Hello, everybody. While making some models for my game I' ve found a problem. I don't know how to create a base mesh for humanoids. I mean i don't need a regular male from ZBrush or whatever. My modelling skills can't help me in this situation. May be there is some sort of program which helps to create a basemesh for human?

There are lots, what style is your game? Is it realistic? Do you have some kind of toon setup?

My game style is realistic.

On 12/4/2017 at 9:59 PM, G-Dot said:

I don't know how to create a base mesh for humanoids.

With practice.

On 12/4/2017 at 9:59 PM, G-Dot said:

May be there is some sort of program which helps to create a basemesh for human?

http://www.makehuman.org/

https://www.mixamo.com/

These software aren't all purpose tools. Use them with caution. 

Daz Studio fits this bill and I think Poser does as well, but that's getting into paid programs whereas makehuman is free. Daz Studio has a free version. I think it gives you a basic human male and female. It's easy to spend a whole lot of money on these programs if you're not careful.

I've seen tutorials on importing Daz Studio characters into Unreal Engine. I think even with the free version you can adjust the shape of the character.

I'm not sure any of these models are optimized for games. For example, with clothes on the model probably has a lot of hidden geometry that the engine has to draw every frame but can never actually be seen (waste of gpu cycles). They tend to be pretty high poly meshes as well, but maybe not too terribly bad, especially for a main character.

I've actually used MakeHuman to create basic characters for Unity. I had a problem with the armature, skinning, and rigging. I had to import the model into blender, delete the armature, recreate it from the Blender humanoid armature and then re-skin and rig it. It was a good educational exercise though. Not sure if that's gotten better, but I think Daz Studio models may handle that a lot better.

I think both programs have clothes for the model. Daz Studio has a ton of stuff you can buy and blow through money pretty quickly (for a "free" program). I've been interested in Marvelous Designer. Marvelous Designer actually comes from the clothing industry. The same people make a version that is actually used to design commercial clothing. Marvelous Designer is the version for the game industry and focused on that basically throwing out features that aren't needed for game creation but are needed for creating real world clothing designs. But it looks to me to be pretty much the industry standard for clothing your models, although you may have to learn a thing or two about real world tailoring to use it.

I want to get into character creation myself, but we're not doing sculpting (like with ZBrush) until next semester and I have a ton of work to crankout this semester still. I'm kind of "chomping at the bit" to get into it. So, I've been looking at this stuff. And Daz Studio and Marvelous Designer seem like they could get you started (or really just Daz Studio by itself). I imagine in the future, I'll be modeling my own base form in Blender and then either sculpting detail in Blender or in ZBrush. Then doing clothing in Marvelous Designer. Then taking it back into Blender to remove hidden geometry and such. Then painting it all in Substance Painter.

I could imagine Daz Studio possibly still being part of the work-flow at that point to crank out a large number of models for NPC's and such. I'm not sure how I will feel about Daz Studio once I learn how to do it from scratch, but I can at least imagine how it might fit into my workflow once I learn to do it myself. You can customize things yourself in Daz Studio if you learn how. For example, you can make your own clothing in Marvelous Designer for Daz Studio characters (and if it's any good, sell it). So, the main reason I can think of that you would not use Daz Studio is to get more control over the model and it's topology.

The other day I even saw that Daz Studio has a plugin for humanoids, which I thought looked pretty cool.

Thaks a lot. It is very useful information. Actually I've made my character, created the base mesh in MakeHuman, add details with 3DS Max and some clothing with Marvelous. For me Daz Studio seems very interesting program and may be I will touch it in the future. I didn't exported bones and maybe it was right desicion. Any way thanks to everyone again.

This was my first humanoid character and I'm very happy with it. Learned very a lot while making it. But there is steel a big way to bring it to the engine: texturing, rigging, skinning, animating. This parts are familiarly to me, thats way I should pass them without any serious problems.

I just found this one a few minutes ago. It looks pretty interesting. Not quite Daz Studio, but much more integrated directly into Blender. I guess if you're using Max it's of no help, but for anyone using Blender it makes a whole lot of sense.

In my opinion Daz makes the best looking character models - but its important to realise its not free if you want to use their models in most types of game. The prices are good for their quality, but they are not free. (if you want free use either makehuman or Manuel Bastoni, or maybe Morph3d I dont know much about it).

Daz models have 2 different licence types, a "standard licence" which is just for 2d renders (daz was not originally written for games, its real purpose is to make 2d renders), and an "interactive licence" which is needed to buy a model for most games usages apart from visual novels or sprites.

example-

You download daz studio (which is free) and it gives you "genesis 8 starter essentials" for free (which includes the basic genesis 8 male and female models under the "standard licence").

You morph those models and export them as people models for your games.

As you used "genesis 8 starter essentials" models inside your models in a game, you will need to buy the "interactive licence" for "genesis 8 starter essentials", (which is $100 https://www.daz3d.com/genesis-8-starter-essentials )

I actually prefer genesis 3 instead of genesis 8. (See Appearance tip below.)

Similarily each product you buy from their shop also has an optional "interactive licence" which you would need to buy if you want to use it in a game. If a model doesnt have an interactive licence then you cannot legally use it in that way.

This is another advantage of daz models - there is a huge amount of clothing models you can buy that fit the characters.

Money saving tip - bundles are cheaper as they have an interactive licence that covers everything in their bundle.

Appearance tip - If you want figures for the player character, I prefer genesis 3 (ie generation 7) rather than genesis 8. Genesis 8 is very new and doesnt have many good character models under the age of 30 out yet compared to previous versions. So currently I prefer the previous generation of character models ie their generation 7 models which are based on "genesis 3 starter essentials" (which was free in their older download, but i dont know if it is now)