want to say sure um where it won't be able to fit with other things um but basically like that would almost be like its own suit its own specific thing or its own clothing that can't go with other pieces most I would say 80 to 90% should all be fully laer yeah that'd be great um okay so another couple questions on that same area will we be able to mix and match of armor like the Hem on the left leg medium on the right leg right that level of complexity U light armor on the chest you you know you kind of get the idea will you be able to go even even that level or is it just like a pair of pants is one the chest is the other because we kind of mentioned that at the beginning um but do you see it even that level um we have everything built to do that what it will really come down to is probably uh performance CU as soon as you start mixing matching rights and lefts and all those kind of different things it it
00:09:00
doubles or triples and can quickly make way more assets um and when we're trying to make everything look really good but also run well uh that's a huge challenge so we have everything built to but it's really going to come down to Performance y I think but we want to absolutely sure for sure so um alien races I know we we talk about that often is there anything you can anything you can say for the the fans out there or the backers out there about Let's see we have been working on uh the vanuel quite a bit recently uh we have been working on the Taran I spoke that that couple maybe a month or so ago um and I have been recently kind of doing some stuff to the genan so I can't say too much beyond that yeah but those are the things that we have been working on so yes they are absolutely being
00:09:48
worked on sure so do shift focuses a little bit a little bit about your your and the team's creative process okay um when you start running low on ideas how do you get those juices flowing right in this big environment but you know how to keep things keep things going I think that's I mean that that could be a whole hourlong conversation on itself but um you know I really love to travel I like to go around to different places and different environments and different cultures um so that can draw its own kind of inspiration just in that just being in different places and uh experiencing and figuring out learning about different histories and stuff like that it's really interesting to me um and just through that that's its own own thing sure right um but then also I really like to collaborate so you know maybe somebody will if somebody has an
00:10:35
inkling of an idea we can take that we can run with it and and Branch off and do some uh mind mapping and experiments to kind of break out like what could come off of this one thing right yeah um that's one way to do that sure so collaborating um really can expand the amount of ideas that you can have really really quickly to I think I think also uh other mediums other entertainment mediums are inspiring right depending on what you're working on the new games all the new watch all the new films yes yes yes talk to other people about things that get you excited or or or like you said just new ideas hey come over here and look at this you know ex that's great um so are there any uh advantages you see to the different tiers of armor um I think well there will be from a play standpoint for sure um you know the light armor will be faster but
00:11:23
obviously take more damage the heavy will be slower but be able to absorb more damage sure um so it's it's really going to depend on your play style if you want to be the guy who can kind of tank up and walk in or if you want to be the guy who can kind of you be more fast and quick and agile uh there's there's advantages to both yeah uh I don't know if you guys have talked about this much or on the character team I mean we've talked about a lot of things but uh one of the questions that just came in is uh I expect character items like glasses to be in the game uh but could we also uh have something like piercings piercings or even cigars or piercings and cigars and you that kind of fun stuff yeah yeah we can absolutely do that that's cool yeah course to customize keep the characters keep the characters customized and unique to each other that's great um so kind of back to the female uh we're jumping around a little
00:12:11
bit but these questions are coming in thank you very much these are great questions um how are we uh so the female is a bit shorter so how the question exactly is how are we getting uh shorter female art to fit in to all these cockpits we've now established as a standard right so now we're kind of talking metrics and and things like that which I know big part of building characters you know what what considerations have come into play for her um I mean that is mostly a tech and animation thing right because for us we're going to make the asset and we're going to make it fit um but we do want to play into that to just make sure that it's all kind of working right we we we can't exaggerate anything from the character side we want to keep it true to the base otherwise we get into this place where we exaggerate for one and then it works for that one and then we have to build to that one and that becomes the new base and that's a huge problem sure um but it is you know it is a challenge like you know when you get
00:13:01
into a seat when I get into my car and my wife has driven my car like oh wait I'm all bunched up and then I got to adjust the seat right you got to do stuff like that so sure adjustments yeah cool other solutions for that I think very cool uh this is interesting question about the body frames so you know will there'll be will will there be two static body frames one for each gender and how much variations will the character body shapes be able to have like you mean like body size shape uh currently like I've said before we have one for each which is what they're referencing um but we would like to have more because there's more like we've talked about more customization more character options more variety within the characters I think you you almost have to have that at a certain point yeah um so but like currently one making sure that those are really good and then
