Facegen concept ideas

[Evarchart]

I have been tackling the facegen art. In between drawing noses etc I have been practising with space suits. I am hoping that there will be a feature that allows players to generate their own profile picture and select various options for additional stuff like suits, uniforms etc...maybe even a shop that allows the purchasing of such items. Just random thoughts for now. :)

[impaktor]

I can only say I'm amazed at the quality of these.

I imagine the space suited version is the face you see when you talk to a ship/captain in deep space (that ability is currently not in the game, but will be).

[Evarchart]

Thankyou! I am having fun with these designs.
I just had this idea that you can buy superfluous things like space suits :D...if the could find a practical use in game even better...we need a Chewbacca-style space teddy ;)

[impaktor]

I just had this idea that you can buy superfluous things...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Groucho_glasses

Buying things for your person is probably not on any to-do list, since the player is the ship (check FAQ), and that will not change. So space suits are always included in the ship, we could say.

[Evarchart]

Ah, I understand. I would like to think there will be options to select facial features as opposed to relying on complete randomness though? I don't know if this is a big ask or if it's do-able, apologies if I annoy with these questions, I am just very enthusiastic. :)

After taking a couple of days off work to get a feel for these graphics I have learned a couple of things...once I have drawn the must-haves like a mouth or a nose I will go to experiment with a helmet or a droid (I can't help myself). I spent quite a while setting up a .psd in Photoshop that game me some indication of how many elements I will need in the end: lots. Although daunting I am enjoying it as I say.

I'll be sketching up roughs of the various faction's uniforms and also some roughs for the police soon too (are the police different in each faction? I think they should be that way I can keep common looking elements and motifs etc). Once I have the basics for the facegen elements then I would like to draw some unique armours/helmets/facial features etc on the off-chance there are distinctive characters and stories (I am thinking like Boba Fett, at least in terms of recognisability).

[impaktor]

I would like to think there will be options to select facial features as opposed to relying on complete randomness though? I don't know if this is a big ask or if it's do-able

Sounds doable. Instead of having a random thing choose each component, we increment through them with buttons. Not sure anyone will implement this soon. I don't see myself having time to look at that within this summer though (unless it will rain), since I'm not that familiar with that code.

are the police different in each faction?

The way I see it, - yes.

Nozmajner and robn once talked about having factions and sub-factions a while ago. I don't know how that would work, but I guess police officers in (real life) L.A. and N.Y. have different uniforms so they could be seen as an example of sub-factions of the USA faction?

Either way, this (sub-factions) is not implemented or planned, and I don't think anything will happen there within this year, unless things pick up here, so maybe not start loosing us in too much detail, that might never get implemented.

Once I have the basics for the facegen elements then I would like to draw some unique armours/helmets/facial features etc on the off-chance there are distinctive characters and stories

Sounds awesome. As I mentioned earlier, pioneer does allow for distinctive characters and stories, it's just that no one has ever made use of it. Are you suggesting that no "randomly" generated character can have certain features that you are planning?

[Evarchart]

I'm glad about the possibility of being able to select features that make up my face in-game, I just think you could make some interesting combinations with the features I am drawing.

As for the police, I'll just draw one for now (maybe a variant or 2 just to mix things up and so it's not samey) and look at expanding the asset set at a later date.

Regarding unique characters, I was thinking along the lines of unique helmets and armour sets...so the game will render the face as normal but put on a unique which will obscure most of the face if not all so you just see eyes or something like that. I fancy myself as a bit of a writer too and I could write some back story for some of the bounty hunters if need be? It could be fun...again, all just lots of little ideas that I have when I am at work :)

[Evarchart]

Ok, the posture of the original sketch was bugging me, so I went back and changed it..although you won't really be able to tell all that much. I added some little lights and a better hood that will be better suited to bigger jaws and chins, also I changed the reflections on the helmet glass to make it look more shiny. All of this is more of a test really for things to come but they turned out really nice so I thought I would share with you.
I am working on some police tests today.

[Evarchart]

Very very early collection of human headshapes, there is a lot of work to be done on these yet, making shading match etc. you get the idea though.

http://gifmaker.me/PlayFrameAnimation.p ... ZOmThEcAJU

[Evarchart]

Quick Police test.