A few questions about the best methods/practice for creating/acquiring character assets

[EnticeMods]

If you haven’t done a character before, it’s going to be a huge challenge, for a good human you need to have experience with modeling/sculpting people and beyond that you’d still need to rig and animate the character, both of which are usually jobs in themselves. Just don’t underestimate how much of a challenge it might be.

I’ve created a lot of custom outfits/clothing for characters in a number of games, but have never designed a full character from the ground up. The way I look at it, is that no matter what project you are working on, there will be some mountains to climb before you can reach your destination. The only issue with a project like this, is after I get over the first mountain, how many mountains are behind the first one that I will also have to climb? So, sometimes it’s good to take a step back and try to look at the larger picture to ensure the destination is worth the effort by the time you have reached it. Even though I’m confident I can create my own character, but I need to make sure it doesn’t absorb so much time that I don’t get anything else done.

The player is the only human that you will really see in-game and that is really when you see your reflection in a mirror or maybe in the final cut scene. It might be best to port a makehuman model as a placeholder and rig it to the manikin skeleton until the prototype game is done. Then I can remove the head later, make my own head/hair and add detail by hand to the body mesh and make clothing. Then just use some of the animations provided on the market for basic movement. Then I only have to make custom animations for special events such as interacting with furniture.

The same programs that you would use for a character can do facial animation–you can use a bone rig or morph targets to do that.

This is where things get a bit complex and I’m sure the rigging on this is a job in itself as well, plus I would need to make custom animations. I’m sure it could be done however. While I may never show the player talking, I might need to at least show emotion for things like looking in the mirror.

Blender doesn’t have a very good FBX exporter, but from what I understand it’s still possible to get almost everything exported with some specific things kept in mind, you’d have to look for a Blender to UE4 guide.
Also look into Maya LT which is a cheaper version for indies.

I would really like to hear from someone with experience with this. I do know that it has difficulty exporting materials and you will need to rotate your models correctly. Something that is pretty easy to work around for the most part. As for Maya LT and 3DS Max, I can’t bring myself to purchase them for economic and ethical reasons. First and foremost, I simply can’t afford them in the first place, even at that price-point, it is still $240 a year and I don’t really get to keep it. I just don’t believe in continuously paying for something. Considering, I may create some things, stop for a few months or even a year to develop other things, and when I come back I’ve lost the value of my purchase. I still run Photoshop CS2 for this very reason.

As for detail/performance, usually you start out by going for the lowest level of quality you find acceptable, keep your high resolution textures saved in case you want to bump something up, it’s very easy to drop a texture resolution down to improve performance.
You can set up LOD’s for characters and for mobile you could then use a lower LOD to improve performance.
You mentioned mirrors a few times, while you can do that on PC, I don’t think mobile supports the 2D reflection capture actor (used to render reflections for floors/mirrors more accurately)

This is likely what I will do. I may replace the reflective mirror with an alternative one if I decide to port to mobile. I could probably just even make the mirror a flat plane to cover the original mirror with. Whatever the case, I will probably go ahead and make it with this in mind.