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Dan Kamentsky

Associate 3D Artist

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Do we intend for it to be possible to load custom logos onto our ships? Decals?

Dan KamentskyAssociate 3D Artist

We've had conversations about it, but I don't know what the next thing is.

Elwin Bachiller Jr.Lead Vehicle Artist

Yeah, that's more of a question for the game designers, actually.

Ben LesnickDirector of Community Engagement and Online Strategy

The hope is yes. If there's some issue with that, we will tell you when it happens. But the long-term goal was, yeah, you should be able to do nose art and that sort of thing.

Reverse the Verse›October Subscriber Edition·
Published on this date.28 Oct 2015

Now that we've moved forward with dividing ship manufacturers between the studios, can we get an update on which studios are working on which ship manufacturers?

TL;DRAnvil, Drake, RSI and Origin go to the US team, the UK takes Aegis, MISC and the Vanduul ships, and some makers, like the Mustang company, remain unassigned.

Elwin Bachiller Jr.Lead Vehicle Artist

Off the top of my head, the UK is going to be working on Aegis, MISC... I forget the other two.

Ben LesnickDirector of Community Engagement and Online Strategy

Well, we can go through. Where's Anvil?

Dan KamentskyAssociate 3D Artist

Anvil is going to be here.

Elwin Bachiller Jr.Lead Vehicle Artist

Yeah, so Anvil is going to be US. We'll have Drake also.

Dan KamentskyAssociate 3D Artist

We're doing RSI too, right?

Elwin Bachiller Jr.Lead Vehicle Artist

We are also doing RSI, and we're also doing Origin.

Dan KamentskyAssociate 3D Artist

I think our side is probably going to be mostly Josh Pughness and Chris Smith, because they know that stuff.

Elwin Bachiller Jr.Lead Vehicle Artist

Well, yeah, but that's like the US team, right? LA and Austin are part of the US team. So we have those four, and there's a few other ones in there that haven't really been split up. Like, what's the Consolidated Outland, the Mustang company? That one hasn't been assigned to any country because we only have that one ship right now. So when something else comes along, we'll pop that in somewhere. And I think, oh, actually, UK is also going to be handling the Vanduul ships, all of them.

Reverse the Verse›October Subscriber Edition·
Published on this date.28 Oct 2015

Any updates on the Starfarer?

Elwin Bachiller Jr.Lead Vehicle Artist

Yeah, it's getting built out right now. I believe part of it is in grey box. And we have certain sections of it which are looking really awesome. So that's coming along pretty nicely.

Jared HuckabyHost, Community Manager

Zane's doing some look dev on the UI for it right now.

Dan KamentskyAssociate 3D Artist

That's fantastic. Zane's UI always looks really cool. It's one of those cool things: when you're building a ship and it's starting to come together, and then you see Zane pop in the UI, because you're modeling the screen your entire time but it's blank, and then all of a sudden it has all this cool UI on it. It's one of those moments where it's like, it's all coming together.

Reverse the Verse›October Subscriber Edition·
Published on this date.28 Oct 2015
EpisodeShipsUI & HUD

How long does it take each of you to work on a single specific thing, like designing a character concept or building a character?

TL;DRTime varies widely with complexity and uniqueness, from a day or two for a simple character to weeks for complex ones, and about a month for a single-seater ship concept, with larger ships, new manufacturers and interiors taking longer.

Jeremiah LeeCharacter Concept Artist

For concepts, it really depends on what type of person this character is, right? So if this is just a regular miner, you just have a onesie, that can take a day, right? But if we're going on to a heavy marine, where it has all these different functions, attachment points, and also EVA capabilities, those things take a little bit more time. And just really the uniqueness of the character kind of defines how long a character would take. And plus, I do not just one character, but three variations of that character. So a little bit more time, because I can't just show the producers and the artists and also Chris just one concept and be like, 'That's what you got.' You can't do that. So I have to show different variations, and whichever meets the standards and also the creativity bar, they'll select one out of three. So it really depends. I've had characters approved in two days, and I've also had characters approved in two weeks.

Dan KamentskyAssociate 3D Artist

I think that's the nature of the beast with being an artist. It's one of these amorphous things where you can build a checklist of everything you need to do, but you don't necessarily know, going into it, how long each thing is going to take. And sometimes I'll be working on a piece of geometry and I'll think, oh my god, this is going to take me three days, and it'll take me a day. And then other times I'll think, this is going to take an hour, and it takes six. And our producers hate us for that. But I think that's the nature of being an artist: sometimes things take a long time, because you're going through this stuff and figuring out how it looks, where it's going to go, how it's going to factor into the ship.

Gurmukh BhasinConcept Artist

Ships, they take a really long time. It just depends. Usually the size of the ship definitely changes the amount of time it'll take for concept. But a single-seater, I would say roughly about a month. And then you just build from there; the bigger the ship, the longer it's going to take. And one of the things is the company that is creating that ship. For example, Aegis is one of our more defined companies within the ship companies that we have already. The Retaliator kind of sets the tone for what future Aegis ships are going to look like. So when you have something like that providing information, it will speed up the concept a lot, but if it's a company where there's a lot less pre-made ships to define it, then it's going to take even longer, just because you're still trying to figure out the look and the feel and all that for that company. So it's a hard question to answer. As well, interiors take a long time. For the Vanguard, for example, interiors for three variants was about two months, with all the art and all the modeling and all the design, which I think is pretty good. And then the exterior for that one was also about two months, just to figure out the basic shapes and stuff like that. But if another ship similar to the Vanguard by Aegis was to be done, now I have a lot of assets I could reuse. So the more we do it, the quicker it's going to get. So yeah, I hope that helps.

Reverse the Verse›October Subscriber Edition·
Published on this date.28 Oct 2015

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