How to Create a 3D Real-Time Character

Hi there, a while ago I started making a tutorial on doing 3D toons for wintermute for the community. As i was doing it the and project grew I decided to try and make a definitive guide about the creation and utilizing of a 3D character resource. I was going to post the entire thing in one go but due to time constraints, with work and my own project, I have been convinced to release each section as I it is completed.

I hope that these video tutorials may be useful to others and is my way of trying to thank Mnemonic for the crazy amounts of time he puts into making this free engine for hobby game developers, and commercial developers alike.

You might need to right click the links and select "Save Linked Content" or the equivalent depending on your browser instead of just clicking the link normally. Either way, the file will be called video.mp4… you will need to rename this manually.

As you can see there is a TON of links here… please let me know if any are pointing to the wrong place or just plane broken so i can fix them. To report an error or just make a comment please use this thread on the wme forum - Tutorials - How to Create a 3D Real-Time Character @ wme forum

WME Tutorials - 01 - Character Plates

Part 1 , Part 2

WME Tutorials - 02 - Modeling your Character

Part 1 , Part 2 , Part 3 , Part 4

WME Tutorials - 03 - Building Symmetrical UVs

Part 1 , Part 2 , Part 3

WME Tutorials - 04 - Texturing

Part 1 , Part 2 , Part 3

WME Tutorials - 05 - Rigging 1 - Introduction

Part 1 , Part 2 , Part 3 , Part 4

WME Tutorials - 05 - Rigging 2 - Biped

Part 1 , Part 2 , Part 3 , Part 4 , Part 5 , Part 6

WME Tutorials - 06 - Rigging 3 - Skinning

Part 1 , Part 2 , Part 3 , Part 4 , Part 5 , Part 6

WME Tutorials - 01 - Character Plates

Part 1 , Part 2

WME Tutorials - 02 - Modelling your Character

Part 1 , Part 2 , Part 3 , Part 4

WME Tutorials - 03 - Building Symmetrical UVs

Part 1 , Part 2 , Part 3

WME Tutorials - 04 - Texturing

Part 1 , Part 2 , Part 3

WME Tutorials - 05 - Rigging 1 - Introduction

Part 1 , Part 2 , Part 3 , Part 4

WME Tutorials - 05 - Rigging 2 - Biped

Part 1 , Part 2 , Part 3 , Part 4 , Part 5 , Part 6

WME Tutorials - 06 - Rigging 3 - Skinning

Part 1 , Part 2 , Part 3 , Part 4 , Part 5 , Part 6

WME Tutorials - 01 - Character Plates

Part 1 , Part 2

WME Tutorials - 02 - Modelling your Character

Part 1 , Part 2 , Part 3 , Part 4

WME Tutorials - 03 - Building Symmetrical UVs

Part 1 , Part 2 , Part 3

WME Tutorials - 04 - Texturing

Part 1 , Part 2 , Part 3

WME Tutorials - 05 - Rigging 1 - Introduction

Part 1 , Part 2 , Part 3 , Part 4

WME Tutorials - 05 - Rigging 2 - Biped

Part 1 , Part 2 , Part 3 , Part 4 , Part 5 , Part 6

WME Tutorials - 06 - Rigging 3 - Skinning

Part 1 , Part 2 , Part 3 , Part 4 , Part 5 , Part 6

This tutorial talks about how to prepare your design documents for use in your 3D app of choice as Design Plates. (images used to model off).

• How to ensure your design is Symmetrical to aid in Symmetrical Modelling
• How to ensure your front / side views are aligned to each other.
• How to ensure you Symmetrical Drawing aligns to your Zero World space in your 3D application

This tutorial will discuss the modelling process to build your model off your design plates. Rather than simply record my making of a model, I decided to try and discuss conceptual ideas of model creation. With luck i hope to have introduced novice modellers to procedures and techniques that will enable you to build a 3D model that is easy to set up for animation and game content.

This tutorial will discuss

• Symmetrical Modelling
  • To speed up the modelling process
  • Aid in the easy creation of a UV Layout
• Choice of Polygons
  • Do i use Tris or Quads, or polygons with more than 4 sides?
• Joints Setups
  • How to make a joint that will be easy to skin and produce decent deformation
• Use of the Model T-Pose
  • A discussion of what pose to model your toon in to aid skinning and produce decent deformation
• Easy way to build mouths and eye blink topology

NOTE:- This tutorial is a little long due to modeling being a large topic. Still I feel I have included some good information here, even though I got real board towards the end and the ending is a little rushed. I may need to redo the end of this but I will wait to see comments (if anyone watches it lol)

This tutorial is about how to do a more advanced UV layout to achieve two things. 1) create a uvlayout that can be easily read and thus painted on in a 2D packadge, and 2) Arrangment of UV layout so you use the space of your bitmap to full effect.

This tutorial is in a way an extension of the first.. it outlines some methods of workflow for painting your textures as well as how to streamline your UV layout during the texture process as you find small things you need to tweak.

Have fun.. hope you like it

This topic is pretty large so I am doing it in a few sections.

Part 1 - Introduction + WME Setup.

• This is a introduction to rigging in general. You can if you wish skip this tutorial completely. It just focus on some very general stuff about 3DsMax and WME pipeline procedures.
• How to Zero out your model (yes again.. but it is so important)
• Installing and How to use the Panda Export Plugin for 3dsMax
• Setting up a "Test" WME project to view your model in the game engine.
• Fixing some common errors in viewing your models in WME
• Getting your mesh perfectly setup and ready to start Rigging and Skinning

Part 2 - Rigging With Biped

• How to Setup CS Studio
• What is CS
• How dose CS Work
• How dose the body deform in the real-world
• How to correctly align your biped to your model data.

Part 3 - Vertex Weighting with Skin

• What is Skin and How dose it work?
• How to adjust envelopes.
• How to use mirror mode on a zero'd out model.
• How to use ABS Weighting
• How to use paint Weights.

Well that is it I will update this page as needed and I hope you guys like it. I would appreciate any comments and constructive criticism.

Be excellent to each other and Party on Dudes
–Jyujinkai