This document aims to provide a comprehensive breakdown of the requirements necessary to rig clothing and characters for SS3D.

It is recommended you read through and follow this guide in its entirety before you consider your model complete.

To beginners, this may be the first part of the guide where you may need to do extensive weight painting. If this sounds like you, you may want to brush up on techniques by checking out YouTube tutorials on weight painting, or by asking fellow SS3D model creators.

Methods

There are two key methods for creating torso clothing for SS3D characters:

First is just by editing the reference items and maintaining the weights that way. You can find some tips for this method by checking out the Basic Clothing section of this guide on page 5.

The second method is by creating your own model from scratch, then by transferring the weights from the model in the rigging template named "Human Weight Transfer Model." In order to transfer weights from one mesh to another, follow these steps:

1. Parent your mesh to the rig with empty vertex groups.

2. Add a Data Transfer modifier to your article of clothing.

3. In the modifier, select the eyedropper and select the object you want to transfer the weights from, then toggle "Vertex Data."

4. Select the drop down in the top right of the modifier and click "apply."

Given that head items almost always need to be weighted only to the head, this is the simplest type of cosmetic item to add, and is very beginner-friendly.

Hair & Hat Interactions

When modeling a head item, you may want to take a peek at the supplied hair models within the rigging guide. Given that hair and hats both need to fit on a player's head, hair needs to change its shape depending on the hat.

As such, hairstyles have four possible shape keys: hats, helmets, masks, and hoods. For helmets that cover the entire head, like hardsuit helmets, the hair may be hidden entirely.

When designing a head item, you may want to enable the desired hair shape key and design around it.

Rigging Head Items

After you're done, consider whether your hat needs a held variant based on the type of head item you created.

This section and beyond is incomplete until precedent is set for such things. In the meantime, here are some key points:

Humanoids

• When making models based off the human rig, try to avoid making them thicker than the human model. This is to ensure human clothes fit.

• If making a non-humanoid rig, please be aware that there is no current standard. If you are going to attempt to create a new standard, consider the following:

• Rigs with altered lower-bodies (like digitigrade legs) may reuse much of the human upper-body. This should expedite the conversion of existing clothes to your new species.

• Clothes for new races do not need any new item variants for clothing, provided they are based on an already existing outfit.

• If you are establishing a new standard rig, be keenly aware that you will also likely need to create new animations to accommodate.

• Analogues to hair on new races (like antennae or lizard frills) may also need to have shape keys similarly to human hair, otherwise your lizard frills will probably clip through a helmet or two.

• If your race's limbs are severable you will of course need to make severable limbs. To do this without having visible seams, you can copy the normals from the completed version of your race's body mesh. To copy normals, overlap the severed version and the completed version, and apply a Data Transfer modifier to your severed version. Then, check "Face Corner Data", select "Custom Normals", and set Mapping to "Nearest Corner of Nearest Face". Then, make the Source of the data transfer your completed body, and then apply the modifier. You will need to do this for each of the body parts. You can do it all at once by slapping all of the severed limbs into one object, and seperating them into individual parts after you've applied the modifier.

Hairstyles are among the most in-demand cosmetic types, being one of the most ground-level customization options for players. Provided you're able to model some decent-looking hair, the rigging process for hairstyles is similar to hats, with a bit more work.

Rigging Hair

Hair is easy to rig, provided you don't need the hair to move off the head (like a ponytail swishing around.)

To rig most types of hair, you can simply follow the guide on the head items page.

If you need to add bones to make the hair move, you can edit the default rig to include those bones. Adding bones named hair1, hair2, hair3, etc. and weighting them in Blender is enough -- dynamic bones are applied in Unity, if used.

Shape Keys

Hair utilizes shape keys to allow it to fit inside headwear. When making hairstyles, use the reference hat, helmet, mask and hood to create the respective shape keys.

(When making the Helmet key, only use the "Reference Helmet 1". "Reference Helmet 2" is an example of an item that would hide the hair completely in-game.)

Understanding the Rigging Template

The rigging template includes a myriad of clothing items that you can use as reference for creating your own.

Because clothing items aren't always worn, jumpsuits, shirts, pants, shoes, gloves, neck items, oversuits and some types of hats need secondary variants to be held and placed as items around the map.

The reference models in the rigging template serve 3 purposes:

1. To supply modelers with a basis for articles of clothing.

2. To ensure that your hair shape keys fit within the constraints of a hat.

3. To serve as a reference for origin placement.

The Contents of the rigging template:

• Human model featuring all cutoff points and shape keys.

• References for head-worn items.

• Reference hairstyle with shape keys.

• All applicable materials.

• References for jumpsuit, gloves, and shoes.

• References for held clothing items.

• References for jumpsuit shape keys.

Shape Keys

The reference items are not only for viewing purposes, they also serve as an example for the formatting of things such as shape keys. Shape keys store positions for vertices, and are used for functions such as hiding hair under hats, helmets, hoods, and masks.

To edit shape keys on an item, simply click the desired shape key in Edit Mode, then move the vertices to the desired position as per each key.

TIP: You can use destructive and light constructive editing on the provided clothing items to make something new, while still maintaining clean armature weighting. However, too many changes in the geometry may result in needing to recreate shape keys.

Understanding the Basics

This section will cover basic things you will need to know in order to progress in this guide.

Rigging

To rig an item, you must select the mesh, then select the armature, and press CTRL+P. This will bring up the following menu:

"Empty Groups" creates a parenting with weights equal to zero, which is helpful for making things that are weighted to only one bone, like hats.

