3D Character Maker (coming soon!)
by Ron Erickson · in Jobs · 04/03/2006 (6:47 pm) · 24 replies
Hello all,
This is my first post on the GarageGames forums. I am a programmer/artist with an upcomming product that might interest you all.
Here is a quick rundown of what it is:
3D Character Maker is the ultimate character model creation tool. One of the hardest parts of making your own games is the creation of good media. Of all of the different types of media that you need to create for a game, good human character models are by far the hardest thing to do. Sure, there are "character model packs" that you can buy from different places, but how original can your game be if you have the same characters as the next guy?
3D Character Maker is your solution!
There are character creators in many of todays games. A lot of sports games and RPG's allow you to customize what your character is going to look like. That is exactly what 3D Character Maker does. The difference is that when you are done creating the character, you can export it directly to the direct x file format! You will have your own unique model ready to load into your game in a matter of minutes!
Here are some features:
-Different build types (skinny, average, muscular, overweight) for different body parts.
-Different body parts are individually scalable. Want a larger head than normal? Done. Wider? Done. Taller? Done. Thicker? You guessed it... Done.
-Models are all mesh deformable, rigged (or boned), complete with some animations (and ready for you to add more).
-Change everything from body hair to eye color. If you want your character to have "six-pack" abs or a beer belly it is all up to you. On the face alone there are currently between 10 and 20 different texture options for each area (forehead, nose, eyes, mouth, chin, cheeks, & eyebrow). That gives you millions of possibilities for the face texturing without even considering facial hair, eye or skin color.
-The actual mesh of the face will be easily editable to give even further customization. Want a wider nose? Bigger Eyes, smaller mouth? Done.
3D Character Maker will be released in content packs. Initially, it will be released with some general clothing and hair style options. Content packs will later be released that ADD to your available options. Examples of future content packs are:
-WWII Soldiers
-Space Marines
-Mobsters
-Medieval Knights
-Terrorist/Anti-terrorist
Also, other content packs such as "weapon packs" will be released. These weapon packs will come complete with all of the animations to make them work with your characters! All of the content will be compatible with each other.
I am anticipating a June release!
Here are some links to some movies of it in action:
Movie 1: Face texture modification
Movie 2: Build Sizes (fat, skinny, muscular)
Movie 3: Modification of face mesh (nose)
Movie 4: Changing hair styles
Head over to my site if you wish!
GameToolshed.com
This is my first post on the GarageGames forums. I am a programmer/artist with an upcomming product that might interest you all.
Here is a quick rundown of what it is:
3D Character Maker is the ultimate character model creation tool. One of the hardest parts of making your own games is the creation of good media. Of all of the different types of media that you need to create for a game, good human character models are by far the hardest thing to do. Sure, there are "character model packs" that you can buy from different places, but how original can your game be if you have the same characters as the next guy?
3D Character Maker is your solution!
There are character creators in many of todays games. A lot of sports games and RPG's allow you to customize what your character is going to look like. That is exactly what 3D Character Maker does. The difference is that when you are done creating the character, you can export it directly to the direct x file format! You will have your own unique model ready to load into your game in a matter of minutes!
Here are some features:
-Different build types (skinny, average, muscular, overweight) for different body parts.
-Different body parts are individually scalable. Want a larger head than normal? Done. Wider? Done. Taller? Done. Thicker? You guessed it... Done.
-Models are all mesh deformable, rigged (or boned), complete with some animations (and ready for you to add more).
-Change everything from body hair to eye color. If you want your character to have "six-pack" abs or a beer belly it is all up to you. On the face alone there are currently between 10 and 20 different texture options for each area (forehead, nose, eyes, mouth, chin, cheeks, & eyebrow). That gives you millions of possibilities for the face texturing without even considering facial hair, eye or skin color.
-The actual mesh of the face will be easily editable to give even further customization. Want a wider nose? Bigger Eyes, smaller mouth? Done.
