Sidekick
Sidekick
The base human character used across herbmail-game — both the player avatar and the template every humanoid NPC is built from. A SIDEKICK modular skin body wearing removable knight armor over its underwear layer.
- Family: humanoid
- Personality: noble
- Movement: patrol
Overview
Section titled “Overview”Sidekick is the shared humanoid base for herbmail-game. The same rig and
mesh set drive the player avatar and every humanoid NPC — an NPC is just
this base with a different armor loadout, face variant, and behavior.
Source art is Synty SIDEKICK (modular). The character is assembled from per-slot meshes that all carry the full 88-bone Unreal-mannequin skeleton, so any part can be swapped or hidden without re-rigging.
- Model:
apps/herbmail/herbmail-game/public/models/character-anim.glb - Pipeline scripts:
apps/herbmail/herbmail-game/art/character/ - Equipment logic:
src/game/character/armor.ts
Layers
Section titled “Layers”The model is a removable knight over a permanent skin base:
| Layer | Meshes | Visibility |
|---|---|---|
| Skin base | SKIN_TORS/AUPL/AUPR/ALWL/ALWR/HNDL/HNDR/HIPS/LEGL/LEGR/FOTL/FOTR | always |
| Underwear | SKIN_WRAP (boxer briefs + top) | always |
| Head / face | HEAD, HAIR, EARL/R, EBRL/R, EYEL/R, NOSE, TETH, TONG | always |
| Knight armor | 25 knight slots (see below) | toggleable |
Stripping every knight piece reveals the naked base in its underwear — the skin body fills the gaps under the armor, so removing arm or leg armor never leaves a hole.
Removable armor pieces
Section titled “Removable armor pieces”Twelve toggleable pieces cover all 25 knight slots:
helmet (AHED, AFAC) · chest (TORS) · backpack (ABAC) ·
pauldrons (ASHL/R) · upperArms (AUPL/R) · elbowGuards (AEBL/R) ·
bracers (ALWL/R) · gauntlets (HNDL/R) ·
faulds (HIPS, AHPF/B/L/R) · legs (LEGL/R) · kneeGuards (AKNL/R) ·
boots (FOTL/R).
Toggling a piece flips mesh visibility only — the rig and animation clips are untouched.
Animations
Section titled “Animations”Baked from Mesh2Motion clips (same UE bone names), retargeted onto the
SIDEKICK rig via the Rokoko GUI (the headless retarget_bake.py contorts the
body and must not be used). Eleven clips ship:
Idle_Loop, Walk_Loop, Jog_Fwd_Loop, Sprint_Loop, Sword_Idle,
Sword_Attack, Sword_Block, Jump_Start, Jump_Loop, Jump_Land,
Punch_Cross.
Build notes
Section titled “Build notes”Because a headless retarget is off the table, every mesh/animation edit is a post-process of the committed glb:
fix_right_foot.py— the retargeted right boot detached from the shin (over-rotated ankle). Fix mirrors the clean left foot’sfoot_r/ball_rrotation keyframes onto the right (direct copy — UE L/R feet share local axes).attach_skin_body.py— binds the SIDEKICK human body (variant 01 slots10TORS–21FOTR+38WRAP) onto the already-animated armature. Same 88-bone rig means the skin follows the baked clips with no retarget. Meshes are namedSKIN_*to avoid colliding with knight slot nodes.
Skin uses T_HumanSpecies_01ColorMap with Closest texture filtering for the
PSX look. Final glb: 49 mesh nodes (36 knight + 13 skin), 11 animations.
Body type (morphs)
Section titled “Body type (morphs)”The body is one gender-neutral mesh driven by blendshapes, not separate
male/female meshes. Every skin part (SKIN_*, including WRAP) carries the same
four morph targets over a Basis:
masculineFeminine— 0 = masculine → 1 = femininedefaultBuff— muscular builddefaultHeavy— heavier builddefaultSkinny— slimmer build
Driving these uniformly across all skin parts gives a coherent body type, so a single mesh set covers masc/fem and every build in between — the customizable “gender-neutral base” approach.
The glb ships the morphs (export_morph=True), and they are driven at runtime:
src/game/character/body.ts holds the four influences in a store, useBodySkinMorph
applies them to every SKIN_* mesh’s morphTargetInfluences, and the equipment
panel exposes them as sliders. Each character/NPC can therefore carry its own build.
Known limits
Section titled “Known limits”SKIN_WRAPunderwear includes a red bandeau top that reads as a bra on the base — recolor via the species colormap or split the mesh to drop it.- The Starter pack is a single species mesh; extra species (sci-fi civilian, horror villain) exist as separate part sets but aren’t wired in.