Game Characters: Clothes & Accessories Theory

Support Modeling
#1

I’m playing around with a model I made in sculptris and ultimately I’d like to take it into Blender and retopologize it for use inside a game engine (BGE, UDK, etc.)

I can’t get my head around how I should best approach giving the character clothes and accessories. I could make the high poly cloths on top of the high poly model but how would this transfer over to a game ready model? would it be the same deal as the high poly? ie would the clothes meshes sit over the character mesh, or, would the whole mesh need to be solid for performance issues and a different model for each clothes setup?

Another thing I don’t understand is how high poly clothes adapt to a character under animation. Any light on the subject would be great.

Oki

#2

I have not actually done it myself before (if there is any anyone who knows it better than I do, please correct me…), but I think the way you do clothing on an model for animation is by first modeling a simple shell of what you want your clothing to look like around the model, and then applying a shrink wrap modifier to it (with the target being your model). Now you can apply a cloth simulation to it, and make the model your collision. As for doing cloth sims for games… well, honestly I’m not even sure if that’s possible. I’m not all that knowledgeable of the BGE, but if I were to make a guess, I would say that it’s too processor heavy for a real-time game. I don’t know. Anyways, if there’s anyone who’s more knowledgeable on the subject, please correct me.

Hope that helped some!

#3

As far as I know, it is not possible to use cloth sim in the BGE. If you select Blender Game render engine, you will see that the options normally available for Blender Render (cloth, collision, force field, fluid, and smoke) are replaced with the Game Physics options.

As pkhs said, real-time clothing would be very processor-heavy. Usually, BGE users apply UV textures for clothing. Few, if any, model clothing details on the game model. Using textures optimizes the game for speed.

#4

Most games have the clothing as part of the character’s mesh. Another way of thinking about it is that where the skin is hidden, there’s no mesh for it [the skin]. There’s no real point since if you never see the character’s feet, then why have a foot mesh complete with toes? Etc.

#5

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Download Transformers 3 Dark of The Moon Movie

#6

I see, so the models would be put together inside the game engine and then just assigned a set animation. Example: I have two pairs of pants with slightly different designs, they would be modeled on a character and then given set animation, ie, they would both use the same rig? Then you just swap out the parts inside the game?