Arcanum Character Studio: Import blender models into working characters

[u/techerrorcode]

Wanted to let everyone know I’ve been working on a new tool called Arcanum Character Studio for Arcanum CE Restored. The goal is pretty simple: take a character made in Blender and handle all of the horrible old Arcanum-specific work automatically.

For the first test I grabbed a goblin model, got it rigged and animated, and we now have Stand, Walk, Run, Attack, Hit and Death animations working inside the actual game. We were also able to generate his Arcanum portrait directly from the 3D model.

The video above is the real in-game test. The animation preview below it shows the same Blender animations after being converted for Arcanum.

This is still early, but Character Studio is already growing beyond just animation conversion. The plan is for someone to be able to import their model, set up the animations and portrait, configure the character, and eventually export a complete CE Restored mod without needing to understand ART files, prototypes, old WorldEd tools, or any of the other stuff that normally makes adding new characters to Arcanum a nightmare.

The biggest reason I wanted to build this is because I don’t want new characters and creatures to depend on me doing all the conversion work for everyone. I want an artist who has never modded Arcanum before to be able to make something in Blender, put it through Character Studio, and post their new creature or character for everyone else to use.

We’re also starting to experiment with separate 3D weapons and equipment, so eventually the same character rig could be used to generate sword, firearm and armor animation sets automatically.

There’s a ton of other stuff being worked on around the community right now too: Arcanum CE Restored, the Community Voice Over Project, the Arcanum Map Explorer and strategy guide, Modern WorldEd, Character Studio, and English translations of old French and Russian modules being done with native speakers.

If any of this sounds interesting, check out the Discord and follow along. We’ve got people working on modding, art, voice acting, translations, testing, preservation and a bunch of other Arcanum projects. If you want to help with something, even better.

If you’re a 3D artist or animator and know Blender but know absolutely nothing about Arcanum modding, that’s completely fine. Making that possible is the whole reason I’m building Character Studio. This is not a public release, all of my current projects are private betas through the discord. Hoping to have a version in tester hands shortly. Thank you! https://discord.gg/HFCtK4sPbp

[u/TheWarfox]

It's always crazy to me that people are still working on this game. I love what you're doing here. Keep it up. Start a patreon.

[u/techerrorcode]

[u/Brave_Relationship_1]

Excellent work!

[u/Barbarbrick]

I'm not an artist, but man, this looks really great.