Character Creation Notes

I'm making the base character for crash.party. I want to record my notes so I can come back to them later if I need to, make additional characters, or help other artists.

Currently, my objective is to:

  1. Make the base mesh
  2. Make facial components
  3. Make some items
  4. Make a character editor to put them all together
  5. Hand off to Jason, we need to save it somehow.
  6. Once we are saving it, we need to recall and create characters to be used in the lobby, and in individual games.

3D Workflow Overview

  1. Form: Overall shape of the object by broad box modeling, sculpting and making strong silhouette.
  2. Topology: Quad polys evenly distributed over the form optimizing for rigging deformations and uv unwrapping.
  3. Rigging: Create armature and weight paint. Check for extrema pinching and change topology as needed.
  4. UV Unwrap: Mark seams on the topology, unwrap UV islands onto a square map that can be textured later.
  5. Animation: Set up IK helpers and create "actions".
  6. Texturing: Vertex paint appropriate areas and import mesh into Substance Painter. Reimport back into Blender.
  7. Exporting: Test model in engine.

Guidelines

Form

- Diffuse (RGB)
- Alpha
- Normal (UV)
- Roughness
- Metalic
- Emissive
- Ambient Occlusion

TODO

Topology:

Finish retopology for character (Elbow and knee pinching) 3D print character (check for form imperfections)

Rigging:

Rig character, model topology if needed

Animation:

make animations: idle, walk, run

Facial Components:

make a few components: socket, eye, mouth, blush model texture export maps and reimport into blender test face with component compositing face compositing ordering base skin eye sockets nose skin detail / makeup tattoo facial hair
---
mouth eyes eyebrows test build process with components make list of components to make

Character items

make items: rigid, rigged, texture only model texture reimport into blender make a list of items to make

Handoff to Jason:

how are custom characters saved on the server? make custom characters work in lobby and game

Extra for fun

make lipsync example make dancesync

test wigglebones

Documentation

make tutorial for item creation make video for item creation