Body Sliders (Take 2!)

[FxsRMcFall]

This is pretty cool! This was something that was tossed around as an idea for the game but never made it in. I can answer questions on face morphs, but that is a world of pain. As you might be able to tell from the data configuration, modding was not a factor when the face system was devised.

 

That said, it sounds like one of your obstacles is getting the reference head from which to build a new morph? Perhaps we could include a base head source asset in SDK. You might have noticed this already as well, but face props that hug the face ( beards, nose rings, etc. ) also have morphs. One for each face... so that could be another complication.

[Hyperplexed]

This is pretty cool! This was something that was tossed around as an idea for the game but never made it in. I can answer questions on face morphs, but that is a world of pain. As you might be able to tell from the data configuration, modding was not a factor when the face system was devised.

 

That said, it sounds like one of your obstacles is getting the reference head from which to build a new morph? Perhaps we could include a base head source asset in SDK. You might have noticed this already as well, but face props that hug the face ( beards, nose rings, etc. ) also have morphs. One for each face... so that could be another complication.

 

Yeah I'm aware of that Ryan, and I know that I will have to "refit" pretty much ALL the props and hairs so they dont clip with the rest of the mesh. It will be a pain, but its one that I'm willing to take, the good thing though, is that the morphs get automatically applied, which really eases the scripting part. And because I understand how the game was built without considering new head shapes (or even body shapes) in mind, thats why I'm appealing to the community to undertake this project and develop a framework that could be used by 3D artists to work over, because its extremely static, due to the Anim Tree limitations. The only thing that is still possible without having the need to fiddle with the Anim Tree, is head meshes, thats basically what the scripting on this is doing, its "listening" for when the mesh is getting loaded (sort of) and change the mesh so it can inject the morphs. It would be fairly easy to do so for the head mesh aswell.

 

I'm not sure if putting the head on the SDK will help though, I'm pretty sure that UDK destroys the vertex order/count on export, which makes it impossible to work with when doing new morph targets. We need to have something like an FBX or OBJ to do so. FBX is preferable, because its able to save weight paints, but if I had an OBJ, I could already manage. Here's what I've verified to come to this conclusion:

 

- If I export the SM_Head as FBX, vertex order/count gets destroyed

- If I export any of the static meshes as OBJ, it outputs 3 OBJs, vertex order/count destroyed

- I went as far as test exporting the meshes from the cooked UPKs, using Gildor's UModel, vertex order/count destroyed

 

So you see, I dont think we will be able to add new head shapes, on the SM_Head as Morph Targets, because of this UDK limitation. UDK is a tool meant to develop games, so Epic Games probably only took the effort to make the Imports work right, because usually a game developer will not need to export, since he should have all the source files right? But to be honest I'm already past that, although releasing an FBX/OBJ would make the job easier for others 3Dartists. It was a decision that I took, to sacrifice all the head shapes in order to be able to do this, because I can recreate the head shapes again, and new ones, I'll just have a bit more work, thats all.

 

I do have some questions though, if you dont mind:

- The only way I found to prevent the game from crashing (when choosing bodyparts), was to unload the skeletal mesh first, prior to applying the morphtargetset on the mesh. This is why sometimes it flickers a bit too much when selecting body parts (also because I suck at coding... I'm just a designer...), because first is loading the mesh referenced on the ARC, then it unloads it, then applies the MorphTargetSet, and then loads the mesh again. This operation must be done on any BodyPart, specially on those that do not have Morphs. Any way around this?

- Regarding the arms thing that was introduced with Anarchy... In my particular case, it doesnt seem to be working very good, but I think this is on how it was designed, which I understand. Whats happening is that I'm trying to use the template SetNames, choosing the torso, will "lock and load" the proper available Legs part, but its not doing so for the arms. I mean, if I go on the list, the list is correct, it only shows the possible choice for arms, but, its not loading them automatically as it does for the legs, I need to go over, and select some arms manually.

 

Thanks for your feedback Ryan