Suggestion: Hide certain costume pieces during costume editing

[biostem]

Basically, what I'd love to see is the option to temporarily not display certain costume parts while I'm editing a costume.  For instance, let's say I'm creating a character that wears a jacket.  It is very difficult to get the chest part under said jacket to look how I want, since the jacket is, well, covering most of it.  I could go to the regular top, choose the look I want under the jacket, then make a mental note of it and go to the jacket option then re-select it, but an option to temporarily hide the jacket would be awesome!  Similarly, if I'm creating a character that wears a skirt, kilt, or shorts, but I still want a certain lower torso piece/look, I'd have to go to regular tights, choose what I want, then go back to skirts & shorts.  Alternatively, perhaps the costume editor could be made to respect the selection of a previous category, so if I set a certain lower tights option, then go to skirts/shorts, it'll retain what I just set.  Similar options would be great for things like hats, hoods, and so on.  Your thoughts?

[PaxArcana]

+1, if it's possible.  🙂

[srmalloy]

Something like having a checkbox that appears next to the Skirt selection and Jacket selection labeled 'Hide' that suppresses drawing of the costume piece in that slot?

[biostem]

2 minutes ago, srmalloy said:

Something like having a checkbox that appears next to the Skirt selection and Jacket selection labeled 'Hide' that suppresses drawing of the costume piece in that slot?

Yes, basically.

[MetaVileTerror]

Great idea!  I'd especially like to have it for when I'm deciding on a face for my characters, while also checking out what they look like in a helmet.

[Megajoule]

I'm not sure if this is possible.  As I understand it, while the costume pieces were of course originally built / modeled this way, in game they're a unit - not layers that can be selectively displayed. A "Jacket" chest, for example, isn't a jacket over a torso, but a jacket-and-torso.

[MetaVileTerror]

Not actually the case, Megajoule.  If you position the camera juuuuust right, you can actually look inside certain costume items and see the textures underneath.  For example, an Arachnos Helmet still has the bald head inside of it, which is fully textured.  In fact, you can sometimes even cause the top of the head to poke out through some hats by playing with the scales.

[Megajoule]

The game engine does that, but it makes no distinction between parts, only what the camera is clipping though.  The requested functionality would require that the costume creator know which parts of a given mesh are "jacket" and which are "torso", and I don't believe it does or can be reasonably made to.  But hey, I could be wrong...

[Steampunkette]

Megajoule is right.

 

The Jacket is not a "Layer" on the model. I mean it is but it isn't within the game itself.

 

"Torso with Jacket" is a separate model from Torso. Yeah, the whole body is under it with all the skin and geos and everything. But the engine doesn't register the torso as separate from the jacket in the costume generator.

 

There is no way to "Hide" that layer without reworking how the game deals with models and geo-sets.

[biostem]

26 minutes ago, Steampunkette said:

Megajoule is right.

 

The Jacket is not a "Layer" on the model. I mean it is but it isn't within the game itself.

 

"Torso with Jacket" is a separate model from Torso. Yeah, the whole body is under it with all the skin and geos and everything. But the engine doesn't register the torso as separate from the jacket in the costume generator.

 

There is no way to "Hide" that layer without reworking how the game deals with models and geo-sets.

Given that, then perhaps the best option would be to "respect" an option chosen from regular torsos if a similar base layer exists under jackets - so if I chose "tanker" as a torso option under the regular category, then went to jackets, it should save what I had selected under the previous category, if that same option exists under the new one...

[Steampunkette]

22 minutes ago, biostem said:

Given that, then perhaps the best option would be to "respect" an option chosen from regular torsos if a similar base layer exists under jackets - so if I chose "tanker" as a torso option under the regular category, then went to jackets, it should save what I had selected under the previous category, if that same option exists under the new one...

There's no connection.

 

Think of it like folders on your desktop. You open "Torso" and double-click on "Tank Top" to open a Picture Viewer of the tank top torso. Then you back up to the higher folder, swap from the "Torso" folder to "Torso with a Jacket" and load up a Tank Top image in a Picture Viewer.

 

It can't "Respect" your last choice 'cause your last choice isn't part of your new choice. Different folder.

[biostem]

1 minute ago, Steampunkette said:

There's no connection.

 

Think of it like folders on your desktop. You open "Torso" and double-click on "Tank Top" to open a Picture Viewer of the tank top torso. Then you back up to the higher folder, swap from the "Torso" folder to "Torso with a Jacket" and load up a Tank Top image in a Picture Viewer.

 

It can't "Respect" your last choice 'cause your last choice isn't part of your new choice. Different folder.

Well, I understand that.  What I'm saying is something like "If [currently selected torso option] exists in [new category you just selected] then [set selection to 'currently selected torso option'].  So, if I'm in regular torsos, select 'tanker', go to jackets, and 'tanker' is an available option under jackets, that's what will be selected.  It's sort of like how you may go through all the different face options, find one you like, find a face pattern & color you like, but then decide that you actually want to see how that looks with a hat - you have to remember the face, the pattern, the color, and reselect them again, from scratch, under the 'hat' category...

[Steampunkette]

5 minutes ago, biostem said:

Well, I understand that.  What I'm saying is something like "If [currently selected torso option] exists in [new category you just selected] then [set selection to 'currently selected torso option'].  So, if I'm in regular torsos, select 'tanker', go to jackets, and 'tanker' is an available option under jackets, that's what will be selected.  It's sort of like how you may go through all the different face options, find one you like, find a face pattern & color you like, but then decide that you actually want to see how that looks with a hat - you have to remember the face, the pattern, the color, and reselect them again, from scratch, under the 'hat' category...

I understand that. I mean there's no connection between the two. There's almost certainly no way to set up a connection between the two without completely changing the way the UI works. Which means basically rebuilding the Costume Editor from scratch.

[biostem]

2 minutes ago, Steampunkette said:

I understand that. I mean there's no connection between the two. There's almost certainly no way to set up a connection between the two without completely changing the way the UI works. Which means basically rebuilding the Costume Editor from scratch.

I guess.  It still bugs me that the costume editor is missing so many QoL features.  Do you think having each category built as completely separate pieces was some performance-improving measure by the devs?  I can't imagine that it was efficient to have to build a version of every new piece for every category, each time such a costume piece was added to the game...

[Steampunkette]

1 minute ago, biostem said:

I guess.  It still bugs me that the costume editor is missing so many QoL features.  Do you think having each category built as completely separate pieces was some performance-improving measure by the devs?  I can't imagine that it was efficient to have to build a version of every new piece for every category, each time such a costume piece was added to the game...

Nope. It was just easiest, most likely, based on the way the engine they purchased managed art assets.

 

The engine is probably closer to Quake than Modern Warfare, after all.

[Megajoule]

The mesh-maker / modeler(s) probably had those assets saved on their dev workstations, but that's not how the costume pieces they produced were stored in the game files.  And the latter was on a fairly ad-hoc, "get it on the test server by Monday" basis.