Sansar: Character Customization

With Project Sansar in development at the Lab the inhabitants of Second Life™ are wondering what avatars will look like in the new world. I don’t know. But, a game just reaching its final Beta test may give a clue. It certainly shows what is possible. Check this video.

The game is Bless – Embers in the storm. An MMO. The Korean developers have been working on this game without much hype. The video shows an AWESOME character customization capability. You may have noticed it includes tattoos and even scares. You can tweak the eyelashes… (Note: Bless is just completing its 3rd closed beta and headed toward open beta. Bless news. And we have no idea when a US version will be available.) 

Bless likely won’t have the creativity that we have in Second Life. They will have a huge range of premade possibilities with an, obviously, exceptional ability to modify them. But, I think they will only want highly optimized content. So, they may have to forego user created content and  the creativity that comes with it. I have to guess as I didn’t find anyone discussing any creative possibilities in Bless.

I also wonder if they’ll have anything like our Outfits, which I love. I doubt it. But, I suspect changing clothes will be relatively simple.

We know from years of bitching about the SL Avatar and the popularity of mesh bodies that SL users want a better avatar. But, we also know that the present avatar customization process in SL is complex. Many think the complexity of SL is a reason it has not achieved mass appeal. Is it possible to balance the two seemingly mutually exclusive aspects? May be.

So, will Sansar have a SL-like simplified character customization tool? Or something more like what we see in Bless? Or could the Lab go for some simplified in viewer thing and leave the door open for extensive modification via 3rd party modeling tools (Maya, Blender, etc.)?

From what I have heard so far, I think they will try to achieve; easy and better. So, we may see a UI more like the one in Bless and the ability to bring in more of what can be done in Maya and Blender character creation. I’m guessing, but I do think we will have better more customizable avatars in Sansar.

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