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!

You can create all your armors on a basemesh and apply the surface deform modifier. Create blendshapes of your different body types on the basemesh and all your surfaced deformed armors will automatically deform to fit.

I usually use procedural textures or tiled textures for the base material whenever I can, and just use decals with image textures all over the model to create detail. Not only does this allow for good resolution on closeups without insane 32k image textures, but it also reduces stretching in the textures when deforming. If you are using image textures though, just fine-tune the UVs for each body shape before exporting the FBX for that version of the armor.

Also, Blender is as professional as anything out there. Check out the CGI in Man in the High Castle.

Last edited by Droata; 25/05/21 03:35 AM.