Im working on developing some games in my spare time and I’d really like to target the fidelity of ps2-ps3 style games, mostly for stylistic purposes (but also because I’m solo and don’t have the time and resources to make too many high poly things)

Specifically, I’m really interested in how characters like pic related were modeled and textured to look semi-realistic and expressive (especially textures because I’m still terrible with them)

Feel free to post low-poly or just your favorite models/textures from the games of the good old era of games

>>995160 (OP)
Dual UV sets in conjunction with camera mapping.

Model your character, rig and unwrap your UV to a UV set 'UV1'. Now pose your character infront of a camera to an angle you wanna texture from.

Render out your character model with a camera mapped projection UV set UV2' and use as a template to paint ontop of in your paint editor of choice.

Assign the result as a texture for UV2 and bake the result down to UV1.

Now change the view to cover dead angles that are still untextured or areas that has too much stretch due to the projection
and keep render new templates and repeat. Bake and combine down to your UV1 texture til you've covered your entire model.

Advantage of texturing like this is that you get pixel perfect placement of all your details and the end result will look exactly as you painted it.

>not good at texturing
oh no

>>995238
Magic
Wizard shit

>>995238
I'm a work in progress lol. I'm getting better at texturing but I'm pretty slow at it and it never comes out exactly as I'd like

Also that's a sick model

>>995160 (OP)
Japanese fighting games from the PS2 era have beautiful character models. That is all.

>>995160 (OP)
So I was able to find the actual in-game model for this character. The model is pretty low poly but I'm having alittle trouble understanding it.

For example, how would they get the split that happens on the front of the shirt, about where the nipples should be? Everything else around it seems to be a loop cut, which makes sense but I dont understand how they would have done that without using like the knife tool. Is this all from edge modeling or am I just an idiot?

>>995345
they didnt make it split. they combined a row of edges between nipples. it gives that part a slightly crisper crease and importsntly its also a clever way to lower your poly count.

>>995345
>Is this all from edge modeling or am I just an idiot?

Geometry is just geometry, who knows how the modeller that built that one preferred to work but any and all methods that you can use to generate useful geometry is valid, you have a knife tool and it makes sense to use it; use it.

>>995350
>>995352

Thank you! I appreciate the help. I'm trying to take modeling seriously so I probably get too into the weeds and worry about random stuff I shouldn't

Again, thanks! And sorry for the probably simple questions

>>995354
>apologizing to chuds on 4chan instead of leaving the thread forever
You are too white for this board

>>996274
Change towards increased compassion gotta start somewhere, and those posts weren't delivered in any chuddy tone, they where helpful.

Why is it that being anon should require one to be a dick all the time?
Even if no one else know who the asshole behind some unnecessary angry post is the author know.
Embrace voluntary politeness and discover the inner love for your fellow tr/3/pot beings.

We can still grow the love within ourselves as tho selecting the scale-tool in our software of choice
press ctrl-i to invert select all our love instead of hatred and just crank that motherfucker skyhigh.

I wanted to ask about something a bit more complex in regards to this. I've wanted to know how to do water/river/beachfront texture work using mainly diffuse and maybe some gloss? There are plenty of examples in the PS2 library, but it seems like every dev had a slightly different way of handling it. does anyone have a general workflow for this?

screenshot from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PhlmYuOJa_0

>>995160 (OP)
>developing some games in my spare time
>(but also because I’m solo and don’t have the time and resources to make too many high poly things)
How feasible is this? make a 3d game with ps2 style graphics seems like a task too big for one guy.

>>995160 (OP)
I'm thinking sofimage xsi or the autodesk implementation of it have what you are looking for. Renders come out on the gray side, desaturated colors and such. Maybe use VMware to install W7 and either version of the program, when the trial ends you can alwaysnuke the vm and reinstall it or just clone a base vm with windows only before installingany trials.

