player mode input Thread - TheIntercooler Games

So I've been putting some thought into the player models for this game and I've got some questions and other stuff that i think will have to be cleared up.

first off i'm not sure how crazy you guys want to go into the customizing for the player models

Elderscrolls III Morrowind

in this image I've drawn a line over every body part that has been split into its own mesh, they did this so that they could just replace that part of the body with the mesh of your outfit allowing for pants and no shirt or a single part of armor, this game allows for, set of boots (comes in a pair), pants, shirt, helmet, shoulder armor (this did not come in pairs), and gloves (also did not come in pairs).

Elderscrolls V Skyrim

Skyrim is much simpler in this manner you are allowed to customize boots(comes in pairs) armor (chest and legs) gloves (comes in pairs) and helmet

as you can see there are less seams (splits) in the mesh the head hands and feat are separate from the base body

I've even seen some rpg games that only allow for one full outfit to be used at once

we will also have to consider other things like if they can choose their face and hair? then we will need the engine to know with one helmet remove the hair and with another (like a full face covered helmet) to remove head and hair.

also something else i have not looked into yet, i know there is a way to attach a mesh to a bone (say helmet to head bone) but i'm unsure if there is a way for animated meshes that have deforming parent bones, say we attach gloves to our fore arm bone will the mesh accept animation data from the finger bones? i'm hoping one of the coders will know more about this as i haven't touched cube engine in a while

I kind of like the way skyrim does it, I feel its a much simpler approach for us.

I think for the head leaving it standard without change should be fine honestly. Users aren't really going to see their faces and having the ability to change their outfits should allow for enough customization.

sounds good! also i did look into the attached items using animations and the docs say that as long as they share the same armature system it will accept parent animations

A_W_O_L__ wrote:

sounds good! also i did look into the attached items using animations and the docs say that as long as they share the same armature system it will accept parent animations

That sounds great! My plan is that the new weapons and attire will come from achievements that the players earn for different things ie game modes, win streaks etc I will write it all out in detail for another post.

So we can probably get away with using a model like a weapon a few times with just a reskin so HOPEFULLY it wont drive you insane.

honestly simple models aren't that big of deal, the player models are what get daunting but i have an idea as a way to make it easier this time, my idea is to make or find some basic male and female models that have the same basic proportions and rig it then model and texture the player model, that way I can use the same rig for all of them, this will also allow them to share animations also, i read your email and i understand that we are going for a semi cartoon feel, but there are several cartoon styles we can try to accomplish anywhere from team fortress to anime or manga to chibi

btw these are just examples pulled from google images i own none of this artwork

If you can do them in this type of body build I think it will work just fine. I like your idea we don't have to kill ourselves just gotta work smarter.

mkay that model is made after a manga series sword art online, that would be kinda on the same page as the second pic with a little less detail, this shouldn't be to hard to pull off. judging from this pick this will be more of a mid evil fantasy, (not so much true to time accurate)

so if this is the style we are choosing i think i feel that we will have to keep this in mind when we are making textures for the mapping so we can keep the overall theme and feel so we aren't putting anime models next to real wood or stone, this should be good too as if we are ever looking for inspiration we can look up some sword art online in google images, not necessarily to copy their art but to inspire ours.

I was thinking more on how the style it is designed in, its not as "kidish" as the Chibi which I know is its point but its also not as detailed as the Anime it seems to be in the middle of the two.

I agree that the textures and models will have to be close to this style for it really to all come together.

PS:

He doesn't have to wear this style of clothing I more like the overall proportions of the character and feel it has the right amount of details for our game. I am leaving the design up to you as you've always blown it out of the park with your RR models.

The game will not be as dark as morrowind so maybe a fantasy / darkage mix?

Ed

right no i understand, that clothing looks very modern fantasy which is not at all what we are looking for, we are going to also look into hair styles for the females especially, im not sure if you were aslo going to go with just one style to choose from like the faces? i thought at least we could allow them to change some of the colors on the costumes/hair but we are going to have to be careful to not pick to big of hair as we dont have a physics engine, i can animate some of it but that only goes so far,

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also i found a pretty good art software out there that is completely free that allows you to tile your photos you are working on so that it makes it really easy to hand paint seamless textures

www.krita.org

I've pretty much fallen in love with this software

So I've been working a bit on the female base first (mostly cause that's all i could find good reference pics for) i was able to build this from the ground up over the past couple of days, i need to put more detail on the body face and hands yet but how does the overall proportions feel? now is the best time to speak up because its still fairly low poly yet

added details to the face hands and feet

Edited by: A_W_O_L__

I think its great! I like the way it looks.

Hey ed! just letting you know that i'm still working on the character i'm currently in the retypo stage which can be long and tedious, i was also wondering how you were coming along with the rest of the team haven't heard much for a while, hope all is going well!