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Clothing System -Notes on how it works!

Name:	Paul Ash
Date Posted:	Nov 25, 2007
Rating:	5.0 out of 5
Public:	YES
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Blog post

Hello again everyone, I'm very happy from the influx of people interested in my code pack "THE CLOTHING SYSTEM!!". I just figured sense so many people asked me so many questions not just on my blog post but via e-mail and other medium I would post some of the functions and basicly what the "coders" will need to do to get there clothing in the game, and a small hint of what the artists will need to do as well.

First off the clothing DataBlock so simple..so easy to understand

datablock ClothingData(Sandles)
{
   category = "Clothing";
   className = "Sandles";
   shapeFile = "~/data/shapes/Clothing/Sandles.dts";
};

now you may be asking, how do I attach my new fancy sandles to my player?

very easily actually, this command was only just added today I've now started on my complete fourth pass on my code and real user ConsoleMethod's are being added

Player.EquipClothing(1, "Sandles");

Now right now you are wonder what that "1" is aren't you, or you have already jumped to the idea that I'm stealing your mount 1 point, don't worry I'm no thief! that point is an EQUIP_POINT a small new addition to the player class to track all the clothing, we cant loose track of whats equipped and where or we would never be able to find it again to remove it, or even change it! To start with the "Clothing System" will have 3 pre-build points, but adding more is as simple as changing a single number inside of C++ which will be blatantly tagged for easy changing.

Alright, now for me to show you the part about the clothing system that is most painful to use but not to bad. And even luckier for us programmer its the artists problem haha.

Each piece of clothing will need to be rigged like the player model this is how the clothing system insures that the clothing stays perfect on your player. This process might seem very painful even tiduse but it is the core of what makes the Clothing System useful.

What Makes the Clothing System Powerful?
- After having made your character completely Clothing can be create after the model has been completely implemented. This allows you to add clothing to your game as you produce it or even after its been released much like many MMO's on the market they easily add new clothing and equipment in single patches.

- Now that the system as been rebuild from the ground up from the early alpha it no longer needs to load in nearly as much data into torque. this makes the memory footprint amazingly smaller

-Due to how the system was first programmed network problems are nearly impossible due to how the clothing is attached to the player

-The system requires extremely little changes to only one pre-made torque class (player.cc/player.h)

Thanks for you time everyone there will be much more to come.

repost of videos
-Clothing Show off, equipping different clothing in the engine
-Far back view of player walking with clothing on
-*NEW* Close up of player walking showing off perfect sync with multipliable clothing

Recent Blog Posts

List:	11/30/07 - Going Freelance! -Advanced Torque Feature Programmer/Scripter 11/30/07 - Clothing sets, what do you want? 11/25/07 - Clothing System -Notes on how it works! 11/19/07 - Clothing System 11/13/07 - Greece WesterCiv + Hint of clothing

Submit your own resources!

metalliandy (Nov 25, 2007 at 18:32 GMT)

Nice work!
Is this compatible with TGEA and any ETA?

Johnathon (Nov 25, 2007 at 18:46 GMT)

Looks easy enough. I'm liking how simple this is going to be to use.

Paul Ash (Nov 25, 2007 at 23:43 GMT)

metalliandy - will work with TGEA and TGE

as for the ETA, its looking like this might release in a few months. maybe less

Johnathon (Nov 26, 2007 at 00:07 GMT)

Cost?

Paul Ash (Nov 26, 2007 at 00:48 GMT)

Johnathon - we haven't picked the cost yet, there will be a cheaper version with little clothing, and a slightly more expensive version with a large amount of clothing, and more clothing packs to come afterwords

Johnathon (Nov 26, 2007 at 01:41 GMT)

Clothing packs would be cool.

Johnny Hill (Nov 26, 2007 at 03:11 GMT)

So is it a clothingFX :) system in which you just plug into your own game? I mean I love the system but what if I want to use some of my own character models and just design them based on the coding designs required for them to work with the clothing system.

I mean, if its like ArcaneFX in which you get a special FX codebase and some example spells to use and still enough info to build your own spells I can see paying about the same price. Which is very reasonable for what you get. :)

So you get a very dynamic ClothingFX system and some example clothing, you can build and design your own. its getting harder and harder to get away from the cookie cutter template. If the clothing packs are varied enough it may be well worth the cost. Sci-fi Exo-battle suits that attached themselves to players and move in perfect sync comes to my mind :)

Paul Ash (Nov 26, 2007 at 05:05 GMT)

There will be a heavy piece of documentation with this code pack, it will make sure everyone knows how to not only make there own player models for the system, but there own clothing as well. so don't worry.

As for the sci-fi Exo-Battle suit, once you understand how this system works you will understand that any style of clothing will be just as easy as another.

Allyn "Mr_Bloodworth" Mcelrath (Nov 26, 2007 at 16:29 GMT)

So each piece of "clothing" has a duplicate bones in it?

Dave Young (Nov 26, 2007 at 17:16 GMT)

This traditionally is done using a multimesh system with all meshes on one model and updating the master .dts with new mesh pieces and additional textures, with the exception of things which mount to the head or hands or back (basically extremities on the upper body). It sounds like Paul is trying this by having mounted dts shapes all individually animated.
Is that right Paul?

Paul Ash (Nov 26, 2007 at 18:28 GMT)

that is more or less how it works, by mounting dts shapes individually

also, hopefully a new feature that I'm working on will work by the time its released, but there should be a removal of all geometry under the clothing as well.
Edited on Nov 26, 2007 18:29 GMT

bank (Nov 28, 2007 at 14:19 GMT) Resource Rating: 5

Paul: this is nice!
And what about using different textures? Like taking your example:

Player.EquipClothing(1, "Sandles");

Wouldn't it be hard to alter it to:

Player.EquipClothing(1, "Sandles", "base2");

Where base2 is a "texture name" assuming (for example) base.sndls.jpg is original texture name and base2.sndls.jpg is a new one, that we would like to use?
I mean if I have same "clothing" part I want to get onto different player object, but with using different textures?

Paul Ash (Nov 28, 2007 at 22:34 GMT)

that will be done like any other dts object that as multi textures, name them as such, base.sandles.png Skin1.sandles.png, then use the skinning commands build into torque, they are actually defined very far up the tree when it comes to classes and will work with the clothing like anything else.

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