MRT (My Robot Thing) progress

Modular pawn and inventory with tpp character and proto character from market place.
https://youtube.com/watch?v=HWVDYBzyiyw

Yeaa. That is what I am talking about :smiley:

Nice Fen. Just basic Component Attachment or something fancy?

A bit fancy in progress ^^ : Basic attachments is fine only with static mesh attach as i did on first tries (only one mesh not animated, upper arm or lower arm but not both animated) But as i finally decided to go with full animated part, my current setting is 7 skel meshes in actor. As they all use one skeleton, no need to attach (and partial skeleton goes fine not attached too) the anim goes for all as it would for one. Now beginning the multi anim part and trying to figure the best way to have different mesh parts (meaning human legs and reverted legs for example) / dedicated anims at same time. A lot of things to try ^^

Cooool. Very nice.

Procedural Levels, Modular Entities, I like the way you develop your games as we’re developing many of the same features. I hope were not developing the same game…lol.

That technique reminds of the UE3/UDK Modular Pawn technique. There is a small performance hit with additional draw call. No big deal with a few modular characters, but, may be noticeable with greater numbers. I’m not sure if this is applicable in UE4 and it would be my technique of choice in using organic ‘parts’ to achieve a singular mesh (seamless) look and animation. On the other hand, for Characters that typically attach at the joint in a mechanical fashion (like Robots), the attachment of static mesh parts to joints could work without visual distraction as seams would be acceptable.

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I also intend using modular skeletons for animating parts independently as well. The current idea is animate each skeleton segment individually and re-root, setting the root pivot as the joint where segment should connect to the next.
https://arcadekomodo.com/home/wp-content/uploads/2015/04/reroot-150x150.png

@ : Thank you.

@ TechLord : To avoid massive draw calls, i do a basic global character with one draw and separate meshes with skeleton and i use global for ai and separates for player pawns and special encounters. (i tried full skeleton and only the dedicated bones and it worked the same but i’ll go with dedicated to have it cleaner, a bit lighter and in case of it changes something i didn’t figure)
Static mesh way trouble for me is that it needs a lot of attach and draws and i don’t need to interact with each part but when i tried it worked fine, yes.
I haven’t do tries with flesh so i don’t know.
But I wonder about your modular skeleton. If each skeleton is different, don’t you need an anim blueprint for each part and as you re-root, can you master pose a master pose as you need one to have different skeleton anims working ? Or did i totally misunderstood ?