Costume References

Intro

This guide will show you how to make a new costume and allow your characters to wear it.

You will need to

1. stretch and fit the new costume the base male or female body
2. make the costume move with the character by assigning parts of the costume to the character's bones.
3. prepare the textures so that the costume will have color, and that materials like metal and cloth will look right
4. convert the model to be usable as a mod in Engage
5. create the files that make the costume available to wear
6. polish up your model after seeing it in action
7. (bonus) add physics to the model

Using a base body

Engage has a lot of characters. They all have different body types. Does the game have 20 different models for each costume, for each character? No. There is a base body, and the game can resize a costume automatically to fit any character.

This is good news for you - if you make a costume, all the characters of that gender can wear it.

Q: "I already have a costume with bones, can I just use that without fitting to the Engage base body?"

A: This can work but can be difficult. Benefits of using a base body: it has the right bones, and it has the expected default body proportions, which Engage will use to create the different character's body shapes. Additionally, you can also use a weight transfer to save time.

Fitting the costume

Unity Work

The albedo

The albedo gives the base color that the game should display. Albedos in Engage are usually flat, solid colors, and don't have much shading.

Here's an example of how Alear's albedo looks:

Understanding the Multimap

The multimap, known as the "multi" for short, contains information that tells Engage how the costume should look in terms of material. It is an RGBA texture, meaning it is comprised of 4 channels: red (R), green (G), blue (B), and alpha (A).

If you just open up a multi in your image editor, you might notice that it has a similar shapes to the albedo you were using. However, the colors are all strange. This is because, unlike the albedo, these colors aren't going to be what the game displays directly. Instead, each channel has a specific role to play.

It is best to think of each channel as separate from the others - it is merging into one file out of convenience for the game.

Each channel has a range of 0-255. Here is what each channel is for:

• Green is metal. The higher the values here, the more metallic that part of the material will be.
• Red is roughness. Metallic areas will be affected by this - you can have shiny metal which looks very reflective or a dull metal that looks rough.
• Blue is occlusion. You can think of this as shadowing. The higher the value the darker it will be. This can be made in Blender by baking a occlusion map.
• Alpha is class colors. These work this way: (explain)

The gradients (ramps)

The various texture ramps that Engage uses help give it its toon shading and metal reflections.

They look like little stripes with a gradient.

They are important to assign to your materials. Compare the following images. Which one looks more like Engage?

The normal

... Depending on what game you got the model from, it may not have a normal map. If you don't have a normal map...

Building your project

Let the characters wear the costume in the game

This next step involves the following 4 files:

• Item.xml - Make your costume into an item.
• Shop.xml - Make the costume item available in the accessories shop.
• AssetTable.xml - Define what 3D model to use when a character wears your costume.
• accessories.txt - Write the name and description for your costume.