Do you use either Daz3D or Fuse for characters? If so, what’s the best and worst thing about using either program? Also, what has your experience been with character production on your indie game? Do you outsource production, or purchase assets most often?
I’m interested in producing a customizable character pack, but I want to know for sure that people need something like that. If Daz3D or Fuse already solves that problem (if not having accessible custom characters is a problem), I don’t want to waste any time on creating my own custom character pack.
If you have additional comments or questions, please share.
I have used both Daz3D and Fuse and I have issues with both.
Daz3D requires either the use of the Mixamo Auto-Rigger or importing your character into Maya and do the rigging yourself. I’m not a fan of the Auto-Rigger as it is hit and miss for me and I’m not an artist so going through Maya and the ART tools is difficult for me.
Fuse, for me, doesn’t have as much customization as Daz3D in terms of clothing, hair, etc., plus the whole auto-rigger thing.
I’m still waiting for a modular character pack. A base male and female model, in underwear or something, and then have clothing packs sold separately that can go right on the character. And the character have the Unreal skeleton rig already set up so they can use the animation packs I already have purchased from the store.
I’d like to create something in my game similar to The Culling where players can customize their character loadout with different clothes and hair, and even skin tone. Plus I’m an indie dev so I don’t have the money to hire a designer to create the characters and clothes, but I do have the money to buy a few packs on the Marketplace.
Toxin, what’s the most important feature of the character assets you buy? Ease of use, complexity of customization, or something else? In terms of costume/clothing elements, what style/theme do you most often need? Modern, medieval, scifi, military?
Also, what’s your experience performance wise with Daz and Fuse? Do they have optimal polycounts, minimal materials and draw calls?
To be honest, I just wanted something that looked human, which is why I purchased the Agent character pack from the marketplace. The most important to me is the skeleton and making sure it has the Unreal skeleton rig. The Agents pack has this and made setting up the retargeting from the animation packs a breeze. The next important would be customization, not so much complexity but easily able to change a character to look different from other games. If I sent out my game with the Agents pack, it is possible that another game also uses the Agents pack and we will have the same characters. But if I had a customized character, I could make it look like my own personal character that no one else has.
So I guess from that, the most important feature to me would be ease of use. Being able to just plop in the character to my project, quickly retarget and have them up and running would be key.
For clothing, I would like modern and military, more so modern, but that’s just me for my game.
Daz has way too many polys, I think, mainly because they look like they are used for rendering and scenes, not gameplay. And I think Fuse is pretty optimal, but don’t quote me on either of these as I’m a coder not a designer.
What kind of customization options would you want to see for characters? Multiple costumes that are broken into separate pieces that you can mix and match? Would you want to have substance support for textures to tweak colors, patterns, and wear/tear? What would the ideal custom options be for you?
Off the top of my head, the obvious ones would be shirts, pants, and hair. Extras could be gloves, kevlar vests, helmets, hats, masks, shoes. I’m not a designer so unless Substance is easy to use to create different materials for the color/patterns/wear, I would just buy packs of different clothes.
For instance, I would like something like this hero pack, but using normal modern clothes and a normal human base, something nice and modular.