How to: Characters - Part 01

This is a subject I have promised to talk about for a very long time.
Sorry for those of you that have been waiting, and by now most of you that wanted to know already figured it out.

However before I get into the skinning and rigging details...

Does anyone want to know how we go about modelling/texturing a basic character?

By modern standards the characters in TS are very basic but that is ok as they are not the stars of the show.

You can however get some fantastic results but you really need to put the time into it, modelling a great character can take as long as modelling a very detailed engine and cab.

While I can model characters, I am very much a generalist artist and not an expert in character modelling or animation. There are many tutorials on how you can create wonderful characters/faces and clothing, but as time is not something I have much of I will only really touch on the basics.

There are two types of blue prints that can be used for animated characters.

• - Anim scenery blue print

Anim scenery blue print can be used for simple looped animations. These objects appear in the browser list and can be placed as normal animated scenery objects.

• - Anim procedural scenery blue print

Anim procedural scenery blue print is somewhat more complicated, they are used for Platform passengers and these characters do not appear in the browser list.

Anim procedural scenery blue prints get referenced by a Platform characters blueprint (This specifies population and character types)

Platform characters blueprint is then referenced by Platform section blueprint.

Platform section blue print is the loft shape that gets laid in game.

But before we get into all of that we need to set up our basic folder structure.

Within your Source folder structure Provider/Product/Scenery folder create a new folder called 'Characters' and within that folder create another folder called 'Textures'

Now we are ready to begin!