How do armor models work?

[Emkani]

Well how do they? I recently got interested in how games are developed and I came across this subject. I don't really know who to ask, so I decided to post here :]

How do armor and clothing work? I mean practically and in terms of design.

If we take a human as example.

Do they make an individual model for a pair of boots and then "attach" it to the human model? Or do they make an entire new model of the human, with the boots and then activate it when needed?

or something entirely different?

Regards

EKN

[Zuldain]

A model is created for an item. The model is assigned a skin (color/texture etc). The item model is then fit to the Character Model. In some cases i'm sure an item model fits easily on a character model, other times it needs to be tweaked. Essentially all the relationships between the item and character models are coded into the game, so that when you equip boots on your Tauren the game knows that you have hooves and doesn't show the lower portion.

Its something like that.

[Surfd]

Each item is "attached" to the character model. Each item is also given various flags that allow for selectively turning on and off polygon regions of the model, so stuff like human pants being "whole", but undead pants have the knees ripped out works.

The only one i have never been 100% sure of is the Female vs Male armor sets, where a piece of armor looks completely different on a female character vs male character. I assume that there are 2 different models for most chest / pants pieces for those situations, since I dont think you can cover the big differences between some of the models with simple polygon on / off switches.

[Toobad]

Shoulders have 2 models - left and right. And then they just set scale for each race/gender. Helms are gender and race specific so every helm has 20 models. Other parts (chest, legs, hands...) have only texture which covers the characters part of body. As for gloves, legs, belt and boots models, they're included in the character model, so they just set some ID for that item (like use that texture and that part of body for those gloves).

You can download wow modelviewer - easiest way to see how it works.

edit: yeah, for male/female armor - there are textures with F for female, M for male and U for unisex parts at the end of it's name.

[Deleted]

Shoulders have 2 models - left and right. And then they just set scale for each race/gender. Helms are gender and race specific so every helm has 20 models. Other parts (chest, legs, hands...) have only texture which covers the characters part of body. As for gloves, legs, belt and boots models, they're included in the character model, so they just set some ID for that item (like use that texture and that part of body for those gloves).

This.

Basically, you have a racial model with a lot of meshes turned off when you're not wearing anything (ieg. a kilt mesh, 3 different boot meshes, 2 different gloves meshes, a lot of cloak meshes...) and depending on the item, a certain mesh is turned on or off. The texture covers it like some sort of "body paint".

Helms and shoulders have specific models that are attached to the part they are supposed to be attached to.

[Surfd]

Really? I would have thought a lot of that was a full on model, rather then just "body paint" attached to the character. I mean, I know that a lot of Bracers, Chests, Belts, and Pants look like they might be painted on to your model, since they are "tight fitting", but Boots and Gloves especially have a lot of extra "depth" to them, and stick off your model quite a lot in some cases.

[Deleted]

Really? I would have thought a lot of that was a full on model, rather then just "body paint" attached to the character. I mean, I know that a lot of Bracers, Chests, Belts, and Pants look like they might be painted on to your model, since they are "tight fitting", but Boots and Gloves especially have a lot of extra "depth" to them, and stick off your model quite a lot in some cases.

Yeah, that's where the different meshes I mentioned come into play. Those are parts of the model that can be changed depending on which item the character is wearing. For example, you have 4 different parts of the body representing the feet (on a single model), with 3 of them being turned off at any given time.

[Emkani]

thanks for the replies so far

I see, so in reality they use a combination of the two things I originally thought(somewhat).

Also, do you know if they paint "over" current textures, so that it is layered? I mean:

1st layer = skin, then another layer for chest, yet another for boots and so forth?

btw, is it also possible to see textures with wow modelviewer? or do I need to find some addon to extract the .mpq files?

[Deleted]

Nope, sadly the Model Viewer doesn't show textures :/

I'm not sure about it, but I believe the skins used on player models are a single texture that is created from a bunch of "partial" textures. I know the NPCs sharing player models have a single texture, though.

[Gigajot]

I think the 'gear' is bound to a Race and that the model stays the same but that it just gets some adjustments

[Toobad]

btw, is it also possible to see textures with wow modelviewer? or do I need to find some addon to extract the .mpq files?

Try MyWarCrafStudio. Allows you to browse textures, models, sounds and other files (like boss quotes, error messages etc.) included in MPQ archives. Also allows you to create or edit them (that's where those nude and other patches come from )

I'm not sure about it, but I believe the skins used on player models are a single texture that is created from a bunch of "partial" textures. I know the NPCs sharing player models have a single texture, though.

Yes, they are made from 2-3 parts - upper, lower and hands and feet. NPCs use "baked" textures - as you have said, it's just 1 texture including NPC's skin color. However their armor is also in regular item list.