How to Create a Character for Overgrowth

DISCLAIMER

THIS IS A ROUGH DRAFT! It is not perfect, and is undergoing refining and polishing. This is also not a tool or code specific tutorial. Although you may not need to know alot before hand, this page assumes that you can stumble along just like I did, and get through this process until I get all the kinks worked out.

Introduction

Now that that's out of the way, I want you to make sure that you read the Disclaimer right above this sentence. So, you want to make a new character for Overgrowth, huh? Well, this page will hopefully assist you in achieving your goal, or at least nudge you in the right direction. This is not a tutorial about how to use the tools I used. I will simply show you my process, and provide hints.

The Toolbox

THIS WILL BE BROKEN INTO SUBCATEGORIES LATER

THESE TOOLS WILL HAVE LINKS LATER ON

I use Blender 3D for modelling and working with skeletons when I make characters, but I specifically use the 2.55 beta release because that is what David used for the current scripts. I have not gotten the .phxbn import and export addons to function in the newer 2.5x releases, but I will work it. Blender does take a little time to get familiar with, but it is rewarding once you've gotten it under your fingers.

I use Sculptris for the clothes scultping and for painting textures onto my models. It works very well, and is extremely easy to pick up and use right off the bat. It is also free, and is distributed and developed by the company that produces zBrush, which is not free, but I've heard is more advanced than Scultpris.

I use PaintdotNet to mix color maps and detail maps for the textures.(More on that later) It is free, and very easy to use. Although it isn't as great as Photoshop, I've stuck by it because it comes close to Photoshop's capabilities.

I use Notepad ++ for script editing, which is free and is also simple to use. Nuff said.

The Model

Before we get started, I reccommend saving all of your new character resource files to a folder in a convenient, non-Overgrowth file first.

We can't have a character without a model, now can we? I use Blender3D, simply because it's free and powerful. I know that some folks have their favorite software, but I also use Blender because David has provided us with some fancy scripts in the Overgrowth releases that allow us to import and export our very own skeletons and animations out of and into the Pheonix Engine. These scripts are located under Overgrowth\Data\BlenderScript\addons (at least for now). The folder io_phxbn contains the files necessary to work with the Pheonix Bone(.phxbn) file format for skeleton rigs in Blender. The io_anm folder is used to import and export animations using Blender.

Although I'm not going to tell you what your model should look like, or how to go about building it, you need to know about a couple of things.

First, that unless you intend to create a whole new set of animations, which is possible, I would advise you to make your character's anatomy match that of any of the current functioning characters so that you can use the old animations on the new characters. So, if we make a giant spider, we'd have to make a new running animation, a new jump, crouch, ledge hang, and attack and so on and so forth. I have not tried to create a new set of animations, but I may in the future, and will post a tutorial on it.

We also have to remember that this is a game and that games, especially unoptimized ones, don't work well with high poly models, (Models with a large number of polygons) so we have to keep it reasonable. I compare to some Overgrowth character models when I want to keep the polygon detail similar between existing characters and the new ones.

Although a tutorial may be made on basic character creation, I'm not going into detail until the rest is finished here.

So, now you've got your character modelled and ready to rig, but wait! How do we rig it for Overgrowth? David uses his own, epic file format. You're going to need Blender (2.55 until I test this on other 2.5x versions). When you install Blender 2.55, I recommend installing somewhere other than where normal Blender is installed, and when prompted where to install user data files, select "Application Directory" so that the files are with Blender. Go to Overgrowth/Data/Blenderscripts/addons and copy the io_phxbn folder. Now, go to you Blender installation directory. Paste io_phxbn into Blender/2.55/scripts/addons. Now when you run Blender 2.55, go to user preferences, and open the Add-ons tab. Find Iport/Export Pheonix Bone(.pxbn) and make sure that this addon is checked. Save as default, and now we can export our new rigs.

Export your character to .obj file format. Go to Overgrowth/Data/Blender Files and open an exisiting character's rig. I like to use Turner's for characters of similar size and shape. If you are making a big character, or a canine, or a long tailed, short eared character, open the wolf's rig file. If not then open one of the others and see which one is most like your character. For now, this means rabbits and wolves, but more will be added as Overgrowth is developed. Select the skeleton, and look in the right panel (Default Layout). Open the tab that has a little stick figure on it, spread eagle. There should be a set of four blocks of boxes. In the top left block, click the box in the bottom row, third from the right. Now, all we should see is the model, and the plain skeleton. Select the current character model, and delete it. Import your character's .obj file, and select the skeleton. In the right panel, go to the same little stick figure tab, and find the two boxes marked Pose Position and Rest Position. Hit the Rest Position button.

With the skeleton selected, go into Edit Mode. Move the balls of the bones around to change the skeletons shape to fit your character. Once that's done, go into Object Mode. Deselect everything. Select the model, and then Shift+Select the rig (Default Button Controls). Press Ctrl+P and select "Armature Deform" --> "with Automatic Weights". That should rig your character to the skeleton. Selecting the rig, change the setting under stick figure tab from Rest Position to Pose Position. Now your character should go to an animation if the .blend file you opened had one preloaded. Look you character over and see if you can spot any errors. These may include, but are not limited to unwanted spiky things, unwanted distortion of body parts, and some parts missed by auto-rigging.

If these errors arise, then select the rig. Enter Pose Mode, select the model and then enter Weight Paint Mode. Select the bone that isn't weighted properly and change the weight painting on the mesh to get it right.