Creating Custom and Customizable Player Models

CONTEXT
Hello all, my friend (dynamicvirus448, DeathDeity) and I are new to Roblox game development and have taken on the challenge of designing an FPS Game inspired from Borderlands; An open-world shooter with quests, a storyline, and elements like shops, abilities, character voices, dungeons, etc. I am the main model designer in Blender, and my friend is the lead coder (however, he is unfamiliar with Roblox code, so much of it is from tutorials online and scripts we found from the workplace). Our hope is to create a system for the player similar to Bad Business, where the character has options for clothes, hair, and skin tones.

OVERALL PROBLEM
Some problems we are experiencing is how to create a custom player model capable of being in cutscenes, having the accessories I mentioned earlier, and by having they’re current arms show in a gun viewmodel.

POST QUESTION (Specific Problem)
The main issue I’d like to talk about is replacing the character model with the base model I made in blender (we’re currently using the StarterPlayer method, although I am worried this will not work when trying to save it across the different maps and the overall method feels slightly janky to me) and then having the character be able to customize it with some basic hair and clothing that I will create. What method should I use to create a customizable custom player model?

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I’m not sure what you’re asking, but my game contains custom models as well, and I can tell you a cool trick I use.
Your custom model will likely start out relatively basic with no optional items (like hairs and clothing), however as you add custom items (like hair and clothing), you don’t need to delete them per player. What I do is make them transparent and weld them to certain body parts. That way when you make the core rig and animations for the player model, you don’t need to remake it each and every time - it will simply be there until the player clicks a button (likely on your character customization menu), that makes that part no longer transparent. Here’s an example:


I have practically no scripting experience but I assure you, I was able to make something like this with Google, YouTube, and DevForum alone - so you’ve definitely got luck on your side when it comes to resources (especially when it comes to custom characters and customization.)

I clarified the question a bit, but thank you for the info! I haven’t added accessory points onto the character model yet, but that definitely could work! Would it be possible to also try and make some sort of true/false statement for when a character unlocks the cosmetic/armor, such as setting it to false if the character doesn’t have the item in their inventory to prevent them from wearing it?

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I definitely think it’s possible and maybe even easy… I quite honestly haven’t reached that point in my project yet haha…

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Lol, it’s all good. This enough was a great response, thank you! I’ll keep the post up just in case anyone else has an idea, but I’ll definitely let my partner know about this method.

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