>>998055
It is *feasible*.
Although if you want it to not be half-assed nor released after the Heat Death of the universe, it would probably be better to find a code monkey while you focus on modelling.
PS2-style graphics are in high demand among amateurs, shouldn't be too hard to find one.

>>998073
I actually recently started looking into that. I think I could do everything in modern software but I found out sofimage is how this exact model was made in the first place. Either way, it'll be interesting to see

>>998055
OP here. I'm sure its highly improbable but not impossible. I'm not so delusional to think I can do everything in a reasonable time period. I'm also not looking this to be a career. Its more of a experiment for myself at the end of the day

>>998080
This is sort of what I was thinking as well. I can code but at this point the modeling (and drawing) is more fun for me so a code monkey is probably in the future if I really get serious about this stuff. We'll see

>>998073
>>998093
Why use old software? It can't make that big of a difference, does it?

>>998098
OP here. For me, mostly to just look into it. I figured, at least from an educational perspective, it would help see the limitations of the era first hand, as opposed to just hearing about it. And then in doing so, it'll help me to maybe find ways to optimize my own work in the more modern software.

Ultimately, I will just use blender/maya/zbrush anyway but I dont think it could hurt to spend alittle time in it.

So no, ultimately it wont make a big difference, but I just think it would be interesting.

>>995238
What's the secret to actually learning shit like this? There's not that many resources on Youtube compared to pretty much everything else about 3D

>>998206
Well first you draw how the character looks, shocking yes for many 3D artists but it’s easier to follow your character style than remembering.

Slowly build the character in the worst way possible because why not, the world isn’t going to peek. Fix the problems and you’ll be ready for rigging or material.

The material needs advanced design skills, this is unavoidable. Many would give up and stay a modeling career and help the technical team. Corporate will always judge your talent on how you drew your character UV so at least know a little.

Rigging is another place people would give up because of rules. It matters not what program or software you use, rigging a character takes skill to help the animation team. You kinda expected to learn python. When your done with rigging, animation should start.

Animation, production, promotion, etc. that’s outside of your question so I’ll leave it as that. The only thing you can do is learn at this point.

>>998206
>>998207
Yeah anon likely meant how to texture it, not about the rigging and other technical stuff. I'm trying to texture low poly characters in substance painter aswell and they look like shit because I can't fucking get how they painted such realistic looks by hand onto a low poly mesh.

All tutorials are for high poly, AAA PBR stuff which honestly looks easier to do than low poly. The first has higher poly characters and more details for support.

>>998263
Substance won’t help, it’s not a design program, no matter what Adobe keeps saying about it. You really do need to learn how to draw, UV professionally and learn lighting.

>>996779
I made this a long time ago in Unity. Animated waves.
The sand is a tillable texture.
There's a darker sand layer meant to represent sand underwater too
The sea layer is an animated tillable texture and has an opacity texture near the shore so it's see through.
The waves are 2 planes that scale back and forth

>>996779

>>996779
Here's a video but 3dsmax fucks the transparency

>>996779
That ocean effect seemed kinda mind boggling to me at first but I think it is just a pre-rendered animation. Then they used vertex colors to make it shift colors and go transparent at the beach. Then the beach foam is done like that anon said.

But anyways, I think this animated ocean texture is quite effective because it omits highlights and specular lighting.

>>998143
But wasn't the look of the era a product of the limitations of the consoles and not the limitations of the tools the devs used?

>>998280
>>998281
>>998282

Hey, Thanks for these! it helps to understand things a bit better. Though, I do feel it would be better to use a texture scroll effect with a sine or something instead of bones? that's the old-head in me talking though.

Sounds like a cool project!

How would I go about texturing this in that old school PS2 style?

>>998263
>>998851
There’s no secret sauce to it. You just gotta unwrap your UVs, paint them in photoshop, and use your editing skills to add dirt, grime, and other details from photo sources. The only people who still use this workflow are the mega autists who manually create HD texture mods for RE4 or a Zelda game by hand.

