Playing animations on multiple models with only one rig?

[Phodex Games]

Hi,

I have not solved this problem, yet, although I have it for quiet a while. I want to make a system so a character can wear diffrent clothing. Say I have an Character which I want to wear a shirt. How is the best way to make the shirt play the same animation as the Character?

The only way, I know, which is working, is to put the same rig, the character has to the shirt inside your model software (Blender in my case) and export it. Then play the animation on both.

Recently I played around with seperating the armature from the model and add another model to the rig (as a parent) inside Leadwerks but that does not work. If you export only an rig from blender this rig has no animations inside Leadwerks. Even if you load animations in, the model, set as the parent of the rig, does not play any animation. Well I would have wondered if that worked anyway.

What I know, what works is if you parent an entity to an bone inside an rig in Leadwerks, this entity moves with the bone. This is very helpful for weapon animation, but what if I need more than one bone to affect my model? Any ideas on that?

[Marcousik]

Hey I made a 3d character that can change clothes ouut of mixamo and blender. It s much work but it is possible. It is alomost a long time time I made this but here is a video where you see at 3.00 min until end how the player is changing 2 different animated T-Shirt.

But it can change all clothes, beard, glasses, hats etc..

Rapidly: You have to upload/ animate/download with mixamo the same character with different clothes (char1 with cloths1, char2 with clothes2, etc..). Then upload the twice with Blender, parent the meshes of the one on the second. Delete the first character, export the second (with all the meshes parented) to .fbx and upload with LE. It should work!

 

[Phodex Games]

@Marcousik

 

Ok but how to hide the cloth now, and what if I dont want my model to have the cloths attached to them all the time. I am searching for a functionality to "merge" my cloth model to the players rig, so that it follows its bones, this should be possible somehow shouldnt it?

[Marcousik]

Yes  << "merge" my cloth model to the players rig >> that's what I was describing.

Those "clothes" have first to be animated with mixamo for example and then be parented to the main character (all animations having the same base skeleton).

To hide them, just put a invisible material on them. There are still there, but the gamer will not see them. Just an illusion but it works.

Like in the video I posted 3.18 -> 3.30, the main character is dropping the T-shirt out of the inventory: I'm just hidding the weared T-Shirt while giving him the clothe in the hands.

There is no simplier way to make this I think because the clothes required definivly to get animated, else the programm just does not know how the meshes have to move. It's not so simple as adding a weapon in the hand of the character. This would work for a hat on the head, but not for a shirt.

[Phodex Games]

@Marcousik Okey I guess I understand now what you mean, thank you for that. But I am searching for a solution, where my player model does not have every cloth available attached to it, because I think its not that smart. Or is this how that kind of stuff works normally, I have no idea.

I think this method should work for me, still it would be cool, to be able to have all the cloths as seperate entites inside Leadewerks and attach them to a rig inside leadwerks (like you would do inside your modelling software).

 

11 hours ago, Marcousik said:

the clothes required definivly to get animated, else the programm just does not know how the meshes have to move

Thats actually was what I am asking for, IF there is a way to tell Leadwerks, to use a specific rig for an yet unrigged model.

Actually, it does work if you put an entity to an BONE inside an rig, this object moves with the animation, but it does not work for multiple bones.

Edit: So again thank you for this idea, after thinking about it I guess its a pretty good solution, although not 100 % perfect.

[randomdude]

Hey man, if you download this guy here, you see it has seperate models. like the arms, legs and head are a model and the clothes are two seperate rigs. https://opengameart.org/content/mudeater-animated

I saw this in a lot of games that they seperate the arms and legs and body to change it.

you could try to play around with it.

The other point if it is just another shirt, simple change the texture. 

this load.animation works very well but only if you have two identical rigs and it uses all bones. it should work if you have two upper cases with the same rig.