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I've tried 2d and 3d, and I settled on 3d because of the consistency of the end result.
I am very much a programmer, so basically anything that requires any kind of style, I rely on actual artists for.
If it's not a building or can't be generated with a script, I'm awful at it.
I'm absolutely terrible at modeling humans so I use https://reallusion.com/character-cr... for my human stuff. I use Marvelous Designer for the clothes and have dabbled in various asset stores for set pieces like furniture. I am probably going to get Substance Painter because why not? -
@cuddlyogre I will have to look into those.
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@cuddlyogre good resource bud! I will look into it, I am terrible at designing anything
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Generating models in a programmatic way is painful man, extremely painful.
Character modeling for people like me(0 design skills) as a whole is difficult, I toyed with the idea of generating basic shapes within webgl (using it with Js is dead simple) and attempting to automate the process of the shapes going into a fixed skelleton by using simple xyz positioning on a template grid, it was sort of working, but then I needed to find a way in which I could add different textures for skin, and subsequently body features and then finally clothing. It was fun, but even if I fully succeeded I still needed to find a way to port that into the type of settings that an engine that is already established would take (such as Godot or Unity, the two in which I have the most "experience")
Could not even figure out where to go, the shaper I was developing already had shitty math and code in it, making a custom engine was the only solution -
I am not giving up on this though, it is a fun experiment even if it is a bad idea.
I am just overwhelmed with the amount of work needed. Still, I would much rather play with this as a purely academic endeavor over doing web based projects on my own anymore, those were boooooooring. Game dev is much more fun, artistic -
@AleCx04 one thing I read really hit home on content decisions. If you use technologies such as hand made levels, hand made models, and voice acting then you inherently reduce the scope of what your game can present. So my interest in creating procedural content should increase the scope of what my games can include. Obviously creativity on usage of assets also plays a big factor here. So I may include limited voice acting, but have the majority of the dialog be read. I would also like to have modular humanoids and monsters. So more detail and attention will go into each model, but the utility of each model will hopefully be higher.
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@Demolishun
Like everything, it depends on resources. Greatly customizable humanoid models with blend shapes exist, but it's an explosive combination soon enough...
That's why you don't see cyberpunk or elden ring rigs out there.
Probably took them months of several animators and modelers to get right.
As for other semi humanoid creatures, both unity and UE have animation retargeting, meaning you can use their preset (or any other humanoid animation) with any (semi-)humanoid rig with only a few clicks. -
@CoreFusionX I have found some code and videos on how to accomplish this in Godot. It is not out of my reach both time and skill wise. It is more a of a long term goal though.
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I actually did a project for my last company, where we had to use these heavyweight, super customizable rigs we had in a web GL app which of course doesn't have multithreading to load in background.
I had to set up a service that would receive a .fbx/.obj, and a json with "static" (as in, no longer changed after character creation) blendshape values and it would fire up blender programmatically, load the model, precalculate the vertex values for the blendshapes, fix those values, and remove the blendshape data from the model, and then return an asset that could be saved for that player.
Shit allowed us to raise the limit of concurrent players from 8 to 50. -
@Demolishun
Well, as you yourself admitted, you are not too battle hardened in this.
Implementing a retargeting system is a looooong path full of many pitfalls.
I mean, I've tried, without success (at least to the point I'd call success), and I'm a veteran in this field.
So, if you feel like it, absolutely go for it, just saying that beware, the undersea currents are dangerous XD. -
@CoreFusionX I will prob be making models from scratch. So I most likely come up with standard skeletons. Not sure if I need to retarget skeletons. I was excited about remeshers going from sculpting to final mesh.
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@CoreFusionX the procedural humanoid is probably a pie in the sky idea though.
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@Demolishun
"Standard" skeletons, as if, you making a barely "humanoid" rig fits for retargeting.
Cool thing is that you can actually get UE to output your retargeted rigs without actually having to use UE. -
@CoreFusionX yeah, I had thought about that. I remember reading about those features for UE while back.
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@CoreFusionX I watched a video about using Blender to retarget animations. I am not sure if they are using a plugin or not.
My first try at 3D printing. Currently selling it on Shapeways, good thing they were celebrating and didn't ha...
When you have so much time on your hands that you create a rotating 3D cube console program...
So I am getting back into game dev. I keep going back and forth about making a 2D or 3D rpg. Maybe I will end up making a mix.
I also want to make customizable characters in game. I found a decent solution for 2D. An artist is making 2D sprites that allow things to be overlaid. Each component has animations. I can layer sprites and animate them in sync to keep all the pieces moving together.
For 3D this journey of what is possible is a lot longer I think. It is hit or miss finding generic 3D characters with build in morphing. I want to be able to change the body for customization. I think I will have to relearn how to 3D model. As I learn what kind of model I need I am also learning what it takes to do this in Blender. And holy hell, Blender is so amazing now! The stuff I can do easily is staggering. You can sculpt a mesh using sculpting tools. Then do a remesh of that to make a more easily animateable mesh. No remeshing by hand, other than installing a plugin. There are a bunch of plugins that you can buy too. I found one for free that looks promising. But the paid ones are not that bad either. Between $25 to $100 depending upon source, license, and features.
However, being a programmer I want to figure out how to generate 3D and 2D models. There is code out there to do this, but I wonder what the learning curve is on that. The engineer side of me wants to be able to model the shape of humanoids and then auto skin that. I think I will start with modeling a few by hand to learn the way it should work. I want a simple anime look. I did find info on automating face rigs and body rigs. Oh the tools we have now!
Anyway, I am having fun.
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