3D Character Maker will be released in content packs. Initially, it will be released with some general clothing and hair style options. Content packs will later be released that ADD to your available options. Examples of future content packs are:
-WWII Soldiers
-Space Marines
-Mobsters
-Medieval Knights
-Terrorist/Anti-terrorist
Also, other content packs such as "weapon packs" will be released. These weapon packs will come complete with all of the animations to make them work with your characters! All of the content will be compatible with each other.
I am anticipating a June release!
Here are some links to some movies of it in action:
Movie 1: Face texture modification
Movie 2: Build Sizes (fat, skinny, muscular)
Movie 3: Modification of face mesh (nose)
Movie 4: Changing hair styles
Head over to my site if you wish!
GameToolshed.com
#2
looks like it's time for me to move to animal pack.....
just kidding
great work Ron !! i would love to play around with this tools too,
looks pretty neat, i can't wait for the demo :D
evi
=======
www.cubixstudio.com
3D Characters for sale
04/03/2006 (9:05 pm)
Oh nooo.. nobody will buy my characters pack anymore looks like it's time for me to move to animal pack.....
just kidding
great work Ron !! i would love to play around with this tools too,
looks pretty neat, i can't wait for the demo :D
evi
=======
www.cubixstudio.com
3D Characters for sale
#3
04/03/2006 (9:55 pm)
Good stuff Ron. I like the level of customization that you can achieve with your tool. It reminds me of the City of Heroes character editor. Keep at it!
#4
Willbkool,
That will probably be one of the first content packs that I do. I was toying with the idea of making WW2 the content to initially release with, but I think general content will be more useful to most users. WW2 media is definately a popular subject matter, so it will definately happen!
Evi,
Wow! I just checked out your site. You really do some nice work! In the future, I may be looking for some help with adding content. Once I get to that point, if you are interested, maybe we could talk :)
BigPapa,
I have never actually played City of Heroes (although I have heard it was a great game). Basicly though, that is the idea behind this. I've played so many games where you can make your own customizable characters, and thought this would be a very useful tool to indie programmers.
Regards,
Ron
04/03/2006 (11:22 pm)
Thanks for the comments!Willbkool,
That will probably be one of the first content packs that I do. I was toying with the idea of making WW2 the content to initially release with, but I think general content will be more useful to most users. WW2 media is definately a popular subject matter, so it will definately happen!
Evi,
Wow! I just checked out your site. You really do some nice work! In the future, I may be looking for some help with adding content. Once I get to that point, if you are interested, maybe we could talk :)
BigPapa,
I have never actually played City of Heroes (although I have heard it was a great game). Basicly though, that is the idea behind this. I've played so many games where you can make your own customizable characters, and thought this would be a very useful tool to indie programmers.
Regards,
Ron
#6
Imagine.. your game calls for a bunch of NPC characters.. the game has lots of them, so you generate their features using your system at runtime.
it would also mean that the player could create their own characters like in City of Heroes.
Basically, in its current form, it's brilliant.. if it can export to DTS using the standard skeleton, that would be the best. But if it could do all that, using parameters at runtime... OMFG!!! imagine the possibilities...
An army of marines, and none of them look the same.
A town filled with citizens, who all look different, generated procedurally, saving on art time..
Keep up the good work... but you might want to consider working with the Garage Games guys to make this a more intergrated part of the engine.. Maybe able to sell it as a pack similar to the Torque Lighting Kit.
You could then sell content packs like clothes and so on..
04/04/2006 (2:05 am)
Now what would be Extremely cool... is if you could port your mesh generation code to Torque.. so we could have paramatised art.. Imagine.. your game calls for a bunch of NPC characters.. the game has lots of them, so you generate their features using your system at runtime.
it would also mean that the player could create their own characters like in City of Heroes.
Basically, in its current form, it's brilliant.. if it can export to DTS using the standard skeleton, that would be the best. But if it could do all that, using parameters at runtime... OMFG!!! imagine the possibilities...
An army of marines, and none of them look the same.
