Pantheon rebuilds player armor meshes to fix spellcaster robes

Visionary Realms said it has reworked the way player armor is built in Pantheon: Rise of the Fallen, beginning with spellcaster robes, in a May 15 dev diary tied to the game's Combat and Progression update.

The studio said players of robe-wearing classes had told it for some time that the game's spellcaster robes did not look good, and that it agreed with the assessment. Fixing the appearance, however, required changing the underlying construction method rather than simply redrawing the garments.

According to the diary, the previous approach to building armor was responsible for a range of visual problems when the same pieces had to work across different player races, many of which the community had reported as bugs over the past year. Full-length robes proved particularly difficult because of how they interact with character animation, with the studio citing knees clipping through the fabric during a run as the kind of artifact it wanted to eliminate. The team also wanted a system that could produce a wide range of looks without requiring animation work for every style variation.

The replacement uses a set of overlapping clothing and armor meshes that can be shown or hidden to assemble a given look, while remaining skinned so that character animation continues to work. Visionary Realms said the method was chosen with texel density and frame rate in mind, pointing to raid scenes in which many players wearing different armor appear on screen at once.

The studio said the systemic changes will apply to all player armor it creates from now on, and that existing armor will be updated as capacity allows.

The diary included early renders of the new robes, which the studio noted were produced outside the game while the assets are being brought in and connected to the relevant systems. One design, described as a simple robe, is intended for much of the starting spellcaster equipment and will appear in several colors as well as hooded and hoodless versions. A second, more elaborate robe was shown in several color variations. The studio said it is one of many new player robe designs planned for the Combat and Progression update, and did not give a date for the update itself.