Bioware visited GDC 2011 (Game Developer Conference) pre-Pax, and the footage is finally becoming available online (well, some of it). Bioware made a couple of presentations there one is included in the now available for download content.
The first presentation was “Advanced Visual Effects with Directx 11″ this panel was actually a whole bunch of game/video card peeps each talking about a little portion. The link to the Bioware (Andreas Papathanasis) portion doesn’t seem to be posted, but if you’re in to DX11 programming the ones that are posted might be worth a look.
Bioware’s “Cinematic Character Lighting in Star Wars The Old Republic” is, however up for download from gdcvault.com. It’s up in a couple of formats, the one that is the most awesome, is the Keypoint version, as it actually includes some video clip of in-game footage, while showing how BW did some of the lighting effects. Also available, are the less awesome PDF and Powerpoint versions.
Also worth a glance at, but not posted for download (or, from Bioware) is Cryptic Studio’s “Ultimate Customizability in Character Creation”. For all the problems STO has had, it’s character generation is very good. It’s on the gdcvault.com site, with a big “play now” button.