OBR unique player race/framework, have some questions/need advice from UE5 people, and thoughts/opinions from the modding community at large

[drp23]

I've spent a considerable amount of time working on a custom race framework for starfield (as well as some RE Engine games, such as the resident evil 2-4 remakes). It's overly ambitious, fueled by some combination of the Dunning-Kreuger effect, wanting to see how far things could be pushed for characters, and partially out of spite for all the (imo somewhat unwarranted) hate/criticism starfield got at launch, resulting in a somewhat dead modding community.

Basically it aims to let users freely mix+match daz morphs/characters, metahumans, and/or 3d scans from 3dscanstore and texturing.xyz, or just sculpt their own body/head if they'd like, and automatically output a 100% functional, high fidelity set of meshes for the player, including the body, all headparts (correctly placed without user intervention 98% of the time), custom face morphs for animations (like metahumans, these are generated unique to the character's geometry, and take into account things like age, skin wrinkles/creases, etc), face rigging, and any custom mesh attributes that might be required such as vertex colors.... TL;DR, it's kind of like mesh-to-metahuman, but for the whole body, works with daz morphs (even cross-generation, simultaneously) and runs in blender via geometry nodes.  (Full disclosure: a fully functional, user friendly version of this is miles away - but, it has all been tested and everything works, at least in isolation).  I also have a method for handling clothes/armor fitting to the new body shape - not sure if there are plans for outfit studio/bodyslide support for OBR, but if I get my way, OS/BS wouldn't be able to batch build for these bodies anyway, at least not without significant changes to the way it transfers morphs (probably).

In addition to starfield and RE Engine games, I'd like to make an oblivion character creation system, but my UE5 experience is mostly limited to me seeing cool shit that can be done in UE5 and thinking "fuck, I really wish i could do that in starfield...". 


To those familar with UE5/OBR:

I basically need to replace every mesh, texture, material, possibly even skeletal mesh, for the player, without affecting NPCs at all:  Am i on the right track with this? (not in order):

1. Edit the player character's blueprint so that it points to my own body + face meshes, skin materials, skeletal meshes, control rigs, etc, entirely bypassing what is already in place
2. Maybe edit or make an entirely new anim blueprint for the player (actually want to try to do this regardless of if anything else works)
3. Somehow link all of the new blueprints to the rest of the game in a way that doesn't break everything
4. (maybe) Create a new retargeting setup for the player, for cases where proportions change or if things aren't lined up, or maybe just convenience if the rest pose doesn't match 

bonus questions:

5. Is it possible to add engine plugins to already compiled(?) games?  I'm mainly interested in ML deformer (I do have the assets + means to create the training data) and/or chaos flesh/softbody sim (for....obvious reasons)
6. Does OBR support groom/strand hair, and if not, is it possible to add support somehow?
 



To the modding community at large:

If you have any suggestions, ideas, etc, even if they're somewhat crazy, i'm open to any suggestions, though I'm mostly trying to aim for realistic, anatomically correct characters (but not unattractive by any means) than stylized body shapes.  Assuming this is all possible for OBR, I have no idea how long it'd be before a full/public release is ready.  It's been over a year in development for starfield, and it's not even to what Id consider a beta state yet... atm its just a pile of scripts in some .blend files, and a bunch of proof of concepts. If you're interested in something like this and/or would like to help in any way, DM's are open 




First image is a character I made with an early version of the project, IIRC it's a blend of victoria 9 (daz) and vface #102, second image is a fairly similar character generated and in starfield, as proof this is not just a huge fever dream lol.  Dont have any great screenshots of newer iterations, but overall, character proportions have improved, are more realistic, and have somewhat more visible details - if I have time and remember to later, i'll see about making a few examples and taking some screens in RE4. Or if things go really well, oblivion 🤞