New screenshots of character visualizer, virtual tabletop

[Wormwood]

I'm fairly sure they're trying to meet a 'looks decent and has functionality' compromise.

Well, that and they don't have professional game studio level budgeting and talent to bring to bear on this project, I imagine.

Yep.

Better graphics are always nice, but the current ones are good enough for me.

 

[mach1.9pants]

I'm impressed by the detail, particularly the 5 o'clock shadow and adam's apples on the female figures.

"she's a man, man!"
I was not really sure....

 

[Jorunkun]

How come there's all this great, highly stylized artwork featured in the 4e preview books, and for the online character builder they show this embarrassing generic dross? "Tacked-on" and "half-baked" is the impression I'm getting here.

Doesn't bode well for the D&D online offering, does it? Which is a real pity, because I'm convinced online playing and collecting is going to be a huge part of the FRPG market, and a goldmine for WotC if they manage to do it right.

If they don't shape up soon, this is going to be a traincrash.

 

[Klaus]

Klaus, have you ever been hired to do a one-off character sketch? How much would you charge for something like those samples you just posted?

A few times, yeah. If you're interested, shoot me an e-mail at claudiopozas (at) gmail (dot) com with what you have in mind and I'll give you an estimate.

 

[A'koss]

Yeah, I hate to jump on the bashing bandwagon, but I sincerely hope that these are placeholder models/pre-alpha build work they're showing here. I agree that maybe 10 years ago this would be fine, but today looks just abyssmal.

 

[PrinceXaxor]

Believe it or not, but 3d modeling is trickier than 2d art. While these aren't the prettiest of graphics, they certainly aren't total crap. If you really want to know what games looked like in 1998, here is the Wikipedia list of games. I think age is making some of our posters forget just how far we've come in 10 years when it comes to graphics.

 

[Silverblade The Ench]

The armor and weapons look ok. But the faces aren't very good. Too round with unattractive hair.

well, it does beat the "anorexic" silliness you seem in some art
Big trade of between:
a) what the company can AFFORD to make
b) What the systems it's being targetted at can take (huge difference between my 8 gig quad core art PC, and Joe Shmo's Pentium *3*), and note it does have to be targetted at "generic PC users", so what they set as the bar *shrug*?
c) More detail ramps up the requirements for video card.

http://www.silverblades-suitcase.com/tutorials/22/light_gels.jpg
That is *NOT* meant to be good art, it's just a pic from a tutorial of mine (hence odd lighting rig).
That's high quality Poser character armour etc. *THAT* would take a lot of PC resources to do for the DDI stuff. However, stuff like that probably will become real time renderable in coming years...

 

[Eldorian]

Those shots make me want to play dnd online instead of at the table, even at my own house (my roommates and me play). Not because of graphics being good, either. They're low quality, but good enough for me.

 

[A'koss]

Believe it or not, but 3d modeling is trickier than 2d art. While these aren't the prettiest of graphics, they certainly aren't total crap. If you really want to know what games looked like in 1998, here is the Wikipedia list of games. I think age is making some of our posters forget just how far we've come in 10 years when it comes to graphics.

Is the sample dungeon really anything better than what you'd find in Heretic II?

Is there any animation at all in the digital game table?

 

[FourthBear]

They look good enough to substitute for the unpainted minis, coins, dice, random rocks and stones we usually use around our game table.