With release in two weeks, there’s been a lot of talk about who’s putting themselves into the game for Career mode using CAF. Self-imaging for games has been a bit of a shallow hobby of mine, ever since the first time I played Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 2 with its Create-A-Skater mode. It was shoddy, kind of inaccurate, but I spent hours trying to get myself to be fully into the game. The next-gen brings a lot more customization into create-a-player, and with UFC 09’s Create-a-Fighter, I thought I’d offer a few creative tips on the CAF process for bringing yourself into the Career mode.
This guide is (obviously) incomplete, because I can’t see what options in particular are available for CAF. But, you can follow along for any game with a create-a-player mode.
What you’ll need for this guide:
-Uncluttered room, or solid colored wall
-Digital Camera
-Tri-pod, shelf, or friend that’s also doing a self-based CAF.
-Photoshop or another image-manipulation program
First things first, in order to know what you are, you’ll want to have a pretty good indication of what’s there. Character designers use either the scanning process that was used for UFC 09, or a character design sheet like these examples:
ArmorBlog’s Coffee Shop Design Sheet:
http://armorblog.com/wp-content/uplo...cter_sheet.jpg
Mattegroup’s “Soldier” Design Sheet: http://www.mattegroup.com/jaser/i/pi...er_sheet_b.jpg
Drawallday.net’s Character Design Shard: http://www.drawallday.net/Gallery/Ch...sign_Shard.jpg
They show the characters from multiple directions and in multiple actions, as well as any details. Obviously, we won’t need much of that detail, but something more like the drawallday.net example, where we see one character in multiple angles and some close ups in action. We’re going to use the camera and Photoshop to create a similar sheet for you.
To start with, you’ll need to find a mostly uncluttered room, preferably with a blank wall. This is so that you can see your outline clearly enough to where it makes sense. Obviously, contrast your skin tone. Avoid browns and wood paneling, this can give you a really awkward idea of what you look like, as can mirrors and the like.
My pictures for this, available in my photo albums here are not great examples, but I’m at school, so cut me a break! They do, however, get across the next couple of steps. One thing you’ll notice in them is that I’m wearing a pair of Tapout shorts and wearing handwraps. Being dressed similarly to how your character appears in the game is helpful to making a good rendition, because you can modify sliders in the game to adjust it to the right level.
An immediate note in this game is about the weight. As of right now, it appears that weightclass will not affect anything in CAF creation, but for the purposes of design, I know most of us will be shaving a few inches off the gut for this one, so for all pictures, tighten your stomach up. This gives a flatter appearance and can help get the exacts down a little better.
What you’ll want to do now is set your camera up far enough away from your solid wall so that you can see your entire body, and have enough room to turn. Mark this point. Have the camera as level as possible, and DO NOT MOVE IT AFTER THIS POINT. You’ll want all of your photos at the same distance and angle so you can get good similarity in the pictures (I.E. shoulders all at the same level and such).
This is easiest if your camera has a time function, usually represented by a circle with a line coming from the center. One press will usually delay the picture by about 10 seconds. Experiment to find it.
Set your camera’s timer, and stand on your marked spot looking directly at the top of the camera, or at the same point. The ideal is that you are looking at the camera head on with your head parallel to the floor so that you can get a good, level picture of your face (More on this later). It also will help arrange your front correctly against all other views, so pectoral height, torso shape, arm length, shoulder width, everything that makes your basic outline up.
Now, you’ll want to set your timer again and turn 45’ to the LEFT, to yield a front 1/4th view. This will help you line up the shoulders and head in the game, as well as assist in getting your facial profile right.
Set the timer again, and turn another 45’ to the left so that you are in profile, (right shoulder facing the camera) and get the picture. This helps again with facial and torso profile. It will also help you adjust your arm and calf size correctly in the game. This is one of the hardest parts of CAF design to get right, because it can create some really funny misproportions.
Timer again, and take another 45’ turn to reach 3/4th profile. This helps get arm shape right, as well as neck size and height.
One more timer, take one last turn to put your back entirely towards the camera. This is a shot to help get your back profile, torso height and shoulder width right. These are easier to get correct from the back because the pectorals are always tied to a separate slider than the shoulder length, even though they affect each other. This will keep you from making your top half a bodybuilder and your bottom half looking like a string bean.
Now, you’ll want to do one more important step, which is catch yourself in a fighting stance. You can look up a basic boxing stance online, or use whatever you know. At this point, I’m assuming the characters will stand like this at some point in the CAF process, so having these pictures is great for design purposes so you can make fine-tuned changes to your fighter, as many errors don’t become obvious until the character is being active in the game. I.E. My self-CAF in Smackdown v Raw 2009 had a lot of clipping issues because I hadn’t gotten the arm proportions right. I didn’t notice this until I started doing flying things in the game. Just threw it off enough to where it was weird.
The last thing you’ll want to do is repeat this process, but with close-ups of your face. DO NOT SMILE. CAF programs use a blank face for a reason: all the face muscles are relaxed and easy to adjust that way. Plus, the face is always the hardest part to get entirely correct. Part of this is that we have a different image in our heads of how our face looks than what we actually look like. Believe it or not, if you go off this image, you’ll look strange, and it will ruin the CAF.
After you have all of these taken, you’ll want to open up your favorite image manipulation program, and crop the pictures down so that you just have you on them. You want to keep them as rectangles with yourself in the center.
