A Host of Equip-able Bierkrugs!

Popularly known as "steins" or stein krugs, these wonderful and fancy drinking mugs are a step above those tawdry wooden things found scattered across stained tavern tables! Fit for festivals of all kinds these have arrived just in time to become available by the end of October.

Hello all! Scottie here!

I was hoping to get these finished last week, but a series of unfortunate events regretfully delayed their completion. However, I've just finished the modeling and texture-mapping of them, and am finally ready to bring them into our editor, and massage all the wonderful materials I'll create for them so that they can glisten and gleam like real burnished metal, painted ceramic, and glazed earthenware!

The ones you can see below fulfill the four initial version requests I was given (the Telethon Virtue version, the two "Ornate" versions to be sold in the store, and a Craftable version). I dug deep into a variety of references for numerous different fabrications styles of steins to create the four initial unique shapes and substance looks displayed here. There is already talk of more versions in the future!




The word "stein" is of German origin. The etymology of the word is either from "Stein Krug" (meaning stone jug/mug) or from "Steingut" (meaning stone goods). They can be made of earthenware, pewter, wood, ceramics, crystal, porcelain, creamware, silver, or glass. They have a handle and a hinged lid, are decorated and sometimes hand-painted. As I mentioned above, I've made four initial versions (with 4 different visual styles) named in some cases to help link them to the areas and cultures of our world...

The first is the Silver Virtuekrug, designed by master silversmiths of Port Graff in honor of the Virtues and Principles of New Britannia... Once I've applied all the proper material shaders to it, the surface will shine and gleam like pure silver! Its dull looks now are merely a temporary byproduct of a quick, "in-progress" working render in Max. Eventually there may be a shining gold version of this richly-detailed piece as well.



The second is the Ornate Porcelain Brittany Stein seen below, honoring that city by showcasing colorful vignettes of various picturesque views within the city walls. Designed by master porcelain artisans in Regalis, there may be more of these eventually made to honor other cities of New Britannia... Once I've applied the correct material shaders to this one in Unity, the surface will have the glossy look of fine glazed porcelain, with a bit more vibrancy to its colors!



The third is the Ornate Saltglaze Drachvald stein, designed by masters of ceramic pottery that dwell in and around the area of Eastmarch. It is said that the old baron of that region long ago commissioned a piece much like this, causing the development of a unique pottery technique called salt-glazing which set a new standard in striking beauty for this style of ceramics... (I found a wonderful antique reference piece for the delicate figures from our own mundane world old enough to be in the public domain to closely emulate, since I was very much taken by how lovely it was). Like the piece above, the surface will eventually have the glossy look of fine glazed ceramics!



The fourth one is the Craftable Earthenware bierkrug, with variations of this theme made by crafters throughout all of New Britannia! Though it is meant to represent the basic craftable version, I wanted this one to be something I would be proud to own myself...talking the time to lovingly decorate it as would a creative artisan in any village or town. It may be made from baser materials compared to the ornate versions, but these (and any like it) will never be available in our store, and instead must be purchased from those who take the time to craft it in-game. Its surface will eventually have the rough gloss of lightly-glazed earthenware, with more evident cuts in the design due to the use of decent normal maps I'll create.



Also,... I spoke with our wonderful animator Matt and the hinged lids that open when you drink from them are a GO! Check it out!!! ^_^



I hope you've enjoyed this peek at my most recent "in-progress" labor of love! Look for more images next week, after I finalize all their materials, and show them as decorations within the game environment!

Scottie ^_^

 

Glad to have one of the Virtuekrug's, and I'll have to get the Brittany one since its my hometown. I'll look forward to crafting a few more to replace those standard "mugs" with, too. Those are awesome pieces, Scottie!

Looking forward to an Elad's krug, depicting the glorious lighthouse and maybe some scenic fishing scenes.

 

Loving these - great job....

 

YES! Once again, you have out done your self sir!

Can't wait for brewing to be in the game and my brewery in Owls Head can official open!

 

Would also LOVE to see an Oktoberfest style glass mug like this @Scottie :

 

Oh man,....I'd LOVE to be able to do a convincing glass stein (or convincing glass "anything") in our Unity Engine... The hard part of glass is capturing the visual distortions of objects behind it due to the refraction and reflection of light both on, through, and within the glass material simultaneously... The caustics indicated by these qualities require a complexity of shader that we really don't have at our disposal for this project, and is not supported by the code we use to render objects in our scenes in real-time...

Literally, what makes glass look like glass to us, is the way other objects get distorted by looking through it, and the way light plays both on and in it... It can't be faked by a painted texture and some specular transparency, it must "distort" the light to feel "real", and that's not something we can do well... With larger objects and a moving water distortion shader we can get close, but with smaller more static objects, even the effect of that fairly decent shader gets lost... Hopefully in the future we'll get something that works well enough for us to achieve the delicious, in-game, "real-time" glass-effect that we all crave...

 

I'm surprised you wouldn't be able to do something like this using the FastGlass shader in this asset. Granted, you guys just went through a lot of work removing the default shader, so you probably don't want to play with putting another in, but from what I've seen in my projects it works wonderfully. Granted, I only have a dynamic "sun" on a day/night cycle and some pre-baked torches, not a host of player-set lights, so I don't know how it would react there.

 

You could maybe get around this by making it a filled "glass" beer mug. So the beer is inside and you would not notice the subpar reflections.

 

Genius!

 

I guess this means brewing is coming soon

 

This is true, although it also creates another issue to solve, which is; how do you make a clear beer mug not look terrible when you move it around, and the liquid contained within looks like a totally static hardened resin... Making "sloshy" liquids to fill clear glass steins might just make Justin (who integrates all the materials we can use) suffer a spontaneous head explosion! ^_^

 

I certainly like the look of that... I'll show it to Justin and see if he thinks we'd be allowed to integrate it into our game...

Scottie ^_^

 

And so here are all the steins rendered in our game engine, with all their proper Unity shaders and mapping! You can see how they look in broad daylight, how they look at night (it's amazing how much detail you can still see), and lastly how they look with a bit of warm firelight shining on them in the evening hours... I was dubious about how well the details would hold up, but I'm very pleased with how they turned out.





And of course they will be items you can equip as well as decorate with. Hopefully these are keepsakes you will feel proud to have adorning your shelves and mantelpieces! Even while visiting the dinner parties of your neighbors, stein in hand, the lovely look and details of these collectibles will be something to be admired...

Take care everyone!

Scottie ^_^

 

@Scottie : Those look great!

 

Right on!

 

One solution to the "beer in glass looks frozen" question is to have proper animations using a few different pictures of the beer in glass. Some with it tilting left some tilting right some level, some with drops falling...

Then, you provide a few new emotes like "spills his beer" or "throws beer in face" or expand the "drink" emote by adding "drink beer slowly". "Chug entire beer" "juggle three full beers in glass steins whilst drinking a sip of each" etc...

@Scottie
@Sheamus McGuinness

 

Heh! Nice! These are fun ideas!

 

To be honest,...I don't know! It certainly would be cool to see the arrival of these coincide with something like that!

Scottie ^_^

 

Haha - hint hint
(Bad time to have quit drinking .. and not be an Edelman .. sigh .. always regretting finding out about this project late and trying to catch up )

 

These are cool!