ESO Art Team Reddit AMA - 7/30/14 (today) @ 4:00PM EDT

ZOS_GinaBruno

Hi everyone!

We'll be hosting an AMA on Reddit this afternoon with some of ESO's Art Leads and Directors. We'll be answering questions about animations, environments, figures, and anything art-related to ESO or the gaming industry.

The AMA will begin at 4:00PM EDT, and we'll be sure to post a link as soon as it starts.

ZOS_GinaBruno

Here's the link where you can start asking questions. Enjoy!

http://www.reddit.com/r/elderscrollsonline/comments/2c678s/welcome_to_the_eso_art_team_ama/

ers101284b14_ESO

So we can't ask on here?
I don't wanna sign up for reddit so I'm gonna ask it here and on Facebook and maybe you can just send it on over to them.

Q: First off I love the art. That being said do you have plans to make the armors look less painted on? The spots of chainmail don't look nearly as good as they could. Also when is the updated facial animations coming?

ShiftControl

Unfortunately I do not use Facebook either redit.
So I would love to ask you guys why do we fight so many Harvester mini bosses? There is no budget to create different mobs?
Its just to boring, same mechanics maybe one stronger then an other but thats about it, its simple boring.
Also Cyr keeps are copy and paste also boring.
Other then that I love the art work in the game you guys made an amazing job,
Specially the upcoming solo zone
Sincerelly

jrgray93

"How do art?"

Is this a valid question? Also, how do reddit?

ers101284b14_ESO

ShiftControl wrote: »

Unfortunately I do not use Facebook either redit.
So I would love to ask you guys why do we fight so many Harvester mini bosses? There is no budget to create different mobs?
Its just to boring, same mechanics maybe one stronger then an other but thats about it, its simple boring.
Also Cyr keeps are copy and paste also boring.
Other then that I love the art work in the game you guys made an amazing job,
Specially the upcoming solo zone
Sincerelly

If you mean why do they copy and paste enemies and keeps? I can answer that one, It's to save computer space and is an old trick by developers. Each team is only allotted so much memory dedicated to the game so a simple and easy way to do it is to copy and paste enemies and change the color. Mortal Kombat made several characters by just swapping color, Mario brothers also did this, as well most RPG's from Super Nintendo era.

MornaBaine

Man I can't believe I missed this! And I was home today! AUGH!!! And NOBODY asked about vampires and giving us a way to make the Stage 1 appearance last longer or a way for vampires to look like normal humans, which IS supported by lore. SIGH. I am SUPER sad to have missed this opportunity.

Hurbster

Would have loved to ask a few pertinent questions - not going to create a reddit account just to do so.

b92303008rwb17_ESO

Did not have time to ask some questions in the AMA. I will just post it here and maybe someone can pass it to the design or art team please.

We know that barber shop has been working on and I am really looking forward to it. But chances are that when barber shop is pushed out, the new hair style that I like and want to change to might not match or go well with the other face or body features. That is really going to impair the beauty of the barber shop. Is there any chance that we will also be allowed to change other features, at least the face, in addition to hair styles? Thank you.

Turelus

I have to ask as some other have here and in the past.
Why Reddit? You have a working official forums with your own moderation groups where there is an active community willing to ask questions but you go to a third party site with no official links to ESO.

EVE Online does this as well and it drives me crazy, I don't (like others) want to go and create an account on a new site just to ask questions. I have a forums account here because I am playing this game, so why can't we use these forums?

Garion

Hurbster wrote: »

Would have loved to ask a few pertinent questions - not going to create a reddit account just to do so.

Why not? It's astonishingly simple to sign up, doesn't require a lengthy process such as some forums or other discussion platforms.

Garion

Turelus wrote: »

I have to ask as some other have here and in the past.
Why Reddit? You have a working official forums with your own moderation groups where there is an active community willing to ask questions but you go to a third party site with no official links to ESO.

EVE Online does this as well and it drives me crazy, I don't (like others) want to go and create an account on a new site just to ask questions. I have a forums account here because I am playing this game, so why can't we use these forums?

These forums are limited to players only. Perhaps they want non-players to be able to ask questions also in an attempt to attract them to the game? (Marketing).

Edit - not to mention that the whole 'AMA' concept is a just a reddit thing. If you were redditors, you would understand...

Turelus

@Garion that's fine and all but why can't we use these forums, this thread to be exact to ask questions as well.

I understand (now) the marketing side of it but it seems somewhat silly to exclude community members on the forums who don't have reddit accounts and are not interested in creating them just for an AMA.

After a short back and forth with an EVE player on Twitter this morning it seems that CCP Games actually started accepting questions via their forums as well so existing members could get involved whilst still using reddit for the marketing side. I hope this is something ZOS could consider in future.

KitLightning

You only had enough surplus in the bank to make photocopies with the statements? No photosnopped speech-bubbles

ZOS_GinaBruno

Turelus wrote: »

@Garion that's fine and all but why can't we use these forums, this thread to be exact to ask questions as well.

I understand (now) the marketing side of it but it seems somewhat silly to exclude community members on the forums who don't have reddit accounts and are not interested in creating them just for an AMA.

After a short back and forth with an EVE player on Twitter this morning it seems that CCP Games actually started accepting questions via their forums as well so existing members could get involved whilst still using reddit for the marketing side. I hope this is something ZOS could consider in future.

There is truth in that we want to appeal to both current players and those that haven't had a chance to pick up the game yet. That said, we are planning to start holding Q&A sessions on the forums just for you guys in the future.

LunaRae

Yea I won't ever create a reddit account, but if you ever host an AMA here I'll definitely enjoy participating Either way though I'll enjoy reading through the AMA over on reddit for the time being, thanks for putting it together.

