We have been working on character creation and fine tuning some of the values to make each culture slightly unique.  Players will enter a small house where they can design their character the way they like him or her.  Sliders allow you to change everything from height, weight, leg and arm width, muscle mass, facial features (cheeks, jaw, chin, eyes, etc.) and many more. You can truly make your own unique character.  You can also change the skin tone based a series of presets, hair and eye color.  Clothing color can also be changed, at least the clothes you start the game wearing. After that, you will have to dye your own clothing or pay someone to do it for you.

Below is a scene similar to what we will be using in game. We will probably be tweaking it and making changes as we go along.  Also, with the release of Unity 5.0, physically based rendering will be available to us so the graphics will increase in quality for those of you whose graphics cards are capable of using the new features. For the rest of you, as you can see, the graphics are still quite nice.  What you cannot see in the picture is the animations, including the idling of the character, smoke twirling up toward the rafters, and the flames of the fire and candle. Light streams in through a window you cannot see in the scene.

Click on picture to see a larger version.  This was taken in the engine using the lighting, animation, particle effects, and props that will be available in the game.  The interior of the house is typical of what you might see in a Bloodland home.  The young lady is wearing a dress that will also be available.  She has been created using the sliders and options available in our character creation system.

As soon as we have the scene set up and a few more clothing options, we will be asking people to test the character creation set up and give us your thoughts on how well it works and if there are any changes needed.  This probably won’t happen until after the holidays as this time of year is busy for everyone but I will be posting on the forums asking for people probably within the next month.

I have spent some time playing around with the options for characters and below is a picture of a tattoo I made for testing. It is a simple tattoo…I call it a scribble tattoo since I just scribbled something on a transparent layer over a face skin to test in the system.  I guarantee my artists can do much better. 🙂

This character was made in a testing scene for Unity, not in our own game. The lighting is not optimized and of course, we won’t have purple or green hair in the game. I thought you would enjoy a picture that illustrated what we can do with transparent layers. Not only can we easily add tattoos, but also scars, freckles, moles, and other skin variations.

Here is another you might like. It shows 5 of our cultures and you can see the variety we can get with our system.  From left to right you can see female characters from Sala, Taran Lands, Sakoia, Dalmite, and Drulon.  Heights and weights are exaggerated a bit here to show what we can do.  While some cultures are usually taller than others, the difference will not be so great as you see here.  I will work on a set of men as well for those of you who prefer the more manly physique. 🙂  Sorry about the underwear but until I have some decent Dalmite and Drulon clothing, I decided to show them in underwear. Also, these skins are not final. I am not completely happy with them so waiting on some new ones to be finished.  We will also have more variety of hair soon so I will make some shots for you then as well.  The Aethans will be coming as well as a Bloodland couple.

A few close ups of the cultural ladies here:

Again, these are not in-game, but are in a Unity testing area. Lighting is not optimized. It does show you the variety in facial features, slanted eyes, high cheekbones, small or large chins, and skin coloring.

Hope you enjoyed seeing some of our character creation ideas! I will update with some men soon.  Sorry this took so long but we ran into some issues. Fortunately, we were able to work them out, given time and perseverance.

I will try to post again before the holidays but if not, I hope every has a wonderful Holiday and a Happy New Year!

Teila