I hate it in games when you can walk around & see Identical triplets & quadruplets running around that aren\'t even related, I mean most games have Character models that are the same. sure you may be able to have different hair, cloths & skin color, but it gives the effect of everyone of the same race being genetic clones, exactly the same height & body size. This just isn\'t realistic. That\'s why I have thought of a simple solution (@ least for height anyway.)
So here is how I would do Height:
I heired that later on we will be able to make shrink & grow pots, so why not in Character creation you have an options estimating your height, like 3 categories as fallows: Short, Normal, & Tall. what you could do is if the model is normally 1.800 Units in Height then if you pick short then you will be randomly chosen a height between 1.500 & 1.800, if Normal 1.7 - 1.9 & tall 1.8 to 2.0. this is just an example, however I think that there really should be more choices later on, & this way since it is randomly picked (probably down to 0.001) that means that there is a very slim change of 2 people being the exact same height. I would also like certain quests or items to effect stature permanently such as you complete a quest for a powerfully mage & they grant you the choice to be short or taller. or certain rare items that make you grow permanently, so you are not stuck with one height. you could make an animation were you select all of the base bones & resize them to the proportions you want to start.
Now for Implementing Muscle-Mass:
the only way other then making separate static meshes for each model, sort of a like making 3 to 5 different versions of a single model would be this; I propose that we set up separate \"Muscle Bones\" were the major muscles are. these bones will be retractable & extrudable but still be linked to the lets say arm bone. I can elaborate later on how to implement this but I am to busy to make examples right now.
I know this would take lots of extra rigging for characters, but if your set them up as animations you could interpolate between them to make different muscle sizes, I have seen in the Cally Demo you can cycle between the Walk Jog & Run Animations Smoothly so it looks like a mix of Walk & Jog so just do that for muscles. all you have to do is get the Client to figure out what a Char\'s muscle looks like depending on there \"Muscle-Mass\" value.
This can also help for spells like \"Increase-Strength.\" You will actually be able to estimate how strong someone is by looking @ them. however there should be different ways of Body-Building & Muscle-Building, The more you work out the more your muscles bulge, like the more you run the larger your legs get, the more you mine/sword-fight the more your upper body develops, just think of the possibilities!
