How To: Implement additional clothing assets : CB Productions

Introduction

This tutorial will show you how to implement new clothing assets into the Character Creator. We will implement a pair of boots into the project. Feel free to follow along with your own content.

First, make sure your own models are properly fitting the base character (either the male or female character). This tutorial will use the female character as an example.

This It's split into two parts. Part One will discuss how to properly prepare the mesh in a 3D modeling application. In this example "Maya" is being used. Part Two will discuss how to implement said mesh into the UE4 Character Creator project.

Part 1: External Modelling program

First, start by opening the "SK_Female_V3.fbx" file which resides in the "Content\CharacterCreator\Meshes\Female" folder inside the UE4 project:

We are using Maya here. For other software packages, the view might differ. We can now add the custom mesh to the scene and place it in the correct location:

Next, the mesh needs to be skinned/rigged to the existing UE4 skeleton. This process differs based on what software you are using and is not described here. However, many tutorials are available on the internet on how to achieve this.

After that, the Morph Targets (Blendshapes) have to be added. You can check which Morph Targets are required either in your 3D Software package or in UE4 directly. In UE4 open up the Skeletal Mesh for the Female, located in "/CharacterCreator/Meshes/Female/SK_Female_V3". Here you can explore the Morph Targets within the "Morph Target Preview" Tab:

You need to make sure that the mesh you are adding has the same Morph Targets. If your mesh only covers a small portion of the mesh (like for example the boots do), only some Morph Targets have to be added. In our case, there are two Morph Targets, "FeetSize" and "FeetTS" that we need to add to our boots.

After this is done, export the mesh and export as an FBX file and import it into UE4 as a skeletal mesh. During import make sure to select the "UE4_Mannequin_Skeleton" as the Skeleton for the mesh.

Part 2: UE4 integration

Within UE4 we start by opening up the "BP_CustomizableChar" Blueprint located in the "CharacterCreator/Blueprints/Character" folder. In the Components tab we can see that there's no object present for boots:

This is due to the fact that out-of-the-box the Character Creator doesn't implement any footwear. So we will be adding a new category here. This has to be done in two places. First of all, it needs to be added in the Character Blueprint and in the UI as well, so that the player can actually select it.

We start by adding a new skeletal mesh component. The "Trousers" or "Shirt" component can be used as a reference here. After that, the component needs to be hooked up to a few different functions:

1. Construction Script. Add it to the Master Pose:

2. Set Val to Morph Target

3. InitializeFemale

Save and compile the Blueprint. Now we move on to adjust the UI. Open the "UMG_CharCustomMain" Widget Blueprint. Navigate to the "V_ClothFemale" object:

Here we will need to add a new option to choose our boots. We can accomplish this by copying the existing "LowerClothFem" object and modifying it. Rename it to "BootsFem" and add the "IdxChanged" Event:

Next, we need to add similar behavior as shown above to our "IdxChanged" Event for the boots. Right now we are lacking an option to pass the information along to our character. To change that we open struct "BPS_InfoLowerBody":