I’m primarily a designer and I’m developing a Character Creator for a simulation application. Eve Online inspired me, so I’m looking to do something similar:
If you watched the video or downloaded the trial and play around with it, you’ll notice that it appears to be one mesh in which you’re able to “highlight” certain areas and change the vertex positions by holding down the left mouse button and moving it. I assume that it uses morph targets, so when you select a certain body part and move the mouse around, it acts like a “slider” to change the topology.
My application will be run from the browser, so I was planning on using the foundation of Unity’s Character Creator example for streaming assets and saving a configuration to a server. I’m also going to be using bone animation for movement and lip sync for talking characters. I’m not worried too much about polygon count, especially for the character model so ideally I would like it one mesh so there isn’t any seams.
I’ve searched high and low on these forums for the best method to design a creator. Some people seem to use morph targets (which seems really slow), and others recommend using bones for changing the topology.
Some questions I’d like to throw out to the community to brainstorm:
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For the deformation of the one piece character mesh, would it be better to get morph targets working or try to use bones?
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If you suggest bones; how would that work after a character gets saved and exported to an environment, and I would like to use additional bones for facial animation and lip sync?
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What would be a good solution for having the mesh “glow” when you hover over a body part so you can click/hold, modify the mesh with the mouse, similar to the video?
Any thoughts would be greatly appreciated!