Character Customizer Blueprint System

Community Marketplace
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Current Purchasing Options:
(Paypal) Sellify: https://sellfy.com/p/ukNt/
(Credit Card) Gumroad: Character Customizer

Links to download tutorials are in ‘CharacterCustomizer/Content/CharacterCustomizer/LinksToTutorials.txt’

Current Version: UE 4.11

This is a BLUEPRINT system.
It is not a customizable character.

3D Characters Not Included

It is intended to be used with customizable characters that you already own or can attain elsewhere.

The Character Customizer is more than just a simple character customization menu. It’s a complete Player and NPC customization solution all wrapped into one solid package. You’ll not only be able to setup the Character Customizer to allow your players to customize their personal character. As a developer you’ll be able to use the Character Customizer to setup the customizations on all the NPCs in your game. It’s an all in one solution for applying character customizations to your game.

The only thing you need in order to use the Character Customizer is customizable character models. For instance, models with different morph targets, hair types, clothing types and that sort of thing. By default the Character Customizer can handle up to 10 male and female races or 20 mono gender races. That means the Character Customizer can handle the customizations for multiple, entirely different, character models. Are you making a fantasy game and need to be able to customize Dwarfs, Elfs, and Humans? If that’s the case then the Character Customizer is your solution.

The Character Customizer Package comes jam packed with 20 high quality video tutorials explaining how to get started with the Character Customizer from the ground up. In the tutorial videos we will walk through the implementation of your first character race and cover everything you need to know about the Character Customizer system.

We’ll talk about setting up the Character Blueprints for the Character Customizer. We’ll then go on to discuss how to implement your morph targets into the Character Customizer system. Then once we’re ready we’ll begin setting up our first race menu. To assist with setting up the race menus in the Character Customizer system we’ll make use of several different slider type templates. The templates are designed in a manner that makes menu creation a breeze.

The process for using the templates is as easy as connecting the dots. The slider templates not only handle the visible changes to the character but also handle saving the changes so they can be reloaded through the Morph Actor All blueprint.

Examples of different slider types include the Single Morph Slider template which handles a single morph from zero to one. The Double Morph Slider Template which can handle two different morphs at the same time. The Negative to Positive Morph Slider Template which morphs the target from -1 to positive 1. The Morph Swapping Template which can be used to swap between several different morph targets. The Morph Snapping template which can be used to swap different material parameters or even switch different meshes such as hair and clothing models on the character. The possibilities are endless.

Once we have the first race menu setup we’ll go on to discuss how we can use the Character Customizer to apply customizations to NPC Characters. You’ll not only be using this system to customize the player character but also to customize the NPC’s in your game. That is the beauty of the Character Customizer system. And if all that’s not enough, the design of the Character Customizer is setup so your players will be able to share their character presets.

If you were looking for a solution to handle the character customization for your customizable characters, this is it.

Please note that the character featured in the video is not included in this system. This is a blueprint system only.

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I’ve received multiple requests for the Character Customizer blueprint system so I am making it available for purchase. This is just the scripting system. No character models are included in this package. It is for UE4.10.4 and will be updated with each release of the Unreal Engine.

For those of you concerned about the package that Robert Brown and I are working on, no need to worry. We are still working on the package that includes both these scripts and some character models. That package is still in development. This package here is just the scripts for people that only want the scripts and do not want the character models.

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Oh hell yea man, I’ve been waiting on this sucker here! Gonna use it with Daz3d models. Snatched it up! I’ll give some feedback after I check it out. Out of curiosity is this also gonna be available on the Marketplace? Not that it matters cause I’m fine with using Gumroad and already bought it, just curious is all. Also, could you give me a laments explanation of that engine bug and how it will effect stuff until it’s fixed in 4.11?

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I’m sure it will be on the Marketplace soon. This same system was already approved by Epic for the Marketplace before and I had them place it’s release on hold because RBrown and I started working on that joint package that will include this system and a male and female character model. We decided that it was in our best interest to go ahead and allow people to buy the scripts or each of the models individually as an alternative to buying the entire kit. In case people just wanted the models or just wanted this blueprint system. We are still going to offer the entire kit as a package as well.

That issue I linked is one that Epic knows about and they did say that it was bumped up as a priority bug to have fixed. I heard that they have planned to get it fixed in the next engine release. Though that’s through word of mouth. Effectively what that issue causes is in the Character Blueprint. In your character blueprint you have the Mesh(Inherited) and you can make other skeletal meshes children of it. The way the engine is supposed to work for morphing the children is you would tell the Mesh(Inherited) to morph and then all it’s children would also morph if they also had a morph with the same name. Currently they don’t morph because of that engine bug and only the Mesh(Inherited) is morphing. It will only effect you if you are making skeletal meshes children of the Mesh(Inherited) but if you’re not separating parts of your model and only using the Mesh(Inherited) then it won’t effect you at all. Like I said before, it’s not my scripts as this system is bug free, it’s a “known” bug with the Unreal Engine and I’ve been told that it’s supposedly getting fixed in the next UE4 release.

Hopefully that makes sense.

