I have also been looking into animation. Shape keys are a big part of animation in blender. Shape keys change the geometry of meshes... and work in the game engine.
I have been making models with MakeHuman. They are great induvidual looking ones and with the future release of the project it should be much better...
Still...
I have decided to begin work on putting together a repository of game models for use in the game engine. It will be expandable by users and all models will be of high quality and free for any use.
Not only that but there will be a seperate section. One for humans. But this section will be different to most. There will only be one model (apart from clothes). One model that has a variety of shape keys added to it. through blending of these keys it will be possible to create unique and interesting characters for your game. Not only that but by creating a "styalising key" you can go from human to manga to elf to chibbi. All the while using all of the other options available for customisation. It will be a MakeHuman for low poly game characters (MH is geared towards rendering).
This model will be fully UV unwraped and fully usable in the GE. Hopefully with a subdevision modifier it will also look good in pre rendered FMVs. It will come with a few "base textures" aswell. (Young Man, Old Man, Boy, Manga Boy, Deamon etc with female equivilents.
It will also be rigged and set up for expressions and lip-synching aswell.
Users will be able to submit their Morphs so the customizability is constantly evolving.
Eventualy the model will have to be upgraded due to engine improvements or simply a better mesh being made. Then 2.0 versions will be released. Both classic and new versions will continue to be hosted (as morphs won't be transferable from model to model) so users have a choice of which version they use.
It is an idealistic dream of a site but If I go about starting off the right way.
I have just found a website hosting site that offers 1GB storage and (More Importantly) unlimited bandwith!
Tomorrow being Halloween I probably wont get a chance to begin working on the site but I should be able to get started over the weekend. The idea of such a site is dear to my heart as it is a site I have always wanted to have access to. I will be working hard to keep the quality of models high and the site streamlined and orgonised. At first I will run it exclusivly and set up a seperate email account for recieving submissions. I will keep this up until the site grows past my own ability to manage it (if it does) and then get a programmer to set it up for automatic submition with user moderation. (If a model recieves x many bad reports I am messaged about it an decide if it should be deleted or not, I may just end up replacing the model with good quality one)
The site should be a good one and if I post a few adsense adds on it I may even get a bit of money from it that could be used to commisssion new models or even get a new, better, human model made.
I will be putting some thought into this site. It will probably have a tutorial section also. I hope it turns out well but I will need to put together a lot of content before I upload. There is no point in it being devoid of models when it first goes up. I will probably make a post on TurboSquid asking for donations before or just after launch. Yay I'm realy excited for this one
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