3D modelling a Video Game Character - Body under clothes or no?

Jadenie

Hey guys! I hope I'm posting in the right sub-forum. I have a quick question about clothing for video game characters. Let's say I first make a base mesh for the character (their body). How would I clothe them in order for it to be not too complicated during the rigging process? 

I've seen several tutorials where they take where, let's say, the shirt would be, and duplicates the faces there. They then proceed to make it a bit bigger to show volume, and simplify/edit the mesh to look like a shirt. Would it be better for the poly count (and the rigging process) to delete the body underneath? Or have the whole body still there and the clothes act like a covering, as they do in real life? (On the first male model I did, I left the body underneath and had annoying problems with the body "popping" out from underneath the clothes due to skin weights in Maya being difficult)

Do you guys know how they do it for Final Fantasy characters or even Overwatch characters? I would love to have one of their 3D character models but they either aren't compatible with Maya or expensive or you can't get them anyways.

Thanks so much!

Brian "Panda" Choi

You can do both.

Just depends on what you're doing.

Customizable character tend to keep body and literal clothing  on separate materials, esoecially in MMOs.  Or if they want, they do texture atlasing.

OVerwatch doesn't do naked bodies underneath.  It''s all one mesh.

You can pull a lot of thee popular character models from a website like https://sfmlab.com/ and convert the mdl file to OBJ to observe how the low poly is structurally made.

Zack Maxwell

I'd say to avoid it like the plague. Some people do it to cut corners, especially on modular characters with different outfits, but it creates a mountain of problems.
It's wildly inefficient and rough on performance, and skin will inevitably clip through the clothing during some animations.
Even with modular characters, the more conventional approach is to split the character into segments, and replace that entire segment instead of just the superficial clothing. Like swapping out the entire torso for different shirts/jackets.

Alex_J

I'm working on a modular character setup right now, and I delete the body underneath the outfits. Makes rigging easier, lowers polycount... why render something unseen? I don't know of a good reason. 

Even if you aren't going to use the "naked body" in your game, hold onto the mesh because you'll want it later for sizing, using in Marvelous Designer, using to extract good topology from for stuff like gloves, shirts, etc.

NikhilR

Would showcasing the body underneath in portfolio work, to show that you understand anatomical form and detail, be a good idea?
I do delete polygons not visible in my marmoset presentations though.

Udjani

Brian "Panda" Choi said:

 Great stuff thank you! 

Jadenie

Thank you so much everyone!

@Brian "Panda" Choi
I'll explore those 3D models you mentioned!

@Zack Maxwell
That's what I figured, thanks so much for clarifying!

@BIGTIMEMASTER
Agreed! Thank you!