Request: Seperate Head / Hair Meshes & Add Facial Rigging
Trinital
Member Posts: 59
Feature 1: Seperate Head / Hair Meshes
Separate Hair / Head meshes so you can swap between hairs on the same head. With faces potentially getting an overhaul, it's going to become very clone army if we can't customize hair.
Not much else to say here. It would be nice if Hair was riggable or could utilize heavy pixel / shaders to flow or move more naturally.. but I won't get too picky here.
Also having helmets overlay heads and not replace them would be nice, then have the option to hide / overlay with hair.
Feature 2: Add Support For Facial Rigging
Seeing the new Aribeth model was really exciting. However during combat I was getting Uncanny Valley Vibes because her facial features were so static.
I think with improved models we should seriously consider uniformly rigging the head meshes to support facial animations. (It can be very basic, Rig the Eyebrow Ridge / Mouth / Eyes for blinking, basic lip syncing, facial reactions)
I know this sounds like a very Slow Burn / Large Endeavor. I wouldn't expect Beamdog to do all these animations. But if they are planning to overhaul the character models - at least design the heads with some kind of standard so that they could all use the same rig / weight paint?
Trent mentioned in the last stream that each skeleton has 128 bones to work with that. That should be more than enough to extend to the head model (Is the Head / Body considered a single rig or not? Wasn't sure based on his wording..)
NWN2 currently has this feature and it's incredibly useful for conversations / cut-scenes.
Separate Hair / Head meshes so you can swap between hairs on the same head. With faces potentially getting an overhaul, it's going to become very clone army if we can't customize hair.
Not much else to say here. It would be nice if Hair was riggable or could utilize heavy pixel / shaders to flow or move more naturally.. but I won't get too picky here.
Also having helmets overlay heads and not replace them would be nice, then have the option to hide / overlay with hair.
Feature 2: Add Support For Facial Rigging
Seeing the new Aribeth model was really exciting. However during combat I was getting Uncanny Valley Vibes because her facial features were so static.
I think with improved models we should seriously consider uniformly rigging the head meshes to support facial animations. (It can be very basic, Rig the Eyebrow Ridge / Mouth / Eyes for blinking, basic lip syncing, facial reactions)
I know this sounds like a very Slow Burn / Large Endeavor. I wouldn't expect Beamdog to do all these animations. But if they are planning to overhaul the character models - at least design the heads with some kind of standard so that they could all use the same rig / weight paint?
Trent mentioned in the last stream that each skeleton has 128 bones to work with that. That should be more than enough to extend to the head model (Is the Head / Body considered a single rig or not? Wasn't sure based on his wording..)
NWN2 currently has this feature and it's incredibly useful for conversations / cut-scenes.
3
Comments
Feel Free to Vote if it's something you'd like to see, Or Add any additional thoughts / comments / feedback.
Separate Hair / Head Meshes:
https://trello.com/c/9JVt9Y6O
Create Standard For New Meshes To Allow For Rigging / Facial Animation:
https://trello.com/c/PiHV3cwo
Thanks!
Well.. I am a Rigger/Animator/3D modeler blah blah.. and if I was to do the math correctly and use a 128 bone skeleton.. I'd assume:
Arms Left and Right - Shoulder/Elbow-Forearm/Wrist- hand bones - Approx 34bones
Legs Left and Right - Hip-Thigh/Shin/ankle-foot/Toes - Approx 30 bones
Torso - Pelvis / Spine/ Neck/ Collar bone - Approx 8 bones
Head - Head/ Face-jaw / mouth-lips/ tongue/ Eyes/ Brows - Approx 10
Approx Bones for a basic Humanoid Bipedal Skeleton : 82<-- Ballpark
Now.. if we are talking about Wings/Extra Legs/More Spine/ Tails - Can tack and extra 46 some bones
That could very well be around 128 bones
That's IF NwN uses one Quadruped For Both Humanoid and creatures. I have seen this for other games.
Actually.. I would like to know how I can get my hands on this NEW Rig and be able to create something seamless like the Aribeth character.
WHERE OH WHERE CAN I HAS DIS!?
https://neverwintervault.org/project/nwn1/model/aribeth-hd-beamdog
Blender Plugin For NWN1 Format:
https://neverwintervault.org/project/nwn1/other/tool/neverblender-blender-27x