Workflow for MMORPG characters?
polycounter lvl 13
Hi all! This is my first post in this forum, so I'll be bold and just ask for help right away 
Just as a hobby I have just started a mmorpg project, and I will make the basic characters myself, with no expereince in this field.
I plan to make a couple of base meshes, and manipulate those to a given number of different body types that the players can choose from when creating their character. However I want more heads than bodies and even more textures than meshes! I do not want to have the heads as separate meshes because of the ugly edge around the neck area, and I have the following problems:
I have made the base meshes, but should I separate the head from the body, duplicate and make variatons? To properly texture the body, what colors should I go for as I want players to be able to change skin tone by the use of an ingame palette (is this made by the use of a programmed color filter?) ? Also what software should I use if I want to make animated face textures like in the game Aion?
The case is I have no prblem making a complete 3d character, but it all comes to a halt when I am to make a 3d character that could be used to make a lot of "unique" characters by putting together different combinations of meshes, morph targets and textures:(
Just as a hobby I have just started a mmorpg project, and I will make the basic characters myself, with no expereince in this field.
I plan to make a couple of base meshes, and manipulate those to a given number of different body types that the players can choose from when creating their character. However I want more heads than bodies and even more textures than meshes! I do not want to have the heads as separate meshes because of the ugly edge around the neck area, and I have the following problems:
I have made the base meshes, but should I separate the head from the body, duplicate and make variatons? To properly texture the body, what colors should I go for as I want players to be able to change skin tone by the use of an ingame palette (is this made by the use of a programmed color filter?) ? Also what software should I use if I want to make animated face textures like in the game Aion?
The case is I have no prblem making a complete 3d character, but it all comes to a halt when I am to make a 3d character that could be used to make a lot of "unique" characters by putting together different combinations of meshes, morph targets and textures:(
Replies
i would so try to limit the customization as much as you can - say female/male > then only three skin types between the sexes (or four if you're looking to do androgynous girly-boy elves).
as far as the programming goes, i don't have a clue - but i assume a fallout-like color swatch menu would be hard....
I have the theoretical game world concept, and I have some concept art and two programmers, who work on the networking at the moment. They do not bother about graphics just yet but its the only thing I can so I meddle with it while I wait for updates.
I will have only human like characters and I have the male and female base mesh nearly done. I had an idea of giving each sex three body types where each body type had a minimum and maximum morph target, ex; the muscular body had a small morph like fitness style, and the big morph had bodybuilder style, and the player who choose the muscular body could slide between the morphs. This means each sex will have 6 body morphs and three body textures which means that the UVs need to be done before the deformation. The deformation is not looking good in Zbrush when working low poly, so I want to do it in my favorite 3d app: Cinema4d for better control. C4d can only deform symmetrically when I delete half the mesh and put a symmetry tag on it, but this means I destroy the UVs!
Oh, I'm just babbling.. and sorry if my english sucks
Don't worry about male and female just yet, but plan for the possibility
Don't worry about morphs, but plan for the possibility
Don't worry about facial animation, but plan for the possibilty.
Get 1 male model into the game and walking around.
Get 1 male model into the game that is comprised of 2 parts - a body and a head, and then work on getting the textures to swap, AND then work on getting the head and body models to swap.
If I remember correctly in WAR, we have the Head and base Body together as one mesh, with different mat id's for different body parts to swap with. We export both a head and body file, with mat id's set to something like 99 for things not of the head/body. The exporter culls these but keeps the normal info on the verts. Then when it's put back together with different parts/armor/etc there is no seam from the vert edges.
At least, that's what happens when each piece is lined up properly and weighted the exact same at those caps. -,-
Sorry my late reply, I am planning for the possibilites all the way, and I'll try getting the male animated for experiments.
It seems like our engine (Unity) does not support morphing so I've separated the head and body, given them their own UV maps, and try ignoring the neck seam. If it turns out ugly and useless I'll consider your solution Xeno