Same Model, Different Outfits?

[rebelmonkeytim]

Hi all

I have an animation of a character walking. Currently it's set up as a model file with the rig and animation file that references the model file.

Now I need to render multiple outfits on the character as he walks. The trouble is- they need to be rendered separately from the character. I've figured out how to render things separately, but I'm not sure the best way to set things up so that I can have multiple different pieces of clothing for the same model.

Also, it would be ideal if the clothes are not merely textures, but offset the mesh somehow. Not sure if the best solution for this is separate geometry or some sort of displacement map.

Any suggestions?

Thanks

Tim

[dsinisa]

Hey Tim --

You should take your skeleton and bind the clothes on top of it. Take whatever geometry you are using and put that in a different render layer, and set the original geometry to have a black alpha. I'm not in front of Maya right now, but that's what you're looking for in the render view -- a black hole where your object was. It's not setting the transparency on a solid shader, it's setting the matte opacity, I think. If you can't get that to happen, you can include the old geometry. Since you have the reference file, you should be fine adding in the new geometry. A displacement map is a cool idea, but for anything complex, you'd rather have real geometry, unless you're an amazing texturer who hates to rig things up...

It's far easier to just change the character's clothing by re-coloring it, if that's an option for you.

-Mary