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Well, I finaly got off my ass and ordered Milkshape. Here's the problem, I plan to do a sort of create-a-character thing and I need an asortment of different clothes. I will use different texture when I can but some new models will be needed (ex. baggy pant vs. shorts, heavy coat vs. sleaveless shirt). The question is how should I model all these different outfits. I had planind to make 3 different models (legs, torso, head) and asemble them in DBPro, but after doing the math, it's over 70 different models, and that only one of 4 other differnt types of characters (they won't have as much as this one though). I was thinking if I was to make a body model and them make clothes to place over it it would save me around 20 models but it would up the poly count.

Before you start flamming me, I know this is pretty big tast for a novice and I'm setting my self up for failure. These models will be used many times (if it is popular enough) and I've been thinking about how to do it for about a month. I plan to use bone animation on the piece by piece method. Does anyone have a better idea than the two I posted or if these are even possible? This is a big part of the game I'm planning, so I can't really go around it. If you need a good idea of what I'm kinda thinking, it simmalar to the Pro Skater's Create-a-Skater. Any helpful replies will be greatly appreseated

All I can think of doing is making the modles and attaching them as limbs, I dont think you'll be able to make them waving in the wind like in FF10 (lol) but that should work (ps you might be able to hide the limbs to lower the polycount, ex: put on a boot, hide the foot)

So just make a nearly nude model, and attacked the clothes, kinda like a 3D kiss program huh?

Yeah, I'm realistic (kinda), I don't plan anything like FFX, Shenmue at most, but nothing higher than 2000 poly. I may make an trenchcoat, you might be able to do wing effect on the bottom part, but for now I'll try to keep it basic.

Pringle jumpers look quite cool.

Well considering the amount of clothes I want, once I get the models done the way I want, I may post the skins so people can may there own logos and styles. I figure to do this project right, I'm gonna need ALOT of chooses, not onlt in clothes but other things too, like music, but I'll cross that bridge when I get there.

"I dont think you'll be able to make them waving in the wind like in FF10"

Why not? A 'simple' clothing engine isn't too hard to make, if you're fairly good with physics and all that. The only problem is that all the best looking clothing engines like to eat away a good few hundred polygons.

Anyway, as already recommended, using the attach object to limb command is probably the best way to make a wide variety of costumes like this. However, as well as make a nude model and then stick bits to it, you could make a very basic 'skeleton' which is then hidden and has whole parts of the body attached to it. This would mean that, with something like baggy shorts, you wouldn't have the upper leg polygons being rendered because the whole upper leg is replaced with a shorts-mesh, but the lower leg has an unclothed body-mesh attached to it instead. Hope I'm not making this too confusing...

This is kinda how I hope to do it my project, but with different armour components instead of clothes.

Ok, correct me if I'm wrong. You're suggesting that I make multiple skeleton models that have fleth in the spots that clothes won't be, like a t-shirt and short skeleton and a long pants and sweater skeleton? Or do you mean make a skeleton that the flesh is attached to just like the clothes?

