Musician Archive
Thread: IGN Interview on Ithorians... Nothing About Ithorian Musicians...
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LeBob
Fri Sep 17, 2004 9:47 am
#1
Link is on the front page.
September 15, 2004 - To me, the biggest hurdle in making the Ithorians a player species was overcome when Dan Borth successfully attached our Hammer Head NPC to the human animation set. The Ithorians are by far the most alien of our player characters, more so than even the Mon Calamari. There was some doubt at first that it would be feasible, since the Ithorians would be the first player characters to have their own unique skeleton. Though it is similar to the human's, it has to accommodate for the bowed legs, longer arms and disproportionately large hands of the Ithorian. Once we all saw it animating well with the existing player animations, it was only a matter of time before the decision was made to schedule them as a new playable race.
September 15, 2004 - To me, the biggest hurdle in making the Ithorians a player species was overcome when Dan Borth successfully attached our Hammer Head NPC to the human animation set. The Ithorians are by far the most alien of our player characters, more so than even the Mon Calamari. There was some doubt at first that it would be feasible, since the Ithorians would be the first player characters to have their own unique skeleton. Though it is similar to the human's, it has to accommodate for the bowed legs, longer arms and disproportionately large hands of the Ithorian. Once we all saw it animating well with the existing player animations, it was only a matter of time before the decision was made to schedule them as a new playable race.
The next big hurdle was figuring out how to make such an alien head--one that essentially has no face--as customizable as the rest of the player characters. There was some debate on what some of these customizations would mean for animation. For instance, making their trunks change in size, length and shape would mean that we would be extremely limited on what we could animate on the head. Since we don't have the ability to offset a skeletal joint's position based on the deformations of a mesh, we would be restricted to animating the eyes with only translation instead of rotation. Initially, the Ithorians had almost no ability to express through there faces except for eye blinks and mouths opening/clothing. (By the way they have two mouths! One on either side of their heads!).
With this in mind, we forged on with more customization. One of the major visuals we were able to easily customize was their skin color and full body patterns. We had done this on the Wookiees already, so this was an easy one to add in. Another wall we hit was creating a female Ithorian who was distinctly different from the male. Aside of just body shape, a more feminine head, and the addition of eyelashes, we decided to use a more desaturated color palette for the female's skin. Similar to how, in nature, the male of some bird species is the more colorful of the two. On top of that, we added different locations for hair on the Ithorians. The males have a set of inner and outer beards that can be customized, where the females have eyebrows and a tuft of hair on top of their heads.
With this in mind, we forged on with more customization. One of the major visuals we were able to easily customize was their skin color and full body patterns. We had done this on the Wookiees already, so this was an easy one to add in. Another wall we hit was creating a female Ithorian who was distinctly different from the male. Aside of just body shape, a more feminine head, and the addition of eyelashes, we decided to use a more desaturated color palette for the female's skin. Similar to how, in nature, the male of some bird species is the more colorful of the two. On top of that, we added different locations for hair on the Ithorians. The males have a set of inner and outer beards that can be customized, where the females have eyebrows and a tuft of hair on top of their heads.
The third and most time-consuming hurdle was figuring out how to dress the Ithorians. Our current set of player clothing was simply not going to fit the Ithorians too well, particularly because of the enormous size difference in the neck. Attempting to create an Ithorian version of every wearable seemed unrealistic and would mean sacrificing a great deal of quality in the look of the clothing when worn by them. We decided to make an amendment to our wearable system and, with time constraints playing a crucial role, change the way we create wearables for the Ithorians. We had to give them as much clothing as possible to avoid adding in another playable species that was as lacking in clothing customization as the Wookiees.
To do this, we drastically simplified the process by creating a limited set of generic wearables that would represent all major geometry differences of a given article of clothing. For instance, there are nine generic jackets: long sleeve, short sleeve and no sleeve. On top of that we added a closed, v-neck and open multiplier. This meant that we could set up all the technical stuff on these generics to be ready for export, and from there it was just a matter of creating different textures and assigning shader effects. Much faster than previously done, where every wearable was a one-of-a-kind, lengthy process.
Finally, and just recently, we have gone back and revisited the Ithorian's facial skeleton. It turns out that having only blink and mouth animations were far too little to express emotion. Damon Waldrip, with input from Alan Pickett, our animator, created a much more versatile facial skeleton that will help add a lot more character to your Ithorian. Of course, making such changes so late in the process meant we would also have to revisit all wearables that fit on their heads. But in the end, the extra work is definitely worth it. --
-- Bill Daly
bah
picklesSW
Fri Sep 17, 2004 9:56 am
#2
There's nothing about any professions in there, is there? What were you expecting to see? I'm sure they can be musicians, why not?
rayill
Fri Sep 17, 2004 10:04 am
#3
(By the way they have two mouths! One on either side of their heads!).
Javy is right.. no mention of professions.. but I'm curious to one thing...
Which mouth will they use when using horn instruments? 
LeBob
Fri Sep 17, 2004 10:35 am
#4
I have been asking in the JTL Forum ever since they announced Ithorians how Ithorian Musicians would be handled.
Yes, there is nothing about other professions, but what other professions will be an issue besides Musicians?
I am guessing they will just have Ithorian Musicians play the instrument out of their eyes.... oh well.
rayill
Fri Sep 17, 2004 10:57 am
#5
If the skeleton is as complex as they are hinting at, Dancer may be a pain as well. But still, it is interesting to know how they may be handling the profession.
NewJedi
Fri Sep 17, 2004 4:34 pm
#6
I'm not sure what I'm allowed to say about this (NDA and all). Erm, I'll try to find out what (if anything) I can say about this.
Warryyr
Fri Sep 17, 2004 5:39 pm
#8
NewJedi wrote:
I'm not sure what I'm allowed to say about this (NDA and all). Erm, I'll try to find out what (if anything) I can say about this.
meh.
fett3041
Fri Sep 17, 2004 6:45 pm
#9
Longer skeletons and necks = Ithorians will be playing their horns out of their chests 
Tralmek
Fri Sep 17, 2004 8:04 pm
#10
Warryyr wrote:
meh.
What's this? The Musician Dev Pro Temp didn't get an invite?!!! Talk about discriminating against Entertainers....
Tralmek
Sat Sep 18, 2004 12:48 am
#11
rayill wrote:
If the skeleton is as complex as they are hinting at, Dancer may be a pain as well. But still, it is interesting to know how they may be handling the profession.
I can see them handling it this way:
"Due to the constraints of creating this excitingnew and complexgaming experience in JTL wewere unable to devote time togiving IthoriansEntertainment abilities. We have many exciting things planned for addingIthorian Entertainers in the publishes to come. Thank-you for playing Star Wars Galaxies."
Message Edited by Tralmek on 09-17-2004 01:50 PM
NewJedi
Sat Sep 18, 2004 7:14 am
#12
I guess I can say that I raised the issue of Ithorian Musicians with the devs before the JTL beta started. So they should be aware of our concerns. I wish I could say something about beta itself, but I can't. 
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