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I think I get what your saying. Sounds good, 4.11 is like right around the corner so that’s cool. Theyll prob release 4.11 really soon cause its already on like preview 5 or something.

Edit:
Btw, just wanted to say that I love all the commenting and notes in the blueprints I’ve looked at so far. This thing is pretty complex but you seem to have explained whaat everythang is doing. I’m downloading the videos now

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Yea, it’s a pretty advanced system and it can do a lot. You’ll definitely want to follow through those tutorial videos. They’ll cover just about everything you need to know. Once you get started with it and go through the tutorials you’ll find that it makes setting up customizable characters really easy to do. You’re also in luck because I originally developed the system using Daz3d models so the videos will kind of line up with those models you’re using. If you have any questions just pop in here and ask away.

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When you release the system on marketplace, could you also release some basic information on how to build a character in a way that works with your system? I was actually just thinking about this the other day and I realized I had no clue how to set up the mesh itself to work with all the blueprint customization options. The marketplace pack wouldn’t help if I didn’t know how to make any characters that worked with it :slight_smile:

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The system is very robust and can handle pretty much any customizable character model regardless of how it is developed. Provided the character model has morph targets or interchangeable meshes such as different hairs and clothing articles or even material parameters like scalar and 2d textures the Character Customizer can handle them. The system is very very capable of handling any kind of customizable character model, period. It can handle them all as far as I can figure off the top of my head. I can’t think of any type of customizable character model that it couldn’t handle.

Now the system does come with 20 video tutorials explaining character implementation from start to finish. It even shows how the character should be set up in the Character Blueprint. However, if you’re asking how to develop a customizable character from scratch then that is actually a pretty loaded question. One thing I can suggest is that if you’ve never checked out Daz3d then that would be a good place to start researching. The Character Customizer system could quite literally rebuild the customization portions of the Daz3d software inside of the Unreal Engine. For instance, the Daz3d Genesis models are customizable characters that I used for testing when I developed this system so they would be a good reference for seeing how a customizable character should be set up. It’s pretty much a character model with morph targets and additional models like hair and clothing articles.

I mean, if I’m understanding what you’re asking that would be a bit more then just a simple tutorial. A big thing to google would be Morph Targets. As to modularity well that’s as simple as making different hairs for the character or different shirts for the character that you would swap. Like I said, that’s a pretty loaded question. Really this is being marketed for people that know how to make customizable characters or even for people that can get them from sources like Daz3d and the like.

Am I understanding you right? I can also suggest that if you don’t know how to make a customizable character then you should probably wait for the kit that RBrown and I am developing as it will include a customizable male and female model. They will also already be fully integrated into this system. You can keep track of that project here:

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So, grabbed this last nite as you know. I started setting up my characters in it and man does this make things easy. It was slow going at first while I was watching the videos but after watching them Im straight up flying through stuff. I like that most of the sliders are simple as like you said in the videos, “connecting the dots.” It’s so easy to do. I already got all the face morphs put in there and started on adding in the body morphs. Quick question tho, on that screenshot you shared for that kit you and the other guy are working on it looks like you have a bit of a cinematic blur, how did you do that?

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That was done with Circle DoF in the Level Blueprint. You’d add it to both the Close Camera Actor and Far Camera Actor for the Customization menu.

Kind of like this.

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There’s video tutorials out there that show how to use Depth of Field.
This is a good tutorial for it:

The trick is getting the Aperture F-Stop just right. Too much and it’s too strong, not enough and it’s not noticeable. You’ll have to play with it to get the right setting for your character menu layout.

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Hey guys if you are looking for a solid character creator system that can integrate seamlessly with your current models and development intent this is the script you will want. I can vouch first hand that it works. Im currently in the process of creating models which have been tested and function better then expected!

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This project is a godsend. It is going to save hundreds of hours, and the price is very reasonable.
Costumer service is first class, too!

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:
Any pointers on how to set up the children meshes (feet, hands, head, etc.) using the DAZ Genesis 3 and DAZ Studio 4.9? I am also considering using iClone and 3dXchange (Reallusion products) as part of the pipeline.
Main thing is, I know how to export an entire body mesh, but am not sure how to create sub-parts like hairline, legs, etc. and have them still connected when you get into UE4.
Any tutorials you know of would be great!
Thanks!

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In those cases the system swaps entire skeletal meshes. So you wouldn’t want the hairline to be part of the body when you import the body. It would be a separate model imported separately from the body as it’s own file. Same for clothing, hair types, etc. That way the system can swap the hairline, hair type, clothing model on the character. If you import them as part of the body then the scripts can’t swap them but would have to swap the entire body because it would be a single asset. Ergo, import them separately, not as part of the body.

I separated the body model into parts using Maya but you actually don’t have to do that. I did it to simply show that the scripts can handle extremely modular character setups. For the Daz models what I would do if I were you would be to simply use the entire naked body as the Inherited Mesh. Meaning, don’t split it up into separate parts unless you know how to bake changes to all the morph targets in a 3d package. In fact, it’s probably recommended not to split up the base body because you’ll probably wind up with the seams being somewhat visible anywhere that you separate the mesh unless you know of some skin material magic that I don’t know of.

