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Scalable Characters - How Do You Approach It?

Discussion in 'Game Design' started by Dave_LeDev, Apr 26, 2017.

  1. Dave_LeDev

    Dave_LeDev

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    Where games offer more advanced Create-A-Character modes, they give the opportunity to scale things like height, limb length, girth, etc. How is this approached, especially without breaking animations that are designed with a particular height (like reaching out to grab something at 4 feet high). Are multiple animations made to compensate for that, or are there some kind of IK motion targets used?

    What I'm trying to do:

    I'd like to generate NPCs based on several different fields to create variety, including: Texture, attached objects, and body scale.

    In 3DS Max, scaling bones generally breaks the entire mesh, and I don't think morph targets are the way to go either. Then there's also the concern of breaking skin morphs. How is this generally solved?
     
  2. JoeStrout

    JoeStrout

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    Why would scaling bones break the mesh? I wonder if that's a 3DS Max problem... in Unity, I don't believe it's an issue.
     
  3. neoshaman

    neoshaman

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    You can look at UMA which is free for a solution that does that.
     
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  4. Dave_LeDev

    Dave_LeDev

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    It's apparently a thing with model editors in general. I've heard artists using Maya complain about the same. Breaks the solvers, I believe. When you have your model in a game engine, all the animations are baked and there's nothing being solved.
     
  5. Dave_LeDev

    Dave_LeDev

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    I was wondering if that tool would be a viable solution. Thanks!
     
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  6. JoeStrout

    JoeStrout

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    Right... but you'd be doing this bone scaling in Unity, not in the modeler, right?
     
  7. Dave_LeDev

    Dave_LeDev

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    That's what I wasn't fully certain about. For example, you create all your morph targets in your model editor.
     
  8. JoeStrout

    JoeStrout

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    Yeah, for morph targets that true, but bone scaling is pretty darn simple... I'd recommend just doing it in Unity.
     
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