im looking to make a game inspired by godof war and i need to know how to make weapons for my character and enemies…im new to the whole model and animation part. i dont have skins for my enemies or my main character yet but im sure ill have to have someone else do that for me cause i havent done it before…
To be honest the best way to deal with this would have been to make a bit of research on the topic… Anyway, I started an year ago only, and I learnt in this time everything that is essential about the graphics and enough about programming to make a game (I’m programming and making graphics for my second game solo style, I developed the first with a buddy that made the models), and have moved a month ago to Unreal from Unity. Be aware that Unreal is a fantastic engine, but not the most beginner friendly, I had experience of C# from Unity from my first game, but I’m still learning Unreal’s C++ because it’s more complicated. Thankfully there are blueprints, but if you are serious about game making start with learning C++ in mind, although you won’t use it at the beginning if you have no experience and want to start now.
Said that, you don’t have to rely on other people to make models, animation and stuff, you can do everything by yourself, the easiest stuff will be doable in a shot time, like the static meshes (the objects that aren’t animated), and the animations will require only a little more time to be learnt.
For the models you can use Blender: it’s free and can do almost anything. It’s difficult to begin with, but if you commit yourself to learning it, after a couple of days of frustration while watching tutorials you will understand the interface, that is the hardest part when you start with it. Nothing much more difficult than learning Unreal engine, so you should be already prepared for this.
You can use it also for the animations and to paint textures. At the beginning don’t push it too hard because you aren’t happy with the results, you can make placeholders for EVERYTHING in your game, and while doing so, you’ll get experience at every aspect of graphics, enabling you to substitute the models with better ones later on while you have truly progressed with your game. A useful thing is that you can simply substitute the file that you loaded in the engine, and in the engine you right click on the object and select “reimport”: it will substitute the model with the updated file everywhere, so you won’t even have to do it manually.
If you want placeholder characters, or placeholder animations, you can use Mixamo. It’s a website where you can download a character (from a small list), and the animations froma huge list. It works only with humanoid characters, but it’s very useful for this. You don’t even have to use their models: you can make your model and upload it, it will be autorigged (rigging is putting inside the skeleton, that is standard for the website, and do the “weight paintint”), and you’ll be able to choose tha animations you need, even doing lesser adjustments. If there will be something that won’t move very well (often the fingers), you’ll be able to adjust the weight paint on blender (you’ll learn about it later when you’ll watch some tutorial, the fast explanation is that it’s like a texture that says to every bone how much they affect the mesh).
If you want to make custom people you can also use the Manuel Bastioni Lab extension for Blender, that is like a small program inside Blender that lets you create people with correct “topology” (the way the polygons of the mesh are arranged, it’s important for animated characters, much less for the other stuff), already rigged, already textured, and moving sliders for precise physical features you’ll be able to create pretty much any person with any look, and then you’ll be able to simply adjust the texture and the models to match your expectations, like adding scars, very peculiar traits, or anything else, with great ease. You can even import those models in Mixamo and get animations for them this way.
I hope this answer helped you, unfortunately your question is so broad that only a generic answer like this about “how to begin doing it” is possible. Always remember that “Doing games is not a game”, and with this I mean that it requires a lot of commitment and hard work to make a game, you have to be absolutely serious about it or you won’t be able to surpass the difficulties and the frustration that you’ll encounter, and there is always a TON of frustration, much more when you begin, but as you go on you’ll want more complex features, so frustration and difficulties will always be there.
Ah, and remember that if you:
“im sure ill have to have someone else do that for me cause i havent done it before…”
Remember VERY well the argument about commitment, because even with friends, it’s easy that they say “wow so cool we start now” but they aren’t commited enough, and after a week/month or so their excitement deflates and drop the project, and at that point it’s far easier to start a project alone knowing that you have to do everything by yourself, than to continue alone a project started with someone else. Plus you get to decide everything, and if your mate have very different tastes it can be difficult to find a middle ground.
All of this is always important, but considered the enormous size of what you want to do, it’s much more important.
I’m not going to discourage you about the “God of war like” thing, but remember that you are a beginner, and that is a complex project, so you’ll find yourself less stressed with an easier game (even a small FPS is a simpler project), plus it takes time, a LOT of time, and with a smaller project you’ll see results very quickly, with this… in a long time, and this can not only stress you a lot, but demoralize you, and this can push you to drop the project even after months of work, and in the time you drop the project you could have done like 50% or more of a small game.
I give you a final list that I thinks are the most important don’ts in my opinions, although I will surely forget some:
DON’T ignore the “time” variable, for it rules your life, so…
DON’T do something you feel it takes too much time.
DON’T start a project that looks much more complex than what you did before: work in steps, if you don’t you’ll give yourself many troubles.
DON’T work with people that aren’t usually committed to what they do: this is a job for serious people, you’ll regret it if you work with them because they’re friends (I talk by experience).
DON’T let yourself get discouraged by the problems you’ll encounter, all of them are solvable with simple persistence.
DON’T be lazy, for this job requires a lot of study. It won’t be bad, it will be interesting stuff, but it still requires effort.
DON’T get seduced by size: you are alone, so no 50 different enemies, no 500 props, no 5000 square kilometers level.
and finally DON’T expect yourself to do the work of 100 people, you simply don’t have enough time and energy to do it, so leave AAA titles to studios, you can do stuff as cool as theirs, you simply won’t aim to the same goals, like 100000 different enemies, uber realistic textures, levels big as countries, and stuff like that. Indie games are known for cool gameplay, that means quality of play over candies, this makes much better games than photorealism or perfect simulation.
ps: sorry i forgot you asked “in blender”, so you know the program. Better then, you are nearer to your goal!