00:13:49
once we get we get all that kind of set up we'll move on sure for the other shapes yeah oh body shapes yep we're all unique uh So currently in 25 uh this question is I was noticing that I'm not wearing clothes uh so that but the the head and the rest of the body have kind of different color tones so now we're going talking about color consistency great question for an art director for character excellent uh will there be consistency in color tones or because the bodies will be hidden will this not need to be resolved or not be resolved at all um so like if you're wearing whatever you know the skin tone should match yes yes absolutely that's clear um but you should you know for the clothing like if what what we actually do is we do uh something called object culling and so that basically means like if you put the shirt on um we have it so that the mesh underneath my my skin
00:14:39
underneath should just go away it should just be cold or removed um and we have that with armor we have that with with all kinds of pieces and that's actually Tech that's just now rolling on the line uh and that saves us a lot of Poes a lot of drawals a lot of you know things that would be rendered or no longer having to be rendered it also saves us some of these problems that he's mentioning right now or she um where it could be you know if there was an inconsistency now it just doesn't even need to be thought about sure um and it also helps with clipping so and some of our older patches you would see where the arm would move around and there would be like uh through SK skin would be poking through the shirt which is obviously something we don't want but this kind of tech will help fix that that's great that's really cool and and I know we T we talked a little bit about the new base mail uh in the in the round the verse and I know we have the skin tone thing and I think that's I mean
00:15:26
something to help balance it out will be CU here's the new base and here's how we're going to have everything blend together and it's coming together I think it's coming together nice um couple couple more questions we're uh we're almost done with Mr Herman sadly we could we could go all day if we had time but uh next up will be Mr Sean Tracy just to get your questions ready our technical director of content we're going to talk a lot about his team the technical content team so start thinking about those questions but we're not done with Josh yet a couple more quick questions um what is uh the purpose of facial animations for the player characters that's an interesting the purpose the purp what is a purpose oh okay yeah um well you know we have some some really cool ideas that I don't really want to go into yet because I think that they um are not ready to be spoken about sure but we have some cool ideas
00:16:13
for why there would be a purpose for the player to speak more to come spoiler alert more alert more to come um I think the last question the very last question we have for you um we're going to ask about um holsters oh okay okay holsters so are holsters considered a um article of clothing with different styles colors just like shirts and pants Oh that that's the question that's the question oh yeah um question mark my inflection should have gone up higher I apologize um sort of yeah so because they they're more of like an accessory uh an accessories like should be also be be able to be customized in its own way sure um but it's not necessarily like it's own clothing yeah so it's yes and no yeah you can change it you can choose
00:17:02
your own different colors and you can do all that kind of stuff with it yeah cool all right uh other than someone really wantan to know about capes cap everybody loves capes capes I don't know if there's a question there per se but capes I want them I want them that's all I'm saying I want them I know you want them I'm pushing for them we should get them all right with with Mr Herman that is it thank you so much for joining us Josh um up next will be Shawn Tracy technical director of content right after uh this little exclusive for reverse the verse thank you very much Josh thank you and we're back after that little
00:18:00
tidbit exclusive that you did not see in around the verse uh and also to mention about that we hope to do more of those so reverse the verse we have special little uh Cutting Room floor pieces that we'd like to drop in going forward this was our first test of that so hopefully you guys like it joining me now to my left Mr Shawn Tracy the wonderful the Glorious we're so happy to have you here technical director of content that's right so say move move your microphone closer to your mouth say hello say hello I was moving away you we your mic close to your face okay all right so uh let's get started get the questions rolling in while he gets his microphone in place uh to kind of get us going we're going to talk about technical content so we did a bit of a behind the scenes we had we had Forest we had um Matt we had Vin we Tred to get more we want more in there we'll
00:18:46
hopefully do that next time uh but the the team that you are kind of a part of and and the one that you help drive through here is a somewhat of the unsung heroes Force kind of mentioned but uh it's a large team it's a global team and uh not only doing the job of being our technical director to make sure the game content-wise gets moving and really gets Rock and rolling uh he's also got a really great team to help him do that so that's kind of what we featured in behind the scenes I'd love to start off uh as the questions start coming in with uh you know what are what are some recent challenges that you guys have helped the art team and the content teams overcome just you know we've got a lot obviously a big part of your job is overcoming challenges but yeah yeah it's every day man I mean um yeah we're every day there's a new challenge that's that's kind of the thing um it's also diff difficult to schedule around right these poor guys uh they come in they
