Do you have questions about Player Studioâ„¢? Ask them here and they might get answered in this week's Webcast!
I got questions! heh 1. will we be able to make weapons and/or armor? 2. can we make just meshes or just textures and would that be applicable? (say you make a more 'snake' type texture you'd like to see on a wyvern, or a different 'evil' texture for the Emerald Lichslayer...or you design a mesh you want to work like a liquid filled pool, but have no idea how to get that to work) 3. will there be some way to see works that have already been made/suggested? like if I want to make a daimond tile, but would rather not compete with 400 other people on something. 4. will we be provided some basic items that are realively popular (furniture sets) that we'll be able to rework as far as mesh goes?
Looking forward to this webcast! A lot of information has already been released about PlayerStudio, but it has huge potential and thus a lot of potentially great questions. EQ2 PlayerStudio EQ2 PlayerStudio Frequently Asked Questions EQ2 PlayerStudio Getting Started EQ2 PlayerStudio Style Guide There's also a great player-started thread about PlayerStudio which I hope SOE is checking in on.
Ashlanne wrote: Question 1: Will our items be "signed" in a manner similar to house items created by "CharacterName"? Question 2: Will we be given one copy of any item we produce (to a pre-selected game character), so we may have it to [discover,] display and link to friends and acquaintances for advertising purposes?
Will SOE be providing any software/tools, meshes, etc for those of us that are less artistically inclined but who would like to try and give it a whirl?
Question 1: Will we be able to create armour or weapons? Question 2: Will we be able to add particle effects to the items we make? Question 3: If we can't create armour/weapons or add particle effects, will it be added later? Question 4: Will we be able to add animated textures, like water, lava, other liquids, etc? Question 5: Will the items have something in the description mentiioning who created them? Question 6: Will we be able to make transparent objects like glass, or reflective objects like mirrors? Question 7: My last quesstion, will any other sample models, like player races or other models, be released as examples? Just a few questions, I think that the player studio could turn out amazingly!
Twwig@The Bazaar wrote: To expand on that... if yes, would this include armor or weapons with stats, and if yes, do you own flame-retardant suits? (question stems from Smedley saying this on Twitter: "Users will NOT be making stats on items. The ones we will select we will balance properly. Although we will listen to the creators.")
My guess is either he means status reduction (though I doubt it) or they will pick some items and make them quest rewards/loot.
Questions: 1) How soon will international players be able to submit items for consideration within the players studio maketplace? for example Australian and EU players 2) Will player studio builders be able to preview their creations in-game before submission? to help to address bugs and other possible issues. one idea would be to use of a house item that calls a specific .obj file that can be replaced by the player, or maybe an instance (ie, a players studio workshop) where players can load obj files like house layouts. 3) Will player creations be able to use ingame shaders like glass, mirrors and ice, seen on many current house items? 4) Will players be able to attach lights to player made objects. 5) How do players go about defining collision volumes on their creations? primite volumes, convex hulls, a specific naming convention? or will player made house items have no collision. 6) Will transparency through alpha ever be available to players? even 1 bit alpha would be very welcome.
First off, I have been animating, rigging, and modeling/scultping for several years now using 3ds Max, C4D, Maya, Lightwave, Modo, Softimage (XSI), and my personal favorite Houdini, along with Photoshop, Zbrush, and Mudbox with recent addition MARI. I currently do this full time with a lot of R&D work as well. My time is very limited, but I am really interested in this oppurtunity -only for EQ2 though. I have some questions and concerns as well. Question 1: As for animation, (since we know little of the EQ2 engine and how it handles rigging/bones and animation) will we ever be able to create our own actual non-static content? (ie: Mounts, Armor, Pets, etc...). Personally, I think the asset appeal (especially for the above items) is quite limited with access to only diffuse, specular, and normal maps. I would like to see self-illumination (depending if that effect is shader-driven or not), refraction or alpha channel at the very "least", and the highly doubtful... reflection channel (spec will suffice here). That being said, will base meshes ever be provided? A complete armor package would need to consist of all races and gender variations, no? We would need to be provided with pretty specific information regarding the restrictions on rigging/animation per race/gender. For my interest, just having a base mesh available would make a world of difference, if anything remotely similar to Unreal assets. I generally load the same mesh (base mesh) into 3ds max/Zbrush and create different variants utilizing maps without changing geometry or topology at all (making animation much easier per assets). Question 2: How are LODs being handled, if not by the content creators? I have been creating LoD meshes and mipmaps for the last several years, I cant imagine an mmo especially not using these. Question 3: Co-planar geometry? Pretty simple, I occassionally see flashing in-game that "seems" attributed to geometry overlapping, should we be focused on "clean geometry"? - This is mainly in reference to Blender assets as I have had significant trouble converting Blender files to any other format without having several issues with geometry. Question 4: What's the up-axis? Question 5: Overlapping UVs? I sometimes overlap UVs in order to take advantage of texture space, but have had requests for non-overlapping UVs in the past. Question 6: House layouts... I found it unusualy odd that a lot of the requests that were being asked of me had to do with wallpaper variations and other misc housing items, much, much moreso than character equipment. This concerned me because I would need to have access to housing assets and their UVs or some sort of reference. The scale of the requested items are quite hard to judge. Question 7: The length of time for a complete armor set would be extreme compared to other content, would we at least have free access to this on our own active accounts per character? I have not had enough time to even get a level 92 yet and miss out a lot on the end-game content and this oppurtunity will cut game time considerably. At least having access to this relieves a little anxiety. Question 8: (Final) Are we limited by theme? I am not comfortable creating cash registers and desktops for EQ2 as it strays from EQ's theme, but items of this nature have been requested. Sorry for the lengthy post, but I like to have as much information as possible before I end up submitting themed collections and having to rework them. Additionally, unless I missed something, is there no forum dedicated specifically for player studio? It may be a very good idea to have a forum tailored for this, especially for those that are interested and would like some guidance.
