So something I wanted to do was to make a standalone RPG character creator. I wanted to do it either in the style of Black Desert Online

Or the Bethesda/Elder Scrolls/Fallout way. 

I'd like to think I'm a decent programmer, but I actually have no clue as to how I could make something like this work. Does anyone know of any resources or possibly even books/tutorials I could go through to help me get started on this?
Just to clarify, my starting scope is pretty basic, all I'd want to do is:
adjustable limb length/width, and detailed facial customization

changeable body proportions on an individual scale (so that asymmetry is possible)

basic poses

I'm pretty sure for something like this all of the body rigs would have to be the same (since I'm starting out with only bi-pedal human characters)

that type of thing.
If anyone has any information, please let me know!
Edit:
Ah, by the way, I'm decent at C++, C#, Java, and HTML5,  and can find my way around Unity. I have no problems with "you have to make this from scratch", I just want to know how to get started.

Fair enough! I've done some work with shaders and UI, so yes the problem would be the geometry deformation. I have no idea how you could get such a large number of possible changes programmatically. Would you just have to make a model for every extreme and then blend between them somehow? 

But to be clear, the problem is getting the geometry deformation to work out in a way that allows the user to customize as much as possible in terms of face, skin, and body type/proportions for their character. Once I get that going I'm sure adding accessories or different clothing would be relatively simple.

As I know from a project; they have had 2 models for male and female characters and defined special spots or regions on every part of the model that could just be modified. Raising the noses length moved the marked vertices for the nose up or down in direction where a spherical transform caused humbs to grow or shrink. Using different skin is realized due to a texture blend where the hair style and beards were made from additional meshes.

I personally would then bake together anything into one model and save it in what way ever instead of generate each time when the model needs to be used

In case anybody else was interested in this, I found a free example of a working character creator for Unreal Engine 4. When I get the opportunity I'm gonna dissect it myself to try and learn more, but for now here's a link.

https://forums.unrealengine.com/showthread.php?74688-FREE-Character-Creator

And thank you all for giving me a good starting point to go off of. I'm going to keep looking for something a little more comprehensive just so I can get a better understanding, but if I find anything new or relevant in my search I'll post it up here.
thanks again!

I have started working on this in Unity3d. We should talk and see about combining our knowledge.

Tim

Have you tried vanilla blender3d or a plugin? Maybe you could make a plugin.