I’m still making my custom character model, which is based on the 4.0 Girl bundle (with a 3.0 Woman torso size). I posted pictures of the hands yesterday, but I think it’ll be more useful if I also showed the rest of it off! (Mine is the one without legs.)
I’m aiming to give it similar proportions to its inspiration, so it will work as a drop-in replacement in my (and others’) experiences. The feet should be easier to shape than the hands were, but we’ll see what it looks like when I’m finished.
The head mesh was scaled to an almost 1:1 scale recreation of the classic beveled cylinder head, but with better optimization. Higher polygon counts will only matter when a player is either zoomed in or taking a picture of their avatar, and if they’re doing that, their character is probably looking at the camera. This is why the front of the head has more polygons around it (though it’s actually more jagged than the original head). Also, the head’s shape/outline when viewed from side angles matters more than top-down, so it uses a six-segment bevel instead of Roblox’s four segments. The back of it uses less polygons because it’ll probably be covered up by hair or won’t be viewed closely.
One thought I sometimes think of is how to keep the player’s character from randomly dying when using the built-in “replace R15 body part” Humanoid method; Sometimes, I would replace a body part to see how it handles it, and the character would fall apart, as if I reset it. (This happens more often when replacing the head, and I have to wonder if it’s a bug that they haven’t fixed yet.)
I’m not too proud of them, but I’ve added legs to my character model. I must say, I don’t like how small of an area that shoes/feet use for UV mapping; You pretty much have to stretch the shoe texture across the top of the foot, and it’s sort of ugly, which you can see in these screenshots:
I’ve applied @iluvcookies23412’s “y2k indie cute kawaii pink lace raspberry dress” pants to see how clothing will map to them, and it’s not that good. These clothes were clearly designed for the default “blocky” body parts based on their shading, so that makes them look worse when round meshes are used.
Oh, and here’s how the whole model looks at the moment!
Update: I’ve completed this character model! It was tweaked somewhat based on feedback, and has been imported into Roblox Studio. You can look at it here.
My custom character is still being worked on. Though its torso needs some work, the arms and legs look good enough. Take a look at this screenshot, now with more clothes textures! (Ignore the blue text, as this picture was edited for use in a blog post.)
If this character’s joints look odd, it’s due to how perfectly round they are. While this means the seams will always be visible, this gives bent elbows and knees a very smooth look, which even Roblox couldn’t pull off with their R15 character models!
This is only possible if the joints are positioned at a very specific position at the center of the “circle” that both part’s cap forms when both are aligned correctly, so sadly, the somewhat obvious seams that you see when the limbs are outstretched can’t be hidden without introducing the “sliced” joints that Roblox’s official characters have, which look sloppy for something that was created by a company. Because of this, I will be leaving the arms and legs how they are now, even though they bother my OCD, perfectionism, or something else.
On a scale of 1-10, how well-made is my character model?
the arms are place a bit high and they dont have that curved shoulder so it looks like the arms are kind of disconnected. They are also completely straight down which makes it look like the character is kinda squeezing themselves into some gap or something. The legs also have similar issues as in they look too “stick”-y and doesn’t really connect to the body well (maybe make the top of the legs slightly larger or something)
tl: dr the arms and legs doesn’t connect to the body in a natural way
Yeah, they probably are positioned slightly too high. I designed them like this to avoid the weird “flat backside” oddity of Roblox’s girl arms, which are completely flat when they’re rotated in animations, which makes them look weird in a different way than my arms.
Placing the upper and lower arm parts vertically made it very easy to align them and size their “caps” perfectly.
The default blocky arms are completely vertical like this, and it works fine for them.
I’m considering tilting the arm parts out from the body before exporting the meshes, because the woman and girl arms are posed more naturally, even in the default “I-pose”. I’m just indefinitely thinking about it, though, as adjusting the arm parts in any way could make it harder to align the attachments once I import the model into Roblox Studio.
I’ve remade the lower torso part, so I figured I should try making the upper legs wider like you suggested and…
…yeah, they look better like this!
I know what you mean. The segmented arms and legs have obvious indents where the parts meet, which does make their body look like it’s shriveling up, almost turning skeletal. I’m not sure what I could try to improve the transitions, because at the moment, each part is rounded off, with perfectly sized half-sphere ends, which let the knees bend super smoothly.
This is partially possible because of Blender’s “subdivision surface” modifier, which made it so much easier to shape all of the body part meshes, but it also makes it harder to make areas of meshes use more specific shapes. I guess I could try adding an extra edge ring around the joints on both parts, and see if that hides the “dip” between parts.
I personally think it looks slightly bad, but not as bad as the torso when the upper torso bends… (The hands were hidden to make the upper torso part easier to see.)
All of those are good points, especially if I was making a more realistically proportioned character. My character model has its unusually large hands and width so it’s compatible with a character using the girl bundle with the woman torso.
I moved the original character model (colored dark purple) into mine in this screenshot to show how similar its proportions and part positioning are (other than its arms, which stretch out to its sides somewhat).
Though I’m thinking of releasing it as a resource, it’s meant to be a drop-in replacement for the character parts that I usually use for my avatar and dummy NPCs. In my experience, I use the HumanoidDescription to make characters taller and thinner (slender proportions), so those modifications at runtime should improve some things about this model’s proportions (though it won’t fix the large hands).
EDIT: My character’s feet are the exception to this, though. They aren’t sized similarly to their inspiration, the Girl Legs. This was done because foot parts have terrible UV mapping (due to how little space Roblox dedicates to them in the internal maps), so I made them thinner, so they’re closer to bare feet, which I could weld shoe models to during gameplay.
I should make a version of my character model that uses the “correct” size shoes, for anyone that would want to use it with the average classic clothing textures.
Models based off of New York City. I don’t really plan on furnishing them all too much, but they are free on the creator marketplace if anybody would like to use them!
I am sill working on my tower defense game.
You can play it here-Tower Defense - Roblox
Currently I am working on performance, Gui, and migrating my movement from MoveTo() to Tweens.
