The Dwarves: Character Race #4 of 8

The Dwarves: Character Race #4 of 8

8 races.

2 factions.

6 classes.

Important decisions.

Over the next weeks we will release info on the 8 playable races in Mist’s metaverse. As we get closer to the Demo date, we will release more Lore and history of the races.

Each race is distinct, with special abilities, special strengths, and weaknesses. Each race has 2 genders, male and female.

The race you choose will determine your gameplay style. It will determine your friendships. It will determine your personality, and persona in-game.

This week we will highlight The Dwarves.

Dwarves are the 4th race we want to share with you. After weeks of development, fine-tuning, re-designing, and re-animating the Dwarf is ready to go.

Dwarves are hearty, tough, and strong. They are a race that you don’t want to make angry.

Dwarves have special healing and damage bonuses against friends and enemies with higher health than them. Some of their attacks can hit twice, and they also have damage-reducing abilities. There are, of course, other special abilities as well.

The Dwarven race was a race we were excited to put in, as a tough and hearty race. The goal was to make the dwarf look tough, wild, and like a small guy who can tear you to pieces if you make him angry.

We started with a shorter body, and wanted to give him strong arms, and a large beard.

We can see the first mockups of the dwarf above. His body is beginning to take shape. His arms are larger in comparison to the rest of his body. His torso is big, and his beard stands out.

At this point, the face is still undefined and the body is still lacking any details.

Now we go into the face of the dwarf, and add some more detail on the body. Notice how on the left-most pic, the face and muscles in the body are not that defined. On the right pic, we have started adding a little more definition to the dwarf’s body and face.

The dwarf beard is important. And a lot of time went into creating it.

The first tests in the in-game environment are done with the original model. We do this so we can test the rigging (the skeleton) of the model. We noticed quickly that the skeleton acted poorly when certain movements were done.

Notice the dwarf’s midsection/torso area. See how weirdly it pushes out? This sort of thing needs to be fixed.

We jump into some of the skeleton features of the Dwarf. By doing a few tweaks to this we will ultimately fix the torso area and make everything look as it should.

We continue trying the skeleton in different poses. In this step we want to make sure the body does not do any weird motion or bending.

We also check to see how weapons will fit in the character’s hands. In this example we use a super over-sized sword (the sword will NOT be this large in-game), to make sure the hands and motions properly fit the weapons.

Now the dwarf is beginning to take its final shape. We see his arms, hands, and muscles are looking solid. The body proportions are taking shape too.

The beard and hair has its detail level increased. Now on to the shaders, textures, and colors.

Here we start adding some textures, colors, and shaders to the Dwarf. It is coming together, but the textures need to be increased and made more “beautiful”.

We add some test lighting and clothes to the character. Notice here that the skin and clothes look shiny and a bit “plastic”. These things we focus on next.

We want the dwarf to look more high-quality.

Yes, the beard and mustache is removable, and yes the dwarf looks very different without his facial hair. Beard and hair customization is important, and it will be a big focus of character creation.

In a few days we will highlight our ___________ character. Any guesses?