A town filled with citizens, who all look different, generated procedurally, saving on art time..
Keep up the good work... but you might want to consider working with the Garage Games guys to make this a more intergrated part of the engine.. Maybe able to sell it as a pack similar to the Torque Lighting Kit.
You could then sell content packs like clothes and so on..
#7
That is definately something that I could look into. In fact, I was considering something similar for Dark Basic Professional.
I'll be the first to admit, I do not know much about Torque. It will take some time to investigate this, which I will eventually do. For now though, it is full speed ahead on adding content and getting this released in it's current form! At some point, I'll try to contact the Garage Games team and see what we can do.
Thanks!
Ron
04/04/2006 (3:51 am)
Jason,That is definately something that I could look into. In fact, I was considering something similar for Dark Basic Professional.
I'll be the first to admit, I do not know much about Torque. It will take some time to investigate this, which I will eventually do. For now though, it is full speed ahead on adding content and getting this released in it's current form! At some point, I'll try to contact the Garage Games team and see what we can do.
Thanks!
Ron
#9
Yes. That would be me :)
Is there any need for something similar in Torque? It should be really easy to port it over.
Here is some info on EZortate:
EZrotate
I forgot to mention before, the models in 3D Character Maker are somewhere between 1500 and 2000 polys depending on the options chosen.
04/04/2006 (5:21 am)
Mincetro,Yes. That would be me :)
Is there any need for something similar in Torque? It should be really easy to port it over.
Here is some info on EZortate:
EZrotate
I forgot to mention before, the models in 3D Character Maker are somewhere between 1500 and 2000 polys depending on the options chosen.
#10
06/28/2006 (8:48 am)
Wow!!!! This will be a cool feature!!! Cant wait to see it in action!!!! How much will this cost and when will it be released? 
#11
06/28/2006 (9:01 am)
Pretty neat. Keep us updated. 
#12
Folks interested in this type of modeling may enjoy checking out an old product which clint and i both worked on: PeoplePutty by Haptek.
It's a parametric character modeller and animator covering textures, lots of sculpting, behaviour, hair, accessories, etc.
The only problem is exporting. - I forget if PeoplePutty can export even the mesh to any common formats such as .obj, and i know the animation/behavior can't be exported because it was our own engine. There are more professional versions of the tool available which i know do export the mesh and allow you to import your own meshes as well. Full- and half-body models are also available.
The characters you create in PeoplePutty can be played inside a browser plugin, and can be scripted via javascript, which is kind of cool.
[/semi-self-promotion]
06/28/2006 (9:19 am)
[semi-self-promotion]Folks interested in this type of modeling may enjoy checking out an old product which clint and i both worked on: PeoplePutty by Haptek.
It's a parametric character modeller and animator covering textures, lots of sculpting, behaviour, hair, accessories, etc.
The only problem is exporting. - I forget if PeoplePutty can export even the mesh to any common formats such as .obj, and i know the animation/behavior can't be exported because it was our own engine. There are more professional versions of the tool available which i know do export the mesh and allow you to import your own meshes as well. Full- and half-body models are also available.
The characters you create in PeoplePutty can be played inside a browser plugin, and can be scripted via javascript, which is kind of cool.
[/semi-self-promotion]
#13
@Orion
Promoting your program in someone else's topic is not a very good thing to do...
07/01/2006 (1:42 pm)
Wow this looks really promising! I saw you said you expected a June release, but, well...It is July :).@Orion
Promoting your program in someone else's topic is not a very good thing to do...
#14
03/25/2009 (2:52 pm)
So I have to ask... Any updates? Did you ever finish this project?
#15
he has not logged in for years and on his site it still say coming soon for 3D Character Maker i don't think its ever going to come out. though he had a very good idea if he finished that he might of been able to make allot of money i know many who would like to see something like this. though his textures and models was not all that good as what else can you say when this was being worked on almost 3 years ago tec has changed from that time. it would of still been a popular program no one else here at GG has released one like this yet that i know of.
