Guests:

• Forrest Stephan: Principal Technical Artist
• Andre Pires: Lead Artist
• Jacob: Gameplay Programmer
• Gabriel Hector: System Designer
• Andreas Rohr: Principal Technical Artist/Animator

TL;DW:

• All the heads currently available in the PU will be available in the new customizer (some only partially for now).
• Existing heads got a visual refresh.
• Current target (for the future, not 3.23) is 60 heads to choose from.
• Skin details and color are separated, you can mix & match.
• Character customizer will only be available during initial character creation for now.
• They do plan to add special machines scattered around that will allow players to change their look.
• You can edit your character from the main menu, before loading into the verse, this will be removed once the machines are implemented.
• New customizer is built with backwards compatibility in mind, can’t promise saved designs won’t break with changes to various features but they do have some kind of “restore” system that will try to convert the saved version and keep it as close to the original as possible.
• Characters might also slightly change in case of art adjustments/updates.
• Exported look files are encrypted, no modification outside the game.
• BIOTICORP is the in-lore company responsible for “Calliope Machines” used to modify your looks.
• No promises on ability to change light/scene conditions in the customizer to check your creation in various condition.
• You can use FOIP during character creation to play around with face expressions.
• Beards have physics, just like “normal” hair. Use the legacy system instead of Star-Cloth for now.
• Small heads in the selection grid update to display your changes to hair etc.
• They chose to limit the max hair length up to the shoulders.
• Longer hair styles will adapt and stick out when wearing hats/masks.
• Each hair style has multiple assets (male, female, with and without hat etc).
• No option to choose specific hair strands to color, some kind of additional color mask system is technically possible but isn’t planned at the moment (lots of technical considerations to keep in mind).
• They use the new customizer to create NPCs (using bonus debug options).
• Lots of new hair styles coming in the future, most likely added with big updates.
• Hair tech will also be used on armor and creatures.
• Ace Ventura hair style (or any other old ones) might come back if people really want it.
• Body customization (shape, height) is technically possible but won’t happen in short term due to technical limitations (mainly attachments scaling/displacement, animations and possible balancing issues). They do want to try and make it work in the future.
• Andreas already spent some time refactoring the head DNA code to allow its use for bodies, however it’s a part-time project.
• No current plans to allow to import your own photos as a texture for character face (lots of technicalities to consider). Could be cool.
• Some theorizing how they could use FOIP to scan player’s face to generate a starting point based on currently available head shapes.
• Only natural eye colors for 3.23, they’d like to add crazier options in the future (possibly full color selection, iris details, asymmetrical design).
• “Cursed” face options depend on the available character pool, it’s going to keep increasing. “Uglies” will be possible as they try to keep the pool as diverse as possible.
• One thing you’d like to add:
  • Forrest Stephan: Jared’s head to the customization pool.
  • Jacob: more randomization.
  • Gabriel Hector: scan your own face and add it to the pool.
  • Andreas Rohr: flesh out the preview view with swappable lighting conditions, outfits etc.