For those who know about designing game characters.
Hi there,
I have an idea for a game (iOS and Android) and I'm planning to hire a company to develop my game. But before contacting companies I would like to learn a little bit about designing game characters.
The game is like Puzzle & Dragons, only in Puzzle & Dragons there is a lack of action and that is where I want to make a difference!
Instead of characters getting attacked by nothing, I want to display action and attacks. I want to add stand out graphics!
It should have shell-shading graphics, an example would be Naruto Shippuden: Ultimate Ninja Storm.
As I have many ideas for this game, I first would like to know what are the possibilities and limitations of designing the characters for this game.
Therefore I would like to have a conversation with someone who has designed game characters before or someone who knows exactly what he / she is talking about.
Just to let you know, I did read a little bit about creating game characters but I started just a week ago.. so I'm a noob!
I would like to implement character creation in the game, the features of the characters that could be customized are:
- color of the eyes (black / brown / blue / green)
- color of the hair (black / brown / blond / red)
- type of haircut (bald / short / long)
- skin tone (white / black)
* These are just features to begin with, depending on the outcome of the conversations here I know for myself what features I could implement more..
I know that the creation of a character is called a mesh, and to customize meshes one could apply mesh swapping or mesh stitching.
If I'm correct, for the above mentioned features mesh stitching should be applied.. therefore the designer should create:
- 4 meshes of the eyes (black / brown / blue / green)
- 8 meshes of the hair (4 meshes of the 4 colors with short hair + 4 meshes of the 4 colors with long hair)
- 2 meshes of the body (white / black) - the body will have a karate suit
With this being said, I would like to know how long it will take to create:
1. a mesh of a pair eyes
2. a mesh of a haircut
3. a mesh of a body
* Is everything I wrote above correct, or doesn't it work like that?
** And who does the cell shading part, the designer of the mesh or the 3D animator?
I have an idea for a game (iOS and Android) and I'm planning to hire a company to develop my game. But before contacting companies I would like to learn a little bit about designing game characters.
The game is like Puzzle & Dragons, only in Puzzle & Dragons there is a lack of action and that is where I want to make a difference!
Instead of characters getting attacked by nothing, I want to display action and attacks. I want to add stand out graphics!
It should have shell-shading graphics, an example would be Naruto Shippuden: Ultimate Ninja Storm.
As I have many ideas for this game, I first would like to know what are the possibilities and limitations of designing the characters for this game.
Therefore I would like to have a conversation with someone who has designed game characters before or someone who knows exactly what he / she is talking about.
Just to let you know, I did read a little bit about creating game characters but I started just a week ago.. so I'm a noob!
I would like to implement character creation in the game, the features of the characters that could be customized are:
- color of the eyes (black / brown / blue / green)
- color of the hair (black / brown / blond / red)
- type of haircut (bald / short / long)
- skin tone (white / black)
* These are just features to begin with, depending on the outcome of the conversations here I know for myself what features I could implement more..
I know that the creation of a character is called a mesh, and to customize meshes one could apply mesh swapping or mesh stitching.
If I'm correct, for the above mentioned features mesh stitching should be applied.. therefore the designer should create:
- 4 meshes of the eyes (black / brown / blue / green)
- 8 meshes of the hair (4 meshes of the 4 colors with short hair + 4 meshes of the 4 colors with long hair)
- 2 meshes of the body (white / black) - the body will have a karate suit
With this being said, I would like to know how long it will take to create:
1. a mesh of a pair eyes
2. a mesh of a haircut
3. a mesh of a body
* Is everything I wrote above correct, or doesn't it work like that?
** And who does the cell shading part, the designer of the mesh or the 3D animator?
Replies
I actually work for a company that's developing an online computer game for children where the player's character (avatar) is extremely customizable. For the meshes we only use 1 body mesh with two texture variations, a boy and a girl. I'm the modeler/animator on those but we have a texture artist who did the textures in a warm grayscale so that the coders could change the colors of skin through code with a color overlay type of effect. It gives the appearance of a ton of different skins while only using 1 mesh and 2 textures. This could work for the eyes and hair for your characters.
To add to this we allow for 2 color choosing options in our game, one for the skin and one for the eyes which use the same mesh and texture. So for what you're describing I think you'd really only need 1 body mesh (this is a bald, naked character including the eyes), and 2 meshes for the hair. You could get away with 3 textures using the same technique as listed above; 1 for each mesh.
Cell shading would likely not be done by the character animator or modeler. It would have to be done by a coder of some sort (I don't really understand code so I don't know what this really entails). I imagine that the Naruto games have someone (or a small team) dedicated entirely to the shader. I've never worked in mobile but you have to remember that mobile so I don't know the limitations of it, just in case I'm completely wrong here.
http://wiki.polycount.com/wiki/SkankerzeroModularCharacterSystem
The cell shader look is done with Shaders
http://wiki.polycount.com/wiki/Shaders
I would suggest hiring an expert for an hour or so, to help you refine your ideas, and get some actionable info. You can find someone by posting a job ad here
http://www.polycount.com/forum/forumdisplay.php?f=82