The "Letter from the Producer LIVE Part II" Video & Q&A Summary Released!

[viion]

Too bad it's not that simple in an MMO environment. It's not just "one" model when it comes to player characters.

hmm all equipment is 1 model lol

It is easy, the issue they have is their current system that hides things. When you have a hood on the engine knows to hide your hair, if you pull your hood down, it would need to display hair, having your hair just pop up magically would look silly, so they cannot do that. So maybe make it hide poly vs visibly, this also cannot be really done as will cause a lot of clipping and will require fundamental changes to engine. They showed this system in the development DVD.

I think people would be fine with just having 2 models and depending on status you switch between them, even if you just reload (like switching gear) people will be happy with.

[SilvertearRen]

Hmm.

Why? How is it different from /display head [on|off]?
You could even make it an action that only appears if you wear something with a hood.
I thought they would stop with such lame excuses after moving to v2.0

I think they were trying to say that they wanted to kind of animate the switch from hood up/down. Being able to do that with a single piece of equipment is going to be difficult, especially in an MMO context. The ad-hoc solution would be to have the item actually be two items, that automatically switches the models out (though that will be jarring with the way the character disappears every time you change items).

So honestly this is a feature I would expect for post 2.0, as part of a "frills and fancies" patch.

P.S. Sou, if you can't understand it, it's a matter of being able to code it properly, and getting all of the elements of the player-character to properly display during both states. Frankly, as it stands now, that will be a very difficult endeavor to accomplish. I'd expect this to be a wish-list item for post-2.0 implementation, not before.

hmm all equipment is 1 model lol

It is easy, the issue they have is their current system that hides things. When you have a hood on the engine knows to hide your hair, if you pull your hood down, it would need to display hair, having your hair just pop up magically would look silly, so they cannot do that. So maybe make it hide poly vs visibly, this also cannot be really done as will cause a lot of clipping and will require fundamental changes to engine. They showed this system in the development DVD.

I think people would be fine with just having 2 models and depending on status you switch between them, even if you just reload (like switching gear) people will be happy with.

Development DVD? You mean the Collector's Edition DVD? I never did see that.

[Bayohne]

I hope you guys enjoy it! I really appreciate everyone being so patient while we completed this. Hopefully the timestamps and summary will make it simple to easily reference specific questions and see the things that Yoshida showed off during the event (of which there was a lot... haha)

Also in the past I saw some people saying they couldn't see the subtitles. Just hit the "CC" button on the YouTube player to enable them!

[Soukyuu]

So which on the ONE races gets this divine privelige? also which gender get it as well because they need different models for each gender and race so your solution has just increased the dev's workload by 13 times?.

You seem to misunderstand what I'm trying to tell you. There is virtually no difference between items we have now and what I'm suggesting.

- You load a model of an item with a hood, just as you always would, each race/gender having their own, scaled model
- You then add an animation where you deform the hood so it's not over the head, but hanging down the back (this is STILL the same model!)
- You save the state in a binary variable, depending on which you either leave the model unchanged or deform it.

The reason the equipment has this semi-realistic look is not just the texture but also the way vertices are animated. When you animate stuff, you just move the vertices (simplified) - no difference between movement/deforming/deformed movement load-wise

P.S. Sou, if you can't understand it, it's a matter of being able to code it properly, and getting all of the elements of the player-character to properly display during both states. Frankly, as it stands now, that will be a very difficult endeavor to accomplish. I'd expect this to be a wish-list item for post-2.0 implementation, not before.

I just don't see a problem. I'm learning animation at the uni at the moment and sure, I'm only a beginner, but I definitely don't see a problem. The state would be one more entry in the character save file, that's what they already do with /display main on/off. They would need one more animation for the hanging hood, but that's it. I don't even ask them to animate the change, though it's possible, it would be like adding a new action.

I'm not asking them to implement it now either, since they are still using the Despa-- I mean, Crystal engine, but it sounded to me as if they won't be able to implement it like, ever.

edit:

The other method is create a robe that can move, this isn't simple. No other piece of equipment in this game has it's own animations associated with it, only some physics. Having a robe hood that animates fluidly when a player grabs it and pulls it over is extra animations that need to be done and for each race. What happens when future hoods come out that look completely different, more animations specifically for those?

Seem to have overlooked this. If it's really just physics as you say (you can turn them off btw), then wouldn't the same engine take care of it when pulling the hood off? They do have their own animations and it's not like they will never add new items. When they add new items + animations for them, why not an additional animation for the hoods? It has to be done, but again, saying it is "difficult" leaves an impression it's almost impossible to implement.

