Dev diary #1 : Humans!

When I started working on Deisim the humans were simply a bunch of Unity cubes and it cost me almost nothing to include children. Childrens are like other humans but a bit smaller and they are too weak to work. At some point they become adult and start being productive for their community. This is also the moment where they can choose to become Priest or Heretics.
 

 
Just before the early access release a cool guy took a bit of his time to make 4 humans characters in blender for Deisim and I quickly included them in the game. They were not perfect but definitely cooler than my original creations.
 

 
The game is not a big success yet but thanks to all of you I am now able to invest into art and to bring Deisim to another dimension of quality. There is now 44 different human adult models into the game and 40 more are currently made for the children.
 

 
When I get the models they are modeled and textured but they are like statues and can't be animated so I must rig them.
 
I don't really have rigging skills so I cheat a bit by using an online tool made by Mixamo that allow to apply a rig to a model. You upload your 3D model, place different markers to key elements of the body like the knees and elbows and voila the character is rigger with some computer wizardry.
Of course that rigging is probably not as good as it would be if it was made by a professional but for Deisim this is good enough.

 

Once the character is rigged I import it into unity and tweak some import value to give it the right size compared to the others. Then I try to auto map the generated rig in Unity's mecanim system. Most of the time it works fine but sometimes something goes wrong and I must tweak the values.
 
I must then make a Prefab with the new models and the animator controller that all humans are sharing. Finally I modify some scripts to describe when this character model will be used.


 
All of this must be done for each model and it takes time so I include them only when I know that they will be visible in the game.

I hope you enjoyed this first article about the developpement of Deisim. Let me know if you want more of articles like this in the comments below or in the discord channel.

Thanks to all of you for your support! :)