Creating and animating changeable equipment for characters

Gharex

Hello dear community of Polycount,

I am struggling a bit with a recent project a friend and I want to start. I am planing to create a character in 3ds Max which I am also gonna rig afterwards. This character will have no clothes on as I want to make it possible to equip certain items like gloves, pants and robes in the game. My problem is that I do not really know how I must create those visible items.

Let us stay with the example of a glove: how should I model it so the character can wear it later on? Is it enough to create a glove model that fits the size of the character's hand and attach it to him in game so it automatically moves with him or do I have to create a certain animation for the glove? The same problem goes with the robes I am going to create. As the character will not wear it right from the start, how can I create a fitting model of a robe that moves while the character runs? I do not want to use realistic models that stick to the character model in realtime as he moves, it is gonna be a bit comic-like game where I only need to use a fixed animation.

Thank you for your help and time!

Greetings,

Gharex

jabennett

Hey there Gharex, since your model's clothes don't need to move realistically, I would suggest weighting your clothes' meshes to your character's skeleton using Skin Wrap. From there, you should be able to tweak the weights as much as needed for correct deformation, and then export your clothes independently of the character mesh with correct skin weights. If done right, you should be able to have them conform to animations that you have made for the character in the engine.

Here's a link to a discussion here on Polycount.
And one to a series of Youtube videos that should still be relevant.

Gharex

Hey jabennett,

thank you for your answer!
So the only thing I need to do with the model of the gloves is to create them so they fit the size of the hand, paint weights on them so they do not deform and export them as a mesh? So I guess the engine will understand on which position the gloves need to be.
Would you please tell me how I need to export them so it is set to which skeleton they belong?

Thanks for your time!


Greetings,

Gharex

musashidan

You'll be skinning(or skin wrapping) the clothing items to the same skeleton as the character. Then you import the character[to engine] and choose the skeletal mesh on import. Then for every item that you import to engine you can choose the same skeleton as the character's.

Gharex

Hey musashidan,

thank you for your answer as well!
I think I understand how it is done now, thanks to both of you. Could you tell me how I need to do the same thing with weapons? I read that they need an extra bone on the back or in the hand to be attached to it when the character wields them or has them sheathed on the back. Is that right?


Greetings,

Gharex

musashidan

Is it a 3rd-person char? What engine are you using? In UE you can use sockets for weapons. Or set it up in your 3D package by linking the weapons to the hand. It depends whether you want the weapon switchouts to be fully animated.

Gharex

I guess the switching between a sheated weapon and one in the hands should be visible in an animation as it will be in third-person. The engine we use will be Unity.
Do I need to animate the weapon in a different animation so it is visible or is a character animation of the person drawing the weapon enough?