Think he means just one skeleton, but meshes for sections of the body, so you make a totally nude body, and then cut it up based on the different types of clothes you'll use, so if you got a girl body and you want to put a pair of shorts on her, you can remove the hips and upper thighs, 'cos you have a separation in the mesh where the join is, if she was to be in a bikini though, you could leave the thigh section on, he's suggesting a way for you to save poly's in the final mesh basically.
I'd look at it differently, For instance by definition what you're trying to do is make it easier to come up with a range of models right? well, that means you want something quite simple to use, and since you say you're new at this then I guess you want it to run reasonably smoothly for you too.
The problem is that you want something modular, and designing a modular system is no small thing, but you've said you're determined, so I'll say, make a few models in the style you're thinking of, then try to find similarities between them, like 'lowest commor denominators'.
If you think two differrent things could pass for the same if textured differently, drop one and make that your archetypal whatever, say it's a pair of legs, one set's stocky and short, but the other's tall and sleek. You want a pair of pants that can fit both, and you'd rather not do two pairs, could you get away with scaling the same pair to fit both body types, if you design the mesh right?
That's the kind of thinking you could adopt to make a few models go a long way, and retexturing would complete the transformation.
Now you have an option to remove the hidden faces, those of the legs where the pants are covering them, like suggested above, and you design the body mesh so the feet, calves, thighs etc are removable, by removing groups of faces, so you could use some memblock manipulations to remove hidden faces based on whether they are showing or not, much like the hiding of objects offscreen, then by doing a simple weld, the mesh becomes whole again, including the pants rather than the legs..
It's not something I'd enjoy doing, and I've been modelling for a bloody long time now, but still, If you do do it it'll be a huge help to newbies and others who just don't know how to model, but most of your work will be in the learning to make comparative mesh structures work well together. You could achieve this more easily if you perhaps make your different body meshes have the same amount of poly's... Do you mean to make this as a character creation set for milkshape, or are you gonna code something in db to make it a standalone character maker?

Well I've allready reduced the amount of clothes I have to model down to 34. Whe I started I basic thought of what couldn't be retextured. It may increase if I can't kind a way to put a open jacket over a t-shirt, but I'll live. I think that and shirts/dress will be the real difficult part. By the way, is there any way I can just load the bone animation without a model attached to it?

This is for a game I'm working on, I've been planning it out in my mind now for about 2 months now. I'm starting with this part becuase its hasn't been done in any tutorial I've seen (haven't seen many good tutorials on memblock, arrays, or other complexe DBPro funtions either, hint hint). I figure get the hard part done first, that way I don't invest too much time to end up not being able to complete it.

If I do a good enough job, I may make a tutorial, or maybe as you suggested a stand alone character maker. In any case, once I get Milkshape registerd (snail mail, at east 2 week) I'll start on it, and release a tech demo afterwards. But like I said this is for an accual game I'm working on, a big part too, if you can believe it. I'll post more details once I finalize the basic idea.

Ahh I got it wrong then, I thought you were jumping insanely into making a complicated tool for others to use!
Well if it's for your own game that makes things a lot simpler, like you say, but I guess it depends on just how detailed you want things to be. I've seen games where an open jacket over a t-shirt looks just fine using a shaded texture, but in your case I guess it's as simple as making the meshs, doing one with the mesh just contoured for the body, in the next you have the jacket edges raised. Then you can just use change mesh from memblock for a quick change... If the change has to happen in real time, you can use tricks to make it look like that's happening. Hide the character behind a changing screen etc...

The reason I suggested keeping the vertex count the same is I was imagining using a morphing technique to do the change, in which you would do maths operations on mesh memblocks to move the vertices smoothly from their position in one memblock to those of another. Perhaps there's an easier way to do that in pro, I don't have pro though so can't help you there, but it's probably unnessecary anyhow, better off faking it

Thanks, guess I better start searching for a decent memblock tutorial made for those haven't taken programing classes. I under programing logic, but I never had any experance with more complexe commands, hell I still don't understand the purpose behind the READ commands. Looks like I got some serious studing to do. in anyone has some tutorials covering intermediate to advanced DBPro functions, let me know. I already grabbed the ones posted on this site (aka http://www.darkbasicpro.com/tutorials.php).

read commands are as old as the oldest basic, and were designed so you could provide a set of data to be read from sequentially, like this:



coordinates2:
data 0.0,0.0,100.0

think of the data pointer like the needle on a record player, you can lift it up and move it somewhere else, from where it will read sequentially again, you use restore to do that, combined with a label so you can move that sphere by rereading new data into the variables x#,y# and z#, by restoring the pointer to coordinates 2, which you don't need to do in this case because the pointer was left there before when you read coordinates 1

That was easy, but the memblock stuff is more difficult, and I'm only just getting into that now myself. I do know what they're capable of though, and they are well designed functions, so once I finish my BombKid game, I'm going to seriously look into that, I'll start with making a morphing function