(( Like Gnobrin said, Its ALOT of work. AAAALOOOOTTTT of work.I do character modelling, unwrapping/texturing, rigging, animation, facial lip sync etc etc... in my spare time. (but I use 3d STudio Max. (Biped makes it QUICK and easy))
They use Maya which is 100% custom skeletal rigs. (no Max Biped!) (means lots more work, and that's just the rigging side of it.)All models need to not only
A. Look good in all lighting conditions, but
B. Be sliceable into pieces so when you substitute a Platemail BP, the chest area of the model vanishes and is replaced by the armor piece, or the Hand comes off and is replaced by a glove, etc.
C. Be geometrically efficient. Wireframe flow needs to be properly setup so animators and riggers don't have nightmares when trying to get the models to move properly. This takes ALOT of time.
D. Unwrap the models all the same way so that every character model (Hopefully now only one body-model?), uses the same textures. (Unwrapping can be daunting and often takes forever)
E. If the new models are not inheriting the old unwraps, then that means every single armor and clothing texture in game will have to be re-textured in photoshop. (Rearranged to adapt to the new model's unwraps. VERY VERY time consuming, there are hundreds of textures)
F. Have their heads re-rigged for facial animations. Additionally, all facial animations will likely have to be redone from SCRATCH. (unless they are using facial bone rig, which would take less time than a morph-target system)
G. All motion capture body animations need to be re-adapted, applied and re-animated on the new characters, tweaked for each one to look as good as it was before.
H. Finally, it has to WORK! All art assets must properly coincide with naming conventions, size restrictions and/or other limitations to the EQ2 game engine. Depending on each game studios level of organization, this may not be a quick task. Often times the only way of seeing if something is Engine-Ready is by importing it and checking in-game. And if it ISNT, well, you just cost yourself tons of time and now have to go back to the art team and get it fixed
Takes FOR-EVA!!!To help put things into perspective, Next-Gen quality game studios may give an artist 1-2 months to create a Main Character for a game, and at the end of which time they want a fully modelled, textured and rigged character for a game (secondary characters may only get 2-3 weeks to complete). The length of time will depend on the target quality of the character, among other variables like the Game Platform you are developing for etc.They are undertaking not only remodelling 12-14(?) (i havent counted lately) races but also models for both MALE and Female of each race, combining them into a more streamlined model system using (entirely new?) models on their new skeletal rig. Lots of work!Don't rush the art team!What would you rather see? WoW-style crappy characters in a few months? orAssassins Creed style ultra realistic characters after a longer wait
*crosses fingers and hopes the end results will be comparable to AC 8-)*(btw to the art team, if I have made an error in my descriptions and explanations please correct me, I'm mostly extrapolating and assuming here 8-))---
