Swapping Body Parts, Weapons and Items

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JaspaW
Posts: 1
Joined: Fri Dec 16, 2016 2:05 am

Swapping Body Parts, Weapons and Items

Post by JaspaW » Fri Dec 16, 2016 2:13 am

Hi

I have a character that I now wish to look at having the player be able to customize (as in choose new head/torso etc) and also be able to equip different melee weapons.

I have tested with Sprite Swapping and cannot ever seem to get the replacement items to align correctly with the original sprite.

I was thinking I would be able to do something the same as Character Maps in Spriter, but there doesn't appear to be a way to align "replacement" sprites.

Think of an axe or a sword, if my base character is animated with a sword and I want to swap with the axe, the axe doesn't line up correctly and I cannot see any way to change the alignment or pivot of the new sprites.

I figure there must be a way, could you please give some advice as I have watched all the Youtube Tutorials and none of them explain how to due "item swapping".
PS. I will be using the Unity Runtime.

Thanks in advance.

chong
Posts: 1178
Joined: Thu Feb 19, 2015 2:21 am

Re: Swapping Body Parts, Weapons and Items

Post by chong » Fri Dec 16, 2016 4:16 am

Hello,

Have you taken a look at the online documentation:
http://www.kestrelmoon.com/creaturedocs ... times.html

Under the section: "Switching/Swapping out Items & Regions in Game"

This is activated via C# code.

For sprite swapping alignment, I should do a new video in the future to help you guys with the topic.
Essentially though, what I recommend is to make a rectangular "block" mesh that becomes a general placeholder for your swapped sprites.

If you have 2 images, a sword and an axe to swap in/out, you should make sure their sprites are of the same exact size. For the object that is smaller, you still use the same size but buffer in additional space so that when they are swapped in, they are of the same ratio.

If you need specific alignment of swapped sprites, you can also use the mesh deform motor, Simple Transform Motor:
http://www.kestrelmoon.com/creaturedocs ... Motor.html

This allows you to directly scale/translate the mesh in your character. It should help you with resizing.

Cheers

Alan
Posts: 7
Joined: Thu Mar 31, 2016 7:37 pm

Re: Swapping Body Parts, Weapons and Items

Post by Alan » Fri Jan 06, 2017 3:03 am

Hoping for that video, thanks

chong
Posts: 1178
Joined: Thu Feb 19, 2015 2:21 am

Re: Swapping Body Parts, Weapons and Items

Post by chong » Fri Jan 06, 2017 8:14 pm

Hello,

Yes that is on the list. There are a couple of feature updates coming up for the Post Process module. After that, there will be a focus on more video tutorials :)

Cheers

gamedevcouple
Posts: 2
Joined: Tue May 09, 2017 6:06 pm

Re: Swapping Body Parts, Weapons and Items

Post by gamedevcouple » Thu May 11, 2017 2:55 pm

Has this video been made?

The ability to do stuff like this is the main reason we are using a rigged system instead of traditional frame by frame, and we are finding it really hard to understand how to make a customizable character!

We want to make a humanoid that can have custom armor and weapons, but finding it hard to work out how. Especially when it comes to images of different shapes and sizes, like the example of swapping from an axe to a sword. Or swapping hairstyles.

Any help on this topic would be fantastic! And would likely work as a great marketing tool also!

chong
Posts: 1178
Joined: Thu Feb 19, 2015 2:21 am

Re: Swapping Body Parts, Weapons and Items

Post by chong » Thu May 11, 2017 4:08 pm

Hello,

Sorry there are a whole list of feature requests/additions that are getting addressed first from studios using Creature in production.
The next big feature coming up is the ability to let Unity users instantiate live Bend Physics Motors in their characters. This also includes a full on video tutorial for it ( it includes an in depth look at the code so it's quite involved )

Regarding swapping of items, if you are on Unity or UE4, I suggest reading through the " Switching/Swapping out Items & Regions in Game " section first in the meantime. That should give you some ideas on how the general framework runs.

Cheers

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