Bulk Character Model Workflow?
polycounter lvl 17
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?...
Replies
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.
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.
http://area.autodesk.com/gdc/ondemand10
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.
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.
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.