I don't work for SOE, but... Vannya Kaji wrote: If you go digging around the EQ2 source files, you can find some of the animation files. I don't know the format but it may be informative. I don't see us doing animation for a long long time, if ever. EQ2 has really good animators. It's the art assets that we need more of. Just FYI the team primarly uses Maya and Zbrush. Vannya Kaji wrote: They are keeping it simple for now to see what kind of items are submitted. Also, they started with items that were fairly straightforward that they could document well. 90% of the questions at the PlayerStudio panel in Las Vegas were folks who had no idea how much work is involved in creating 3D models and textures. They thought you could push a button or fiddle around in Photoshop for an hour and bam create a flying mount or armor set or weapon. Boy are they in for a rude awakening. Self-illumination is not something they could expose because it's all proprietary code in the engine they set just before the item goes in-game. On the PlayerStudio Item Submission form, you can specify any kind of particle systems or that you want an item to glow. You could mention the name of another item with similar illumination % to what you want, and then specify a color for the light. Refraction/Reflection in-game is really complex and beyond the scope of this first item spec. I'm bummed they didn't include alpha though so we could make partly transparent items, but again they wanted to keep it simple. Vannya Kaji wrote: Armor is insanely complex. Not only are there 19 different races (sorry Freebloods but you're just retextured High Elves), but they come in both male and female. EQ2 has like 7-8 base armor sets. In 2008 they started using Snap-on Armor. This allows them to add pieces to an existing armor set and reposition them for all 38 race/gender combos. In 2011 they added a basically "nude" armor set so that new armor sets can be built up from scratch with snap-ons. But again, it's incredibly complex. At SOE Live, SmokeJumper said that eventually down the road, they will probably just pack up a full armor set, release it to us, and see if anyone manages to makes an armor set without running away screaming. Even the experienced artists on the EQ2 team have to keep detailed notes about where all the pieces are and how the textures line up. The assets have evolved a lot in 11 years and is probably not as "clean and organized" as you are used to. I would not expect much documentation. It sounds like you may be someone who has the skillset to turn out some great armor sets -- and maybe produce your own documentation which you can share with others. I doubt you'd be exposed to the rigging/animation though. I think the intention is to release some kind of basic version of Builder (an internal SOE app) or the EQ2 client itself that we can load objects into and see how they look with the in-game engine. Vannya Kaji wrote: The EQ2 artist looking at your item submission will handle that. As armor and other things get opened up later on, then we'd need to create LOD ourselves. Vannya Kaji wrote: No idear on #3 and #4. #5 right now you get one texture layer. You're right that multi-layered textures is something they'd need to provide going forward for more complex things. Vannya Kaji wrote: Alas the wallpaper/house trim/flooring that was built into the game 11 years ago is really a pain to work with. This is why we never saw this added to new housing outside of Qeynos and Freeport. I don't see them ever exposing this to players to design. Generally, if someone wants a new wallpaper, they just put up wall dividers and sink them into the wall. You could conceivably make "pieces" that exactly fit onto existing walls in existing houses. But I don't know what the market would be for these. Vannya Kaji wrote: You mean game time as a Gold subscriber? Or being able to use the armor set in-game before it's submitted? I think the chances of both are remote. I wouldn't get into making items for EQ2 if the rewards are that important to you. Most people who do this are wanting to make the game better, and the thrill of having in-game items that they created, and if they get paid a little bit, that's a nice side bonus. Vannya Kaji wrote: Yes. For the most part, items created have to fit into the high fantasy setting. If you read the PlayerStudio EQ2 Style Guide there is an extensive style guide. I would consider the Vegas slot machines a one-off that won't be repeated any time soon. Vannya Kaji wrote: Actually there is a PlayerStudio forum which just appeared in the last few days, but it seems odd to setup a forum now, when SOE forums are in transition to the new XenForo software. I would post in this player-created thread. It's the most technical thread we've had yet on PlayerStudio and EQ2.