>>998971
Well that’s too god dang bad because Blender and Maya both lack the necessary tools for painting, no such plugin exists to directly paint it.

>>998994
Substance cost $5000 a year and buying the Steam version is outdated with no other features. Only a matter of time until it’s useless to both Blender and Maya.

>>995160 (OP)
>(especially textures because I’m still terrible with them)

Unfortunately for you, this style is literally all about texture artistry. So you've either got to learn to paint, learn to photobash, or both.

>>999011
>buying

Rofl nobody pays for Substance.

>>999069
Yeah I know. It forces me to get good at texturing or fail trying

>>995160 (OP)
I'm in the process of creating a PS2-esk looking game myself. Picrel isn't finished yet but I've got the base details down. So yeah I know he has no nipples lol. Anyway, I say -esk because the painting workflow is the same I'm just using higher res textures (512 instead of 256) but with a generally lower poly count (my faces are static for instance since). I've studied a ton of PS2 models over the years, specifically from Rockstar Games and from games like Def Jam: Fight For New York which has AMAZING looking characters.

Anyway, I'm not that great at painting yet but the advice I can give is definitely use something like 3Dcoat for texturing. I've tried painting in blender with many different add-ons over the years and its never as good. You can also bake your AO really quickly in 3dcoat to use as a lighting guide before turning it off. For realistic looking clothing like the pants I've done here, you want to find a base texture for the material it's made of from an image and create a seamless texture from it to fill the clothing with. Once you've done this you create 2 layers above it. A shade layer set to Multiply and a highlight layer set to Screen. Use a base color that matches your material when painting in both, shades being more saturated and hue shifted toward blue and highlights being desaturated and shifted toward yellow/orange generally.

It really fucking sucks theres pretty much zero tutorials online for painting REALISTIC textures by hand into a single texture. Almost ALL hand painting tutorials are for the World of Warcraft stylized look.

>>1000762
Oh I forgot to say, use the same highlight/shade layer setup for the skin too. But then on top of it add about a 2% white/black noise layer Multiplied on top of it at about 20% opacity or so. Then over that apply a Red/Yellow/Blue "Render Clouds" texture over that set to Overlay blend mode to add randomness to the skin color.

I normally flatten the shade/highlight layers down into the base color at some point then start color picking from that to add more colorful flesh tones to it. Its far from perfect but I'm still experimenting with it. I'm still hunting more tricks and ideas on making the skin look more realistic, other than just getting better at painting in general.

>>1000767
Quite interesting, thank you for mentioning the "Render Clouds" texture, I was bothered by how overly basic my skin textures looked so this'll fix that a bit

>>1000797
Speaking of, here's a tut video I found
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9g47eGdURUc

>>1000797
Yeah it's pretty good trick I seen on
http://www.poopinmymouth.com/tutorials/character-tutorial.html
theres a few other tricks he talks about at the bottom that I haven't used. Like a desaturation layer and such.

I just ran into this book today that goes through skin painting and seems to use the same layer system I was talking about but his painting ability is way better.
https://issuu.com/kukkii/docs/3dtotal.com_ltd._-_swordmaster_-_lo_5d93f13ed71d5e
On page 79+

Anyone has any examples of sixth gen era characters with long hair or long beard?
I can't think of any right now and I really want to study how the hair was done

God I love 6th and 7th gen Japanese vidya models

>>995160 (OP)
Ps2 or heavily stylised, less realistic graphics with more modern physics/animation/movement is the best way to go

>>1001461
Kimahri from FF10 is an example I can think of off the top of my head that would be the most readilyt available.
I'd also suggest looking at models that have alpha fur, like monsters and such, as it's going to be the same general workflow as a thick beard or long hair. Some hair models from PSO2 also still use these methods (but don't bother with New Genesis, just the original release.)

>>995345 #
Where'd you get it, could you post the link? I've been looking for it for a while now but I couldn't find it.

