Question What are the options for highly customizable characters ?

Hi !

My team is working on a multiplayer RPG where there is a lot of characters. All with their hairstyle, face, equipment variation. A classical situation for such a game. The players can also have different style and armors represented on their character.

What are our options to manage all those characters and armors ?
Is there some good paid assets that are working very well ? Of course we can develop all the system by ourselves but maybe there is an hidden gem somewhere

We need :
- Integrate our own base body model
- To be able to change the base body (with skin color change, shape sliders etc), choose hairstyle
- Add armor over the base body
- Be able to merge the result in one mesh for optimization

We are currently using UMA. It tick all the needs but feels super heavy and complicated with a lot of not-so-useful / confusing features.
There is also things like the Character Creator plugin that look awesome but we have to implement ourself the armor management. Someone tested it ?

So yeah, what are you using ? What's working great for you ?

Thank you !

 

I'm making a character customization system for a hobby project.

At first attempt, I made a low polygon model and customization system
https://drive.google.com/drive/u/0/folders/1A-26SzgsXNUa39SwbJ_UFsNPuV_DT-AA
- 1800 tri low poly model with blendshape for facial and bodyshape
- blending normal maps for bodyshape

It works well, but making all armors takes too much time for one man developer.

So second attempt, I bought assets (Synty) and modified them for my usage.

- remodeled head mesh and add blendshapes for customization
- hairs and body parts have blendshapes for preventing penetration

The method is almost same as FF14
https://www.4gamer.net/games/092/G009287/20100901009/

Merging into one mesh is very easy only when meshes are using same one material.
1. apply blendshapes for shape
2. merge
3. transfer facial blendshapes

 

Thank you for your answers !
So creating a customizable character is quite simple but with armor merging it gets tricky ... And no fully integrated solutions aside from UMA. I suppose we'll stay on UMA then !