00:19:33
expect to be working on one thing one week and then uh yeah sort of switch it up on them just because yeah there's challenges um uh I don't know a good example of one that actually we're we're we're up against right now um and we are trying different things on is is the fit of the hair right uh across all these different heads so um like you've been seeing we have uh about 120 uh heads that we've scanned so uh and they're all at various qualities um one of the big difficulties of that is that um everybody's head shape is very different right so I can't just uh copy paste your hair and put it on mine as much as I might want to who would want to who want to cover with me well I would absolutely I would I would die to have that much that much hair uh um but you can't just copy paste it across so uh one of the
00:20:21
one of the hopes um and and what I had actually expected to do and this is usually when the problems come up so you've got a design you've got a technical design or you've got some ideas um and then you get there you do it and there's a problem sure and there's something that doesn't work with it so oh oh all of a sudden we have to iterate on it or we got to figure something out so uh with the hair what we were going to do was store all the morph Target so here's here's the thing there's three different ways we can do this the the first way is have individual assets for 120 hairs so let's say you got 10 hairstyles that's 1,200 hair assets that you have to make so let's not do that right um that is actually the way that a lot of them a lot of games have done it in the past anyways it's the it's the least sophisticated way and it's the most resource intensive so you just do it um then the idea that I had I i' wanted to do with the hairstyles was uh have a
00:21:09
morph Target per head so at least we only have a singular uh hair asset itself but within that asset we can trigger off a certain morph per head sure um so that would be great because then we've got the one hair asset and it can share across every single skull somebody's still going to make those morphs right um so that doesn't save that but it does save the uh uh save the performance of having a whole bunch of separate assets problem is is that the way a morph Target actually works is all these vertices align on the CPU so uh running anything on the CPU is just kind of a especially in terms of the art um is not the most performant way you can do it so um the best way um is is is via skinning which is going to happen on the GPU so if we did it with morph targets we could trigger all these Mars but again that's going to cost CPU um where we really need the CPU for a bunch of
00:21:56
other things yeah so um the next sort of iteration of this now is is a is a I call it wrap base um uh joint deformation system so basically we wrap those scalps to to each of the heads and then we offset um all the joints that are going to be within this little hair rig that we make for it so it's kind of like a customization rig so we would end up taking that one on a hair asset it would have this customization rig on it and then we write out all the joint offsets um per head or something like this so um right now we're taking a look at that we're seeing how many joints it's actually going to take because there is going to be uh there is going to be a point where we have too many joints at the morph Target way would actually be better so we've got to find the happy medium within there um yeah exactly uh it's it's not a matter of not being able to make these assets we can scripted create this thing it's a matter
00:22:44
of how we give it to you guys sure um so that's one of the one of the challenges one of the many one of the many exactly and and they're always pretty deep right like I mean there takes there's a lot to to understand and the implications of things um yeah are pretty pretty um uh pretty large um when you're dealing with asset sets of 120 heads whatever totally changes the questions are rolling in let's jump in this is my first favorite question uh how much just tell us how much you love the new naked mail I love the new naked I don't know if you watched the final cut of that but uh we we didn't take out any time he talked about how much he love the new naked maale well yeah well I was kind of put on spot it was just like this one where it's like hey what's a cool thing that you're working on right now and I'm like okay I just got done reviewing this so that's the cool thing it's it's an exciting asset and I think what you were saying was there's a lot
00:23:32
more than just the reason you're excited about it obviously it's a it's and actually and you know I should probably be a little bit more clear why I'm excited about it so like yeah great there's there's a new goodlooking um um bass mail coming along uh which is great but what what I didn't really talk about and what I what I was just finishing up reviewing actually was was our Zone calling um uh technique um and the reason that we're putting another mail in is is the way we are marking up the mesh in such a way that we can do the calling of the clothing in a way more sophisticated way um currently what we were doing was hiding certain parts so we had like an arm piece and you got the leg piece and you got the Torso piece U and you would hide the whole um um um item Port itself the the item that was on that Port sure U and now we can unify
00:24:19
