EQ2 Panel #2: Art and Animation

Starting the EverQuest II: Art and Animation panel.

Dave Georgeson and David Brown are wearing KILTS!!!

Update: This is a video of EverQuest II Panel #2 “Art and Animation” added on July 16, 2011.

Kilts and New Outfits

* The long road of getting them work. We had to figure out how to attach Kilts to bones without anything to really attach them to.
* Building model using only 2 bone influences per vert
* Creating 26 models of the kilt for 26 individual character models
* Set up a new occlusion system

New Outfits
* Legend of Norrath inspired

Screenshot of a totally new outfit. Bikini and small top.

Froglok in a bikini.. Ouch.

Screenshot of new weapon appearances by Aaron.

Character Animation Retargeting

Animations only have to be done for one race and they can be copy-pasted to the other 25 races.

New programs (Motion Builder, Maya 2011)
Copying character animations for mounts
Animation Blending
3 weeks to do a mount instead of 3 months

Whenever we make an outfit, we have to make 26 different outfits.

ZBrush is a newer program we are using for high detailed models. EQ2 is not a new game, but we are using newer tools to look a lot better.

Character Creation Process: Warboar

Level of Detail (LOD)
same model drops in detail as you get further away
9000 Triangles – closest
4700 Triangles
1900 Triangles – farthest away

We are working on some new tech to get rid of the problem where models change completely as you get closer or further away. For instance in a Guild Hall when you walk away from an NPC it changes completely.

Showing Videos now

* Froglok modeling the new bikini.
* First pass at the Kilts, but legs popping through and a hard line on the kilt.
* It looks pretty bad from the back view.

* Barbarian walking, fighting, swimming with the new Kilts.
* Showing different animations being copied between character races so animation only needs to be done once, instead of 26 times.

* Showing a player holding onto the horn on the Komodo dragon mount. Switching different races and it’s using the same animation instead of having to re-do over and over.

* Showing skeletons, flat shaded, and then textured Warboar. Photoshop for textures.

* Warboar animations.

* Warboar mount animations.

* Komodo fighting animations.

* Large Falcon enemy animated. They will be in the new dynamic dungeons.

* Showing a new flying enemy – War Generals.

* Showing new Flying Squirrel glider mount. Holy crap it looks cool!!!

* Flying Squirrel is bipedal but walks on all fours.

Q: When do they come out?
A: Not sure yet. 😉

* Showing the Flying Squirrel ‘rig’ and all the bones. Tom Tobey hand-animates everything with 2 influencers because EQ2 doesn’t support four.

* Old Badger model updated with new animations.

* Showing one of the first flying mount animation tests including barrel rolls.

* New character Lizard King

* Showing a new flying mount. Looks like Zarrakon.

* Showing a ratonga on a proper T-Rex.

* Golden Phoenix flying mount. HUGE applause. Fire Gryphon. Fire coming off the back of the mount. It’s moving textures and particles.

Q&A Starts

Would like to add new weapon stances, especially for larger weapons, but it’s hard to find time on the schedule.

Changing up the animations so different weapons use different animations.

Q: How do you do kilts with holes for certain races?
A: We had to add holes so that tails would fit through. Everything is really skin tight. Recutting geometry and redoing animation so it looks good on every character.

Q: Any chance that we could have mounts that don’t have tack/saddles, just bareback?
A: We could add that to the schedule.

Q: Pink mounts?
A: I’m not sure of any plans.

Q: Multiple people on the same mount?
A: The answer is it’s extremely difficult. It would take us probably a couple of months. What keeps us from doing it is not the work, but why anyone would really use one. Why would you want to be at the whim of another player’s movement? We thought it might be cool to have multiple seats on a flying mount, especially for escorting low level characters, but it would have taken a tremendous amount of time.

Q: How are Mercs going to travel?
A: They run REALLY fast. 😉

Q: Hide flying mounts?
A: I don’t think it would look very good with players walking around in the sky. If we could have Super-man poses maybe. This is why we are doing Fae/Arasai flying. We are also considering any wings you can equip as appearane would allow flying. Invisible Walking Guy is not what we want to do.

Q: Can flying mounts disappear on the ground only?
A: It’s a good suggestion.

Q: Can I get a broom as a flying mount?
A: I don’t see why we couldn’t. It would be the easiest model ever. It comes down to Lore and time.

Q: Could anything be done about hair styles?
A: It’s a big workload, we just have to fit it in somewhere. It’s something we’d like to do. We all want it, and we’ll talk about it.

Q: Dance animations are pretty dumb especially humans.
A: The animation I showed was Tom experimenting with new dances. It’s something we want to do but it’s just a matter of fitting it into the schedule.

Q: Can we get Dragon Eggs and get a dragon mount?
A: [Zarrakon] was just a test. We could make it, but does it make sense in the Lore for a bunch of dragons to be flying around as mounts? Right now, dragons are rarely seen as enemies.
Smoke: Remember Velious 1? There were a lot of dragons there. We’re not there yet in EQ2. 🙂 We have many plans for dragons after November. 🙂

Q: Pegasus mounts, can you raise up the camera so I’m not staring at it’s butt?
A: Yeah, we are going to work on an update for this. It should zoom in on your head, not the pegasus’s butt.

Q: Can we convert house pets to plushies?
A: This is a design thing. We’ll put it on the list.

Q: Tinkered mounts?
A: YES! Aaron has been making a lot of tinkered stuff.

Q: Any way to access old items from old quests?
A: When we offer things one-time-only, we do that so they stay rare. People like to treasure those items. We don’t want to bring them back, and this is on purpose. (applause)

Q: LoN paintings via a Tournament. Can we get those items which are no longer available?
A: This is a LoN issue.

Q: Carpets, Hover discs, etc. for flying mounts?
A: We’ve been working on those animations.

Q: When will we see these as mounts or appearance?
A: We don’t know yet.

Q: Can we see the flying squirrels glider mount animation again?
(showing animations)

Animation of the flying squirrel mount looking around and eating an acorn.

Q: Why do we only have 2 beard types?
Smoke: Because we hate dwarfs, that’s why. There are a lot of reasons we can’t talk about that here. We want to talk about it [hair styles] later this year.

Q: Sokokar as a flying mount?
A: The Kunark Sokokars don’t have all the animations necessary to do as a flying mount.

Q: Change how other players see your character from SOGA or not?

A: Forcing players to see what you want is an issue. Players need to be able to see what they want to see.
SmokeJumper: We have no plans to do this, and we have no way to do this BUT, if you wanted us to, would you kick out all the character models and do all new ones? (PR hate this kind of questions) Show of Hands?

We would NEVER do this until we had polls, talked to players, get a lot of feedback first.

Q: Can we have untraditional mounts like cows?
A: We like things that are fun, the cute mounts, but we are trying to please everyone.

Q: /really emote?
A: No response.

Q: Alternative mounts — pogo stick?
A: It would have to be some well-engineered gnomish item!

PANEL END

This was a Live Blog by EQ2Wire.com from SOE Fan Faire 2011 at Bally’s in Las Vegas, NV.