Character Creation Guide

The following is a high level overview of the entire character mod creation process, it assumes you have already read the Getting Started section.

The Character Creation Guide aims to present information roughly in the order that you will need it as you work through the process. It covers aspects of creating a character from scratch, if you already have a character model with textures and a skeleton or are familiar with creating 3D art you can safely skip ahead to the Setup your Character in Unreal Section.

Design your character

• Consider what actions your character needs to perform.
• How should they be modeled/rigged to support this
• Do they need separate Mesh Effects? (3D Mesh that only need to be present briefly, eg. a weapon pulled out for a few attacks and then put away.)
• What Articles do they need? (Actors that have their state tracked separately, eg. zetterburn’s fireball or Kragg’s Pillar)
• Do you need to control the visibility on different sections of the character during certain actions? (eg. hiding Fleet’s bow during a taunt, or hiding Orcane’s legs during his FSpecial)

Create your Character in Blender

Model Your Character

1. Create your geometry
2. Scale your geometry
   Set Blender scene scale to Metric and unit scale to 0.01, add a new cube
   match your character to this or download a scale reference file
3. Unwrap your Geometry UVs for Texturing

Rig Your Character

1. Prepare the mesh.
   Ensure that the character mesh is facing the right way and is correctly scaled,then apply transforms
2. Set up the armature (Either from scratch or use Rigify)
3. Bind character to this skeleton (armature) and adjust skin weights.
4. Set up control rig for animation

Animate Your Character

1. Organize your files for animation.
   Create an new empty scene and reference or link your character into it. (Avoid animating in the same scene that you rigged your character)
2. Create a test Idle animation action

Texture Your Character

1. Bake Normal Map and Ambient occlusion Map
2. Paint Base Color Map
3. Paint Shading Map
4. Paint Outline Mask
   Use Ambient Occlusion Map as foundation
5. Paint Roughness mask
   Paint fully white if no gloss needed
6. Paint Metallic mask
   Paint fully black if no metalness needed
7. Pack the ORMS map
   Combine the Outline, Roughness, Metallic and Shading maps into one texture.

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Setup Your Character in the Workshop (Unreal Editor)

Generate your Mod Template Files

1. With Steam logged in and running in the background, in Unreal open the Modding UI
2. Click Start A New Mod
3. Click create a new Character Mod
4. Enter the name for your character and click Accept

Playtest your Character

1. In the Modding menu in the top toolbar select Open the DebugRoom
2. Select your newly generated character mod in the EditorPreferences/Rivals Developer Settings menu
3. Click Play

Export Model and Animation from Blender

1. Export Model and armature from blender as .FBX
   (Ensure you are using correct mesh export settings!)
2. Export Test Idle from blender in a separate .FBX file
   (Ensure you are using correct animation export settings!)

Import Model and Animations to Unreal

1. In the mod content folder under unreal assets look for your Sandbert skeletal mesh template asset. Right click on it and reimport with new file, selecting your character mesh FBX as the source.
2. Reset Material order to FBX and Yes to rebuilding the skeleton when asked.
3. In the Unreal Assets folder look for the Idle animation sequence and right click on it, reimport with new file, selecting your exported test Idle .FBX as the source.

Import Textures to Unreal

1. Ensure all textures are named with ROA2 standard Suffixes (_BC for base color _N for normal map etc.)
2. Right click in the content browser and import, selecting your texture files when prompted.
3. Select all of your textures in the content browser and right click, then select scripted asset actions – Automatic Texture Settings or set compression settings manually by opening each texture and adjusting settings within.

Create and Configure Material Instances

1. Organize Your Material Slots
   Open Skeletal Mesh and ensure the material slots are named appropriately, remove any unnecessary (duplicate) slots.
2. Generate Material Instances
   Right click on your Skeletal Mesh and click Asset actions, Generate materials to create a Material Instance named after each slot, these will be automatically assigned to the slots.
3. Assign and Configure your Texture parameters.

Setup Physics Asset and Hurtbox

1. Edit the Hurtbox (HB) asset to assign capsule volumes to your character joints that can be struck by attacks.
2. In Character Data populate the list of hurtbox entries.
3. Edit the Physics Asset (PH) setting up 10-20 capsules to capture the overall volume, shadow casting of your character

Setup Mesh Effects (Visuals that need to match character animation but only appear during brief moments – If a character pulls out a weapon briefly during some attacks for example) Note that swipes are a mesh effect for base cast.

1. Create your mesh effect models, textures, rigs and animation as you did for the character and import them, following the same methods for setup.
2. Populate your mesh effect list in the neutral palette file (CS_”Name”_Default_Neutral) with unique names.
3. Invoke the mesh effect by name and assign the appropriate animation in attack data.

Set Up Color Palettes

1. In Skin Data add Material slot names to the color section, add color parameter definitions to under each material slot entry as color slot definitions.
2. Populate palette files with color slot definitions.
3. If using Color masks load the character into the Photobooth scene and choose colors for their neutral and three alt palettes (Red Blue Green).
4. Capture the CSP (Character Select Portrait) files for all palettes
5. Import any Mesh effect and article content separately, create rivals article blueprints for each article and assign the article mesh to them.
6. Define mesh effects in the Neutral CS file.

Setup Dynamic Custom Colors

1. Create Custom Color Map Textures
2. Enable Custom Color in Material Instances
3. Populate Custom Color Parameters
   Right Click on Skin Data and run Populate Parameters, then assign Custom Color Names
4. Import Custom Color Names to PS (Palette Skin Files)
   Right Click on CS_ files and import Definitions from Default Skin
5. Assign Palette Colors
   Load Your Character palettes into the Photobooth and assign colors, then save your palettes.

Create Portraits

1. with your palettes setup right click on the character in the steam modding UI and generate all portraits
2. Set up portrait offset for use in game menus via the Steam Modding UI

Setup Skeleton Sockets for specialized effects

Create Articles

Set Up An Attack

Set Up A Throw

Publish your Mod

Adding polish to your character

Customize your Victory Sequence

Assign VFX (Particle effects)

Customize Shield Visuals

Add a Zapped Skeleton for when your character is electrified.

Animate Material Parameters

Set Up Mesh Visibility Control

Add Audio

Add Item specific animations and Item holding socket.

Tips

Start simple, if this is your first foray into modding or 3D art, try to pick something reasonable to start with, it will be a more enjoyable experience to learn the ropes on something more manageable before taking on additional challenges.

Note that this isn’t a strictly linear process, a major benefit of working in 3D is that any of your art assets can be edited outside of unreal and re-imported without breaking connections in the editor

Try to import your assets as early as possible to begin testing them in game for scale, orientation and proportions, this will let you catch issues early when they’re easier to address.

It becomes more challenging to make edits to your model/rig once animation has begun so ensure that everything is looking right in terms of scale before proceeding too far with animation work, however you can change the export scale of your mesh and animations in blender to make adjustments if needed.