them onto the the unified body so the new naked male brings that and maybe that's what I'm more excited about rather than the actual art itself the art is a win too because um one of the biggest things we've been noticing especially with levels that don't use armor or something like this um is that you do see your hands a lot um even when you're not in armor when you're not in some of these nice uh like really really um authored um um uh character costumes so when you see your arms it it can't look like dead arms it was very very strange the the older um U the previous version of the mail looked looked weird yeah it would lack detail um looked dead which was creepy it's it's especially when you see your legs that's right the side by side is is so dramatic right and and what James did and how you guys got
00:25:08
in engine and just how it's coming together like it's it's really exciting um kind of going on the characters I think we've inspired people that B Josh being on here previously um you know on the technical side a little bit how are characters textured tille textures with decals like the ships or high res textures um actually the characters are different than the ships uh the difference is uh we have a Shader called we call it layer blend Shader Forest talks about it a lot um he helped develop it with our Graphics programmers so it's a set of tile textures um in that case they're they're they're referenced uh via a layering system um but uh it's not quite as simple as just uh having a couple preset materials and then uh you know masking them out per uh per piece uh what you have to do is do a bunch of draw call savings within there
00:25:55
um try to merge those up because you've got so many dispar materials usually every single material ID you'd be at least costing two draw calls or more um and that's two at the at the very base and most cases it's going to be three four depends if the cast Shadows things like this um so to have a character Shader that uses that sort of referencing without you know completely uh uh destroying your draw call Budget um is a is a challenge by itself so um but yeah it's a it's a layer blend Shader so it's a combination of uh the tile textures it's very cool Tech it's very um and it's actually shared by the way too um as we developed it for characters as the prop team came online prop team uses the same layer blend Shader stuff um and then even on top of that most of the weapons um like definitely the first person weapons uh all use the same technique um but the uh ship weapons as well U so the only thing
00:26:43
that actually doesn't the only two things that don't do it is the environments and the ships wow very cool all right next question for you um a little bit more again kind of in the same vein about kind of clothing uh how does Zone calling work and still allow clothing to become damaged and show tears uh we were just talking about the damage on it this morning and uh showing tears and things like this um really what we'd love to do is take exactly the damage system that is being used on the ships and apply that to the characters now I I say that and I make it sound so easy but what I just talked about before the layer blend Shader and and the difference between the way the ships work in terms of materials and the way the characters work in terms of materials is the problem um um the the damage system is very much set up for
00:27:31
for the the the shading Types on the ships for the way the ships are set up um so to apply that on the characters is actually a much more difficult thing also the character meshes are a different format than than what the ships are ships are we call them cgas or animated geometry uh uh whereas the character meshes are skin files so um we've just got a very different format um between the two meses so that can be a problem interesting so uh how the Zone calling actually works is that we've split up each of the Mes in um a bunch of zones uh we call them chunks or you can call them regions I mean whatever um and like I was saying from 2.4 and the first shopping implementation we didn't have the Zone calling online so what we were doing was hiding entire pieces of the character again we had like an arm or we have the Torso then we have the legs um and then based on what you were putting on top of it it would say okay
00:28:20
whatever uh uh whatever uh uh um item is on a certain item Port hide that item so it was really not that sophisticated and not very uh you couldn't get real granular with it right so we couldn't put a t-shirt in the vest on top and uh take the T-shirt away and just have the small part that the vest was covering um uh uh calling out on the on the base body um so now what we have again going with this more unified unified naked male greatl looking guy B uh a Bas mesh approach um we can actually put all these zones on it um I think there's I can't remember the actual number it's the 30 some odd zones um but uh yeah we can have all these zones and they get called out via layers uh depending on the item that's attached to them so it's not uh it's not
00:29:10
quite as uh quite as rudimentary as it as it was originally um but we always expected that that would be the the route that we'd go first have entire item hiding then the next one have Zone calling and then the next one if we ever get to it um is is going to be a more automated approach so so it would be something that was happening at runtime so it has an idea of what verts are actually hidden and things like this but uh great but yeah there's no actual requirement for that right now because we can output all the zones from Maya on on an asset export is very very straightforward to do though that's awesome so shifting focus a little bit okay because we could just Tech talk with Sean easily I love talking about um a little bit broader right since you've been on the project for for some time you know since the uh since the beginning um what what is like the biggest technical accompl accomplishment in star syiem that you are personally the most proud of I feel like we asked this question to you a lot but I but I I
00:29:57