>>1001944
This is where I got it from. The guy I think is a modder for the game. He also has other characters from the game as well:

https://www.deviantart.com/xmastergeorgechiefx/art/Fiona-Belli-All-Her-Costumes-515792394

>>995161
Won't some parts of the model be hidden away from the camera pov

>>995161
Sorry for double replying can somebody pls make a video for this.

>>1002045
Never mind I'm a retard the last part went over my head.

I'm a beginner and absolute shit so don't listen to me, but I followed guides to making PS1 looking shit and just didn't make it crunchy. I obviously have a long way to go in all respects but in principle I feel like this looks pretty PS2. Keeping the textures low res, turning off shadows and using only a diffuse area light seems to do a lot.

>>1000762
>>1000767
Godly. Thanks.

>>1002053
got any recommended guides?

If your bad at texturing a really effective technique is to photobash then touch up the texture with added shadows and highlights. The pic rel is a 512x512 texture done by using Blenders stencil feature and was edited with Clip Studio Paint. Since your a solo dev this technique would probably be the best as it's quite quick while still being able to produce that early to mid 2000s style. I go for a more 2000-2005 style but you could definitely make some stuff more akin to model posted in the OP with some trial and error, although you would definitely need some more texture painting. As you said its really difficult to find resources on this era of graphics but I've done some digging and here is some stuff I've found.

This channel is from a guy who is versed in the style and has a lot of good resources on his website too. Specifically has a really good character tutorial that's even using the software that was used during the era, 3D Studio Max and Bodypaint
https://www.youtube.com/@videogamemaker

I've also found some books on the subject, particularly one from 2006 called "3D Game Textures: Create Professional Game Art Using Photoshop". It might be hard to find torrents of books like these due to the age and lack of interest but they're a resource straight from that era. I haven't started reading them yet because I'm working on a project atm so I can't say how effective they are but there is certainly some techniques to be gleaned.

Also study the models and environments from games of that time, I take a ton of screenshots from games like Oblivion, Postal, RTCW, and the like. I'm glad that other people are passionate about this style, so many games are based off of PS1 but this "mid poly" era gets skipped over entirely it seems.

>>995160 (OP)
what do you call this look when the characters are white but very clearly made by an oriental game studio?

>>1003136
just to clarify, the OP image is also an example of what I'm talking about. the game, haunting ground, is made by the japanese Capcom

>>1003136
I doubt there's a specific term for it. I guess the best way to describe it would be an asian/anime style face shape with white complexion?

>>998851

The PS2 polycount is probably a touch higher, and the texture size a tad lower, but the following might help

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K6AIWMWhXLA

>>995160 (OP)
i thought this video was interesting although it doesn't really answer your question.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0_-K56PVeh4

>>998207
Do I really need to know python to make rigs?

Are there any good books focused on model topology for this kind of thing?

>>998263
For fine details you could model a high poly version and bake it to your uv texture to put on the low poly version.
That would save you a bit of texture painting.

>>995160 (OP)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zW_MyOrgNpY

Just came from another thread, I finished the CG cookie Blender beginner Course and my endgame goal is ps2/psp era graphics.

Do you guys have any recommendations of videos, courses, or anything to help me get to that?

>>1002334
I can also recommend that book. I didn't read it entirely (some parts of it explain pretty basic stuff) but there were some really helpful things in there! I'm pretty sure you can find it on sci-hub.

Also, using an emulator and RenderDoc can be helpful for looking at textures and models to study, especially if you can't find any ripped models online.

>>995160 (OP)
What do you do with materials in Unreal or Unity for these graphics? Unreal seems like PBR would mess with these graphics and you would have to customize the materials heavily. At least Unity has legacy shaders I guess.

Or am I just a pleb and am overthinking the material settings?

>>1008090
>material settings
It's not even just a matter of settings, you might need to write an entirely custom shaders just to pick what effect you want or not depending on the exact artstyle you are trying to emulate.

>>998263
3DCoat seems to be a solution that some hand paint style artists use.
I find the internal brush engine a little janky but being able to send projections to Photoshop and back to paint on is nice.
Of course the final product will need a little cleanup but it's not terrible.

