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My First Game Character

Started by July 24, 2014 12:20 AM
1 comment, last by Tutorial Doctor 10 years, 6 months ago

So I've created my first character and I decided to use mudbox to built this one. My game is going to be an fps style war game with a twist but I will most likely put the option to swap to third person if the player chooses.

I've played around in other programs a little bit but I felt the most comfortable with here. I'm fairly comfortable with mudbox and 3d coat. I know cinema 4d decently also but I don't think that is very good for games though I'm not entirely certain. Anyway I've created a basic mesh at Level 1 but I can drop it down 1 level to 0 for the base mesh. Level 0 is currently at 8.5k and Level 1 is at 33.2k. I think I will probably need to work on the face more most likely but didn't want to go crazy with it since this is gonna be my first game that I wanna build.

I've done some homework but it seems like there are so many different ways to do this for workflow so I've gotten lost and confused in the middle of it. Any ideas on what I should do next? Is retopo supposed to be next or should I focus on clothes first and then add those as a sublayer and then follow that up with a retopo for the whole mesh? Or? Can someone please help point me in the right direction. I'm trying to learn more so I can get something up and running. Any input on this anyone?

Here's what I have at the moment. I know the face needs work but I think the rest is decent for now unless you guys think it needs a lot more work? I'm trying to figure out what I need to do next after that, but I am trying not to get too into detailing it allover since I've heard its bad to get too detailed.

CPMsiNU.png

So you have a human basemesh and you want a clothed character ready for real time use?

It's like asking how do I get from New Jersey to an idyllic beach holiday resort. Take a plane for the fast travel and least complications, or throw in some train or boat sections to spice up the journey... as soon as you figure where exactly your "beach holiday resort" is. If you need to pick up your luggage from London then you need to stop there as well...

There is no one way and any advice are going to be matters of personal taste and the workflow you've established. It's hard to give advice. At least you should first design the character, how it should look clothed and equipped. (if you have then you should post it here) Set your goals for polycounts for different LODs and which maps you can use (diffuse, spec, bump/displace/normal, opacity, emit etc). Then it is much easier to try to get from A to B.

But for me (knowing where to strive for) I'd load the model in Blender, delete half and add mirror modifier, add seams, offset basic shirt and pants shapes, box model some accessories and sculpt cloth folds and hair, then based on where I am I could do retopo with shrinkwrap modifier to optimize quad flow and poly density and efficiency. Fix seams, UV unwrap and paint textures, bake AO. Then make a low-poly model from scratch (for really low poly) or by dissolving loops and adjusting remaining ones. Bake diffuse, AO and normal maps from high res mesh. Rig and animate hi-poly mesh and use it as reference for making the same for low-poly version.

I think the LOD for basemesh is pretty much waste of time as the final character is probably only going to have the same face and hands depending on how much and what kind of clothing you need. In practice you'll be rebuilding most of the model.

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Your topology looks okay, unless you want to do animation. If you want to animate, you could do some basic UV unwrapping and texturing first (with a basic checkerboard texture) followed by a quick rig, to check any distortion or stretching in the mesh when you move bones. Don't do detailed UV maps, or detailed rigs at first.

Clothes would be next, and are usually made out of the final high poly body mesh. But you have another option as well:

The best way to make detailed clothes is with Marvelous Designer.

The face should be the last thing you rig (it can be really complex).

You might want to use solvers to animate as well (it will make animation easier.) I use the BepuIK Blender build myself.

They call me the Tutorial Doctor.

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