[OOC] Face Time

I have been rather busy lately.

See, I saw Myrhial's post and then I had to look for myself. That pic over there is a first go at what I would look like in Sisi.

I liked the sculpting tool, although I felt that it is sort of limited in range. I mean, you can move the cheekbone a bit but not too much, the jaw a bit but not too much, there is no control over the shape of your head -which limits the kind of hair you should be legally allowed to sport- but you can control the shape of your temples tho, and the corner of your eyes (WTF? "wow, did you see the temples on that guy?"). Yay. I guess that this has been done this way to get a more realistic look and, anyway, they do achieve that in spades.

It would seem that cartoonish pics are no longer that easy to create, whereas the classic pic maker made it more challenging to create verosimile ones. Way to go!



Sorry, you gallies all look the same to me.


I wonder what will be the implication though, maybe we will transition from people that look all cartoonishly the same, to people that all look realistically the same? Then again, I have not played enough with this to build radically different faces within the same bloodline.

Maybe it is possible. We shall see.

Then again, maybe that's ethnicity at work, people looking alike. I remember that ethnicity did limit some of the choices you could make before, like no red-headed Amarrians, Brutor being generally more tanned and the Lonetrek facelift -that weird tight hairdo- only being only available to Civire and Sebiestor.

No such limits this time but again, test phase and we shall see. It would be cool if choices were ethnical (hair, eyes, tan) and some location-based (hairdo choice wherever you re-cast a character)



Fashion emergency


Regarding clothing you get the basics from what I guess are each race's designs of one piece of each top, pants, jacket and shoes. You can mix and match, and I happen to think Matari boots work surprisingly well with an Amarrian tunic :)

Designs are indeed gorgeous and very detailed; from a heavy-looking ornate tunic to a running tank-top. I can only imagine what the CCP wardrobe design department will be coming up with.. and I can't definitely not imagine all the many different ways that people will use them.

One thing though: no accessories yet, but these are promised for the future. I want backlaces!




Full freckles ahead!

You have many different face options, from hair to eyebrows to makeup and eye colour, no tattoos allowed. Sculpt sensitivity is weird, it takes some time to figure out what happens when you pull features in different directions with up/down/wide/narrow being an easy guess and smile/smooch/frown/sneeze being not so intuitive.




Eyebrows do not really work well on Gallentean faces yet and with my freakishly huge in-character ears, I guess I will be sticking with the bob for the time being.

Oh by the way? The round sliders are not that difficult to work, if you hate sliding it is possible to just click on any position and voilà, it slides by itself.


Express yourself!



After sculpting, I was surprised to find that you can make faces. I mean, you can smile or frown or squint, which is not the same as -and trickier than- pulling your mouth up or changing the size of your eyes from the previous phase. Range is again a bit conservative (see if you can tell wide-eyed smile from squinting smooch above and... yes, wide toothy smile was possible but I rather not). The pre-set poses look natural and are a much better starting point than the old ones.

What is cool is that the pic is alive as it is posing! Slight movements, eyes that wander here and there, light changes in expression... you get the idea. Which also means this is only the tip of the iceberg: come Incarna, I think you will find your avatar fidgeting, frowning or making faces you may not have intended and well beyond the control of the posing environment.

Which, I think, is a good thing.

And this is where the game is -'cause character creation is a game, did you not know?- in making a character that looks lifelike, real. Someone you could be talking to on the holo, or an ID card snapshot, or a realistic expression of happiness, anger, sadness, vengeance or whatever background history your character has. And it is still as challenging as it was before because, even if you get all these aids like the pre-sets and limits, the entire process from head to toe has now so much more complexity, that it still leaves you lots of room to come up with something unique, genuine and yours.




All things considered, I am quite impressed. It shows that there has been a lot of care and hard work done on Incarna, so I would like to send many thanks and kudos to CCP.

Also, thank you for allowing us to see this!

-Q



PS: I tried the Deteis and they look stunning already, just by pressing "continue" all the way. They sorely need to look uglier. Really. Lots. Nerf please!

PPS: I can see a meme calling. So, what do you look like in Sisi?