Custom character system for UDK! Customize madness!

[darthwilson]

Hey folks!

I'm doing a project involving a "Custom character system" for the UDK which I would love to share and would like your opinions on.

I've come up with a 'workflow' which could be used that goes from stage 1 modeling to the final result in engine. I just want to show some of my milestone stages and see what you think!

Firstly, a custom character system? What art that?! :-

It's the type of system seen in games like Morrowind, All Points Bulletin, Mass Effect and many many more! A system which will let the user change a base meshes appearance for example facial structure, body structure, skin colour and complexion etc.

Okay so milestone 1 was to source a model to use for the project.. Because this runs over two semesters I'm sourcing a base mesh and only doing a male character. I'm using the awesome base mesh by Nick Zuccarello (with permission). I'm using Zbrush to create morph targets as it has awesome features like active symmetry, move tool and layers! Layers has an awesome option to reverse intensity!

Okay so here is the base mesh that I'm using.. I've tweaked it to around 9k triangles!



Here are some of the wacky morphs I have made in Zbrush!



Exported morphs in 3Ds Max! about 40 in total!



Clothing and Hair! with some morphs as well!



I have setup the system in UDK with the morph targets etc and it works fine!

Character in engine (with crap vectors instead of diffuse maps



Morph target set. The animation tree toolset is needed as well if I want it to work with matinee or in script via scaleform.





The things left to do is mainly the texturing! I need to do the following

• Texture pale and tanned diffuse maps of the character so that I can hopefully make a blend system in the material editor
• Texture hair and clothing
• Texture two tattoos
• Sculpt an example of wrinkles, a scar and an older complexion. Then bake normal map overlays
• Setup shaders for all textures
• Rig and skin with standard biped
• Final prototype either in Matinee/Kismet or build a GUI using scaleform!

Any suggestions to this system would be greatly appreciated! I'm considering to implement global scale somehow, most likely through script in the engine. I hope you folks like what I have done thus far.

[lVampirel]

wow dude this is pretty hardcore epic, Looks very epic. I had plans similar to what I was going to do for my game

[LeiterJakab]

Looks exiting. Hope we'll get updates about results.

[darthwilson]

Thanks for the nice comments, I hope you like this next small update!

I've implemented dynamic eye and skin colour systems!

Because the eyes UV space is on the same area and same Material ID as the head I needed to use masking and linear interpolation to accomplish this!







Got it hooked up with a vector parameter so the colour can be changed as a material instance.

As for the skin colours, I've 'very quickly' made some diffuse texture from 3D coat to test interpolation from one texture to another. IE, pale to dark and hoping the falloff doesn't look horrible.

Here are the results.!







I think for the amount of time it took to do the texture maps (30 minutes), I've got an okay result! Once I properly paint these diffuse maps the result will be much better!

Also, all these assets aren't finished. IE I have yet to clean up normal maps, texture things properly etc. At the moment I'm testing my content as early as possible!

[TheAgent]

Does this require many bones, for the morph targets?

[darthwilson]

The vertex morphs do not require any bones as it uses vertex data

[TheAgent]

Thank you! That's really cool stuff, keep it up. Custom character creation is always the best.

[darthwilson]

Just some videos of them systems in real time.

[rowan_moss]

Awesome stuff!! Very nice work

[EmAr]

That's tons of hard work man. Great result

One small thing that can be added to the face morph video can be changing many parameters(not only one parameter at a time) to create a completely different but equally good looking face which is obviously possible with this system.

[ObstinatusMiles]

wow! awesome work! keep it up

[Lexluthor1]

Hey folks!

I'm doing a project involving a "Custom character system" for the UDK which I would love to share and would like your opinions on.

I've come up with a 'workflow' which could be used that goes from stage 1 modeling to the final result in engine. I just want to show some of my milestone stages and see what you think!

Firstly, a custom character system? What art that?! :-

It's the type of system seen in games like Morrowind, All Points Bulletin, Mass Effect and many many more! A system which will let the user change a base meshes appearance for example facial structure, body structure, skin colour and complexion etc.

Okay so milestone 1 was to source a model to use for the project.. Because this runs over two semesters I'm sourcing a base mesh and only doing a male character. I'm using the awesome base mesh by Nick Zuccarello (with permission). I'm using Zbrush to create morph targets as it has awesome features like active symmetry, move tool and layers! Layers has an awesome option to reverse intensity!

Okay so here is the base mesh that I'm using.. I've tweaked it to around 9k triangles!



Here are some of the wacky morphs I have made in Zbrush!



Exported morphs in 3Ds Max! about 40 in total!



Clothing and Hair! with some morphs as well!



I have setup the system in UDK with the morph targets etc and it works fine!

Character in engine (with crap vectors instead of diffuse maps



Morph target set. The animation tree toolset is needed as well if I want it to work with matinee or in script via scaleform.





The things left to do is mainly the texturing! I need to do the following

• Texture pale and tanned diffuse maps of the character so that I can hopefully make a blend system in the material editor
• Texture hair and clothing
• Texture two tattoos
• Sculpt an example of wrinkles, a scar and an older complexion. Then bake normal map overlays
• Setup shaders for all textures
• Rig and skin with standard biped
• Final prototype either in Matinee/Kismet or build a GUI using scaleform!

Any suggestions to this system would be greatly appreciated! I'm considering to implement global scale somehow, most likely through script in the engine. I hope you folks like what I have done thus far.

