Greetings Fellow Avatars! I hope you all had a wonderful Father’s Day weekend.  I wont be covering the Reddit AMA happening tomorrow or the SeedInvest Webinar I already attended, but if you have any questions about them, please leave a comment below.  I am however quiet pleased to share info on the Arabella NPC this time around.   Enjoy!

Here’s what we have for you in this week’s edition of Update of the Avatar:

• A New Look to Celestis Scene
• The Making of Arabella NPC

A New Look to Celestis Scene

Celestis is an NPC town currently in the game, but is being uncloned for Release 43. Changes are being made to make the scene look more like other nearby Perennial Coast scenes. In Celestis you will find an outdoor theater, beautiful rock garden, and much more!

Text by Chris “SeaWolf” Wolf:

Hey Folks, Sea Wolf here with an update on my current project, the uncloning of Celestis. Celestis is receiving the Perennial Coast makeover. The terrain is heavily influenced by Zhangjiajie National Forest Park in China, while the cultural decor is influenced by feudal Japan. It will feature a new town center and harbor, several gardens including a rock garden, several koi fish ponds, and a Noh/Kabuki stage which can also double as a dance floor. There are also a few Easter-eggs throughout the scene which pay tribute to some of my favorite chambara (classic samurai films).

Please keep in mind that this is still a work in progress, but feel free to leave some feedback. I would especially love to hear from the folks who live here. I will continue to post updates as the scene progresses

Harbor

Town Center

Stage

Lord of the Manor Entrance

Mountains

Zen Rock Garden

Koi Pond

After the scene changes go live in Release 43, we have even more content, including quests, you can look forward to in future releases!

Chris “Seawolf” Wolf
Level Designer

The Making of Arabella NPC

[From a Dev+ Forum Post Update by Kevin “UglyFist” Wells]

Hello again everyone!

I’m posting this time to show off our new Arabella NPC. This release I had a bit more time than usual so I wanted to show off a bit of my process of how I usually create a character from scratch – all the way from concept to in-game asset, enjoy!

So we’ve had this great concept for me to refer to…

Looking at this I block-out all my low poly geo in my favorite tool: ZBrush…

From here, I’ll subdivide this geo into literally millions of poly’s, and begin the process of sculpting the high-res detail…

Then I’ll UV the geo and run it all through another favorite tool called Substance Painter to get my base textures (for example, Arabella’s armor normal and albedo texture maps)…

Finally, I hook up all the textures in-game and tweak and polish until I’m happy with how the NPC looks in our environment (this is how she will look to you guys in the game)…

So anyway, there is a quick look into how I tend to make characters when I have a good concept to go off of. I hope you guys love it. Have fun and I’ll see you guys in game!

Kevin “UglyFist” Quinn
Lead Character Artist