>>1010308
Are you using 3DCoat for everything or just for texturing?

>>1010308
>>1010454
Just remember to never make anything that makes you or anyone else wanna touch themselves when you're operating the tool of our Lord that is 3Dcoat.

A generation of retards whose entire comprehension of 3D visualization boils down to a single platform's hardware optimization. No words like specular, microtextures, 3 point lighting, crushed dynamic range, subsurface scattering are necessary because you, anon, you LIVED playing video games for years and it's granted you the only vocabulary you need, pee ess plus digit
God the wonders you'll bring us with your BASED nostalgia aesthetic, I'm erect just thinking about it

>>1010481
>the tool of our Lord that is 3Dcoat
It took work to surpass DAZ3D being an entirely Mormon-run company where Michael 5's penis was a separate figure as the gold standard for Christardation in a medium invented to produce degrading porn, but 3Dcoat pulled it off somehow

>>1010539
I'll do a lowpoly game with dithered subsurface scattering just to make you mad.

>>1010539
I'll do a high poly game with none of those things to make you mad

>>995160 (OP)
So if my understanding is correct:
Older games mostly used Spec-Diffuse maps, so just specular and diffuse/transparency maps.
Occlusion maps existed, but were instead baked onto the diffuse map

Modern workflows require roughness, diffuse, Normal, and occlusion maps, the normals being baked from a high-poly model/sculpt.
Specifically for the PS2, it seems it couldn't handle Normal maps at all (and some places tell me Bump maps only showed up at the tail end, idk)

Does all of this sound right?
Honestly I don't know how much it matters if all you want to achieve is a "look". Like, it wouldn't make sense for me to merge my diffuse and occlusion if I have the option to layer them separately on modern systems...

how long before people is nostalgic for x360/ps3 era graphics? Somebody should be making a guide for that style already.

>>1010722
Do you have a nice screenshot of that?

>>1010722
PS3/360 feels too high fid for indie creators/studios desu

>>1010750
how so? what would the issue with that be?

>>1010785
extra detail means more time is needed to make anything, stupid fucking brainless retard

>>1010785
Other guy is mad but he isn't wrong
Even PS2 aesthetics is a stretch for a lot of solo creators, you're not just talking about players models but everything all together including environments, NPCs, enemies, menus, FX...
It all adds up and 360/PS3 is leaps and bounds ahead of the PS2-style visuals.

you offset the workload with bought and free assets for things that dont matter, and focus you effort on the things that do.

>>995160 (OP)
The truth is that if you actually studied and practiced the fundamentals of 3D then you wouldn't have bothered to make this thread. What you are hoping is some anon to give you an easy One Click answer. I recommend you to stop this and just learn how to use AI along with the rest of the larping niggers on this thread who responded before me

>>1010870
I appreciate the advice and have actually been doing that. I made this thread when I was going through a really depressive phase.

Asking these questions and making threads, while still getting valuable info, was really just a delusional way to make myself feel better for not moving forward on projects and a means of procrastinating.

I've since moved on, made actual decisions and have started to work on my projects, which is much more fulfilling, albeit slowly. Still appreciate those who've given actual advice/resources though

>>1010785
It's hard to do convincing characters & monsters when not abstracted. Environments are easy. See something like Tormented Souls god awful animation & characters but bordering AA environments.

>>1010790
I always assumed this was just a bunch of transparent layers on top of each other for the fur, which is a pretty crazy solution. There must be a trick because that must be like 10 layers

>>1010943
It's only 3 layers actually
You can see the noise texture in the post above, there's three (dark, mid, light) in 3 layers. The dark adds density and provides "AO" (in a way).

