Bulk Character Model Workflow?

Lord McMutton

Is workflow the right word? Anyway, how do you guys usually go about the character modeling process when you have a large amount of characters to do? Do you completely finish one character (Modeling, UV mapping, Texturing, Rigging, etc) before going onto the next, or would you finish the modeling for every character, and then the UVing for every character, and so on and so forth? Maybe the previous ones, but in groups of characters?...

Mr. Bean

I really think that's just a matter of preference. There's no rule or anything as far as I know, it's just whatever you want. I don't see why it would make any difference if you made all the models, then textured them one by one, or went from start to finish before moving on to the next.

I personally would go from start to finish and do one character at a time--mostly because making a character is a big process and I don't like to leave something like that hanging unless it's a long term project; it helps to work on the same character because while creating that character you make little notes to yourself and if you drop that project to go work on a different character, you may forget some of your mental notes. If there's a large amount of characters to be made, then I would probably use the same character model and just kitbash it into he others and give them each their own unique texture.

Just what I would do, I'm sure that there are many people who would do it differently.

acc

An advantage to doing the models one by one is that things you learn in later stages of one model may help in early stages of another, like running into rigging problems and realizing you should model a certain joint differently next time. It's also cycling you through a set of varied tasks instead of doing the same thing over and over for weeks which is generally good for morale.

Calabi

I'm not so sure the model one by is such a good idea. I have noticed and have heard developers speak of a predictable quality variance in their games. Like stuff at the beginning of the game being noticably worse than stuff later on.

You could easily save a lot of time by just morphing changing slightly the mesh on one character for all different types. Copying UV's. Changing colours of textures, etc.

Creating them in batches would give them a conformity too, that you may not likely get with doing them separately, so that they appear to belong together in a world.

r_fletch_r

there was some interesting stuff preseneted by bioware at GDC 2010
http://area.autodesk.com/gdc/ondemand10

Mr. Bean

Calabi wrote: »

You could easily save a lot of time by just morphing changing slightly the mesh on one character for all different types. Copying UV's. Changing colours of textures, etc.

Well that's true enough, that's sort of what I meant by kitbashing. I think it kind of depends on the type of game, too. For example Spider-Man 3 or any of the Spider-Man games have characters that were obviously all created using probably one of three same base meshes but with different textures. For low poly characters I would do that.

However with a game like Modern Warfare 2, where there are very high poly characters, I would make each character one by one so that they are each unique. I might use a very basic base mesh for each one, but still I think for high poly characters it calls for a little more work on each model.

Gav

I'm pretty sure a lot of sports games make their heads by using the morph system. Basically, modeling each head using one human head base mesh then saving each head as a morph for that base mesh. Loading 1 head with, like, 25 morph shapes. Just got to keep vert order in tact. Not exactly fun to work with, but has it's advantages.

If I had a mass amount of characters to do, I would try and categorize what common elements characters shared and kit bash them. Spend time making a good, versatile base mesh for heads, hands, boots that can all be easily changed to make 'unique' versions..or just straight up copied. I'd make sure that the neck cut point was practically the same for all of the models to swap heads and create a false sense of character variation. something like armor or army guy outfits where you can get away with using the same body a whole bunch of times but make a bunch of different heads that would snap into place.

I've never used it, but some games have an atlas system where certain sections of a texture are delegated to parts of the costume (top left is head, top right is chest, bottom right is legs, etc.) so that parts can all be swapped and amalgamated into one texture map. Again, I've never done this...

Basically, you're going to have to reuse at some point - it would be silly not to. I'd make one character, one that would have the most in common with others and complete it. Take what parts I can from that and make the next, then the next, then the next. Then, tackle fully unique characters on their own. Like said before though, if you need mass population right away, bang out a few morphs - do some quick texture swaps and you'll have a decent ground work for what you need.

sprunghunt

Mr. Bean wrote: »

However with a game like Modern Warfare 2, where there are very high poly characters, I would make each character one by one so that they are each unique. I might use a very basic base mesh for each one, but still I think for high poly characters it calls for a little more work on each model.

Even for military characters like in modern warfare 3 you could repeat hipoly sections between characters for things like shoes, goggles, helmets, ammo pouches, bandoliers, strapping, buckles and so on. In real life all these things would be standardised by the army anyway.

r_fletch_r

you see XSI being mentioned alot in this sort of workflow. I remember reading about how they used it in the ghost in the shell film. they used it to copy rigging information from a default character to the loads of crowd characters. I think they used the UV and Animation transfer tools aswell.