Sorry for the long absence! I am still wishing to contribute

[Evarchart]

Hello!!

How is everyone?
I am still around and yes, still very interested in contributing to this game!
I have been super busy with some other projects, but I haven't forgotten you I promise. I just wish I could take a year out of work to get all of my various projects completed!

I was looking through my files just the other day actually, and thinking about how I need to get back into creating the assets for you guys.

So, without me promising and never delivering (as I have done so far) I really want to come good on my promise to create these assets. :D

[impaktor]

That makes me very glad to hear!

If you get started again, then have a look at nozmajner's Facegen viewer.

[Evarchart]

:D
I actually spotted that tonight and figured it would be a great tool to help me, it just needs a race slider and a Male/Female slider ;)

I am glad to see you guys are still so budy on this! Noz's ships still blow me away, that latest one (the really big one) looks stunning!

[Evarchart]

I have been looking at my original work on my version of the facegen art and have come to the conclusion that the reason I failed to complete even one set of assets is because of my method. I had a single .psd with various folders and layers for every single asset...this meant multiple layers for things like shadows and highlights on the face. This made for an impossibly complicated way of working and it obviously must've dawned on me at some point that organising them into usable assets would take many days alone, with the turning on and off of layers.
So I have gone back to it and have restarted pretty much from scratch. I am salvaging what I can from the original .psd of mine and I am creating a new method of working which will hopefully produce assets you can use in game.
Once the daunting task of creating facial assets is over (gonna take ages) then the fun stuff can start - designing space suits, uniforms, unique stuff...for me that's the real meat of it.

So what I intend to make is 1 set of male caucasian assets which will be basic (not too detailed) and one female set with a view to re-working them and making them more detailed as time goes on...then releasing them as a pack update.
These can then be saved over the existing game assets (for the 3 different races) so at least the offending existing facegen assets are replaced with *hopefully* more pleasing results.

[Evarchart]

I have been making as many placeholders as I can, it's only now when I consider I have spent many hours today just creating "roughs" that I understand the mammoth task ahead. At least I have a new method of working, which is cleaner and quicker than before. Bear in mind that the eyes, nose and mouths here (apart from the ones you've seen already) were draw in a matter of minutes.
I have drawn 10 noses, 5 mouths, 2 sets of eye (very tough) and no hair as yet. I couldn't help but have a play here to show you some of the combinations...

[impaktor]

I think that looks fantastic, and to be of "good-to-go" quality, as I can't see anything "wrong" or "off" with them, I suggest keeping it at this speed and level (thus reducing the "mammoth task"). But then I'm no artist, so maybe I'm missing something? Is there more work required on those assets you just posted?

@fluffyfreak:

Code: Select all

<evarchart> I was also thinking, as I am working on these placeholders I am
            looking to the future in a possible feature that you may/may not
            make. I am structuring the .psds so that the colour element of the
            hair or eyes is seperate, this will allow for a possible colour
            randomiser feature...given that you're looking at how to drop a
            new facegen program into the game. What do you think @impaktor?
<impaktor> jpab: ^                                                      [16:18]
<evarchart> placeholders will still be coming, it just means that in the
            future we may be able to colour match hair with beards/eyebrows
            with hair
<evarchart> I also thought, it would work for skin-tone too             [16:19]
<evarchart> might be a little too much at the mo, but it was just a thought I
            had while I was out.                                        [16:20]
<evarchart> I save them out as .png for use in the game currently
<evarchart> but I can save them out as multiple layers so the colour element
            can be changed                                              [16:21]
<john_cephalopoda> Hmm, loading .psd could be quite difficult. Their format
                 isn't really simple.
<evarchart> I can save them out as .png's with the colour element seperate
<evarchart> I'll be designing them that way so if there's ever the programming
            there to re-colour within the game it won't be a massive job and I
            won't have to re-draw the lot.                              [16:22]
<impaktor> Sounds good.
<impaktor> as far as I can tell.                                        [16:23]

[Evarchart]

Yes, haha, there is a lot of work involved in me making them look as nice a possible, mainly shading and detailing, some colouring but they work as a sort of outline for what I have planned. Although, I suspect there may be a problem with them, we'll see...I was wondering if there was a way of adding some sort of vertical slider or a sort of vertical randomizer as to their positions on the face? as I placed the mock-ups on the heads I was amazed at just how different a face can look by just raising the mouth a tiny bit, or dropping it...same goes for nose and eyes.

I have a goal in mind regarding these, to release this as a set of placeholders for use within a month or 2 with a view to finishing them up properly as time allows. I strongly suspect that if I hadn't had to go out today I would have doubled the number of placeholders. The eyes are so far the hardest and most time consuming to create.

[Evarchart]

In between drawing eyes, noses and mouths etc I am having fun whenever ideas pop into my head...like this whimsical set of tech-eyes...

[nozmajner]

Neat! I'm glad you are still interested in the facegen. I was ruminating about starting to work on it again, because the current faces can ruin older GPUs or kill your cat if you are not careful. :D
I'll update that faceviewer thingy for larger images (sadly I was unable to figure out how to account for changing image sizes), but I can't promise anything about race and gender switches. I'm not even sure it it would be that useful, I assume one would work on them separately anyway (at least I would).

Those you posted look very nice.
I'm not sure about the feature moving feature. I'm afraid it could become very unpredictable when the feature library grows. Some mouth shapes might look odd in certain positions. Maybe there could be some metadata in the image, or in a separate file which could constraint the position to a given range or something. Of course it's just me being paranoid. :)

Have you tried using Photoshop's animation feature? You could have animated layers for each feature and their shading, and you could switch between them dynamically. Might help with a bit. Note: last time I checked only the 32 bit versions had proper keyframe animation support for some reason.

Just saw it: that goggle is creepy as hell :D

[Evarchart]

Haha, yeah, the idea for bug-eyes popped into my mind and I had to draw a tech version.

So far I am keeping the assets the same size as the originals and should be able to drop mine straight into the game as the drawing area is a little larger than the rectangle that contains the current eyes etc on the pngs, this allows me to create a little more top and bottom than currently exists. Hopefully this won't break the game.