Others Looking to work on a complex 2d paper doll/character creation program

[Kotaff]

So, to start off with, I'm not actually a programmer, or an artist, but I'm looking to get into either, depending on what I end up enjoying more/having more success with.

At first I wanted to make my own game from scratch, using bits of my favorite games to make my own "perfect" game. But that task might be a bit too daunting, so I figured I'd work on something I often find lacking in the games I enjoyed the most. Customizable character art. I'll add a TL;DR at the end for those who don't really care, but here's some comparisons to explain my goal with this :

Fully commissioned / self made art : Obviously has the highest potential for quality, but also requires the most work. Works for any situation, given that you take the time/money to get the needed assets. Limits customization or complicates it a lot.

3D engines (Daz?, Honey Select, Koitaku, Artificial Academy, Breeders of the Nephelym) : Great amount of customization, good visual quality, animations, backgrounds. They do still require a good amount of time to setup, because the physics and customization options can be finicky. Plus I'm not too fond of the artstyle (not unique enough, doesn't support certain proportions well, etc.)

2D customizable character creators/editors (the one often used on TFgames site like Queen of the Sea, the one in Lust Doll, the one from Hentai Highschool, or TrapQuest) : This is what I'll be taking the most inspiration from, but I'd like to bridge the gab between them and the others. The one from QotS has a decent amount of customization, and animated change (to work with TF themes), but the artstyle isn't to my taste at all. The one from Hentai Highschool probably has the art style I enjoyed the most, but it was lacking in options. Might be a bit too chibi to my tastes, but a good base imo. Lust Doll probably has the closest to what I'd like to do.

TL;DR Basically, I'd like to make a program that would make it easier for game designers and players to create characters that fits their desires, while retaining a good amount of detail and uniqueness. It should be able to handle a wide range of characteristics, and hopefully be able to be animated (or at least have a decent array of poses). It should be varied enough to work for games that could want a user created group of characters to play/interact with, and to support the many fetishes/body sizes that could be used in the games centered around TFs. Something that would work for games like the ones mentionned above, maybe even a game as complex as Trials in Tainted Space.

And why did I make this thread? To get ideas on where to start, suggestions, and maybe just have a discussion on the subject. Do tell me if this would fit the recruitment forum more, but I figured since I don't really have a roadmap, and not exactly looking for people to work on this with me for now, that this would be the appropriate place to post.

 

[Saki_Sliz]

depending on how simple

flash animated character can give you a basic starting idea. mainly, how they are paper puppets. now I think flash is basically dead thanks to lack of default browser support, but I also wouldn't recommend flash just because money. but I bring it up to point out the idea of the paper doll thing.

if you look at art such as from the total drama series, they take good advantage of flash. where as a simple game may only make the parts of the arm and rotate them (making the effect obvious and sometimes dumb looking) in TDI some of teh characters body parts were made with simple shapes so that the effect look normal, natural, and when it didn't they actually drew a new shape for the joint to get it te bend right.

I'v been looking into the idea of using vector art to define basic character line drawings (and fill color). as well as shirts/clothes. then port it into blender. in blender you can create shape keys to make different morphs for different characters, and be able to mix and match. sadly it doesn't support proper rigging and bone weight painting so you can do more advance techniques to control the shape and pose. It also means that you have to start from scratch if you want the character drawn a different way.

you could always spend years trying to figure out your own personal art style. I think I have mine but I don't have time to work right now on any projects.

 

[Marduke]

Use Spine or live 2d if you want to use something more complex.

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[Saki_Sliz]

I don't remember if spine is adobe or not, or behind a pay wall, I can't remember if live 2D is either.

both can be repllicated in blender, but you need a bit a technical know how in order to do this at first. but then that still requires you to first make the 2D art and cut it up into layers.

I would recommend just going around the internet stealing art for reference, using GIMP to edit the images together to get a basic pose, using Inkscape to then draw a clean version of the image (just the outline?) and that is a quick and dirty way to get some custom art without needing serious skill. but that means learning how to use gimp, learning how to use inkscape, and if you want to animate the character, learning how to use blender (which would allow you to load and animate a character as a video or as a 2D mesh you could load into a 3D game engine like unity to animate in real time).

 

[Marduke]

I don't remember if spine is adobe or not, or behind a pay wall, I can't remember if live 2D is either.

both can be repllicated in blender, but you need a bit a technical know how in order to do this at first. but then that still requires you to first make the 2D art and cut it up into layers.