Kharnis

I have done a (very rough and) quick summary of the AMA for everyone. However, I'd just like to caution everyone that you should confirm everything for yourselves by going to the AMA itself, because I can almost guarantee you that not only have I missed some things, I have also mis-understood what was said. So, if you see something I missed/got wrong, don't hesitate to correct the record. That being said:

Character Models

- "Cartooniness" is where developers tend to lean towards to deal with polygon and texture limitations; realism is pretty much impossible to achieve.
- Models were optimised to have the game perform well with 200+ characters on the screen at the same time.
- One of the biggest challenge was that each TES game has a different art style.
- Would love to see different Khajiit models, but easiest to stick to one; no plans to change this.
- More hairstyles are in development, including longer hairstyles.
- Many new customisation options have been made; not at liberty to discuss just yet.
- Improvements coming to long hair clipping, as well as loincloth, fabrics, and robes deformation; early iterations of ESO's engine caused limitations as seen currently.
- While more hair and adornment options will come, unique NPCs will keep their unique looks and will not be usable by PCs.
- Body sliders for each race were chosen to help give each race their own unique cultural identify.

Character Animations

- Facial animation tech is pretty much completed, currently working on refining mouth shapes and refining data.
- Looking at ways to bring back pivoting while doing emotes; initially removed to resolve issues between 1st and 3rd person movement.
- Changing character animations based on player level something discussed, but no plans currently to implement it.
- Working hard to keep players in 1st person view while they perform activities such as harvesting, riding, swimming, etc.
- Combat animations are their current focus.
- Animations for each race was originally planned for, but addition of 1st person as well as minimal gameplay advantage for heavy development work had it scrapped; can be added in the future if there is enough demand from players.
- No current plans for werewolf customisations other than fixing current bugs/combat responsiveness.
- Working on an entirely new animation management system for all characters to give animators more control on how and when animations are played.
- Continually evaluating 3rd party solutions and looking for ways to implement them into the game to improve (such as the new FaceFX technology).

Gear/Equipment

- Plans and some designs are in the works to support costumes, not only for RPers, but to support activities within the game.
- Actively working on adding more silhouette changes to armour.
- Choices for which armours to make stem from zone or feature production.
- Constantly checking with Lore to ensure armour designs are within the proper style and motif.
- New set of light, medium, and heavy Daedric armour that will be released with the Imperial City update will look very similar to the style seen in the cinematic trailer.
- Armours that change colour depending on texture quality are caused by textures being scaled down/up.
- No current plans to make more racial motifs, but there will be new motifs (eg. "Glass" rather than more Breton or Khajiit).
- Weapons removed when mounted are because some weapons clip badly with the horse's body, which was visually distracting.
- No plans for cloaks right now; hoping to one day implement Havok Cloth into the current engine, but not something on the horizon due to other systems currently being worked on (but is something they want to do).
- No plans on adding a "skin" or "transmutation" system (though they are aware of many players' desires); prefer an improved costume system instead.
- Need to be very careful about amount of unique mount textures (ie. "horse armour") as it can have an impact of frame rate in PvP, etc; plan on adding more mount types instead.
- Next motif to be released is Dwemer.
- Working on improving armour geometry for future sets, but performance issues will limit how far they can go with details.
- Artifact weapons tricky, as there are supposed to only be one of each in the world; easy enough to do in single player games, but doesn't make much sense for everyone in an MMO to be running around with a supposed one-of-a-kind weapon.

Emotes

- Technical issues prevent emotes on horseback; no immediate plans for it, but something definitely wanted.
- Tries to add new emotes with each major update, and always look to players for suggestions and ideas.
- No immediate plans for walking while emoting, but high on list of emote improvements.
- Khajiit and Argonian tails clipping through /sitchair emote was something it was decided not to devote development resources on to improve.

Architecture and World Design

- Architecture diversity is something currently being addressed, with plans to expand many of the existing sets.
- World builders create, prop, and light every space in the world by hand.
- Style of building used in each area is decided on functionality, depending on type of content and the story to be told.
- The art teams do get a say in the racial motifs designed.
- The more recent a past TES game, the more maps/layouts remained "true;" Imperial City close to what is remembered from Oblivion, while liberties taken with Hammerfell, for instance.
- Sometimes, not much lore is available, so art team has to design from scratch (such as Coldharbour); constantly running things by Bethesda to ensure the look/feel is appropriate.
- Always a fine line to walk between being recognisable by TES fans while also making sure it fits in with the current game world.
- Design philosophy is everything should be hand crafted; though layouts (such as caves) can be repeated, the details inside are put in by hand.
- Currently going through another pass on the delves to expand the layouts to give some form of differentiation.
- Often considering the use of lesser-known races in Tamriel for visual diversity; stay tuned to see what's coming in the future.
- Working on designing a better modular architecture sets to create more unique city areas rather than re-using the same house everywhere.

Miscellaneous

- Went through quite a few versions of Molag Bal over the course of several months.
- Wanted a more animalistic and demonic look to him rather than a humanoid.
- The statue from Oblivion was used as the jumping off point.
- More vanity pets will absolutely be added to the game over time.
- More dyes will definitely be added to the game as new achievements are added.
- Would love to be able to support custom guild icon requests; creating the art won't be the issue, but rather making sure it will work in the back end (in the UI system).

nvsg

I got a question why is werewolf berserker not black?

SteveCampsOut

When did AMA stop standing for the "American Music Awards"?!?

ers101284b14_ESO

SteveCampsOut wrote: »

When did AMA stop standing for the "American Music Awards"?!?

When they stopped awarding it to musicians
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zi2VLBFeD30