Is it possible to build a 3d character creator where you combine individual body parts to crate a fully rigged character?
I'm experimenting with trying to make a 3d character creator, and since I haven't done something this advanced, I want to know if this idea would be possible, or if I'm completely barking up the wrong tree and I need to rethink my approach.
my logic was that since unity's animations understand rigged models as a hierarchy of the meshes that make up the individual bones, it might be possible to make a game where each of the bones correlates to a static model, and one can customize a character by swapping out those models, and perhaps changing their dimensions a bit.
think like a lego, where you can pop off the head and put on a new one.
I've been trying to plan out if I could do this either by:
method A: rig and animate something where all the body parts are individual models, then see if i can swap one model for another mid-play
method B: have character models just actually be skeletons made of invisible sticks, but each of the sticks is going to have the model for the body part as a child. basically just have the body parts be attached to the bones, but not be apart of the rigged mesh. (seems easiest, but would probably look weird)
my questions are:
1: is this possible/worth trying?
2: if so, how complex would it be?
3: are any of my methods remotely on the right track, if not, can you give me a rough idea of how it could be accomplished?
4: any tips, plugins, tutorials or warnings that might be helpful if I were to attempt this?
I don't expect any one person to have answers to all of this, any insight at all would be extremely helpful!