How do character customization menus work?

[Jakuryusei]

Character customization in RPGs is almost standard, but I'm not really sure how it works...

 

It sort of looks like they have extra bones under the face that are repositioned as the sliders are moved, but then they're also able to shrink and enlarge areas like noses and eyes, which doesn't quite seem like something you'd be able to do with bones alone.

 

I'm sorta in the preliminary stages of just planning now. No coding laid out and only a few assets modeled. I figured that I should get started on a strong foundation before I end up in a quagmire of wasted effort.

 

I'll be coding in LUA with the Indie Edition of Leadwerks (which I've already bought), I'm using makehuman for the humanoid characters, and sculptris mostly for the non-humanoid. I'm sooorta thinking that I might have to make very different menus, or no menus for non-human heads, but that wouldn't be a huge sacrifice. (It seemed to work for Bioware's Krogan, after all.)

 

Here's what the two non-humanoids look like... Textures are definitely far from final on the 2nd one. Little derpface doesn't even have her eyes or mandibles yet!

 

[Edit] Oooh, shoot. I messed up! The little pics have to be backwards forever now.

[Guppy]

Character customization in RPGs is almost standard, but I'm not really sure how it works...

 

It sort of looks like they have extra bones under the face that are repositioned as the sliders are moved, but then they're also able to shrink and enlarge areas like noses and eyes, which doesn't quite seem like something you'd be able to do with bones alone.

 

There is no fixed solution but for things like body type, etc I would use vertex animation ( going from obeses to skinny ) and just blend that in with the rest of the animations.

 

But that only gets you so far - hairstyles, etc will require swapping out meshes.

[dennis]

Think of parenting. Attach different weapons to bones...

Also, as guppy said swap put meshes

[Jakuryusei]

There is no fixed solution but for things like body type, etc I would use vertex animation ( going from obeses to skinny ) and just blend that in with the rest of the animations.

 

But that only gets you so far - hairstyles, etc will require swapping out meshes.

 

Oh! So basically what's being shown here? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_KCwMM3iZlUJust set up an animation this way and... I guess pause it? Can you just make animations jump strait to certain frames and hold in place there?

 

<br />

Think of parenting. Attach different weapons to bones... <br />

Also, as guppy said swap put meshes<br />

 

Weapons will come later! Though I will be treating body parts kind of like equipment, so I will need to do that for hands, claws, pincers, ect!

[YouGroove]

For face shape customisation for now i would just suggest you using bones. In your customization menu;clicking on a button would rotate one or more bones to change cheeks shape or nose or anything else.

 

We should ask to shape keys support in imported FBX models, if i'm not wrong this is already supported in Unity.

[Guppy]

Oh! So basically what's being shown here? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_KCwMM3iZlUJust set up an animation this way and... I guess pause it? Can you just make animations jump strait to certain frames and hold in place there?

 

you should be able to do just that yes