[Delsus]

You seem to misunderstand what I'm trying to tell you. There is virtually no difference between items we have now and what I'm suggesting.

- You load a model of an item with a hood, just as you always would, each race/gender having their own, scaled model
- You then add an animation where you deform the hood so it's not over the head, but hanging down the back (this is STILL the same model!)
- You save the state in a binary variable, depending on which you either leave the model unchanged or deform it.

The reason the equipment has this semi-realistic look is not just the texture but also the way vertices are animated. When you animate stuff, you just move the vertices (simplified) - no difference between movement/deforming/deformed movement load-wise

I just don't see a problem. I'm learning animation at the uni at the moment and sure, I'm only a beginner, but I definitely don't see a problem. The state would be one more entry in the character save file, that's what they already do with /display main on/off. They would need one more animation for the hanging hood, but that's it. I don't even ask them to animate the change, though it's possible, it would be like adding a new action.

I'm not asking them to implement it now either, since they are still using the Despa-- I mean, Crystal engine, but it sounded to me as if they won't be able to implement it like, ever.

edit:

Seem to have overlooked this. If it's really just physics as you say (you can turn them off btw), then wouldn't the same engine take care of it when pulling the hood off? They do have their own animations and it's not like they will never add new items. When they add new items + animations for them, why not an additional animation for the hoods? It has to be done, but again, saying it is "difficult" leaves an impression it's almost impossible to implement.

The problem is the amount of code and testing required to make the animations realistic, first they have to design the gear, then they have to make a model of the gear in real life to fit people of different sizes, then they have to motion capture people pulling hoods on and off because the character movements are motion captured in this game, then they have to get together the raw data from the motion capture and convert that into code the game understands, then they have to check how it looks on all races, then iron out any bugs and graphical glitches.

They have to do these (except the motion capture cos i covered that) for each of the possible character models ensuring the raw data from the motion capture is imitated as close as possible.

You could be looking at about 1 month of work to ensure the animation is of the graphical quality of the game, not to mention the costs involved, although the motion capture (of which they will need to take a decent amount of time to check the data is as realistic as possible) could take 1-3 days, the models they use will probably want paying quite a bit, then theres the money to pay the designers and animators, for a game that has not taken any money its not viable to take the time and money to implement this at this moment, but come 2.0, maybe 2.01, 2.02 or something they may add it if thier workload has dropped a bit, the poor devs have been working so hard to keep the game running and will be until 2.0, how many other MMOs get as many patches as we have in 1 yr?

I am not saying we will see it and I am not saying we wont see it but the amount of time and money to implement it means we definitly will not see it before 2.0, also the current engine may not beable to do somthing like that, Crystal tools seems decent on ffxiii, but for some reason it isnt able to work for a MMO so there is alot we cannot do.

[Soukyuu]

Well if that's why they say it's difficult then I guess I'll just leave it at that. Thanks for taking your time to explain it.

[Delsus]

Well if that's why they say it's difficult then I guess I'll just leave it at that. Thanks for taking your time to explain it.

Its ok, glad we agree on it now

[ellohwell]

The concept art look interesting. I want to see them in game.

Hopefully the game is good in other respects, and not merely graphics.

[Efrye]

[...] I just don't see a problem. I'm learning animation at the uni at the moment and sure, I'm only a beginner, but I definitely don't see a problem. [...]

3D animation - especially for game engines - is always more complicated than it seems.

On top of what Delsus said, if you want to animate the hood instead of just toggling between an up/down mesh, you have pretty much no choice but to use a mixture of bones and morph targets[ (or blend shapes, for the fellow Maya users), which not only means a ton of extra work for the artists and programmers, but could also lead to an additional render pass for the character and thus a hit to the performance.

Depending on how their engine, character rigs and their general work flow is set up, there could be tons of complications, so please don't call their statement a "lame excuse" if you know nothing about the actual development process.

[Delmontyb]

I hope you guys enjoy it! I really appreciate everyone being so patient while we completed this. Hopefully the timestamps and summary will make it simple to easily reference specific questions and see the things that Yoshida showed off during the event (of which there was a lot... haha)

Also in the past I saw some people saying they couldn't see the subtitles. Just hit the "CC" button on the YouTube player to enable them!

From what I have found, the iPad doesn't support that feature oh well, guess I'll have to go to my pc.