dressing right

[Ocean_Park_Raven]

Hey everybody-

   Character Generator is really cool! But there are some things that we desperately need!

   To start with {for female characters} we need skirts that extend below the knee! We need Tartan plaid, checked and floral print as well as the basic solid colors.

   Then for both. There's this long wavy hairstyle that is perfect for one of my characters! Problem is that it's dark brown color isn't really. 

   Finally, we need eyeglasses and headwears {hats and even a veil!}

Thanks!

[j.walczak1]

While I know this thread is a few months old, I wanted to toss my own $.02 worth in here in case others stumble upon it.

MANY of the things you mention here are in fact quite easy to do outside of Character Generator.  The plaid, floral and checked textures for example...if you open the main texture file in Photoshop (or Gimp or other photo editors), you can change/add/edit just about any color/pattern you desire.  In fact, if you have access to a halfway decent scanner (most inkjets are combo units these days and work great) you can even scan in your favorite piece of cloth, save the file then apply that to your character's clothing textures.  I've even gone to hobby/craft stores and gotten those paper samples and scanned them in...again, works great!  And there are of course PLENTY of internet resources that provide royalty free textures (notice the words "royalty free"...please be respectful of the "intellectual property" of others).  YES, it does take some experience with Photoshop (or other), however that alone gives you FAR more options than the good folks at Autodesk could EVER offer...and to be honest, it's something you should learn anyways.  Same goes for your hair color too!  If you used one of the hair styles that uses a separate mesh, if you look there's a jpg file attached to that.  You can open that file in Photoshop (or other photo editor) and simply adjust the brightness, hue, saturation, color, etc. (although don't forget to check your texture settings too...the "Specular Color" is usually cranked up way too much for my own personal tastes).   Don't be afraid to experiment...although do ALWAYS save your original textures as separate files so you have a place to go back to in case of a catastrophic mistake.

As far as longer skirts, glasses, hats and other "accoutrements" and accessories, my advice would be to learn to make those things yourself using either Maya or a similar program (Max. Blender, etc...although I do by FAR prefer Maya for such work).  A simple dress or a veil for example is pretty easy to create using Maya's NCloth (check Youtube for tutorials) and things like glasses, bracelets, rings, etc., are usually pretty simple/straight forward geometry regardless of which program you use.  And don't forget about textures or even bump maps and displacement maps too!  You can "fake" A LOT of things simply by using good textures, which can save you quite a bit of geometry (and thus render time).

While I just posted a similar pic to this in another thread, I'll repost it here as well...

This is a still from multi-faceted project I'm working on for my own student portfolio.  The main bulk of the "set" was created in Maya (where I'm also doing the animation and rendering), the textures for the set itself were created in Adobe Illustrator (with some textures tweaked in Photoshop), the 3 characters here of course were created in Character Generator, I used Mudbox to tweak out the characters and at some point...eventually...the Isis character will be "talking" with lip sync done in MotionBuilder.  In this example, the dresses were created using Maya NCloth...they were created from a simple poly plane with the textures created separately in Photoshop.  I created the characters themselves in Character Generator as nude and applied the dress/cloth to them (I also modified the Isis character texture so that she's wearing some makeup, ala Liz Taylor, LOL). One of the biggest advantages to creating your character clothes like this is that using NCloth simulations, they will move like...well...REAL cloth, as apposed to the stiff/ridged cloths that come on the Character Generator characters.  The clothes that come on Character Generator generated characters (say THAT 3 times fast, LOL) WILL move and they are fine for background characters, but for ANY kind of closer work, it's apparent that the cloths are simply part of the character mesh.  While they usually require SOME degree of tweaking, NCloth provides presets for cotton, silk, denim, etc., and this way you can design/create them however your heart desires.  Yes, there IS a learning curve, but trust me...it's WELL worth the effort.  And in case you're wondering, the hieroglyphs on the front of the dress Isis is wearing say "Stop staring at my chest", LOL!

As you can probably see, I also created a few accessories for the characters here as well, such as the bracelets, arm bands and ankle bracelets, which are (more or less) just a simple cylinder with the ends deleted and textures applied...no big deal AT ALL.  The Crook that our Isis character is holding is also a simple cylinder where I simply applied a "Non Linear Bend" (under "Animation" -> "Deformers"), although I did put a bit more effort into creating the flail.  Likewise the crown Isis is wearing is, for the most part, REALLY simple geometry....mainly just a couple of cylinders and spheres (with textures applied of course)...the only real exception there is that I did use a couple of animation deformers to create the "horns".  The sandals were downloads (royalty free)...I may replace those later with my own design. 

Anyways, Autodesk Character Generator gives you a good starting place, but I'm pretty sure it's intended as just that - a starting place.  The rest is up to you!

Again, just my own $.02 worth here...I hope it helps!