Customizable and animated character models

[flo]

Current situation While terasology already supports animated meshes, they don't get curently used for the player controlled character.

Thus if you view another player in multiplayer you see just a place holder mesh.

Wanted situation

Other characters look visually pleasing and are animated so that you can see what they do.

The characters should be customizable in some way, to allow players to identify themself with them.

Some brain storming in that area:

• The armor of the player could be made of many small parts that can be idivually chosen and added
• An item/NPC could allow the modification, form and color of the hair
• The face could be based on many small parameters. e.g. one parameter controls the form of the mouth, the other the color and form of the eyes, etc. (even if it may just be a single pixle)

Ideally of course the API for generating the customizable model should be separated from the ingame mechanism to activate it, so that alternative activation strategies are possible.

[Remi05]

Hello, I am new to this project but would love to help around. Has any work been done on this issue?

[skaldarnar]

Hi @Remi05 and welcome. The answer is similar to the one you've got on the particle system issue: this is a GSOC item as well to which students have applied. The decision which tasks will be part of GSOC and handed to a student will be decided later.

[Cervator]

Hi @Remi05 :-)

I just posted a thread with some related info: http://forum.terasology.org/threads/continuing-mentoring-beyond-gsoc-and-new-issue-markings.1522

We won't know for a few weeks if this topic will get picked. But maybe you can spend the time preparing by getting set up to run from source and try out some smaller topics to get used to the code first?

[DRAGONMANU]

Hi I am interested to take up this topic as a GSOC project this summer(2017) . This is my draft for the proposal. Please comment on anything I should add ?

[flo]

Project page for better characters models in terasology: https://github.com/orgs/MovingBlocks/projects/10

[Cervator]

Maybe as an update for Kate from IRC, didn't get back home in time for still catching on IRC.

Current state / some general summary notes:

• 3242 introduces an initial replaceable character model from the player, with the default a simple block, with https://github.com/Terasology/HumanoidCharacters offering a more advanced player character

• We may need more support for triggering player animations in certain cases (like jump, attack, etc)
• We need support for dynamically modifying player meshes, to for instance pick a different color starting shirt or similar customizations
• We need support for better identifying different parts of a mesh, for instance so you can custom color something, or show an overlay indicating damage or other effects
• We need an equipment system that will then visually affect the part of the body a newly added item goes on
• We need the character model to show actions like the player looking in a given direction (other players should be able to see this)
• We need the character model to show a held item in a way that other players can see, and maybe also that the owning player can see if that should differ from the current "faked" held item (just a 2d image attached to the bottom right of the screen)
• We need better support for extras surrounding the player model (and others) to play appropriate footstep noises, tool noises, particle effects for when running through sand or splashing in water, and so on

That's real rough but just to expand on this item a bit