How do you make character?

[baygol]

Help i got blender so i could make a character but im not very good at modding so can someone make a video or say some instructions . thank you

[Korban3]

Well, there's not much for a tutorial right now. I started one a while back, but it isn't done nor does it do the process justice, but you're free to reference it if you'd like.
http://wiki.wolfire.com/index.php/How_t ... Overgrowth

I really should rewrite that thing.
Other than that, you'll mostly have to reverse engineer the existing characters.

[Endoperez]

Model a character. You need to know modeling, UV unwrapping, texturing and normalmap baking.

Then you need to attach the model to the skeleton. The skeleton is under Overgrowth/Data/Blendfiles, so you only have to do the weight painting, but this only works if your character has 2 arms, 2 legs and a head, like the rabbit. The hands can be shaped differently (e.g. wings), but you can't have arms AND wings, and have them all move. Tail can be done, but won't move much if at all.

Once you've done both, you can export your character using the Overgrowth exporter. It only works on specific Blender version (2.55 or something like that), which is NOT the newest one. Before you start, make sure that you can open the .blend files saved in the newest version in the version you have to use.



Characters are quite hard. Try doing something easier first - custom weapons, buildings, building parts... That will most probably take some trial and error as well. Texturing and normal mapping for Overgrowth has some unique problems, you have to put specularity data into a texture's alpha channel and other stuff like that.

[Macrauchenia]

I always meant to add to the wiki, but I never got around to it. Here's the workflow for the characters I made:

The mesh
-Made the model in Sculptris
-Painted model
-Exported the .obj
-Saved texture
-Opened up Blender and opened .blend file of an existing Overgrowth character(depending on my original character's dimensions)
-Scaled my model to the dimensions of the imported .blend file character (making sure they're both about the same size and in the same "blender space")
-Exported my resized model as an .obj file
-Imported that same .obj and added a decimate modifier to get the vertice count down to around 4000-6000 vertices.
-Select model, hit U and unwrap model automatically
-Enter UV/Image editor, make a new image with the dimensions of 2048x2048
-Exported the new decimated/UV mapped model as an .obj file

The Rig (currently only Blender 2.55 Beta will work with the scripts necessary for exporting the .phxbn files)
-Open up the same .blend file that I originally worked with, and delete everything on the scene (camera, lights, misc meshes) but the skeleton.
-Import my decimated/UV mapped model
-Select both my model and the skeleton, press ctrl+P and set parent with Automatic Weights
-Select model, enter weight painting mode, touch up till it looks good
-Select skeleton and export .phxbn file.
(In my experience, successfully exporting the .phxbn file only works about half the time. If you load up your character and it crashes Overgrowth, adjust the weight painting on your rig a bit and export a new .phxbn file).

The Maps
-Open blender, import my original, resized model
-Import decimated/UV mapped model
-Import texture for high res model, bake to the low res model
-Save texture map
-Scale each model -1 in the Y direction, and -1 in the Z direction
-Select both meshes and bake normal map with World normal face selected
-Save normal map



After that, it's just a matter of creating the appropriate .xml files and putting the .obj/.phxbn/maps in the correct directories for your character. Look at the existing .xml files in Overgrowth/data/characters, copy/paste one and update it with your info.

Hope that helps!

Note: I copy and pasted this from this thread: (viewtopic.php?f=16&t=17686&p=188875&hil ... ow#p188875), there's some more info there too.

[Endoperez]

For what it's worth, I study game development and my teachers would not let us use a game model made exactly the way Marauchenia does it. They work for Overgrowth (which should be obvious since Marauchenia has don cool characters), and his way is faster and easier (which is why I haven't), but I'm a bit pedantic about this since it's what I'm studying. Have a look if you want, but if you just want to make a model for Overgrowth, following Marauchenia's advice is the faster way to do it.

[+] Hidden because this is optional and not a requirement

For the mesh:
-Made the model in Sculptris
-Painted model

-> You don't have to make a 3D sculpt. or use Sculptris. If you want to use just Blender and not Sculptris, that's fine. You might lose some extra pretty details, but that's optional.
-> Painting the model is a bit trickier without using Sculptris.

-Imported that same .obj and added a decimate modifier to get the vertice count down to around 4000-6000 vertices.

-> Import the same .obj, and then model a lowpoly model from scratch, using the old model as a reference and guideline. This gives better topology. That means that the vertices form nice, regular squares, instead of random triangles. This makes unwrapping easier, makes the character animate a bit smoother and makes the model a very tiny bit faster to render.

[+] Topology examples

Bad topology, all triangles:

Good topology, all squares. Note that while the shirt with good topology happens to look better here, that's just a coincidence.

-Select model, hit U and unwrap model automatically

-> This is faster to make, but a horrible waste of computer resources. If all of a game's models were done this way, the game would run slower. If only one or two characters are done like this, it won't matter.

The Maps
-Import texture for high res model, bake to the low res model
-Select both meshes and bake normal map with World normal face selected

-> If you didn't make a sculpt using Sculptris and/or didn't paint the model yet, then you won't have color paint which you could bake, and you don't have a second mesh to select for normal baking. You'll have to make the texture in Photoshop, and you'll have to bake the normalmap using the in-game model.

[RagdollZombie]

I plan to try and make a detailed tutorial on this when i have the time, I am still going through a lot of trial and error to see what methods are best for making characters (right now i pretty much need to figure out how to make palette maps work correctly and then i should be able to piece all of this into a tutorial)