Hi, I’ve been working in UE5 and Blender for over a year or 2 now. After being unable to figure out how to make an equipment system that worked well with my animations in blender and the sheer information learning curves one after the next I stopped. I’m back and I really want to move forward with making a Character that can equip armor that is tailored to the character. I have the time, I have the patients and I want to do this from the start again. I’m able design a character in less than a day and rig it. Spend an entire day on animations etc. I’m doing this all off of tiny bits of information that don’t give me the results I’m looking for.
I was wondering if there are any online courses or useful guides that I haven’t located yet that can help me with the process of equiping armor weapons etc. A full in depth guide would be worth it even if I have to pay, I just need a reasonable guide with actually helpful step by step guides and examples. I’ve purchased a few ue5 books from amazon and they’ve helped out allot but the information only helps with most level ideas. I need character design Info, equipment, gui, inventory system. In-depth guide. Any help would be remarkably appreciated. I love doing this, it’s going it alone this whole time for 2 years is starting to become extremely overwhelming. Props to all game designers this stuffs like learning 4 different languages at the same time.
I do not know about such tutorials, however try marketplace, search for modular characters (none free atm.), if you know rigging and modelling you can learn (fairly simple setup) to make mesh modular with bit of blueprints.
Basically its collection of meshes that use same rig and skeleton, and can be swapped.
You can put multiple meshes on same “combined” mesh. and swap parts.
Hardest part of it all is making model that works with all parts swapable.
systems like this are usually handled by teams by necessity.
the only way to get a handle on it as a soloist is to simplify considerably. Keep in mind this system is but one part of the entire game, and probably not even that important as far as the player is concerned.
You won’t find tutorials for it all. You may find tutorials for little bits and pieces but it won’t all work together. What you want to work towards is a holistic system that uses same patterns over and over so that it is easy to manage as a soloist, however without considerable experience you won’t know how to design that and people making tutorials don’t how either.
TLDR: if it seems overwhelming that indicates you are biting off too much. Make simpler game that includes like 10% of your current idea. After a couple games completed you’ll have a better notion of what it takes to make complicated systems and whether or not you really even want to, once you understand the work hours involved.
imo as a solo dev you either make playable game with a lot of compromises, like a cardboard armor popping up on your character from nowhere or focus on that equipment system, polish it, put it in your portfolio folder and go look for work when it’s done
I highly recommend buying two different “modular character” systems on the Marketplace, and then picking them apart in detail. Then try to push them a little bit, and see where they break, and why.
You will learn both how each developer thought about it, and also where those systems fall down.
Note that, 20 years ago, building a custom clothing system that worked with characters with different body shapes (e g, clothes morphed to fit the avatar body shape) required several artists and two programmers (one art path, one engine.) These days the bar is higher (it needs to look better) and thus it’s quite likely that what you have in mind will take you a long time to accomplish on your own.
Asset production is the bottleneck for almost any bigger / better-looking game. Hence why tools that make that easier, are so valuable (and why read-made tools used by lots of people, like Unreal, are so common, rather than hand-rolled, that can’t possibly spend as much time building the fundamentals.)