I’m looking to make a character creation screen in the vein of stardew valley (Stardew Valley - Character Creation - YouTube) or fantasy life (Journal - Fantasy Life | A Journey Begins! - YouTube). Something with a base mesh that I can have different outfits, hair, and faces for that can be colored however the player wants (either with sliders, or with pre-made textures they can select from)
I’m a 3D artist who has made a few games before, so I’m familiar with unreal and blueprints, but I’m not entirely sure how to go about this, concept wise. If anyone has a tutorial, or an explanation of how you would approach this I would be grateful; I’m only finding tutorials that are going into boob jiggle and morph targets, which seem a little overwhelming for me to start with.
I’d like to have 3-4 body types available at some point, but if the best way to do that is with morph targets as opposed to separate meshes, I’ll hold off.
Eventually, I’d like the player to be able to change their appearance (add other clothes, get their hair ‘redone’ like animal crossing, ect) , I don’t know if that has any affect on this system or not but mentioning it just in case.
Also, if someone could give me a quick rundown on the best way to create/separate the meshes to be compatible with this system that would be extremely helpful. I also want to use this system to generate random AI characters down the line, so if I can manage to just use one base and one skeleton that’s the dream (for animation especially).
Well there are many ways to create characters for UE4 , my methods are simple because they are the fastest way to get a character into my world but the least detailed in some sense. The first one is free and has a great community for getting extra assets and the second one you have to have an adobe license which I have but use the free one sometimes to supplement what the other doesn’t have.
of course If you want to spend the time to fully create and customize a character with a Rig and all then Blender with Z Brush would be your go to. The forums also has a load of knowledge about this
You need deep knowledge how to change clothes, hair etc. You should look for general 3d character creation tutorials and I’m sure - how to use 3d software. You can use payable and free like a Blender.
If you want ready assets - characters, you should use mentioned An Update on Adobe Fuse as Adobe Moves to the Future of 3D & AR Development
Make human is not bad start too, but with Fuse you have animations. It still need some knowledge how to use it in Unreal Engine (character and animations from Fuse) but much easier than creating it from scratch.
If you are not skilled character creator and animator - forget creating it yourself if you want it fast. Of course is good to learn things, but this will be long way.
Thanks for your reply. I am a 3D artist, I make, rig, and animate characters so that part isn’t an issue. I was asking more about the best way to split the meshes to apply to this specific instance, since my work so far has either been for animations, or for games that didn’t require any changes to the characters.
The question isn’t about making the characters themselves, it’s mainly about having a character creator in-game; sorry if I wasn’t clear.
Thanks for your answer. I think I wasn’t clear; I make 3D art, I can make characters. I just need to know how to have a character creation system in-game similar to what I had linked above.
I see, this can definitely be done in UE4 and here is one example out of many on the marketplace, notice he says he uses UMG, start with those to understand how he did something like this.
Just thinking from the top of my head this wont be a quick system to create from scratch. I could do it but it would take me a few months to get a good idea done for how to structurally build it. If you can already make the parts for the human/character then study the animations forums I linked above and they can explain AnimBP which you will be working with for this type of setup.
Hello, did you ever find an answer to this? I am trying to make a character customization feature like Stardew Valley with the 2D features but can’t seem to find any resources. Please help if you can!