I'm busy making a game in which the player can create his/her own character which they can customize to their liking. I would like to know how exactly would you do this? Create one mesh which has all the features ? Or use a whole bunch of meshes to create one whole mesh? Any help would be really appreciated. Btw, I'm using 3D Max 8 for my models and coding in C# using DirectX

I don't think that there is one right answer on how to do this, but you might want to check out the MakeHuman project for one route you could go [wink]

It depends how many variations you intend to have... If you only intend to support four or five armor types which are worn as a set then by all means use fixed meshes.

We had this problem with Tearsol and actually figured a solution (for bettor or worse) without looking at any previous RPG examples. Basically we split the body into ten or so parts which also corresponded to particular bones or groups of bones (hands, forearms, torso, etc). We then just use tags which define which bones link to a particular mesh.

This takes some extremely careful building and rigging to work successfully, but as long as your art follows it's guidelines you'll have no troubles.

There will probably be ALOT as the game progresses, right now I'm just working on the basic functionality. I'm not so advanced when it comes to making meshes, so if there is an easier way to do other than splitting the body parts and such please let me know.
THanx

There isn't. Period.

The only options you really have are a dynamic creation via something like MakeHuman or use DogCity's suggestions on cutting the meshes and stitching them back together (which is how a lot of games do it). Either of those or you're just stuck with static models (which is how pretty much the rest of games do it).

1. mold shapes (MakeHuman)
2. stitch shapes (DogCity)
3. static meshes