"Automatic Weights" does its best to automatically calculate which bone attaches to which vertex. Often produces undesired effects, but may be useful.

Weighting

"Weighting" in 3D modeling refers to the amount of influence a bone has over a vertex. Typically, a weighting of 1 means "this bone has maximum influence," while a weighting of 0 means "this bone has no influence." However, more than one bone may be weighted to the same vertex.

When weighting clothes to the armature of a character, it's often very difficult to ensure that it deforms 100% consistently with the body underneath, resulting in parts of the body clipping through the clothing.

To circumvent this, we hide portions of the body beneath the clothes, so clipping isn't an issue.

To make use of this, it is recommended that you model the ends of the clothes along specific cutting lines, such as at the wrist and below the shoulder for tops, and directly above the knee and below the ankles for bottoms.

We can also make use of an alternate body mesh that reveals only the area surrounding the neck, so shirts can have some leeway on the size of the collar.

When modeling the ends of the clothes, it's also best if you model inside the ends of sleeves, so if the limb is severed, it will still look natural.

Some objects don't need to be rigged, and can just be parented to the bones in-game. Below I will detail which items need to be rigged to the character armature, and which items do not.

Needs Rigged to Character:

• Hair

• Jumpsuits

• Overcoats

• Underwear

• Backpacks

• Gloves

• Shoes

• Belts

No Rigging Required:

• Hats

• Helmets

• Masks

• Glasses

• Ear Comms

(This page will get removed once we resolve the size discrepancy issue.)

To match assets created before the human model was finalized, the rigged human model is scaled down .87 in-game.

This creates a size discrepancy with a majority of items in the game. Because the rigged model is scaled down automatically in Unity, the size discrepancy is also negated automatically. Do not adjust the scale of the rigged model.

The dummy model included in the SS3D Modeler's Kit is the in-game size, while the rigging size is the size you should be working in for rigged items.

Simply put, dynamic bones work pretty much the same as regular bones, but they are made dynamic in Unity. You will add bones to the rig up the subject the same as normal, applying weights where you would normally.

Something to keep in mind when rigging up hair or other equipment with dynamic bones would be to ensure that the shape keys don't ruin the effect of the weighting.

Additionally, especially long hair might need an alternate hair model with shorter hair to fit within the confines of a closed helmet, and things like ponytails can be made into separate objects so they can easily be hidden when a helmet is put on.

Remember to parent the dynamic bones to the correct location. In the case of dynamic hair, parent the additional bones to the head bone.

The basic clothing types in this page mainly refer to things that are easy to edit from the reference items, such as shoes or gloves.

Editing Reference Items

If you are inexperienced in weight painting, take care not to model too destructively when modifying reference items, or you may cause damage to the weighting of the mesh. This is especially difficult to fix when working in tight areas like the fingers of a glove.

If you want to add details to the reference items, you may be better off duplicating the selected faces of a mesh using Shift+D, which duplicates the faces' weighting as well.

And of course when you are finished making your item, make sure you create a placed/held item variant. Feel free to get creative with the positioning, as long as it still looks like one item.

A shape key (also referred to as "blend shapes") is a basic mesh transformation that moves vertices directly from point-A to point-B.

Body Shape Keys

Shape keys can be used for a variety of functions, but in this context, we use them to customize the proportions of player-created characters.

Accordingly, the rigged clothes need to be able to support the shape of the body underneath, so clothing items also need to contain the same shape keys.

The shape keys that need to be accounted are as follows, and need to be named exactly the same way:

• Basis - The default character shape.

• Female - The female variant of the base character.

• Breasts - Size of the bust.

• Fat - Chubbiness.

• Muscle - The size of the character's muscles.

Hair Shape Keys

While body shape keys are used for customization, hair shape keys are used to maintain the look of the character while also allowing hats, helmets, masks, and hoods to be worn on top.

For this, we shrink the effected part of the hair so it fits within the constraints of the hat. For this, I've created a couple shape keys that should fit the constraints of a large majority of hats.

The shape keys that need to be accounted are as follows, and need to be named exactly the same way:

• Hat - Squishes the top of the hair down as if there were a hat on top.

• Helmet - Squishes all sides of the hair inward toward the head aside from the bangs. Used primarily in instances where the helmet might reveal a lot of the head.

• Mask - Squishes the bangs inward as if a mask were pressed against the face.

• Hood - Like the Helmet shape key, but more extreme.

Object origins hold a lot of vital information, such as an object's scale, rotation, and position. You'll want to apply the scale, and rotation of the object, or it will likely be horribly disfigured after export.

To apply scale and rotation in blender, select the object and press CTRL+A in Object Mode, and select the respective options in the menu.

If the object is rigged to the body, the origin of the object should be in the exact location of the body's origin. As for hats and other non-rigged head-worn items, the origin should be placed in the middle of the head bone.

If you are using the human rigging template in the SS3D Modeler's Template, you can use the included objects as reference for where the origin should go.

When exporting a rigged item, you need to export the model itself as well as the armature you used. If the rigged item requires a secondary held item, it should be included in the same .FBX file as the rigged model and the armature.

As always, if you are exporting items from a file with multiple objects, be sure to select only the objects you want to export and turn on "Selected Objects" in the export settings.

While the rigged model is useful for being worn, it is not very useful as a held or dropped item. For this purpose, we need two models for a given piece of equipment (with the exception of head items).

One for being worn on the character, and as an item to be held in the hand. Head-worn items generally do not deform like most clothes do, so it is unnecessary to make separate rigged and item versions of these articles.

If for some reason you need your head-worn item to deform, then you will likely need a separate held item for it as well.