always I think it's always a great question to ask um I think it depends and it uh it would because it it changes a lot um uh for example when I was still working with krych and still uh met Chris and uh got this got this project started on the cry engine and things um I was extremely proud of the very first um uh demo that he was able to give um in in real time flying around the bangal um doing all this this was myself Paul ryell uh forest was was working on it at the time um so at that point in time that was easily the the most proud I was um of personal work that has done it but since I've come on the team this is more I don't know I'm more proud of of of things that we're doing as a whole like the Gamescom demo I'm extremely proud of I I was really happy with uh the citizen
00:30:46
con um uh Landing demo that we did for our Corp yeah so honestly it's more of a team accomplishment thing I I don't know I'm more proud of the I'm more proud of the entirety of of of our team rather than than just individual achievement things I guess it was pretty pretty masterful uh yes yeah yeah uh here's a kind of going back a little bit about you know adding on what you were saying we have a question about why the textures you know should be in Target RAM and not vram why they should be yeah and well it's just a little bit faster I mean it's a little bit faster yeah sure um I mean yeah that's yeah it's faster hey these are L questions yeah it's going to be faster I awesome so um mesh deformations so do you think there'll be mesh deformations
00:31:33
to simulate the muscular contractions uh there is already um the problem is is our suits are such that they don't really it's not as obvious as it should be um and this is something I talk to our our rigger about all the time uh we have muscle deformation systems within the rig um so is this Dynamic at at runtime hell no you don't want to do this at runtime you don't want to be uh like it's one thing to have some jiggle joints or like uh uh some simulated Parts uh but what you want is that muscle deformation stuff happening within your rig um and then uh you can do a little more complex things but it does get baked into the animation then eventually so it's actually something that we changed into five was was some of the underlying um um Tech that we were using for these for this deformation on the rig itself um but
00:32:22
yeah it's all actually going on one of the bigger problems with it is the amount of verts um that we don't have on that body to actually really show you that um the other thing that we really want to do is bring on eight weight skinning for our body um this is something that Graphics brought online for the faces so uh we do eight weight skinning on on the CPU but now we also have access to it on the GPU um and it's it's way faster and we can handle a lot more verts that way um and we might apply this to the body depending on if you are going to get better better visuals for for the biceps uh for the lats for things around the shoulders um yeah right that's great um so I don't know how much we kind of go into this but talking 26 um item system 2.0 we've we've we've tickled that one a little
00:33:11
bit that's a pretty big overhaul um is there anything you can share uh right now about what what may or may not show up in 26 or or uh you know the the immediate the immediate release uh it's good question um on the item 2.0 stuff the characters all item 2.0 um but actually well definitely it needs to be online for 2.6 is the helmet 2.0 um basically uh the helmets are still on the old item system and the reason they're on the old item system is mostly of the uh visor um FPS stuff yeah so there's a bunch of Hud work that has to be done there's HUD items there's the uh uh FPS radar stuff that needs to come online so as soon as that's all switched up then we'll switch those helmets over to item 2.0 that'll be in 2.6 I I believe I want it to be because really
00:33:59
really frustrating with the item 1.0 versions um they're just really hard to maintain for sure for sure this is kind of jumping to a interview for from jumpo you did uh you had said uh the Character Creator was going to be a mix of blending between faces and actually moving vertices around I was wondering how would the ladder work with facial animations it seems that once you move the vertices around animations may be messed up forever uhhuh and that's that's that's the absolute trick um to everything that goes on uh uh within that customiz ization system so um we have we have a system that can actually do these copy poses so the idea is that you clamp that that amount of movement right um one of the one of the trickier Parts is how you get that face in the first place so the two faces or or however many that you might combine to get your your more unique face um that's harder to to deal with in the animation
00:34:49
space uh than it would be just making some offsets on some of the uh uh non primary joints let's call them so you know whether you're you might not separate your eyes you might not actually uh uh change the shape of the inside of the mouth and things like this um so that we can get away with having animation plus the uh plus the customization um but what we do have anyways uh to answer the question maybe a little more directly is this uh modifier system that makes it so that yes we can clamp it um but we can still get that movement and retain all the underlying animation because we use skeleton extensions mhm and this is something that uh actually gets extended based on your customization so um yeah it doesn't completely mangle the animations but to be fair it doesn't give you a huge range uh uh to be able to move this stuff around it's enough
00:35:36
that you get uh a pretty customized face um but uh is it like uh like a Black Desert or something like that not quite um um our faces again are kind of in the realm of of of realism sure um so we want to keep them real without making them look a little too wacky sure little little over real out Outer real out Outer real outer real right the word we're going to use that's the technical term yeah that's technical ter all right so in cry and all question about uh are all the character astics loaded even on long distance for a different player perspective from a different player perspectives um it's a it's a loaded um what is loaded um uh so yes they are okay so if if they're placed uh it really depends on the entity type that
