Wait, base model has running animation... Does it mean, that you are animating each model separately? Don't you use a skeleton animation?
No no no, it would be a crazy thing to do
. I am saving animations in separate files and not putting all toghether like the VB model. That way is a lot easier to work, I can have many different files, like Spear_animations.x, Walk.x, Pistol_animations.x , they are all very light in kilobytes and they load when the game starts, so there is no problem. I use skeleton animation with a nice tool that lets me ,load ,save and mix animations , then exports to the standard bone system that the game uses.
Question:
What are you going to do with skin tones/hairstyles? Making each model of armor for seperate skin tone might be a long process of texturing. In that case people shouldn't make anything like "NCR ranger suit" right now without having lets say - few different skin tones to work with. Hairstyles might be seperated models but I think few of them should be just textured on players head so we've got next dozen of skins to make. Same applies to beard/moustache. Prove me I'm wrong. I'm not too much into that kind of stuff.
Anyway:
I will try to make few "Naked" bald guy textures(with underwear you dirty cats!:>) in different skintones to be some kind of "base" for future works. Maybe it will be helpful, maybe not. Always some practice.
Answer: Right now the clothes I am using are the skin tone, like body painting
. But yes, you can add the leather jacket over the bald naked guy, like I did in the first video, or add it over the dressed up one, and the clothes/skin below remains the same. Before that first video, the guy had the jacket but he was still in underwear, so I added a different texture to the subsets I needed, pants , shoes, and shirt. You can PM if you want base texture to make others.
I think running animations should be according to the holding weapon.
Clubs, knives, spears, pistols, SMGs: The same running animation like if you were unarmed.
Sledgehammers, rifles, shotguns, laser rifles etc.: The character holds his weapon in both hands and has it near his body.
Heavy guns (flamers, plasma rifles, miniguns, rocketlaunchers etc.): The character tries to pull the weapon up, but due to it's weight, the character holds it low.
Good Idea, maybe spear too, they are quite heavy, I could make him run like the spearmen in many RTS games.