richardkopelow / gac

Avatar creation tool for Unity

GAC (Generic Avatar Creator)

Avatar creation tool for Unity

How it works

GAC uses bone scaling to modify a base mesh. Once the "DNA" for a character is setup, modifying the character is as easy as setting its "Height", "Foot Size", or any other attribute you setup.

Installation

Download this repo and copy the GAC folder (Assets/GAC) into your projects's Asset folder. If you would like a sample "DNA" file for the Male sample character, copy the Resources folder (Assets/Resources) into your projects's Assets folder.

Usage

There are a few component that are key to how GAC works

DNA

The DNA for a character is a collection of Genes. Every Gene has a name, value, and a list of bones to effect with a mask for how they will be influenced by the gene. For instance, a Foot Size gene may include the bones in both feet, each sporting a mask of (1, 1, 1) so that they scale in all directions. This way, when "Foot Size" is set to 2, the feet will become twice as big as those of the base model.

Base Characters

Base characters are normally a generic model with an Armature and without any fluff pieces, though the Armature is the only necessary part, since the body model can be added as a component. The base character serves as a baseline that will be modified by the character's DNA. A base character needn't be a human or even humanoid. Since the DNA can be setup for any Armature structure, GAC is completely character structure independent letting it be used for human, dogs, monsters, or anything else.

Character Components

Components are additional things you want to put on the character, such as clothes, replacement features (elf ears, claws, ...), or even body models because all that is really needed for the base character is its Armature. When a component is added to a character, a copy of the template game object is made, added as a child object, and then attached to the character's Armature. This means that the components are standard Unity object and can have colliders, scripts, and any other component. Creating components is exactly like creating any other object in Unity. Any piece of clothing will fit the character (with any modification from the DNA) as long as the component's model is properly skinned to an armature. THe easiest way to do this is to model clothes directly from the base model to make sure it will deform correctly.

Credits

This was made by Richard Kopelow

License

This project is under the SIT-License that can be found here A copy of this license can also be found in the root of this repo

gac's Issues

Bone space scaling problem

It seems that there is some improper scaling of child bones going on. I am seeing some bleed to child bones but I am not seeing it very consistently. Maybe a problem with the vector transformation code.