This is guessing based on what I'm seeing, but I supposed the UVs are done in a way that the noise texture is stretched giving it the hair-like look

>>1010949
It's called shell fur and yes there are dozens of layers there

>>1010953
I misremembered, it's 6
https://www.froyok.fr/blog/2012-10-breakdown-shadow-of-the-colossus-pal-ps2/

>>1010943
>>1010953

3dsmax has shipped with an example of such a shader since way back, I don't think it even works with max anymore unless you rewrite it a bit to run under dx12. Here's my understanding of the important bits and what they do. In 'Shadow of the Colossus' There must've also been some UV offset to read a different diameter alpha texture on each pass, the max example seem to omit that bit but you prob get the idea if you understand anything about shaders, just offset your UV's each pass to read a different texture space according to how your texture is organized.

>>1010870
lol, lmao
why even post if you're gonna say actually nothing?

Okay I'm a complete retard at this and a beginner but I have a question.
Instead of painstakingly painting on the details on lowpoly models why not... sculpt them in zbrush and then bake that onto a lowpoly model?
That way it's not only gonna look the same but in different angles it will actually have geometry like bumps and muscles actually protruding and you know be raised and lowered instead of just being painted on and looking flat once you turn it.
Am I missing something?

>>1011131
> sculpt them in zbrush and then bake that onto a lowpoly model?
That's a pretty standard technique actually.

>>995160 (OP)
>>998206
ancient posts and thread, but baking from high poly onto low poly seems to work very well. I've struggled for ages when it comes to texture painting since I can't draw, and relying on photos for texturing has limits, plus procedural stuff like PBR can only get you so far
this allows me to quickly sculpt out a form, use Quad Remesher to get the low poly, then bake all the detail right on the low poly
you could likely get better results by manually box modeling over for the low poly, but I suck at that so I leave it to automation with QR
here's a post I made on the process
>>1011119

>>1011131
I sculpt in blender since you can do the entire baking process in there, and it's free, but yeah this method works. I'm surprised that I've never really seen it discussed when it comes to PS1 low poly stuff. not sure how often the method was used for PS2 era visuals
only caveat is that you need to learn anatomy, but that's far easier than actually learning to draw, in my experience

>>1011138
messing with it some more. important to bake out not just the diffuse but the AO as well, then combine them into a single texture
the Color Management setting doesn't seem to affect the render
also upping the amount of renders to about 5k or more makes a noticeable difference, makes it a lot less grainy and it only takes seconds

>>1011149
>>1011138
This is with or without normal maps?

>>1011149
forgot to mention but I vertex painted over the sculpt, stayed in sculpt mode and used the paint tools since they're a lot better than what you get in the dedicated vertex paint mode, mostly just soft brush and hard blending, was using a mouse too but w/e
just plug the Color Attribute node into the Principled BSDF and it should be fine

>>1011150
without, all just a single texture, although it's as easy as setting the bake setting to normal, then it's just a matter of plugging the normal map in alongside the diffuse

>>1011150
here it is with a normal map, think this is working right

>>1011152
more of this stuff. I'm a normal map faithful now

>>998206
1 take note of the chest/pecs. see how they have shadows already baked into the texture there, bake shadows and ao into the model, then, and this is somewhat important, dont put them in lighting situations where it becomes overly obvious that its baked.

you can also do bump mapping or normal mapping, this will let you bake in dynamic detail into the texture but requires better 3d sculpting skill, if you want to really go big or go home, parallax occlusion mapping, I think you can apply this to a non static object, and then add a tessellation perimeter that for a 1080p 1440p and 4k pixel count, so you only ramp it up when the detail would be visible.

if you want to stick low poly at all times, normal or bump mapping is as far as you can go, if you want to stick with a very specific aesthetic, you have have to be very good at painting a texture.

I will make a suggestion, get an airbrush irl and some large pieces of paper, anything works if you are ok with it being tossed after you are done/not keeping it long term, this will teach you about texture painting faster than digital ever will.

