I'm looking for ideas on how to setup a character in a 3d modeling program and in code to create an editable avatar. I want be able to have its facial (and body) features editable in game. The only thing I know about this subject is that if i try to move facial bones in game, the animations will override my changes, so, how can i create different looking people, but keep the animations intact? I'm not talking about the basic swap meshes technique (replace the head model with a different head model for example) because I can already do that. i want to do this:


saitns row 3 avatar edit

So, is it a 2 bone dual bone setup? Where one set of bones is for the animation as normal, and the other set are the ways to change the facial features? Maybe its all mesh based, and there's a system to edit the meshes around the bones to give the effect I'm after?


anyway, what do you guys think? How would you set it up? Any ideas welcome. I dont know if it matters, but I'm using unity and C# for this game

thanks

Thanks, now I have some idea on where to look...so it I have some research to do!

I also started to play with the actual mesh, so I hope to get some interesting results modifying the mesh at run time. The only problem I see with that method is that that while it can lead to what i want, it seems like it will be more difficult to keep the models looking good/human.

So, besides morph targets, anyone else have any ideas?

morph targets were just the thing to do what i wanted! To get a working prototpye wasnt that hard either, thanks to the wikipedia entry (it helped me figure out what i needed to do and what was possible).

Anyway, thanks!

No problem, Character Creation systems like Saint's Row, or Mass Effect, to me, do have the downside that if you're 0% artistically inclined, you will go in wanting to recreate Scarlett Johansson and getting Joan Rivers instead, its all part of the freedom you give your players.

You may want to look up the http://www.makehuman.org/ project, its an open source 3d character modeler which uses some of same principles.