I join a fantasy football league every year on Yahoo. They have a simple character creation program where you can design what your cover image will look like. You’ve seen them. You can create body type, hair color, clothes etc. . . It’s basic and of course, there is no animation, bones, rigging. But somebody knows, that if you give your customers a little way to easily customize their experience, there’s a payoff. Someone is going to come up with a character system somewhere between Yahoo and the sophistication of Max/Maya/Blender (Plugin for UE4? Anyone?) and people are going to use the **** out of it.
We’ve got one program coming online soon; SpeedTree (which is awesome) where you have the ability to make any kind of tree with any variation. And we are doing backflips over it. Imagine if we had a “SpeedHuman”. Yeah. Right On!
I’d take anything similar to the character creators referenced below, if something like them could be integrated into UE4. It wouldn’t be the end all, be all. I respect you artist types, wanna spend weeks getting your guy or gal or creature just right. You could still do that. But wouldn’t a little streamlining in this area be cool?
Eve Online: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kgk-vXxPvV8
The Sims 3: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yPt3szu7KDY
Guild Wars: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-5EWjd4t8gI#t=261
A Top Ten List from 2013: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=20YHZHF2dOA#t=399
PS: Invariably, half way thru the football season, someone notices my Yahoo cover image. I always try to make it actually look like me. (boring I know) They will say, “You’re supposed to make your avatar be something amazing. Like a superhero or a monster or something. Not look like your self; A short, fat, grey headed guy.” Now, I think, as simple as some of these things are, you can get a lot of individuality and creativity out of basic, easy, creation tools.