Project Description: This is my most recent solo Development Project in the creation of a custom character from scratch for import into Arma 3
Process: The reason I started this project was I had to find a way to leverage what I know in the Games Business and do something that would be unique to me as a developer and could also expand my skills in the Games Business. So in essence I thought going with something cultural to me in a game that was complex but managable was the way to go hence the start of the Character Development Project and so I took on the challenge of creating a custom made male hair braiding hairstyle despite not having any solid 3D Artist experience or any experience working with Arma 3's game engine which is 10 years old or more now.
The challenge: Some the of the biggest challenges were described in the process as I had to learn a new 3D software program (Blender), copy paste and run basic pythons scripts(that I never ran before), work with 2 game engines that I never worked with before iClone7 and Arma 3, research the concepts of creating a 3D character within a game, research the concept of 3D hair, complete a unique and highly complex hairstyle, configure a hair object, the Arma 3 game script, and configure new hardware (Graphics cards and Ram Cards) and configure software (Blender and Arma 3 games scripts) to import the character and the hairstyle object without my computer, hairstyle, graphics card, or the Arma 3 game engine crashing and do it pretty much on all on adaptation and instinct.
Where did coding or software engineer work come into play here ? Mainly in the Game Script which is apart of the zip file, I also had to copy and paste python scripts in Blender to get the Blender addon's to work for character creation and to setup import for the character and hair object into Arma 3.
What did I learn that was new? I learned 2 new gaming engines in Arma 3 and iClone7, learned binarizing for 3D objects, Arma 3's game script concepts, and now know how to configure graphics cards, virtual ram, and ram memory for software development for games and know how to figure which set of hardware to buy based on development requirements.
What is unique about this project? All the work was done from scratch and strictly custom made so it's not on the market and not many people would have gotten the import to work even the Arma 3 developers thought it wouldn't work when I introduced the idea and details but I completed the import successfully no issues.