How to use character meshes that don't have a separate head for first-person mode?

[avalonsutra]

I'm trying to follow the workflow of creating a first-person character setup by using FPS Mesh Tool to split the arms from my character. The arms are no problem but since the head should optimally be hidden in first-person mode and my character mesh doesn't have a separate head part I'm a bit stuck at this point. I've tried to create different parts with FPS Mesh Tool but this leaves me with three separate game objects that can't be unified, i.e.:

Character Body
Character Head
Character Arms

... but these all have their own bone rig and don't relate to each other. And just putting them together into a parent game object and use that as the character for UCC obviously doesn't work.

The character is exported from Character Creator 4 so I don't really have an option to split meshes at the source (unless perhaps I take a turn via Blender but I'm not yet that proficient in going that full route).

So I would be interested ... if I want to have the head separate to hide it in FP mode, are there any other ways that could work? Maybe it's somehow possible to do that with FPS Mesh Tool but I haven't figured out how.

I don't know if FPS Mesh Tool is supposed to create a resulting prefab that contains head, body, arms as separate parts when including all but for me it doesn't.

EDIT: FPS Mesh Tool comes with an optional UCCFPSMaterialController. Is this still relevant or is it not supported anymore?

 

[Justin]

I definitely an not an FPS Mesh Tool expert so you may want to ask the FPS Mesh Tool developer, but I did do a video showing at a high level how it works:

In this video I separated the arms from the rest of the body so you can then use the arms with the humanoid animator controller.

FPS Mesh Tool comes with an optional UCCFPSMaterialController. Is this still relevant or is it not supported anymore?

I would ask the FPS Mesh Tool developer about that.

 

[avalonsutra]

Thanks, I had so far only checked an older video for FPS Mesh Tool and UCC. I followed this video but it didn't work out for me, the head and arms don't get hidden when switching to first person and the first-person arms mesh appears several meters above the character for some strange reason.

I also followed another guide by the FPS Mesh Tool author that results in actually separated meshes and works for most part but there are some trade-offs: I'm losing all blend shapes on the meshes (so losing eye blinking and mouth movement, etc.) and stuff like hair physics stops working. I think to retain such features the mesh separation has to be done at the source, e.g. in Blender.

What would be the downsides of only using the third-person mesh incl. for first-person mode other than arms disappearing when close to a wall? If possible I would want to skip using an additional mesh for first-person completely as it seems a lot of extra work to maintain the extra mesh, counting in item positioning etc.

 

[Justin]

What would be the downsides of only using the third-person mesh incl. for first-person mode other than arms disappearing when close to a wall?

You won't get as high-fidelity of animations in a first person view. The first person arms are generally positioned differently than how they are positioned for a humanoid since the arms are just below your eyesight. You could adjust the camera position but then when you look at the humanoid character the body is in a lot different position then you would expect.