The characters and their equipement are in a blend file, and a side folder contains the textures.
Once the file is open, you can customize the character with the outliner :
The structure of the file is the following : everything is contained in the EFT Multirig collection. There are two sub-collections : Armature contains the rig, there is no need to modify it. Meshes contains all of the character parts.
In Meshes, each part of the character is in a different collection :
Heads
Tops
Pants
Equipment
and each of these collections has subcollections corresponding to the different factions and equipment types.
Creating a new character
Renaming the file
To create a new character file, first save as the original file to rename it (for example as Bear1.blend). This will avoid making any unwanted modifications to the original file. Rename the main collection EFT Multirig with the name of your character (for example, as Bear1 Multirig). This will make each character easy to identify in the outliner when working with several characters in a single scene.
Customization
Then, click on the checkmarks to enable or disable collections. In each collection you can then toggle visibility (eye icon) and render (camera icon) for the items you want. Make sure to enable at least a head, a top and pants.
Important
Not every equipement from the game is in this file (for example, Killa’s armor and rig are not there). You can use Tarkin’s item exporter to get any equipment you want, but it requires a bit of tweaking to make it work with the rig.
Make sure to enable the render for each part of the character (camera icon) or you might get surprised !An example of what you could obtain if you forget to toggle the render on a character.
Cleanup
Once you have the character you want, delete the unused items from the outliner (to delete an entire collection : right click/delete hierarchy). Then, use file/clean up/purge unused data to remove all unused data. This can be a bit tedious, but it allows easier navigation in the outliner and to reduce the file size. (It is might be possible to write a script to do this automatically if you know that kind of stuff, but I did it manually)
Importing characters
This project had five main characters that are often at the same scene. I first created them separately with the process mentioned previously. Then, I imported them all into a single blend file to be able to import them all at once in an other scene.
To do this, I first created an empty char_with_guns.blend file, then an empty ALL_CHAR collection. Then, for each character, select the ALL_CHAR collection, and use File/Append to open the import menu. Navigate towards the .blend file containing the character (for example bear1.blend from earlier). The .blend file contains subfolders corresponding to all of the element types you can add, but you can navigate inside it like in any other folder.Collections contained within the character file we built earlier.
Go to Collections and select your character’s main collection (in our example Bear1 Multirig). Click Append to import the collection in the new .blend file. By importing this main collection, we also import every item it contains, while preserving the file hierarchy. The character is now transferred to another file ! If you selected the ALL_CHAR collection before, the character collection should be directly inside. You can also move the collections afterwards.
If all of your characters are imported in the ALL_CHAR collection, you can then append this collection to any other .blend file using the same method. This import all of the characters at once in the scene.
For convenience, I also appended each weapon to their owner’s main collection (for example, the AK-74 is contained in the Bear1 Multirig collection).
Posing a character with a rifle
The EFT characters are always carrying a gun, so I will describe my method to pose them with a rifle.
Settings
Auto-keying
Start by activating the auto keying at the bottom of the layout screen : for some reason, the EFT multirig does not work properly without it. This will ensure the pose is saved.
Gizmos and axes
In the gizmos menu at the top of the viewport, activate Move and Rotate. This will display a tool around the selected object to move and rotate it.
Above Move, switch global to local. This will make the move/rotate tool use the local axes of the selected object.
Warning
This step is crucial to make sure the fingerposing will be correct : it will allow us to rotate the fingers around their natural joints, and not around the global axes.Left : global axes ; Right : local axes. Notice how the local X axis (red circle) corresponds to the natural rotation of the joint.
Detailed finger rig
Click to select the rig (the lines on and around the character). Press N to display the object properties menu on the top right side of the viewport. Activate Rig layers/(detail) under the fingers button. This will activate a more detailed finger rig that will be useful later :
Posing
Click to select the rig, click on Object mode, and switch to pose mode (you can also press Ctrl+Tab). Follow these steps :
Move the hands and position the fingers. Fingers have a simple rig (red line with a square) and a detailed rig (green circles around the finger joints), it is better to use both in this order. This is the most complicated step, as each gun is different. I don’t have a particular tip, so take your time and start over if you are stuck.
Select the left foot (Base Foot_IK.L) and bring in a bit in front of the character.
Select torso (the big cube), lower it a bit, and rotate it around the local Z axis to make the left side of the character face slightly forward.
Rotate the chest (the yellow line around the shoulders) and rotate it forward on the local X axis : this makes the character lean on the weapon. Rotate it along the local Z axis : this makes the left side of the character face forward a bit more. This is important to make sure the left arm will not be alongated when grabbing the weapon.
Move the rifle to the character’s right shoulder(it is ok if the stock clips through the shoulder).
Rotate the neck to move the head if the character is aiming (the yellow line around the base of the neck).
Make sure the shoulders are not too high or too low (the red arrows along the arms).
You should obtain something that looks like this :
It is not perfect, but it is a good starting point for the following animations. In particular, the fingerposing is time-consuming, but if you did it correctly, there is no need to do it again for this character !Animation showing the different posing steps.
Parenting
Usually, it is more convenient to have the rifle be the parent of the hands (in other words : moving the gun will also move the hands).
To do this : in pose mode, select a hand, click on Bone constraints, add a Child of constraint and select the rifle as parent. Do the same for the other hand. If the hand moves after setting the constraint, click on Set Inverse.
Caution
The Bone constraints menu applies to a specific bone and the Constraints menu applies to an entire object (here, the rig). If you use Constraints, this method will not work properly : moving the gun will move every bone of the rig ! (It is both horrifying and funny, try it)
Bad news : this method did not work as I espected, because the hands will move with both the rifle and the root bone (the arrows on the ground), which moves the entire character. As a result, if you try to move the root bone, the character will move without the gun. If you then move the weapon, the hands will also move when you do not want them to. I tried to parent the gun to the root, but it makes the hands move twice as much when moving the root, and they end up off the gun. I found a rigging tutorial for this kind of case, but it looked overkill and I figured it would be faster to disable the parenting, move the character and then re-enable it. If you know a simple way to fix this, please let me know !
