Chris described tiers of NPC detail for Squadron 42. Can we go into more detail about the tiers of NPCs in the PU, such as how many of each tier will populate the average system and how detailed the various tiers will be?
TL;DRTier zero heads have the most geometry, detail and blend shapes, with wrinkle-map blending decreasing through the tiers; zero and one are close, while the question's PU population numbers go unanswered.
So I'm not entirely sure of the context of the question, but that probably refers to the tier heads, I'm assuming.
Let's start with the tier heads. From the tier 0 to the tier 1 to the tier 2. What are the differences between these? How do they work?
And the tier 3. Omar probably knows more about that, actually.
So I guess the best way and the simplest way to break it down would be tier zero has the most amount of geometry, the most detail, and the most amount of time spent.
And blend shapes. Only tier zero has blend shapes.
It comes down to fidelity. The tier zeros have a bunch of blend shapes also so you can hit tiny little nuances in the face. Whereas the lower you go, or the higher number-wise you go in the tiers, you lose fidelity. So it takes less time to make them. But the tier zeros are top notch.
The tier zeros would be used for characters like Gary Oldman and Mark Hamill.
Yes. And also, since we use wrinkle map blending, which is when those blend shapes are activated on the faces, they actually do wrinkles. So we have to do blood flow maps and different normal maps so that the face actually changes when different expressions are happening. So if we're doing a Tier 0 character or a Tier 1 character, they both have triple wrinkle map blending. Tier 2 characters have double wrinkle map blending. Tier 3 characters have single wrinkle map blending. So it's just blending between three images for tier zeros and ones, two for twos, and one for threes. So actually, there's really not a lot of difference between tier zero and tier one, except that tier zero has more blend shapes, like you said, higher fidelity and more topology. But the polish pass and the art pass is essentially identical from zero to one, except we spend a little bit more time on the zeros, obviously. But for them, it's more different.