I would recommend just going around the internet stealing art for reference, using GIMP to edit the images together to get a basic pose, using Inkscape to then draw a clean version of the image (just the outline?) and that is a quick and dirty way to get some custom art without needing serious skill. but that means learning how to use gimp, learning how to use inkscape, and if you want to animate the character, learning how to use blender (which would allow you to load and animate a character as a video or as a 2D mesh you could load into a 3D game engine like unity to animate in real time).

The new grease pencil in blender can do ir, but has problems exporting it. Spine makes the Sprite sheet by body parts and exports the animations straight to unity.

 

[redle]

To be honest, unless you are thinking about designing an entire game engine, or at least designing a program that directly hooks into an existing game engine, I'm not seeing the point of considering anything but the art side (especially as a first project if you aren't a coder and aren't even sure you want to become a coder).

The tool itself, either you will use an existing tool that already takes models and creates art (whether 2d or 3d) and your addition will simply be to reduce its power by pre-defining and limiting what options are available to make the tool easier and quicker to use, or you will make a tool which is simply layering existing images together. Both are fine, but likely don't provide much added value to the existing market.

You named a whole long list of programs that do this, from the complex 3D tools that start from scratch to the simple clip-art pairing tools. All of these tools are used to create a 2D image of various characters in various poses and various outfits. You mentioned some were more complex than you wanted, and others were about right, but the artwork wasn't the style you wanted. So you said it yourself, the existing 2D paperdoll system is what you want, but you want a different art style and more options. There's no reason to recreate the paperdoll system. You simply need to create the art that matches your desire.

As for uniqueness and variety, it's simple: the more complex (read: more options) you make the tool, the more possible permutations will exist for output. In other words, the more source-art the tool provides, the more end-result art it can produce. Although any tool's resultant images will feel less and less unique the more it is used. The other benefit to focusing on the artwork side, a tool that creates the art from scratch with thousands of options would need to be made in its entirety and complexity before it becomes at all usable. Artwork can be used as soon as 1 image exists and can be expanded continuously over time to broaden options. Honestly, whether the pre-made art is 2 or 3 dimensional doesn't matter, nor whether the tool manipulates it in 2 or 3-D. The point is, use existing tools to do the combining, and focus your energy on making the art components that said tool will use.

(Modelling is always going to allow for more options than static art, and is always going to be way more complex, and better handled by the professionals. I'm by no means saying you couldn't become a professional level coder yourself. But creating a full modeling tool isn't a casual hobby.)

 

[Kotaff]

To be honest, unless you are thinking about designing an entire game engine, or at least designing a program that directly hooks into an existing game engine, I'm not seeing the point of considering anything but the art side (especially as a first project if you aren't a coder and aren't even sure you want to become a coder).

The tool itself, either you will use an existing tool that already takes models and creates art (whether 2d or 3d) and your addition will simply be to reduce its power by pre-defining and limiting what options are available to make the tool easier and quicker to use, or you will make a tool which is simply layering existing images together. Both are fine, but likely don't provide much added value to the existing market.

You named a whole long list of programs that do this, from the complex 3D tools that start from scratch to the simple clip-art pairing tools. All of these tools are used to create a 2D image of various characters in various poses and various outfits. You mentioned some were more complex than you wanted, and others were about right, but the artwork wasn't the style you wanted. So you said it yourself, the existing 2D paperdoll system is what you want, but you want a different art style and more options. There's no reason to recreate the paperdoll system. You simply need to create the art that matches your desire.

As for uniqueness and variety, it's simple: the more complex (read: more options) you make the tool, the more possible permutations will exist for output. In other words, the more source-art the tool provides, the more end-result art it can produce. Although any tool's resultant images will feel less and less unique the more it is used. The other benefit to focusing on the artwork side, a tool that creates the art from scratch with thousands of options would need to be made in its entirety and complexity before it becomes at all usable. Artwork can be used as soon as 1 image exists and can be expanded continuously over time to broaden options. Honestly, whether the pre-made art is 2 or 3 dimensional doesn't matter, nor whether the tool manipulates it in 2 or 3-D. The point is, use existing tools to do the combining, and focus your energy on making the art components that said tool will use.

(Modelling is always going to allow for more options than static art, and is always going to be way more complex, and better handled by the professionals. I'm by no means saying you couldn't become a professional level coder yourself. But creating a full modeling tool isn't a casual hobby.)

Thanks for the well thought out answer. I think you've hit it right on the nail. People have provided me with tools I can try to work with to see where I want to go for, and like you said, I'll have to set realistic goals once I do know how much time I am willing to invest, what kind of results I can achieve, and how motivated I am.