Just wanted to give everyone an update on the progress of Em-8ER!
First of all, thank you to Ronyn for the manual processing of backers, and for Fillmore for the automated software he created to assign titles to backers here on the forums. By now all of you should have your titles. If you do not, check your e-mail and messages @Ronyn if you do not have your title.
3D files for printed THMPRS will be e-mailed out next week. We are still finalizing the mailing list before we import it and send it out. The final round of physical book shipping is also complete, and the last round of THMPRs (non-painted) are going out on Monday. Painted THMPRs should be done by end of next week and will be shipped out then as well to Max Kahunas. Thank you for your patience on the physical goods. They are fun but a huge time sink and we are glad to have them wrapped up!
The Omniframe is looking sick. Joe is nearly done with the hi-poly model. We will post screenshots very soon of the untextured model. Once we have the lo-poly done (a faster process), we will send it to our rigger and then to animation.
We also have been working on completing the human female. Our "lo-poly" version is going to end up being 100,000 polys, as that's the standard for modern games. Don't worry, these render extremely fast in Joe's tests using automated LOD systems such as Simplygone. Polygons are not so much the issue in performance these days. We are finding that shader complexity and lighting to be much bigger potential bottlenecks we have to look out for.
I've been working with Michael Bross on our dynamic music needs. We looked at a few engines and decided to use Wwise, which is widely regarded in the industry. We used it on Firefall but it has grown since then. Wwise has a great Indie price of zero dollars to start, which is also nice for our tight budget. Bross and I have been talking through the dynamic combat music of the THMPR encounter and he is thrilled to be on the project.
Meanwhile it took almost 3 weeks for the funds to clear from IndieGoGo but we have them now. Thank you very much! With the funds we started ordering some much needed software (bad CPU in one of our work rigs was causing crashes) and will be ordering things such as the motion capture suits and other necessary expenses.
Along those lines, we finally purchased a copy of Autodesk Maya, which our animators use, but which I've never been able to access until now. This will help immensely with tweaking what we get from rigging and animation and for our later mocap work.
For motion capture, I've been looking at the various systems out there. A researcher friend of ours has had a lot of experience with the Neuron Perception suit and this looks to fit out needs. It has its quirks but having a friend who has dealt with them is a great resource to have. After discussing it with the animator, it looks like the best workflow will be to use motion capture to prototype animations, then use them to choose the best ones and create hand tuned version from those. This way we can try many things before deciding on the best animations.
I've been evaluating software such as Houdini for creating terrain and bases. Houdini has better visualization for terrain vs World Machine, which is what I currently use. Houdini also has powerful level editing tools which might come in handy for bases. However, we've heard its hard to use, so we're being careful about jumping into something that might cost more time unless it has solid benefits.
Finally, we have been working on both a login system for the game and a website where you can see your backed milestones, perks and perk status! Your Em-8ER unified login will link your forum and Discord accounts together as well. We think this is going to be an important tool for backers.
Thank you again for all the support and we will be back regularly on Discord starting next week. Thank you!!!!
- Grummz & The Em-8ER Team
First of all, thank you to Ronyn for the manual processing of backers, and for Fillmore for the automated software he created to assign titles to backers here on the forums. By now all of you should have your titles. If you do not, check your e-mail and messages @Ronyn if you do not have your title.
3D files for printed THMPRS will be e-mailed out next week. We are still finalizing the mailing list before we import it and send it out. The final round of physical book shipping is also complete, and the last round of THMPRs (non-painted) are going out on Monday. Painted THMPRs should be done by end of next week and will be shipped out then as well to Max Kahunas. Thank you for your patience on the physical goods. They are fun but a huge time sink and we are glad to have them wrapped up!
The Omniframe is looking sick. Joe is nearly done with the hi-poly model. We will post screenshots very soon of the untextured model. Once we have the lo-poly done (a faster process), we will send it to our rigger and then to animation.
We also have been working on completing the human female. Our "lo-poly" version is going to end up being 100,000 polys, as that's the standard for modern games. Don't worry, these render extremely fast in Joe's tests using automated LOD systems such as Simplygone. Polygons are not so much the issue in performance these days. We are finding that shader complexity and lighting to be much bigger potential bottlenecks we have to look out for.
I've been working with Michael Bross on our dynamic music needs. We looked at a few engines and decided to use Wwise, which is widely regarded in the industry. We used it on Firefall but it has grown since then. Wwise has a great Indie price of zero dollars to start, which is also nice for our tight budget. Bross and I have been talking through the dynamic combat music of the THMPR encounter and he is thrilled to be on the project.
Meanwhile it took almost 3 weeks for the funds to clear from IndieGoGo but we have them now. Thank you very much! With the funds we started ordering some much needed software (bad CPU in one of our work rigs was causing crashes) and will be ordering things such as the motion capture suits and other necessary expenses.
Along those lines, we finally purchased a copy of Autodesk Maya, which our animators use, but which I've never been able to access until now. This will help immensely with tweaking what we get from rigging and animation and for our later mocap work.
For motion capture, I've been looking at the various systems out there. A researcher friend of ours has had a lot of experience with the Neuron Perception suit and this looks to fit out needs. It has its quirks but having a friend who has dealt with them is a great resource to have. After discussing it with the animator, it looks like the best workflow will be to use motion capture to prototype animations, then use them to choose the best ones and create hand tuned version from those. This way we can try many things before deciding on the best animations.
I've been evaluating software such as Houdini for creating terrain and bases. Houdini has better visualization for terrain vs World Machine, which is what I currently use. Houdini also has powerful level editing tools which might come in handy for bases. However, we've heard its hard to use, so we're being careful about jumping into something that might cost more time unless it has solid benefits.
Finally, we have been working on both a login system for the game and a website where you can see your backed milestones, perks and perk status! Your Em-8ER unified login will link your forum and Discord accounts together as well. We think this is going to be an important tool for backers.
Thank you again for all the support and we will be back regularly on Discord starting next week. Thank you!!!!
- Grummz & The Em-8ER Team
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