Tutorial: Character creation basics This tutorial walks you through the steps needed to understand the basics of creating a

character, including how to create a character definition file, an attachments overview,

and apply simple attachments. At the end of the tutorial you will have a simple character

assembled with a skin and joint attachment.

You will learn how to do the following:

Create a character in Geppetto

o Create a Character Definition File (.CDF)

o Understand the basics of attachments

o Apply skin and joint attachments to the character

Prerequisites You must have the following before starting this tutorial:

Sample assets are included with Lumberyard. They can be found where you

installed Lumberyard under:

...\dev\SamplesProject\Objects\Tutorials\Biped\

Creating a character in Geppetto With a .CHR and .SKIN file, we can assemble a character in Geppetto.

To create a character in Geppetto

1. Go to the File menu in Geppetto and click on New Character… The Create

Character… window will pop up.

2. Choose a location within the project to save your new character to and give it a

name. In this example, the character will get saved under Objects\Tutorials\Biped

and be named “new_character”.

Click on the Save button when you’re done.

3. This will create a .CDF for your character, or a Character Definition File, in the

location you specified. This file type is what defines a character for Lumberyard.

You should see it selected in the Assets panel.

4. In the Properties panel, you will notice there are some warnings displayed.

The first one informs you that the .CDF is incomplete and cannot be loaded. The

second one informs you that a Skeleton is required for every character. The last

one informs you that you need to add an attachment to create the character’s

geometry.

The first thing we will do to make some of the warnings go away is assign the

character’s skeleton.

5. To assign the skeleton, click on the folder icon to the right of where it says

Skeleton in the Properties panel. This will pop up a preview window for you to

navigate to the skeleton or .CHR file you want to use.

Once you’ve found and selected the .CHR, click Open.

6. The skeleton will be assigned to your character. By default, it will not be visible

because the joints are not set to be displayed in the Viewport.

If you wanted to see your skeleton, you can go under the Display Options for the

Viewport, expand the Skeleton category, and enable the Joints checkbox for it to

render the skeleton.

7. As the remaining warning says, we need to create an attachment to add the

character’s geometry.

To create an attachment, click on the drop down list next to the Attachments that

currently says 0. Click on the Add menu item.

8. There will now be an attachment added to the character, and the 0 drop down list

will have changed to a 1 to indicate the number of attachments on the character.

The new attachment will have some warnings, one that is displayed directly

under the attachment item, and one displayed under the name property for the

attachment. They both say that the attachment is missing a name.

9. Give your attachment a name in the name property field.

10. The next property for the attachment is the Type.

The applied default is a Joint Attachment. This creates an empty socket that

can optionally have a model or other object applied. The empty socket is

linked to a specific joint on the skeleton and will move with that joint when the

skeleton is animating. These sockets also have the option of having

secondary animation applied to the socket itself or redirected up to the parent

joint.

The second type is a Face Attachment. Similar to the Joint Attachment, this

creates an empty socket that can have an optional object applied but instead

is associated with a triangle (or face) on the surface of the mesh.

The third type is a Skin Attachment. This is where a .SKIN file gets attached

to a skeleton. Based on the .SKIN file data, it will attach the geometry to the

skeleton accordingly and will automatically animate and deform with the

skeleton.

The forth type is a Proxy Attachment. This creates a special geometric object

called a lozenge to help deal with collision detection on characters. The

lozenge is parented to a joint and moves with it when the skeleton animates.

A variety of different shapes can be created with a lozenge to help

approximate the shape of the part of the character you are creating collision

for.

The last type is a PRow Attachment, which stands for Pendula Row. This

stores simulation parameters for an entire row of joints that will be using the

pendula physics. This attachment is good for physics setup for something

such as a cape.

Of the attachment types, we will want to select the Skin Attachment in order

to apply the geometry to the character.

11. With the Skin Attachment type assigned, some of the property fields have gone

away that are not applicable to the Skin Attachment.

The Geometry property is where we can assign our .SKIN file.

12. Click on the folder to the right of the Geometry property. This will pop up the

Choose File window for you to find the .SKIN file for the character.

Once you select the .SKIN file, click Open.

13. You should now see the geometry for the character in the Viewport.

14. Depending on where the character’s .MTL file is, you may have to manually

assign it if you do not see it displayed properly.

For the Material property under the Skin Attachment, you can click on the folder

to the right to open the Choose File window to navigate to your material and click

Open to assign it.

15. Let’s create a Joint Attachment by adding a new attachment. To do so, click on

the 1 drop down list and click on Add. Our new Joint Attachment has been

added.

16. Give a name to the Joint Attachment in the Name property field.

17. We will need to pick a joint to create our empty socket on. Click on either the

Joint field or the bone icon next to the field to bring up the Choose Joint window.

Once you have selected the joint you want, click OK.

18. The empty socket will automatically align with the joint assigned. You can apply

offsets by either manipulating the gizmos in the Viewport, or by manipulating the

Transform properties in the Joint Attachment.

19. For this tutorial, we will just attach a static mesh to the empty socket. There will

be other tutorials that will cover secondary animations using pendula.

To attach the geometry to the empty socket, we will click on the folder to the right

of the Geometry property. This will open the Choose file window for you to find

and select what object you want to attach. Click Open to assign the object.

20. You should now see your object attached to the empty socket.

21. Be sure to save all of the work you have done of setting up attachments to your

character by double-clicking on the Save button in the Properties panel. The

asterisk in front of the name of the .CDF will disappear once the .CDF has been

saved with the latest changes.

You have now successfully created a character and set up a skin and joint attachment

in Geppetto. Please refer to other tutorials in the related section for next steps.

Related tasks and tutorials Here is the Geppetto tutorial for importing animations:

Tutorial: Importing animations

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