[Question] Character customization system: Questions

Development Character & Animation
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1

Hi,

I’m not yet trying to implement a character customization system, but planning ahead (I’ll need it for my game)… I’d like to know from Epic devs what do you think is the most recommended way to implement a system like this in a game made with Rocket (I’m not asking for specific implementations, only general design, approach etc specifically for ‘Rocket’s way’ of doing it):

  1. Skeleton joints for facial expressions and blendshapes for customizing facial features, size and shape of chin, nose, forehead etc etc? Or vice-versa?

  2. What is the most recommended approach: customize body parts in maya, apply ‘combine’ to combine all meshes, delete history, freeze transforms etc, skin, then export (saving lots of different files, one for each kind of NPC character)? Or make a mini-editor in-game where I can switch parts, assemble a character then save the result to a text file that a script can call during level loading etc? Or import a character in Unreal Editor with all possible body parts included and skinned to the skeleton, then manually hide, unload etc the parts I don’t want for a given character that is part of a blueprint instance? Or another approach?

  3. If the different body parts are loaded as different meshes, does it affect rendering performance too much if compared to a single-mesh character exported from maya?

  4. And for customizing textures, using layered materials for scars, tatoos, beards etc… Any recommended approach and workflow?

  5. Is it feasible to have the characters hairs use tech like that in the Samaritan demo - poly planes with alpha-transparent textures placed where you have hair guides in maya etc? It would be nice to use this kind of tech even if we use a low-res low-density approach (a few poly plane stripes). It may end up looking like the standard way of doing low-poly characters hair at a distance, and when closer to camera, the LOD for the hair would change to a denser and finer look. A benefit I see would be being able to customize hair growth of characters, for instance.

Thanks in advance.

2

Hi Athos,

Thank you for your questions. The questions you are asking cover different areas of the editor and require different answers. For tracking purposes, I would like to ask if you could please break this down into separate questions. That will make it much easier to assign the correct people for answers.

Cheers,

Alexander

3

For facial customization , you can definitely use morph targets/blend shapes. It is the perfect way for what you desire. For other body parts , you can either use blend shapes , or you can use different skeletal mesh components , but I believe blend shapes will occupy less storage space , rather than having different mesh components.

I use morph target to create many instances of the same non playable character , to look like different guys. It is very helpful and saves lot of disc space , rather than to use lots of different skeletal meshes.

As for you hair question , I am trying to implement Nvidia’s HairWorks into UE4, as the mane hair of my horse, will let you know about the performance , if I succeed into doing so.

4

Hello,

This is a question from the beta version of the engine. We are marking this answered for tracking purposes. If you are experiencing an issue similar to this please post a new question.

Thank you.