>>1010939
animations are king, good animations are able to elevate bad looks and compliment high fidelity.

bad animations at best fit in with the shitty looks, and become eye sores that make high fidelity graphics look like dogshit no matter how good they are.

its the single hardest thing to get correct.

the next hardest is going to be the models themselves, its hard to know exactly how to cull/where detail is required and where its not needed. I can easily bang out a 100 million poly sculpt that looks great, but tell me to make that sculpt 1000 and brain breaks. I could do it in time sure, but thats FAR harder than just giving 0 fucks about a poly budget.

hell, making something ps3/360 level would be easier than a ps1/2 and making that look good, starting with ps2 you are largely following modern design methods

>>1010943
holy shit I cant remember what this crap is called but there is a specific technique/shader for it, effectively, its how alot of grass and fur is made, and it works great when you dont push it to far because the meshes will make a great illusion of fur, but when you push it to far/get to close, you see the breaks in the illusion, sif from dark souls is a great example of it being pushed too far, look up viva pinata as the effect is used everywhere for everything in that game.

but for the life of me I cant find someone demoing how anything about this, I only see more modern 'model every strand of hair and render it' methods.

>>1011185
"Shell Fur" is the key word you want

you should check out acerola, he has a lot of good videos on computer graphics
https://youtu.be/y84bG19sg6U

>>995160 (OP)
anyone know where i can find the DOA xtreme volleyball (1 or 2) 3d models? the old approach to sexy models is quite unique, and i cant seem to find something similar

>>1010958
Unlike your post, you mean?

What's the pipeline to get a good enough looking quake-like model from a concept art?

>>1003934
there should be a term for it though. i just wanted to make sure i wasnt the only one who noticed.

>>1011884
draw the texture first

>>995160 (OP)
Not OP (I just like haunting ground) but how would one go about making the different costumes for a character? Just remake the model x amount of times with different looks or reuse it and just model around it with interchangeable pieces in the engine?

Additionally, how would you guys handle changes to the model such as how they clearly change the position of the breasts between models? Is there an easier way to do that without completely remaking the model each time?

>>1014074
>Not OP (I just like haunting ground) but how would one go about making the different costumes for a character?
3D character artists create a base mesh (model with no clothing) first then model clothing over it. As long as you have a base mesh, you can make whatever costume you want. See pic related.

>>1014074
>>Additionally, how would you guys handle changes to the model such as how they clearly change the position of the breasts between models? Is there an easier way to do that without completely remaking the model each time?
Blendshapes/shapekeys. Look it up. Lets you deform parts of the character and store it. So say if you wanted a character with small boobs to have big boobs, you can do that and manipulate a slider to control the size.

>>1014074
You remodel every part of the model that needs to change to accommodate the new outfit, games with few cosmetic options usually makes a new complete connected hull of everything that goes with the new model, but games that have a gazillion outfits tend to have a system of swappable parts.

Like there are several versions of your characters upper and lowerbody, the head is typically a separate model split at the neck.

Take GTAO for example; your character wear a T-shirt the engine will render two sepparate skinned models for the upper body.
The T-shirt the character is wearing and another model of just the arms and neck sticking out of it and all the other polygons of the naked skin is deleted. Your character wear a V-ringed T-shirt it renders that T-shirt and another version of the naked skin where the exposed are around the neck/chest is included.

All in all there are like dozen variants of the upperbody with naked back, waist, forearms etc all kinds of combinations meant to go with different outfits. Then same for lowerbody and long or short sleeved pants/skirts and low/high boots etc.

If you bother with breast physics the easiest thing would probably be to have multiple variants of the chest rig like free/holstered and your skeleton has two set of bones in that area to drive the animation. Having the same bones drive both would be very finicky as you wanna rig to bones in a neutral 'frame zero position' and now have to bother moving keyframes around and remember what frame to use for what outfit etc.

>>1014074
For the breasts, for that game they just model it a bit differently and keep the same bones and no one really notices

>>1014077
>>1014086
>>1014102

Thank you all for the advice! The Blender shapekeys in particular was really great. I looked into it and they seem exactly what I was looking for.