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Assets for a total conversion... namely character models.

Posted: 02 Dec 2017, 17:29
by mattwla
Hi everyone,

I've been working on a stand alone game using the OpenMW engine, I don't have a heck of a lot to show yet but here is some info for those curious

Work in progress itch.io page
https://mattwla.itch.io/greylock?secret ... Mu870pYUXc

My skillset is in programming, not in 3d art, so I've been using redistributable assets.

I've been getting by finding redistributable resources from Morrowind mods - there are loads of statics and textures to use: Tamriel Rebuild has a CC library as does an old Morrowind Ultima TC.

But... character models and animations. That's where things get tricky. Anyone have ideas?

Thanks,

Re: Assets for a total conversion... namely character models.

Posted: 03 Dec 2017, 03:25
by AnyOldName3
The example suite definitely has something basic for each thing you need - there's definitely a character mesh, and definitely enough animation to make it not crash (even if that might just be the character floating around in a T-pose).

MakeHuman is probably a good thing to use as a base as its output is CC0. I think we might be somewhat stuck with Morrowind's original skeleton (or at least its bone count and naming) right now, but you'll have to ask someone who actually knows about that part of the engine. It shouldn't be too hard to knock up some intentionally terrible animations in Blender to use in the short term, but I'm not sure there's any good animation data that's got a super permissive licence and is easy to work with. Animators are expensive. I could be completely wrong about that.

Another possibility is to look for something somewhere like the Unity asset store and get something that you can convert to an OpenMW-compatible format via Blender. This will probably require money, and you still might well end up with something of placeholder quality when compared to games that actually get played.

Re: Assets for a total conversion... namely character models.

Posted: 03 Dec 2017, 03:31
by mattwla
Thanks for the info, I will look into those resources. Also, I do hope this becomes a game that actually gets played!

Re: Assets for a total conversion... namely character models.

Posted: 03 Dec 2017, 06:30
by DestinedToDie
I'm working on making something... it's taken me way too long already, but you will see it in Example Suite eventually.

Re: Assets for a total conversion... namely character models.

Posted: 03 Dec 2017, 11:10
by Berandas
mattwla wrote: 02 Dec 2017, 17:29 But... character models and animations. That's where things get tricky. Anyone have ideas?
As mentioned above, MakeHuman is a good start for character models (without clothes mostly) when you have limited skills/knowledge.
If you're using Blender, then I can recommend the Rigify addon and Mocap tools addon, there are many free mocap data libraries online, if you import those anomations and retarget them to the OpenMW rig, then you should have enough options.
From my own experience I can tell that this process is quite time consuming, still much faster than animating everything from scratch by yourself though.

Re: Assets for a total conversion... namely character models.

Posted: 03 Dec 2017, 15:09
by mattwla
Hm, so a modder by the name of Antares released this tutorial which comes with a skeleton rigged for animation

https://www.nexusmods.com/morrowind/mod ... w%3D&pUp=1

In my time working with MWs meshes I never encountered this skeleton, I am wondering if Antares made it him/herself.

If I coupled that with Better Bodies, which I also think is original, I have a model and skeleton all set up for redistribution.

I sent Antares an email but have not received a response, does anyone know about this skeleton or about how to contact Antares?

Thanks,

Re: Assets for a total conversion... namely character models.

Posted: 04 Dec 2017, 02:59
by mattwla
An update to Antares skeleton, I was informed that the skeleton is actually owned by Beth, it is used for shadow casting in game I guess.

There have been some solid suggestions here and I've got some leads to follow now. Thanks for the help all.