So we’ve been asked to provide some details on what types of things will be able to be user generated in the new platform. I’ll outline here a few of the things that we’re planning; however, keep in mind that at this point nothing is final and things may change during development. We make no guarantees that what we mention here will remain done in exactly this way, this is just our current wishlist and what we have planned.
Textures:
Of course we will keep supporting uploading of textures. Users will be familiar with this from the re-texturing options from the current client. We do however hope to include a lot more tools that allow users to do some texture editing INSIDE the client. We’ve been experimenting with things such as changing the hue and brightness of textures, layering multiple textures on top of each other, and allowing projection of decals onto surfaces all inside the client. We’ll also be using more advanced shaders; users will have access to specular, bumped, parallax and more advanced shaders. For those looking to gain some advanced knowledge on these new advancements to texturing, the Wikipedia pages on them can tell you more about what we’re talking about:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Normal_mapping
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Specularity
We’d also recommend checking out game development forums and tutorials for more information on how create spec and normal maps for your future texturing!
Objects:
This is the first of the brand new options we’ll have in the new system for user created content: we’re planning on supporting uploading of your own props and meshes. This is considerably more difficult then just retexturing an existing mesh, but we’re confident that many of our users will have the talent and dedication required to learn the skills.
The simplest type of mesh that users will be able to upload will be one for a prop. If you want a new couch and none of the currently available couches in the client look exactly the way you want then you can use a 3D creation software of your choice to create one to your exact specifications and then texture it as mentioned above and upload it to the system. The engine that we’re using currently supports OBJ and FBX file formats, which are two of the most common formats exported by 3D software, so you should be able to choose which creation suite to use. The VWW Art team prefers to use Maya, but we also recommend Blender as a cheap (free in fact!) alternative. The downside to using blender is it does not support FBX file formats and only OBJ.
A much more complicated type of mesh that can be uploaded are character meshes themselves. We don’t want to go into detail about this too much yet because it’s still in development, but we plan on letting people upload their own clothing meshes as well, therefore greatly increasing the capabilities of clothing designers. If you wish to start working on your skills in this department, we recommend checking out some tutorials online for Character Modeling and Skinning (which is the process of attaching the mesh to the bones used in animation).
Recommended website:
3dbuzz.com
Animation:
Finally we also hope to support uploading animation files to be played on your character. Now we have a special treat for you all here... we're releasing a few files for you to play around with! By clicking the download link below, you can download a zip file which will contain the working Male and Female skeleton files, along with a short video explaining how they're going to be used. We won't be providing animation tutorials of our own (at least not right now anyway), but you can use these skeleton files to practice your own animating talents for when the system is released! Currently the team uses 3DS Max, Maya and Motion Builder to do animations. Unfortunately our new system uses FBX file format therefore Blender is not recommended. Until further notice there is no other alternative.
Download link!
www.utherverse.net/downloads/Utherverse_Animation_Example_Package.zip
Recommended website:
3dbuzz.com
Regions and Scenes:
We will not talk too much about this at the moment until we have further knowledge of how this will work. But this has been brought up in our discussions and when we have more information we will share it with everyone.
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