A sneak peek at the improved male and female body meshes coming with the Percival update.

July 4, 2019 at 12:10 PM by PrintsKaspian

The Percival update arrives on July 10, bringing a host of new customization features to the world of Albion. As the development process for customization has progressed, our art team has taken the opportunity to make improvements to the basic character models for both male and female characters. These changes are visible both in the classic character creation screen and the new appearance customization UI, as well as in the game itself.

According to Marcus Koch, Art Director for Albion Online, the time was right to update the game's characters. "As new assets for the game had an increased level of detail," he explains, "we wanted to bring the older assets up to date as well." The old character models had approximately 500 polygons, while the new ones have between 1500 and 2000. "We were able to equalize the poly count between "naked" and "clothed" characters without any negative effect on game performance, so this seemed like the perfect time for an upgrade."

Improvements to the so-called "naked" character models aren't just visible when the characters are unclothed (though in a full-loot game, every character will likely end up naked sooner or later). They're also visible any time a character's face, hair, and beard are exposed, which is the case with numerous armor builds. The original character models are some of the oldest artwork in the game, having been untouched for almost seven years, so this update was the perfect opportunity to bring them up to date.

Check out the improved character meshes when Percival goes live on July 10 - and be sure to take the new character customization system out for a spin!