Well after managing to score some time to work on things, I managed to nearly complete the male npc model. I decided to take a different route then when I firsted made the model and instead of building it off one object and composed it of several.

The model is broken up by moveable pieces, upper/lower arms/legs, hands/feet, head & torso. Basicly its set to move without any bones.

Now the animation will be frame based, however U3d supports a vertex tweening which is supposed to fill in the gaps between movements. Now I'm not 100% certain how this will work with the model I've constructed, but hopefully it will work…but its also not a must for their to be smooth animations.

It'd just be nice.

I've also decided to drop bump mapping for its normal uses and try using for other things like special effects and possibily water too. I'd sacrafice refraction for a more controlable water effect anyway, as reflection will actually be fairly easy to apply.

Other changes I've decided to make is dramaticly reducing the draw and fog distances. Mostly because then I can have more on screen details without dealing with background stuff.

But who knows, I'm still playing around with things. I am happy with the basic visuals, it'll definatly look nice and artistic to make up for it not being realistic looking. Whats with realism these days anyways? Isn't that why we play games, to escape it?