03/25/2009 (10:43 pm)
Marcus Fernstromhe has not logged in for years and on his site it still say coming soon for 3D Character Maker i don't think its ever going to come out. though he had a very good idea if he finished that he might of been able to make allot of money i know many who would like to see something like this. though his textures and models was not all that good as what else can you say when this was being worked on almost 3 years ago tec has changed from that time. it would of still been a popular program no one else here at GG has released one like this yet that i know of.
#16
It's a longshot... but maybe ;)
03/26/2009 (5:18 am)
Yeah I just figured that maybe he would get an email that someone wrote and could shed some light over my question.It's a longshot... but maybe ;)
#17
Haha!
I had to laugh when I got an e-mail in my inbox notifying me of a new reply to the Garage Games thread: "3D Character Maker (coming soon!)"
I guess I slightly missed my June-2006 expected release date!
Believe it or not, this is still in progress. It hasn't been constant progress, but I am still working on it. I've worked on and finished a few other projects in between the last time that I posted here. I have also re-built everything that was shown in the links above (probably at least twice!) since I last posted here or updated my web site. The product looks much different now. The quality is much better. Textures are now 2048x2048 instead of 512x512 and include normal maps. The face mesh includes bones that support full facial animation. The GUI is much more polished and the characters look much better overall!
I'll try to get some new screens put together and post them up here. I have no idea when I'll finally release! Hopefully sooner than later!
Here is a quick pic of a couple of exported character models. They have been loaded into another "test" app and have shaders applied.
I'll see if I can put together a few more pics and/or a movie showing the actual application in action.
Thanks for the interest in this!
Ron
03/26/2009 (6:36 am)
Not such a long shot afterall.... :)Haha!
I had to laugh when I got an e-mail in my inbox notifying me of a new reply to the Garage Games thread: "3D Character Maker (coming soon!)"
I guess I slightly missed my June-2006 expected release date!
Believe it or not, this is still in progress. It hasn't been constant progress, but I am still working on it. I've worked on and finished a few other projects in between the last time that I posted here. I have also re-built everything that was shown in the links above (probably at least twice!) since I last posted here or updated my web site. The product looks much different now. The quality is much better. Textures are now 2048x2048 instead of 512x512 and include normal maps. The face mesh includes bones that support full facial animation. The GUI is much more polished and the characters look much better overall!
I'll try to get some new screens put together and post them up here. I have no idea when I'll finally release! Hopefully sooner than later!
Here is a quick pic of a couple of exported character models. They have been loaded into another "test" app and have shaders applied.
I'll see if I can put together a few more pics and/or a movie showing the actual application in action.
Thanks for the interest in this!
Ron
#18
Those screenshots looks nice!
I'm definately interested in this, any chance to get on a "beta-test-list"? :)
I had an idea about making something similar but I don't have the time now or in quite some time, and yours seem much more detailed and "better" then the idea I had in mind, so if this is going to happen I'll wait for your release ;)
03/26/2009 (7:15 am)
Hey Ron,Those screenshots looks nice!
I'm definately interested in this, any chance to get on a "beta-test-list"? :)
I had an idea about making something similar but I don't have the time now or in quite some time, and yours seem much more detailed and "better" then the idea I had in mind, so if this is going to happen I'll wait for your release ;)
#19
Whilst displaying all the signs of death, the patient was actually still breathing!
Not a zombie thread after all!
:)
03/26/2009 (10:39 am)
Wow!Whilst displaying all the signs of death, the patient was actually still breathing!
Not a zombie thread after all!
:)
#20
you should update that site some 3 years and no updates i think its about time for a updated one unless you got a hole new site.
also what other projects have you finished. :P
03/26/2009 (10:42 am)
wow i am amazed he came on after 3 years the character looks alot better now then 3 years ago.you should update that site some 3 years and no updates i think its about time for a updated one unless you got a hole new site.
also what other projects have you finished. :P
Torque Owner Willbkool
Gamebox Creations
I am especially looking forward to the WWII content pack.