Now its time to import all the files into the unreal editor.
When importing your files into the unreal editor you need to make sure that you use the right settings or you will get bad surprises when testing it ingame! (the model is split in parts which makes the customization possible). Here is a very good tutorial by Geodav about the whole process of getting a character in the game: Tutorial
For putting the textures on the model parts, a material is needed:
To get the textures on the model simply connecting the textures to the right slots is enough but for a good character material much more is needed:
This is the full character material, it has a lot of material expressions, though a lot of it is for gameplay stuff like the biorifle death effect.
This is how the material looks on the model:
As you can see it looks much different from the preview in 3dsmax.
To get the gold reflection material effect and other effects on the right parts I have made a special texture:
The green channel defines the gold effect, the blue channel a fresnel effect and the red channel a moving emissive effect.
The material is done, but its still something missing, because the character is different from the normal characters it needs a custom physic asset. The physic asset defines how the joints will move when he is dead and the always physic animated parts like the skirts.
This is the Physic editor, the blue shapes are collisions that are attached to the bones and make the character collide with the world and also with bones of his own. The bones also need joint constraints so they can only rotate limited. The Shoulder shield and skirt is always physic animated. The shoulder shield parts can rotate so the shield can get bigger or smaller, that is controlled by how it collide with the arm.
The physic asset can also be tested in the editor which makes some nice crash tests possible:
The bungee jumping makes not much sense but its fun to watch.
Here is a test with one of my invasion monster:
On the beginning you can see what happens if the physic asset is not setuped and bones collide in the default pose which each other.
This character has also a custom voice which was done by Koribian. The sounds need to be referenced with code so the game can find it:
Not only the sounds need to be referenced, all other stuff too. That is what the utcustomchar.ini and the family.uc code is for.
When everything is coded in it can be tested ingame:
This is the finished character in the character selection:
Here is a simple timespan of all the steps:
Thats it! I hope this makeing of was interesting and have fun playing with this Character!
More cool things are in the making:
If you are interested in getting you own character into UT3, here is again the Tutorial by Geodav about it:
Or if you just want to make your own skin/texture, here is very good tutorial from Slaughter about it:
You can also grab my bunny SDK package that comes with all the files to get your own bunny skin quickly and easy into UT3: