Quote: "Can i ask, what was the favoured methods for uv mapping it, if you don't mind"
Sort of a vague question; so here's sort of a vague answer:
Research, planning, insane amounts of layers (when I create a new layer it auto numbers to "layer 1886" lol), plenty of test rendering, revisions and time.
For these characters (including ones yet to be shown) they have about 80% commonality in UV coordinates so that I can effect global texture changes with relative ease.
I keep layers grouped up so that I can toggle alternate pieces on/off via "paper-doll" system. Those layer groups are then organized into larger groups split-up by body location (head, upper body, etc). At the top of the chain I keep some additional layers for overlaying generic dirt and model-specific AO bake.
To minimize wasted UV space, mutually exclusive sections are partitioned into the same UV space. For example; This body will have three head variants including the gas mask as shown here, in the same helmet but wearing a balaclava and finally as a fully exposed head just wearing the headset. The full head requires more vertical UV space to reduce seams. I can use the UV space of the head which is above the eyebrow level to fit the image content for the goggles and night-vision bracket. Now, the eyes are actually in a seperate area of the UV map so that I can make them higher resolution. In the gas mask version I use this UV space for the filter canister and on other heads which have eye-pro/sunglasses I use the area for that.
There has been, in general, a lot of care taken with UV layout to keep sections straight where they should be (so if, say, you wanted to put a logo on the chest or shoulders there would be minimal concern about the logo being distorted or mirrored. Speaking of which, there is very little UV mirroring on my characters. If you wanted to re-texture him to have an asymmetric amount of blood or damage on them, you can. This also works well when applying camo patterns. It's not so apparent with digital camo but you would really notice ugly mirroring with bolder pattern designs.
On the camo itself. I ended up building my own camo pattern. It isn't precisely MARPAT or ACU but it plays the part well. In a seperate file, I made about a 512x512 section which tiles well and then made that into a pattern-fill which I can place on a soft light blending layer over the basic grey-scale texture of the pants. That pattern can easily be rotated or flipped to get different distribution of the colors so that different characters won't be wearing the exact same cammies.
I keep two or more versions of the pattern-fill because I need the pattern at different scales to look right because some mesh areas (like the helmet) have a greater number of pixels allotted. Now, I could have just scaled the previous pattern but that would cause the edges of the digicam pattern to blend together and I wanted them to remain absolutely crisp but just smaller. So, the solution was to index the colors to a custom CLUT (color look up table) prior to resizing.
OK, so this is all sort of anal and slow-going but I'm nearly over the hump which means that all the preparation will accelerate production from this point on.
The packs will be broken up into squads with the first pack being Marines. There will be around 4 different bodies with 2-3 heads variations each and 3 texture versions for desert, woodland and the the dystopian sci-fi style. The characters are quasi role-specific with body01 being an assaulter and intended for use with an m203 or m32 weapon and you can see the 40mm grenades on his sides. The next will be a SAW gunner with the big ammo boxes strapped to him and so on. Animations will be tweaked to work/register best with their weapons of choice.
The follow-up pack will be an Army squad following the same structure. The idea is to have these packs as base media for multiple genre use. That's why I'm including three texture variations. The third sci-fi set is going to continue on but in sort of my vision of it. Part of the plan is to have some less generic characters for sale individually that will complement what is found in the packs. So, for examle there won't be a dude in a ghillie suit in the pack because that's a lot more limited in genre scope but there may be one on GCS. Same goes for something like a high-tech sci-fi soldier.
Release date is unknown and will remain as such, for now. Just know that I have mentally blocked-off/limited what the pack will include to make it a finite number of assets and that it will require some time for animation revisions. Some of the previously shown anims will be thrown out completely and others will be changed to fit my vision of use.
