Wolfire Development Blog!

[Sage]

My what big teeth you have.

I mean, what's even creepier than switching to that in a few seconds is doing that in the blink of an eye (it is a facial expression after all >:D)

But, umm, is his fur supposed to change colors? Or did the lighting source move or something?

I'd love to see facial expressions, especially surprise from a split second before inserting your knife into their throat .

This is good news, not only this cool morph system, but the programmers as well. I certainly hope they know what they're doing. Then again, knowing David (which i don't much...) he wouldn't have hired them if they didn't .

Progress is always good, keep up the good work... because... there's cookies waiting for you?

EDIT: Snap, their eyes will be able to look around, right?

[MacWiggy]

Finally, a graphics update that's really useful. But don't listen to me, I'm a troll.

[zip]

The shot of the morph looks like it's taken from Lightwave or so, not from the engine?

[Ninjas]

The morphs are shown from inside Max, but the same morphs are working fine in the engine and look great. This was a test Ian did when morph targets where being tweaked.

[rudel_ic]

Nice!

Just as a sidenote, when a wolf shows his fangs, the fur rises. If you ever considered to include realistic fur, that's a way to really benefit from it.

Have you thought about simulating muscle contraction and release with morph targets?

[Viking Zippy]

That looks totally badass, but personally, I think the wolf looks too different from its original Lugaru counterpart and almost 'cute and fluffy' until it growls

By the way, what are morph targets? I didn't quite glean enough from the blog and the posts contained herein ...

[rudel_ic]

I guess that if you have 2 models for 1 3D object with vertices at different locations, you could say "move vertices from model-A-vertice-locations to model-B-vertice-locations, adjust the normals and stretch the textures accordingly with seamless tradition if this-and-that happens". That would make model B a morph target for model A, and probably the other way around if you want to have a way to go back.

[Sage]

Seems like it would be easier to have 1 model except have it so that a certain vertex can move to different locations depending on the facial expressions (I think this is kinda what HL2 has?)

[rudel_ic]

In a frozen state, the model with the moved vertex is not the same model as the model with the vertex at the original location. Of course, model B could be a transformation of model A, but the resulting matrices are different and model B doesn't have to be a transformation of model A, which for me makes it 2 models in each case

[David]

This is basically combining the best aspects of traditional vertex interpolation (ala pioneered by Unreal and Quake 2) and modern skeletal animation, so we can combine bone-level pose animation with per-vertex soft tissue animation.

The new programmers are really fantastic; they are better at their respective fields than I am, which is why I asked them to work on this project My specialty is game/engine design and rapid feature prototyping, so it is best if I can focus on that as much as possible.

[Sage]

That's good news, could you tell or describe to us what the other 3 specialize in?

[rudel_ic]

For me, it's more interesting who they actually are. Like, you know, their names, history in game development, how they were actually chosen and stuff.
Yeah, I'm curious

[Vib Rib]

PS: I vote I be added to the development team, for purposes of creating cutscenes/intros/etc. Just think, it's a beautiful, ultra-advanced-graphics-engine world with a rising sun that illuminates the vast rolling grassy hills, and suddenly BAM! CUTSCENE! Scenery disappears, everything goes black and white, and looks at though it were drawn by a third grader with a Sharpie!

It's win-win!

[Sage]

It can have voice acting from Microsoft Sam as well

[Renegade_Turner]

I've stepped into Bizarro world.

But seriously yeah, give us some info'mation on the programmers.