So recently I did the Mimic chest animation that had 4 character variants. That's something I been thinking of doing for a very long time, but it's always been a massive task to change out characters. Over the Christmas holidays, I was dabbling with some ideas and started hammering away at them. That Mimic animation was my first attempt at it and while it worked, it still left a lot to be desired.
I've continued tweaking it and I think I got close to the final implementation of what I'd like. The general gist of it is - All characters are using the same rig and mesh for the body, eyes, mouth/teeth and eyelash/brow. I sculpt shapekeys/morphs for different characters and then use drivers to toggle them all at once.
I've currently got 3 sets of this:
BG3 - Shadow, Karlach, Lae, Mizora and Minthara
Witcher - Yennefer, Ciri and Triss
Final Fantasy - Aerith and Tifa
I cant mix games with this setup, as games usually have very large variation in character design and won't align up the same way. Also, there will always be cleanup needed when swapping characters for an animation, but this cuts the time down significantly. I plan to do this setup for any game that I use more than 1 character from regularly and will add more characters to the current list with time~