Originally Posted by vometia
Originally Posted by Alexandrite
I wonder how much design effort it takes to adapt armour onto different 3D model body types?

Depends. I'm not a professional modeller (in fact I'm barely an amateur) so my experiences are limited, especially with industry-standard software, but it can be a case of just stretching a given model to fit so you have the small and large extremes, which is Skyrim's approach, to completely different body types which involve pretty much making it from scratch for each one. They have their pros and cons; the stretching can look weird as it will be compounded as the character moves, though some careful design should theoretically avert it or at least make it not too obvious; completely different models can be tailored to the character type in question in much the same way as light, medium and heavy armours look different (even if the underlying model is the same) but obviously the effort involved quickly ramps up.

There's effort and effort, though. It's a lot less effort for an experienced modeller with professional software than it is for my one-vertex-at-a-time approach in Blender!

Believe it or not, in the majority of smaller studios, Blender is the major 3D software, and it is definately professional level. In the larger studios, there is also ZBrush, but if you learn Blender, you can use most other major software bundles with very little transition. It mostly comes down to sculpting experience, and the familiarity of the tools and hotkeys. Personally, I have found sculpting to be easier for modeling rather than vertex. Not to mention, Blender works very well with Unreal. It has incredible built in tools for clothing, physics etc. It is definitely a different ball game from my days in 3DSM 10 years ago.

Last edited by Pandemonica; 25/05/21 12:09 AM.