Native Dancer: General Updates
Author: Ariann Rousu – Native Dancer Digital Artist
The Native Dancer Metaverse Project is making progress in various areas of development as well as taking on other endeavors that will help the project overall reach some end goals. Aside from continuing to build gaming assets (accessories) for our characters, I have begun an online gaming program at Vertex School. Taking classes here strengthens my sculpting skills and allows me to learn game optimization techniques, which will help the game work better.
Pictured above are some examples of the steps I am learning in this process. The barrel you see in the bottom two images is a sample of the high Poly (upper left image) texture being overlayed on the low poly (upper right image) example. The next step will be adding more texture details to the barrel and crate using Adobe Substance Painter.
This process helps with game optimization by allowing more assets in the gaming environment to render in each scene and still maintain high detail. This is essential to reaching our goals of having realistic regalia and movement, as regalia is complex. When in motion the regalia takes a lot of computing power, and by optimizing assets in the gaming environment, it will allow more power to go toward the game functions. I also am learning other aspects of game creation such as industry standards, and using different workflows that will enhance various parts of Native Dancer.
Other members of the team involved in Native Dancer’s making have been working toward a milestone goal of displaying the current grass dancer in a VR headset. We are continuing to use uDraper in this process and will have the male grass dancer on display in an art show, at this year’s 55th annual UND Writer’s Conference “Horizons of Knowledge”. Included in the art show will be other pieces celebrating the work that has gone into the making of Native Dancer so far.
