Character armour animation.

[Scorpionra]

I'm currently working on an action rpg and need some advice concerning the model setup. I want to have customizable character models ie: hair style, face and armour. I'm using 3ds max 7.
I was thinking of making the hair and clothing part of the model and using alpha channel on tga for the textures of each hair style and outfit so I could animate them all together then attaching solid parts such as shoulder armour etc onto the bones.
This would work and I believe its how its done for world of warcraft but it presents some design limitations. Such as In order to have say a glove I'd have a solid part attached to the forearm to make up the glove from the wrist up but the hand would just have a flat texture. I supose this is fine for plate armour since its all basically solid and can be made up of many parts and attached to each bone. Problems arise when aiming for cloth or leather that isn't skin tight.

I was hoping for a solution that involves having attached armour that adopts the animation "skin" etc of the character model if that makes sense. That would provide flexible clothing.

I know that above I've given myself one alternative but I'm aiming for realism and would rather not have chunky motionless parts making up the armour on the characters since the game is mostly played in first person mode.

I'm open to whatever advice you can give .

[bitplane]

I think the way that this is done is to build and rig your accessories to the same bones as your character, then export each item separately.
you then have a choice - you can export the full range of animation for each object and play them all at the same time, or you can set the bone positions in the animated meshes (saving some memory and disk space).

disclaimer: I'm not an artist, I can't rig or animate and i'm not familiar with how the different exporters work. I'd expect problems with bone numbers (for example if unwanted bones are optimized away) and where the origin is in each mesh.
I'd also like to know if anyone has proved a method of doing this, as I'll need to do it myself one day.

[Scorpionra]

I was afraid that would be the case. I don't want to spend countless extra hours animating each accessory since I've already got my work cut out for me animating the characters themselves since the combat requires so many different animations.
Suppose its back to using solid parts and flat textures. I guess it isn't so bad since it would allow for far more armour sets with less editing needed. Suppose its my job as an artist to work with the limitations and make something that looks good anyway.

I'd still like to find another way but if I must I'll learn to live with the chunky attachments and just make really great textures for them .

[Dances]

Couldn't you, taking the example of a glove, make a model of the hand, a model of the fingers, a model of the wrist, load them all, and attach them each separately to the approprate bones? As long as your models curve inwards it should look okay, as you'd have seams on anything at those points anyway...

[Scorpionra]

I would do that for solid armour such as plate but for leather and cloth unless its black it won't look right. The characters will be complete models rather than made of parts so it would be noticeable since the camera is always pretty close to the models.

[MonkeyVoodoo]

It's late here so bear with me if I don't make any sense.

From what I can tell you are trying to do something similar to the WoW model setup right? From what I can tell by playing with their in-game models they have a standard character model to begin with (the one you create at lvl 1
). The model is not one solid mesh though. The hair, forearms and shins are separate meshes (and shoulder pads,cloaks, and quivers have floating mount points). They interchange the meshes as the armor changes,but still match up to the vertices's of the original mesh. (am I still making sense?)

They use a limited number of meshes with multiple skins to create most of the armor, with specialized meshes for the high end sets and tier armor.

To recreate this you could model your character and seperate the parts that you want to change. You can build new meshes in the same places to match up with the main body so that they blend in. So when you are finished you rig up the bones to all the meshes at once and animate it. when you export the animation files just select each mesh at a time.

I hope this is clear and that it helps. If you are still having problems I'll help out as much as i can.

Also, I suggest getting a WoW model veiwer.There is one that will export to milkshape 3d format. It will help you understand how they built their meshes.

[vermeer]

curious method...

seems doing the exchange not in the art side... but in the engine...in the art side, could be complex...I like to do very well my weights, and they vary from a fat dwarf to a woman elf...thinkess of the arm/shoulder, behaviour, motion, are all different...weights will be, and if not very hi pol, surely I'll need to place vertices differently for, for example shoulder, but other joints too...So...I'd need for sure different weights set per character...and possibly, different vertices positioning..though..maybe not touching those in the seams of joints (i guess it gets welded, otherwise will be seen a break in smoothing, and hiding seams all q3 method...no good..) even if wasting some polies... could do....

Dunno, for mid pol meshes, I see it...not simple, unless you simplify a lot meshes, and only change texture, but then, no need for more...hmm..havent seen wow characters...maybe they'r quite low poly, and maybe they make types of characters as different meshes (big guy, thin guy, big woman...etc... and those are the only unique.)

Maybe is pretty easy, I haven't either played too much with that, tho did something in certain job.In games I usually do a rig and skeleton per mesh, at least.

[vermeer]

reading a bit of your post...

you may want to try Skin Wrap feature of Max 7.

basically, lets you asign the motion of a low pol model, to a higher res model. In the vid I saw eons ago, when max 7 was released, (yup haven't needed since then , in the teams been) it also allwoed a later on asign of the original low pol skeleton , to the hi res mesh...

hmm...but maybe this is ok for a full body hi mesh. If you had already one, , after asigning to the skeleton, playing well with Max stack, I'd remove all vertices except "glove".I dunno if you can build only some parts and then only asign some bones. Havent used the feature, so havent had the usual nitty gritty fight with crap issues.

I guess...if only where a few things...I simply would model (and then position in place) those parts, and then, asign then to the bones, settings the weights...If you use Skin(which I prefer) modifier instead of Physique, is very easy later on to copy weights if you mirrored well the mesh glove with the character mid axe... There are some external plugins for this, but max internal works perfect for skin, cutting by half the work of weighting.

How many "type of gloves" u'r gonna have...that many? I doubt it. I guess given enough thickness, u can use same for all. And remember the mirror weights trick...

You could , playing very carefully with the stack, if know s ome tricks, scale up the glove a bit, for some cases...but be cautious, you can wreck internally all rig. Keep allways safe copies.

And I choose gloves to explain as is the most complex case by far.

If you're exporting as vertex animation format (md3, etc) , then , you can use whatever which has vertices(with the limits of each format!) in max and export, no issues. And Surely skin wrap will allow the reasign of bones. But cant bet for something I have dealt in depth with. The other thing, yep, I have done.