One of the main reasons we're developing the full-body avatar option is to give you even more ways to express yourself in Rec Room! We believe one big part of how you express yourself comes from the clothing that you wear. As we said in our last dev blog, the full-body option will support all existing avatar items at release. Today we’ll talk about how that will work, and about the new items the full-body will unlock.
Converting Torso Items
Sleeves were one of the first parts of dressing the full-body we thought about. None of the existing items have meaningful sleeves since the floating beans don’t have arms, so we had two options - have all tops on the full-body be sleeveless or figure out a smart way to add sleeves to the old items when they are on the full-body. We decided on the latter.
To do that we needed to create a universal sleeve design that could apply to the many different styles of torso items Rec Room has to offer. We've created these concept designs, where one of our skilled 3d artists will then take a sleeve style that best matches the base item and cut holes, stitch, and apply color and materials to each item. The end result will be sleeves that look like they were there all along!
All items at release will have a version for floating beans and one for full-bodies. This image shows how we plan to create the latter from the former.
Once we figured out the plan for sleeves, we had to address the fact that many torso items already included a bit of a “leg item” in them. For example, the tan pants on the hoodies above or the skirt on the jacket dress below. We can’t just extend them all the way down, since we want you to be able to mix and match tops and bottoms so you have greater ability to get your avatar to look like you want it to. So again we’ll turn to our awesome 3d artists.
Each torso item will get individual treatment so it looks great on the full body option.
For some items, like the hoodie, where a leg item is implied, they’ll trim off the bottom bit letting you replace it with whatever it you want. For other items, like the jacket dress, where it’s more all one piece, they’ll leave the bottom bit in place, and you’ll get to choose what you want to wear under it (e.g. a pair of tights).
Converting Hand Items
Another bit of anatomy you’ll get with the full-body option is fingers. That means we need to figure out how to make a bunch of items that were made for a wristless mitten-hand work on a hand with five digits that’s attached to an arm.
This one is more of a work in progress, but we hope the same principle we used for sleeves will work here. In a sense, we’ll have five little sleeves, one for each finger, that those awesome artists will match to our existing items to turn mittens into gloves.
Ironing Out the Wrinkles
While we’ll do our best, converting old items to work with the full-body option won’t be 100% perfect. There will likely be bits that look off or broken at first. But we’ll keep iterating on them until we get all the wrinkles out.
And don’t worry, none of these changes will affect the items when floating beans wear them. If you choose to stick with the floating bean avatar your items will look like they always have!
New Leg and Foot Items!
Now for the shiny, sparkly new stuff we're really excited to introduce - leg and foot items! We think this new clothing goes a long way to helping you be yourself, or whoever you want to be, in Rec Room.
For foot items, we’ll have about four starter options at launch. We’re currently thinking: sneakers, boots, flats, and sandals. Sneakers will likely be the default because it's unsanitary to be walking around the Rec Center in bare feet. We’ll add more foot items as time goes on.
These shoes are for mock-up purposes only, but we’re excited for all the potential foot items. Flippers? Bunny slippers? So many possibilities!
Similar to the foot items, we’ll have about four starter leg items and more soon after. We’re thinking about starting with jeans (default), tights, shorts, and a skirt.
What else should we add?
What’s Next?
We’ll be making lots more of all kinds of items, and might eventually take advantage of other new item slots that the full-body option gives us. No promises, but here are some things we’ve discussed: nail polish, socks, and nose and eyebrow piercings.
Let us know what you’d like to see!
Also, the work we’re doing under the hood for the full-body option will allow you to make avatar items for each other, but that’s a topic for another dev blog.