After that, you’ll want to arrange them from left to right in the order that you took them, with standing normally on top, and fighting stance in the middle, and face below. The face will be a little weird to line up, but bear with it and get it as lined up as possible.
It’s key that you have the ability to use layers for this, because you can bump the pictures with the “layer move” key to get them lined up just right.
Congratulations! You now have a character design sheet for yourself! Now, what exactly do you do with it?
When the game releases, keep this sheet open on a laptop, and you’ll be able to look at it against the image on the game screen to help fine-tune your CAF’s looks so that you create yourself as realistically as possible! I.E. you can use the picture to make sure that your eyes are shaped the same on your CAF as yours, the cauliflower ear matches, and all that sort of thing.
Now, what about greater questions, those deep burning ones, like “How do I take my knowledge of an art like Aikido, and transfer that into the game?” or “How do I represent a ‘good chin’ with my stats?”
A great way to approach these questions is to look again to the Attributes and Skills. Each does represent particular thing I won’t go into here, cause I already did. (Statistics Breakdown Article) However, now is the time to talk about what specific real-world styles mesh with the 6 presented in the game, and ways to think about representing them in the game.
I’m referencing these in extremely simple, generalized ways. Also, I’m assuming that if you’re looking to represent a single art, you’ll focus on either your standup or ground game, not both.
Boxing
This is the mysterious one of the Striking styles, because we haven’t seen it. However, one can guess from promo material we’re dealing with midrange strikers here.
“Dirty” boxing: A subset of boxing using semi-illegal tactics and close up striking to win knockouts. Clinch Striking Offense and Standing Striking Offense are good for recreating this, as well as a decent Strength.
Tai Chi: These guys may seem to move slow, but every fiber of their bodies are primed to explode at any second. Speed and Strength are the high points here, along with Standing Striking pair also being high.
Muay Thai
Close up, personal, and a lot of long range techniques to close distance make up the Muay Thai toolbox. Arts that are represented here are great at keeping themselves in the distance of their choosing.
Hapkido: A Korean striking art that uses kicking and punching effectively against opponents at both probing and clinch ranges. Takedown and Clinch Offense are high, as well as Submission stats.
Krav Magna: Israeli special forces self defense system, usually ends with an opponent incapacitated, in handcuffs or deceased. Extreme focus is placed on all Offensive Striking and Takedown stats. Defenses focus on Clinch, Takedown, Ground Grapple and Submission.
Kickboxing
With Kickboxing, we’ve already seen that Kenpo Karate can be recreated ala Chuck Liddell, but so can the following arts:
Savate: Meaning “Old Boot”, Savate focuses on powerful, momentum driven kicks with the tip of the feet. High Speed and Standing Striking Kicks are representative of this style, as well as a good all around defense.
Tae Kwon Do: Obviously, this doesn’t work that well in MMA, but, you never know what from this flying kick style can be useful. Speed and Cardio are hallmarks here, as well as Standing Kicks Offense and Defense.
Jiu Jitsu
The Gracie Family started a huge thing with Jiu Jitsu, spawning hundreds of variations around the world, wherever their students settled. It’s also hard to say which specific art is used for the Jiu Jitsu in the game until we see it.
10th Planet: Speedy, based on Rubber Guard. You’ll want Rua’s “Jiujitsu 3” for the Rubber Guard, as well as focusing on Speed, the Submission Pair, and Ground Grapple Offense.
RGDA: A lot slower, more thoughtful about its positioning than 10th Planet. High Cardio, Submission Defense, Ground Grapple Defense and Clinch Grapple Defense. Their Submission pair should be high.
Judo
Again with the mystery, we’ll have to see what specifically this entails, but, you should be able to get Aikido out of the Judo subset.
Aikido: Art I’ve heard it be called “Fat man jiu-jitsu” before, but straight up about submitting opponents. Combine a high Speed and general Defense with a high Takedown and Submission Offense to recreate this art.
Wrestling
The old styles of the Greeks and Romans made for the ring and testing strength.
Greco-Roman: Different from Freestyle in the more rigid rules. Straight Takedown goodness with Ground Grappling cover, and Cardio to back it up.
Freestyle: Same as Greco-Roman, but more open ended. Ground Grappling Offense added with Submission Offense and Defense more than Takedown strengths.
“Hybrid” Arts:
These are arts that didn’t seem to really fit one, but I thought might be interesting ideas to chew over.
USMC Combative System: (Muay Thai/Judo) Forgive me if I got the name wrong, but you can beat me over the head later if its’ not right. But, this style focuses on taking down opponents permanently with elbows and throws that plant them into the ground. Focus on a high Strength, as well as all Striking Offenses and Takedown Defenses.
Sanshou Boxing: (Kickboxing/Judo) This art focuses on catching kicks and the like, and (usually) stops at the Takedown. Cung Le uses this style. Recreating a Sanshou Fighter requires a high Speed, as well as Takedown Offense. Standing Kicks Offense would also likely be a benefit to a Sanshou-lookalike.
Brawling: (Boxing/Wrestling) Not really a martial art, but more of the bar brawler variety. Think Wolverine in the first X-Men movie for this one. High Strength and all Offenses put through the roof without any defense to think of.
Amateur MMA: (Muay Thai/Jiu Jitsu) Sort of the granddaddy of all, a generalized grab bag of useful techniques that can be taught anywhere in America. I call this one only on noticing that there’s no Amateur with any real specialty. Keep the skills generally even and there you go.
So, get ready to create, and I’ll see you all, personally, in the Octagon.
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