Quick Start Guide

A quick start guide for the Linteum Character Kit. Learn how to create a base character, add clothing items and morphs, and preview your selections.

Welcome to the Linteum Quick Start Guide! Here you can learn how to use the Linteum Tool included with your Tafi assets. You can watch the below video for a visual walkthrough of the quick start guide:

To create a character for use in your game projects, you will need to complete a few steps:

1. Create a new assembled character.

2. Add the base character and specific character.

3. Add clothing.

4. Add extra morphs (optional).

5. Preview and build the character.

Creating a new assembled character

After you import your chosen Tafi character or clothing into your project, navigate to the correct folder. Inside that folder you will see the character FBX, along with the texture folders and three different colored diamond icons.

An example Tafi character folder.

For reference, here's a breakdown of what the different icons mean:

• Yellow - This is the character asset.

• Green - This is the assembled character. For every new character that you want to create, you will need to create a new assembled character.

• Light blue - This is the morph asset.

To create a new assembled character, right-click in your project window and choose the following path:

Create > Character > Create New Character

Doing this will add a new, blank assembled character to your project (represented by a green diamond), which you can rename for your reference. Select the new assembled character icon, and you will see a selection of options appear in the Inspector window. For more information about these options, please see the following documentation.

Building a Character

Adding the base character and specific character

With your new assembled character selected, go to the Inspector window and click on the circle icon next to the Base Character field. Depending on the gender of the character you want to create, you will either need to choose "Genesis 8 Female" or "Genesis 8 Male."

When you purchase a character from Tafi in the Unity Asset Store, it will always be packaged with the appropriate gender base character.

Next, you will need to choose which character you want to build. This is the specific character you have purchased from Tafi, for example, "Sienna Female from Tafi." Click on the circle icon next to the Character field and choose the character you want.

Adding clothing to your character

When you have chosen your character, the next thing to do is add clothing. You will need to have clothing assets from Tafi in your project in order to do this. To add the clothing you need, navigate to the Tafi > Clothing folder in your project window, and find the clothing you want to use. The clothing asset will have a dark blue diamond icon. This is the item you want to drag and drop into the Clothing dropdown field.

An example of a clothing asset, represented by a dark blue icon.

Drag the diamond icon to the "Clothing" field.

Do not change the size element under the Clothing dropdown menu. Simply drag and drop the clothing assets you need to the word "Clothing," and those assets will be automatically added to your project.

Adding extra morphs to your character

Extra morphs can be added to your character to change the character's appearance. To add extra morphs to your character, click on the Additional Morphs dropdown field in the Inspector window to open it. Here you will see the Size element. As a first step, you will need to enter the number of morphs you want to add to your project -- for example, 2.

Here we have added two additional morphs to the character build.

Click on the circle icon next to each morph field, and use the search function that appears to find the morphs you want to use. These will be automatically added to your character.

Previewing and building your character

Now that you have edited all of the above information in the Inspector window, you can preview your character to see what it will look like. Click on the Preview Character button to preview it in the scene.

If you want to change anything, make the needed adjustments and then click the Refresh button, followed by the Preview Character button again.

A character previewed in the scene after clicking "Preview Character."

If you have previewed the character and you are happy with the results, you can now click Build Character to save the character. You will know it is saved when the character is in your scene.

You can now drag and drop the character file from the hierarchy into your project window to create a prefab. This prefab can then be used in your game projects.

Need to animate your character for inclusion in a game, or want to learn more about the Linteum Character Kit's advanced features? Please visit the pages below for more information:

Animating a Character

Advanced Topics