Looks amazing mate and sorry I wasn't very responsive for a while...Just so bloody busy at the moment
You've come up with a brilliant work around and that's what's called innovative in game design and development! I can see a very rosy future for you in this field
Good luck and if you want to PM me again about anything, use this email because I read these every day, dsaxon6@gmail.com or message me on my company Facebook page here, Seek and Destroy Games

[Schwarzleben]

Very Nice! Keep up the Good Work

[Private Tux]

Awesome job mate. Good way with those dynamic head and body design and nice optimization about the poly assets that way I feel. Hopefully this one gets the best result.

[darthwilson]

Thanks everyone for the lovely comments! I'm still working on the basic systems and once they are done I can then focus on improving the art content.

Here is a shader I'm using for overlaying tattoos. It uses one texture map with individual greyscale images in the RGB channels. Then I have a mask for the tattoo and finally it is over-layed into the final body material. Below is the texture I made, the tattoo design is from deviant art (http://bigman19.deviantart.com/art/n...s%20star&qo=21)



And here is a video of the system working..



Next update I'm going to have textured hair and a shader so that the player can change the base, root and tip colours of the hair.

Thanks folks.

I'm not happy at the moment because it just doesn't feel right, as if its just slapped on. I need to work on the diffuse and specularity to make it look and feel like a real tattoo.

[darthwilson]

I done the hair but it hasn't turned out good as it was the 1st time texturing hair and turned out awful..

I shall show you what I'm doing for clothing.. similar approach to the tattoo system.

[zanrai]

Really cool! It scares me to think how long this took to get going.

[darthwilson]

Thanks! Glad you like it..

It does take time unfortunately but worth it! Here is pretty much all of the WIP functions in place!



All I have to do now is make the art asset pretty!!

Thanks folks!

[darthwilson]

I though that I should do something slightly different and experiment with Sub Surface Scattering. Used this as a guide http://udn.epicgames.com/Three/Scree...cattering.html

Not too sure on how SSS maps should be done but here it is without:



SSS on:



I guess the light is kind of getting absorbed :/ Also! Thats a new diffuse map! Painted in 3D coat!

Now... Some weird faces this guy can pull!!





Added animated normal maps for the fat body size and older complexion as well as rigged and skinned all the assets! Got the animtree using an aimoffset so he can look at you :P

Still looking a bit clunky though :/

[darthwilson]

Thought that I would also show cloth morphs working along side the mesh morphs! This has to be setup in matinee though!

Regular man



Thin Man



Fat Man

[TheAgent]

Great job keep it up.

[Private Tux]

Cool on the mix! I like the body gain feature at post #20.

[FraktalZero]

cool stuff!

[darthwilson]

Thanks folks! If you's have any suggestions please hit me with them!

Thought that I would share this achievement:- I mentioned that my tattoos were looking ugly which is evident in previous posts. This was because it was being directly overlayed on the diffuse map through the add material nodes.



Now I have cleverly used an alpha mask to firstly overlay a value of 0/black to the diffuse then add the texture over it! however this wouldn't work by using mask then add. I finally figured out that it needs lerp functions!



I then managed to get arm tattoos as well working! each are "swapable" and each have 3 different colours to choose from!



This project nearly done! Hair needs attention then I'm done! (May do some cheeky overlay images for the Tshirt!)

[darthwilson]

Okay! nearly finished! Here is a demo of my system!!

I'd really really appreciate feedback of any sort!

[Private Tux]

Sweet tattoo design bro, just as I explored that much.
And very nice video about the custom character profile formula (as an avatar).

[lVampirel]

yea i really like this but after actually looking at it,im not sure if you thought about it, but it the results will be similar to APB (All Point Bulletins) Reloaded game customization,it would be epic to do a customization similar.

[darthwilson]

Thanks =)

Here is the final prototype!



I'm also going to post this under the released projects forum!

I do plan to do more at a later date! I'd like to team up with a programmer to make a working GUI =)

[Lexluthor1]

Thanks =)

Here is the final prototype!



I'm also going to post this under the released projects forum!

I do plan to do more at a later date! I'd like to team up with a programmer to make a working GUI =)

Amazing....I'm flabbergasted with this Darth............Fantastic job

[juguefre]

GREAT FU**** WORK! never mind if I know how to do this manually is still impressive.

[darthwilson]

Hehe

Thanks =)

[Razorb]

Really awesome work mate! very impressed!

[Fi5h1fishy]

Very good work, i loved your work, cant wait to see some more of it, you have a good youtube channel, keep up the work youve just earned a subscriber

[Fi5h1fishy]

Are we going to be able to download them or somthing soon, becuase i really like them!

[LordNelson7]

Really Cool! I love all the customization!

[DT85]

Did you manage to get this awesome system into a character customisation menu?

[darthwilson]

Afraid not.. I'm not really a programmer so I wouldn't know where to start!! I will finally get round to it one day!

[TechLord]

Hi darthwilson

Awesome work! Excellent Thread! Your demonstration on Morph Targets has provided me insight for their application in adjusting areas on non-facial body/accessory meshes used in OverArc's Modular Entity Construction System. MECS extends UDK's Modular Pawn to customize everything, using featureless Body meshes with Skeletal Mesh Sockets as a base to attach high-detail Accessory Parts: Limbs, Armor, and Ornaments. The Premise: 1) Assemble a large variety of Entities from interchangeable parts; 2) Use a seamless Body mesh to eliminate gaps between Parts. I'm tracking this thread.