MMORPG style character customization

[Riceman]

I'm looking to produce a single-player RPG using Irrlicht. Among the many features I plan to include is the ability to customize your character's appearance.

There are two ways I could go about this - mesh deformation and texture manipulation.

In the first case, I would need to set up morph targets with sliders controlling them. Does Irrlicht natively support morph targets, or is this something I would need to write myself?

In the second case, which is probably easier and ultimately what I'd want to go with, I think I'd need to create some kind of generic texture for each customizable bit (hair, skin, eyes, etc.) that can be color-manipulated using sliders. Is that the right way to go, or is there a better option?

[vermeer]

I'd go for modeling types of characters. Withthe rule of only if very different morfology and scale, deserves a new model. between models, often usually needs new animations, sadly.

That is:

you model, ie, a dwarf, as generic as you can, a male, and a female, same stuff.

because later on you can add slight mesh modifs once animated (but this depends on the 3d artist package/skills of your artist or your self) like fat male, thin, some slight mesh addition or modification, etc, can be done in certain tools without redoing weights asignments nor anims.

Once the generic models are modeled. do their UV maps, tetxure them in valid textures, finished state, going specific or not, as you just use those tetxures as base ones for new totally diferent or just modfified verisons. If uv maps are EXCELLENT is quite easy for an skinner to do "new characters".provided some mesh modification hides a lot the trick, if welld one, totally.

Crazy for an rpg (imo, rpg single player is pretty doable) would be to do all steps every time you want a new character.

The mesh targets is a route I really dislike, personally. Too many times ppl is tempted to do not semales models but by pieces, parts unwelded, pretty uglly and unrealistic. (md3, ok for armour parts based models and the poses only needed for that game, but...yet tho i think a melt by code in visual apect was done, cant remember...but a 50% weight programmatically appplied is never good. i convinced a mate in certain team to trash it and let me do the weights..he wasnt convinced till saw the difference)

The re-texturing thing requires someone really knowing is job in uv mapping, do well readable tetxures. So anyone with just a 2d painting tool and a way to check in 3d (ie, engine, viewer, etc) , can reskin easily.
That's not only good for your production now, but future if do moddable.

Many tools allow sharing anims, internally or via scripts or plugins. My preferred workflow is do ie a male full animset, and if needed ad some geometry later, modify, etc, change tetxures, all from single set of anims, not duplicating work there, and just adding a bit in modeling and weighting area.... Is...not easy, but possible. Not with every package.

[Halan]

Is there a way to keep the animations between models as they all will have the same bones?

Just courios.

[wyrmmage]

yep; ISkinnedMesh->useAnimationFrom

[mc08]

I've been thinking of a similar problem. Since it's kind of the same subject i'll steal som space in your thread to post my question.

I'm working on a game with a couple of friends and we were thinking of some kind of way to attach armor to the character, unfortunately i have no idea how this usually is done. (think oblivion, morrowind, wow etc)
Is it a viable option to load every armor as a new animated mesh at the same place at the character? And then making this piece of armor steal the animation from the character and use at the piece of armor in question, and remove all the animation that this particular armor doesnt use.
Maybe someone have a link to some guide treating this matter?

//should maybe have made a new thread or something, oh well :/

[vermeer]

dunno, the old way, in max, was to attach in the 3d package, the weapon or armour(to the hand, etc)...

it'll follow anything animated , being child of hand, etc. Gotta be well positioned, tho...And often need extra anim for hand grabbing weapon, etc...
For a long distance camera game, not needed, just attach.

After attached, (always in 3d tool)you just go like I used to do with md2 files... if the exporter allow, export just "selected", so that you only select the weapon. If does not consider it must go to 0,0,0, it'd work. For me used to work. So I had just the files of the guys and women handling all weapons, with all anims. Then export weapon anims , and human anims, separately. Depending on accurateness wished, you may have to do extra modif duplicating some human animation ie cause is not same grabbing a magic wand than a fat axe...(heck, neither the weapon movement) You end up with all animas exported and with exact offset done for you, in every frame. You now go an combine by code as game goes rquiring. I guess you can do lots of those stpes by code. Yet tho I'd care for details like how it grabs weapons with fingers, etc...
I have friends than handle -in their jobs- so much with bones the thing, that leave the anmator with much less work, lol...But sometimes result is not very realistic.

[Halan]

yep; ISkinnedMesh->useAnimationFrom

Niceee

If you just use several textures for amor etc? But you will soon exceed the limit of 4 textures then..

[roelor]

yep; ISkinnedMesh->useAnimationFrom

Niceee

If you just use several textures for amor etc? But you will soon exceed the limit of 4 textures then..

Not if you make one texture for all objects (Im not saying all objects have the same colors) If jou uwv map it correctly, you can have like the top row for a few helmets, and then the row below for your arm pads and a row below for a armor, the row below for the legs and the row below for the feets and the row below for the accesoires.

[bitplane]

yep; ISkinnedMesh->useAnimationFrom

Niceee

If you just use several textures for amor etc? But you will soon exceed the limit of 4 textures then..

The 4 texture limit applies to texture layers per mesh buffer, not textures per mesh. This is for things like diffuse, normal map, specular map, lightmap, detail maps and so on. If you use several different diffuse textures on your mesh it will be made of several mesh buffers, each buffer can have 4 material layers but Irrlicht's built-in materials only use 2 of these anyway. You have to use custom shaders if you need all 4 layers.
Also Irrlicht's built-in vertex types only allow a max of two sets of texture coordinates per buffer, so you have to be clever with your tcoords if you need a bump map+specular map+light map shader.