3D Character Creator: Texture System

This pack is the result of a deep study into how World Of Warcraft renders their customizable characters and npcs. We learned the complete character textures are not saved to disk but are calculated as RenderTextures at runtime. At first we thought this would cause negative performance compared to a Texture2D. However, by using Graphics.Blit and Graphics.CopyTexture along with a custom shader, this solution has the same performance as using a regular .JPG or .PNG texture.

Change your character’s skin colors, scars, tattoos, hair, facial hair, eye color, jewelry, clothes, or anything that could be drawn to a texture. Your game should contain a database of various textures, each broken down into what part of the body it should be drawn to. For example Pants_JeansBlack03.png is UV mapped to your character’s legs but only “JeansBlack03” are saved to that file.

Your characters will start off naked as a base texture and then have all the various options layered onto that base texture. You might apply underwear first, then clothes, then jewelry, and finally items like boots, gloves, belt, cape can be drawn last.

Textures are layered similar to how Photoshop layers work but by using a special shader the GPU can perform the operation to merge these layers into a single texture on the fly. The final RenderTexture is only re-computed when a change is made to the outfit, so performance is synonymous with using a regular Texture2D.

Create randomized outfits & characters, procedurally generate a population of people all with unique clothes, skin tones, and accessories! The sky is the limit when it comes to the endless possibilities of character customization when you use 3D Character Creator: Texture System.