Building Character Customization

I just finished writing up part 2 of my Building Character Customization articles, and thought I'd post it here in case it helps someone with their own project(s). The first part is focused on Blender to export FBX files, but can be generalized to any other 3d package as well. The second part is all Unity, and how those FBX files are loaded to support custom parts on characters.

http://undertheweathersoftware.com/building-character-customization-part-1/
http://undertheweathersoftware.com/building-character-customization-part-2/

I hope someone finds this useful!

 

Should really Place an ADVANCED tag on this, seems bit more Pipe-lining...
GREAT information though really gave me more incite to blender and rigs..
Thanks

 

Well i've been looking a long time for this! Your explanations are very good!

 

Thanks. It looks like Part 1 is a little outdated with the new Blender 2.8+. I'll perhaps update it one day.

 

At least it answered some of my question. I was thinking at other ways to do some deep character customization (nested prefabs, parenting gameobjects with their own armature etc) but your way of doing seems the easier i found. My last problem is : how could i add a character part with its own armature and its own animations. Should I merge the armatures and animate the whole thing? Should I try to animate the part as a child?
Character customization is pretty complex... So thanks for your post haha

 

I don't understand. The way I described how I set up layers in Part 1 of the article was so that adding parts and animating them would be done in that one file. If you need a different body type, like tall or bulky, you'd have to create a new armature, animations, and parts. For example, you couldn't have one gauntlet for different body types. I mean, you could, but it probably wouldn't be seamless. That's the problem with different body types. If you wanted to author the same gauntlet type for two different body types, you'd have to author them separately, and something that a lot of inexperienced devs don't realize when building out their MMO. Lol. Hence the content explosion, and another unfinished game.