A Hairy Situation

Embarrasing Motion Capture coming!

The female model now is "rigged" -- which means it has bones. I am still pretty new to 3D, so all that "having bones" means to me is that it must be able to become... SKELETAL UNDEAD. But at least the undead will have hair. (Which just looks silly in most cases... undead warriors and their silly toupees!) In the picture below, Yergen has been working on the hair. On the right picture, we turned the mesh on so you can see the geometry of this hairstyle. Just like in AQWorlds, hair will load seperately so we can have an unlimited number of hair styles. Of course, this is trickier in 3D, because a single hair can consist of 5 different files (mesh, UV map, Normal Map, Bump Map, Specular Map.) Notice that the entire mesh is not filled in -- this is because the texture has transparency... allowing us to do some really creative things! (Like invisible hair?)

We now have a Green Screen Room at the Secret Underground Lab. Tomorrow or Friday we will be using it to do a motion capture test with a live actor to animate the female character. We were thinking Kiara or Beleen.... or perhaps, um, Thyton :-P  Then a GREAT idea popped into my head, "Hey guys! How about we film it and post it on the design notes! You know... so you can see the real person on the left of the screen and the 3D model mimicking their actions on the right!" At which point Kiara gave me a super serious dissaproving glance that made me reconsider my next request for dancing and doing jump backflips. To be fair, the green floor of the green screen room is 100% pure concerete. I would never ask anyone to do anything I would not do myself (except heart surgery, having babies, and taxes) so maybe I should injure myself in an attempt to push mo-cap to the limits too?  What do you think -- should we make a video?

Friday the 13th is THIS FRIDAY!

It is weird that the "superstitiously unluckiest day of the year" (which is happening 3 times this year) is one of our gaming communites most celebrated holidays. You guys are so strange! (Good to be with you.) We have special events taking place in both AQWorlds and DragonFable. I wonder how many people know how this whole thing started... and how it created Chuckles? Would you like to hear the story? If so -- how much caffine would you like me to consume BEFORE telling the story. (Choose 1 for one cup of coffee. Choose 2 for a 5-hour energy and a cup of coffee. Choose 3 for a design notes post from the Hospital.) Please post your vote "on the Twitters"!