Then you would import the hairlines, hairs, clothing models, etc as separate models. So long as the hairline, leggings, shirts, etc all use the same skeleton you’ll be fine to set them as children of the Mesh (Inherited) as I did in Video 02. You’d just drag and drop ONE hairline, one clothing model, one hair type model onto the Mesh(Inherited) to add a new skeletal mesh as a child of the body in the Character Blueprint.

You can then set up an opacity mask in the skin material to make any part of the body under clothing transparent. Then swap that opacity mask based on what the character is wearing. In video 11 I show how to swap meshes using one of the templates. There’s a function, fairly simple one, in the Character Customizer system that I demo in video 11. It can be used to swap the hairline, swap the hair model, swap the clothing model, etc. It can swap any skeletal mesh so that it uses a different mesh. This would be how you’d change the clothing or hair type of your character.

When you change clothing you can also rework a template to not just change a clothing type but also change the opacity mask of the body model to hide the body under clothing. For the Genesis models this is fine since they aren’t that high of a poly count to begin with so it’s not like doing so would really waste any resources or at least it would be so minimal as to not warrant attention. You’d just be making part of the body invisible that’s under clothing.

Alternatively, if you’re good at rigging, you don’t even have to hide the body under clothing and so long as they are both using relatively the same skin they’ll move together. Effectively you’d treat it just like Daz3d software does in that case. Where you load the body in their program and then load up a clothing model and it moves with the character because it’s skinned the same as the body. The same concept can apply in UE4 using this system.

If you choose to go with the Opacity mask route and have issues setting up the slider/button to swap both the skeletal model and opacity mask just let me know. I’ve done it before.

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Very helpful and thanks for the quick reply!
Did you use Genesis 2 or Genesis 3 when you proofed the CC?
How did you import/convert the DAZ skeletons to UE4 - did you use iclone or 3dxchange (Reallusion products), or Maya / 3DSMax?

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I used Genesis 2 for testing during development. I didn’t redo the skeleton as there was really no point in me doing so. I just imported it using the Daz skeleton then I used motionbuilder to convert a few animations. Just enough animations for testing purposes. There’s really no reason to redo the weighting I don’t believe or even to use Motionbuilder to convert animations unless you’re as nitpicky as I am about things being perfect. You could try animation re-targeting directly inside the engine. (Doing so will require you to probably make some slight adjustments to certain bone by keying them in the animation on the first frame.) http://docs.unrealengine.com/latest/INT/Engine/Animation/RetargetingDifferentSkeletons/

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Hi ! - I am plowing thru these tutorials which are very well written.

Question - do you know if CC is compatible with UE4 v4.11?

also - any plans to extend your framework into an Inventory and display system?

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It is compatible. The system will always be updated if an update is required. However that bug I mention in the second post in this thread is still present in the engine. Epic staff has taken it up as a priority issue in the engine. They recently claimed to have a fix for it and they plan on implementing the fix soon.

Regarding the inventory and display system that would kind of go outside the bounds of the focus for the system. The system is primarily focused on handling customizable/modular character models. To some extent however it can already handle things such as what meshes the character model should have equipped. For instance, using the miscellaneous integer template you can save/load what meshes the character model is using and that can be used to say, choose which armor the character has on or even what helmet the character is wearing. When the game starts the Morph Load Actor loads the save game object that has all the customizations for the characters. You can access that save game object simply by referencing the Morph Load actor in any blueprint and then grabbing or saving variables to the PlayerCharacterMorphSettings or the NPCCharacterMorphSettings.

With that in mind you can add all the “Chest Armors” to an array in the Morph Load Actor blueprint and then in the MorphActorAll graph you can tell it to swap to the chest piece the character has equipped via an integer. It would be handled the same way I show how to swap hairs in the MorphActorAll graph in video 11 at around the 17 minute marker.

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Thanks for the quick reply!
I was thinking that there would be a way similar to how you mention for the inventory control.
If you implement a separate Inventory System that plays nicely with this system, I would buy!

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The system can definitely be integrated to work with an inventory system. The misc int and misc float arrays in the save game objects can be accessed from any blueprint by referencing the Morph Load actor and getting the save game objects from it. So for instance when you changed what gear was equipped in the inventory, the inventory script could reference those arrays and change the associated element for the equipped slot to match what is equipped. Swapping the meshes based on what is equipped and keeping track of it in the save game objects would be easy to do with this system. In fact in the menu blueprints there’s functions that you could copy to an inventory blueprint that are already setup for changing a specific element in the misc int and misc float arrays.

The part that would take time to write up would be how the inventory worked. There’s a lot of different styles of inventory systems. There’s one slot style like you see in many MMo games, there’s grid based like you’d see in the old XCom games, then there’s simple list based inventories like in Skyrim. The Character Customizer system is so broad that it can handle any kind of customizable character model and that’s what I was shooting for. This system is meant to be universally applicable to any type of game. An inventory system would have to be a separate package because it narrows down the spectrum to a specific style of inventory. I’ll have to think about it.