00:36:23
we're using so I mean if you place an AI and and in cry engine default cry engine vanilla cry engine um everything that's placed in that level is is is loaded when you load that level now whether the asset itself is being uh rendered or not or whether there's all the resources are actually there for it usually not and that's something that we've improved upon massively here at c um but uh yeah the the actual character there's an idea that it's in the world uh but all the all the cost of the skeleton and everything no that's not updating at distance we LOD that skeleton out really really quickly um is kind of the idea so if you can't see it yeah matter right well it shouldn't matter that's kind of the point problem is the server sees it that's the real problem oh these servers they see everything if only they
00:37:10
wouldn't see anything yeah this interesting question about kind of cry engine and um you know the current state like you know how much is the SC version right our version of cry engine differ from the current cry engine or massively I mean massively uh there's so so many levels of of customization and Improvement I I think upon upon systems that were already in there um the engine the core engine has it massively Chang yes and no it really just depends on the system that we're talking about because a lot of people think we've really retained most of the renderer and and in in some cases we have but we've also changed out some core components of it like tiled shading uh uh like making the renderer camera relative instead um the 64-bit support of the of uh Within sandbox is crazy um yeah so there
00:38:02
there's a lot of changes um and that's just a few right off the top of my head but at this point yeah what if I ever go back to check something on the vanilla SDK yeah I I I miss things and I find things to be to be missing uh we love to change in cig the third person button so that that one always drives me nuts sure making it more improved yeah yeah more improved because we moved around every build no uh so you know kind of talking a little bit about your team in general like what's the What's a what's something that uh we talked a little bit to venite and we talked to Forest and we talked to mad and Trier um you know again just a small subsect of the the larger team yep U mad and Trier talked about explosions and uh one of his passions are the explosions of our ship in fact something we don't have in the final ATV was him saying that when he first sees a ship the first thing he
00:38:50
thinks about our explosions really and it's not just for the they're awesome but it's also for how are we going to make that explode right and that's interesting question I was talking to Matt today too about how we break up ships and um you know the the eventuality of of needing to split things in half or quarters and how the physics grid would affect it you know can we just put stuff in global space yeah um he he loves breaking he loves breaking the stuff yeah is it is it a requirement on your team to like breaking things and fixing them no the requirement is that you you don't find bugs you find fixes there you go and you bring those fixes you check them in there you go and that's all do that and you are successful yeah stop finding bugs we got people to find bugs that's wonderful that's wonderful well I uh I really want to thank you Sean for
00:39:37
joining us yeah you're welcome this is it's always fun I love doing re it is fun I I like I said we could sit here I said this about Josh but it's true about you we could sit here and just talk for days about this stuff so I really appreciate you joining us and I know your team does a lot of really hard work kind of the work that people don't always see up front but it is crucially important to long-term success of what we're doing so absolutely it's wonderful so I'm going to thank you in front of everybody for your team doing a great job and uh thank you for joining us uh Jared is going to slide in here and give us a quick Community update and that will be the wrap of our show um so thank you Sean for joining us we will slide we will roll to the sides thank you Sean come on in there's there's Jared so he's quick update on the community stuff and then we will wrap it today hey guys great show by the way great show good job good job thank you we did a thing we did a thing it work actually worked uh
00:40:25
so guys uh uh next next week we got was is a low makers Guide to the Galaxy week so with Dave hadock if I'm not mistaken so it's always good when you get you know senior writer Dave hatic on the show did I say senior Senor he Mis uh ATV comes from Austin does next week uh and then RTV again from Austin uh next Saturday uh in our or part of our origin Museum series if you can remember that from way back in these stretch schal days Wing Commander 2 25th anniversary live stream with Ben Lesnik so check that out that'll be on Saturday right here on cig Community um yeah other than that it's full steam ahead to Citizen conon Man full steam ahead everybody's working on citizencon uh we got lots of stuff to show you um if you like Gamescom man tune in for citizen con
00:41:14
it's coming all right well thank you guys for joining us again thank you for subscribers for allowing us to do this extra content and for joining us today we always love having these wonderful developers on to go into the the in-depth details a little bit more about what we're working on so we'll see you guys next week from Austin for RTV and uh thank you guys have a fantastic weekend

Transcript from YouTube’s automatic captions — punctuation and Star Citizen jargon are approximate. The video itself is hosted by CIG on the official channel.