Modeling equipment for a character

[Anonymous]

Hello community,

I am struggling a bit with a recent project a friend and I want to start. I am planing to create a character in 3ds Max which I am also gonna rig afterwards. This character will have no clothes on as I want to make it possible to equip certain items like gloves, pants and robes in the game. My problem is that I do not really know how I must create those visible items.

Let us stay with the example of a glove: how should I model it so the character can wear it later on? Is it enough to create a model that fits the size of the character's hand and attach it to him in game or do I have to create a certain animation for the glove? The same problem goes with the robes I am going to create. As the character will not wear it right from the start, how can I create a fitting model of a robe that moves while the character runs? I do not want to use realistic models that stick to the character model in realtime as he moves, it is gonna be a bit comic-like game where I only need to use a fixed animation.

Thank you for your help and time!

Greetings,

Gharex

[irishman_team_kilber]

HI and welcome,

Have you ever done the military man tutorial that is built into 3ds max, well i guess it's a military can to show you how to model the basic stuff from pants to shoes etc? if not here it is or maybe autodesk did not include it into the new tutorials here is the one i am talking about 

http://docs.autodesk.com/3DSMAX/12/ENU/3ds%20Max%202010%20Tutorials/files/WSf742dab041063133-62b9306...

good luck on your work

[Ihno]

For clothing most common way to do this is to first model and uv the "naked" character. Than, you can copy parts of it. Let's say the hands, and model the glove based on that Geometry. Cloth NEEDS to be skinned. Rigid stuff like weapons can be added into the hierarchy of the rig. (you want to have as less skinned vertices as possible. Usually you'd export all and tell the game engine which to show when.

[irishman_team_kilber]

@Anonymous

The only problem is with the newer versons of max i think autodesk removed the feature when you could add the ref image to the background, as i am using max 9 full verson i have not updated by 3ds max because i cannot afford it  

IMHO the biped is best way to rig the character's mesh, once you get started. instead of the bones. the biped is easier to control as well 

make sure you and your friends are using the same units as each other or you or your friends will have to restart your model and other equipment

[Anonymous]

Hey everyone,

thank you all for your answers!

The problem is not the way of modeling those equipment pieces, it's much more the missing information if I need to animate those objects when I want to use them on my character once I imported him into Unity. Do I need a certain animation for those pieces or is it enough to link them to the skeleton the mesh has?

Regarding the held weapons: am I right that I have to apply an extra bone to the characters hand so I can stick the weapons into his hands?

Thank you for your time!

Best regards,

Gharex

[Ihno]

Hi,
for all soft bodys like cloth: Skin them to your character rig. So they will follow the animation of that rig. You can use Skin Wrap to speed this up.
If everything is animated and ready, export everything to unity. So, if you have 20 different gloves they'll all be in one place.
In unity, you tell the engine to just show the pair of gloves you want to see.

You can also have a FBX in unity which just contains the rig and the animations. And use those animations on other objects that are skinned to the same rig.
Those other objects than need to be exported with the same rig but dont need to contain the animations. That workflow allows to work with a team on one character.

Yes you should create a new bone for the Weapons. But don't skin them to the bone, just link them. Since they don't need to be deformed, skin would be a waste of performance. Afterwards the process is the same: export everything, tell unity which to show.

[Anonymous]

Thanks, that really helped me!

Do the clothes need to have exact the same skinning like my character does? Should I transfer the skin proberties I used on my character to those of the equipment?

And one last question: do I just just need to link the piece of equipment to the rig so it knows to which skeleton it belongs or is there another process? I do not really know how to attach something else than the character itself to the rig as I never did it before.

Best regards,

Gharex

[Ihno]

Nope the clothes don't need to have the exact same skinning. But you need to find a way to hide the character underneath the cloth. I've seen people doing this with textures (alpha cutout) or split the character mesh to single meshes for every cloth part so you can tell unity to hide the chest If the character wears a shirt or so. You need to do that because otherwise it can easily happen that a peace of skin gets pushed through the cloth. Especially if they don't have the exact same skinning.

For weapons: I suggest modelling the bones yourself. Let's say, you need one handed pistols and two handed rifles.
Build dummies, and give them the shape of a pistol and a rifle. The Reason for this is that all weapons which use the same animation need to have the same pivot and everything which is important for the animation in the same position, the trigger for example.
You can link the dummy weapon to the hand using the select and link tool. And give the dummy to your team-mates. If they build a new weapon they have a reference shape and pivot. You can then import the animated weapon in unity and throw it in the hierarchie of your character underneath the dummy weapon. If you then turn all pos and rot coordinates of the weapon model to 0 it should have the exact same position than the dummy and follow the animation.

[Anonymous]

Alright, I think I got it now, thank you so much! 🙂

But the clothes just need to be linked to the skeleton as well like the weapons, right? They need a linking to the rig and a way to hide the character below them, did I understand it right? 😄

[irishman_team_kilber]

If you're using the Cloth Modifier on your articles of clothing, here's what you do:

Include all the articles of clothing into the simulation by doing this:

Take one of the cloth objects, click "Object Properties" under the Cloth modifer from the modifier stack, and add all the objects that pertain to the cloth simulation (The actual items of cloth, the body the cloth will hang off of, etc)

For the cloth objects, make sure you set them as cloth objects.
For the body, or anything else the clothing will have to collide against, set as "collision objects".

After that's all done, make your rig for the model as you'd normally do. Forget about the cloth.

When rigging is done, feel free to animate and all that - and when you're finished, the last step is where you get the cloth to sync with the animation:

Go to your first frame, click "Simulate" and voilla. It'll go frame by frame, making the cloth move with the flow.

If there's a simpler way to do it, I'm sure someone will poke up and mention it. This is the way I've been doing it though.

Hope it helps.

you sound like your running before you can walk, you would need to do the tutorials that are building into max.

if your not using a cloth simulator, just skin the cloths the same way you skin the mesh(body). The cloths will move with the body, just like it's supposed to.

If you want to get real advanced, or not so much, add a few extra bones then only have them skined to the cloths. It will give you more control over loose parts of clothing. Great for animation.

[irishman_team_kilber]

final post this was answered by Jean-Thierry Roy on how to rig a weapon link https://forums.autodesk.com/t5/3ds-max-animation-and-rigging/rigging-and-animation-of-guns/td-p/6859...