Not sure on how to quote this: 90% of the questions at the PlayerStudio panel in Las Vegas were folks who had no idea how much work is involved in creating 3D models and textures. They thought you could push a button or fiddle around in Photoshop for an hour and bam create a flying mount or armor set or weapon. Boy are they in for a rude awakening. Yes, I presumed as much, but that is a main reason I was drawn in. My deadlines and stress level stay pretty high; this provides a much needed outlet for mentoring and my own content creation in a less stressful manner. In my opinion and experiences, the EQ community is driven and dedicated, perfect mix. As for Question 7, I was referring to having access to the content we create (if approved) as a benefit to being part of the player studio. As for reviewing assets locally in the engine, I don't see that as an option either. We are not making shaders though, so there is not a real need for that in my opinion. It would be nice to have some maya and max DX shaders available just so we can review how the spec maps are going to react. Armor IS my primary goal. I am an animator now, but I see little need for player studio animators for quite some time, if ever, and the effort to train the community could be too resource intensive. If we can use the base meshes though, then animation would already be dealt with, for the most part. That does assume the meshes retain their topology though and we only provided diffuse, normal, and specular maps for those specified. It is not as cookie-cutter clean as that when dealing with the shear amount of racial/gender combinations, but the challenge is well worth the personal investment. In reference to the comment mentioning SmokeJumper and an armor set, I would readily accept that challenge with just a clean set of .objs and the textures... but for all races and gender variants included. I have to create full sets with matching arsenal or it will always be left as "incomplete" in my book. The only part that scares me about this is decimating the meshes, which I don't generally do for anything requiring animation; if they have been decimated or "optimized", there might be complications subdividing for sculpted normal maps. I was not aware of the full process that the asset goes through upon submission. If they use Maya, then the up axis is Y.
Vannya Kaji wrote: Quoting on these forums is a nightmare. The new EQ2 forums coming on November 9th are so much easier. Vannya Kaji wrote: Once you get an item approved for PlayerStudio and it goes into the game, you get a free copy of that item. I believe EQ2 shaders are VDL files. I have no idea how you'd load that. Again, I think the end goal is some kind of Viewer we can download that follows all the rules of the EQ2 engine so we can test how items will look in-game. Vannya Kaji wrote: Again, you may break the mold on this, but adding a completely new armor set (and fitting it to all 38 race/gender combos) is something on the order of 2-3 MONTHS work. This is why there are only like 7 sets of armor in EQ2. It's concievable that players could create and submit armor specific to one race. But the idea that a player out there will do a whole new "set" of armor fit to 38 different models seems... unlikely. With the Snap-on armor system, and then with the skin-tight "nude" armor set that was created in 2011, you can build on top of it with new geometry pieces and build up into whatever kind of armor you want, and then you can adjust how those snap-on pieces fit on all the other race/gender combos. New armor sets created this way are like 1-2 weeks for a skilled artist and work on all races and genders. Hopefully Tom Tobey, Dave Brown, or others will post in this thread and clear up any collossal mistakes I've made above in my explanation. I always wished there was a detailed article about how the Snap-on Armor worked. Vannya Kaji wrote: Read everything you can at http://everquest2.com/player-studio/
feldon30 wrote: First of all, yes, I'm in that 90% of never once launching a 3D modeling engine before. But I am an electrician of 20 years, strong in math and attention to detail, and very interested in learning how to design cloak textures. As a SOE Live attendee, I attended the panel for Player Studio and (I though) I was told that we could download the cloak wire mesh and we would just need to re-texture it. So right after this panel finished, I went to the computer area to check out the cloak model but, sadly, the EQ2 devs had back-to-back panels and were not yet available. Instead, there were other devs there (EQ1, Pox Nora, etc.) who could show me how the engine worked in general but no one knew where to find the EQ2 cloak model. Not to be stymied, after returning home, I found this Player Studio link: http://www.everquest2.com/player-st...dio/get-started This told me the exact 3 texture maps required for cloaks and the necessary parameters. However, without the cloak model downloaded to my computer, I will not be able to see how the cloak will look when worn. So my two questions here are.... Will we be allowed to download the cloak 3D model? And, if so, where do we find the link?
