Headwear

Create custom headwear for Ready Player Me avatars.

This document explains how to create custom headwear that meet Ready Player Me technical specifications and functions properly in your application. The headwear asset type is any asset that covers the scalp or is worn on the head, like hats or hijabs.

Example hijab headwear in Blender.

1. Create your headwear

• Download template hijab (Download). The template project contains a reference head model and a headwear. Alternatively, you can get the head model as an FBX file.
• Use Blender to open the headwear-hijab-01.blend.

• Inspect this example and familiarize yourself with the details as your design must match the same requirements.

• Create a headwear model as a single object. It should fit the provided head model reference in the headwear-hijab-01.blend template project. -> Check out modeling guidelines
• If your headwear does cover the neck or clavicle area and needs to deform with motion of the head, you can assign skin weights to the joints in the provided template file.

Technical requirements

• Triangle count: max. 2500

• Object name: Wolf3D_Headwear

• Mesh name: Wolf3D_Headwear

• Material name: Wolf3D_Headwear

• Basecolor map: Optional Use sRGB (IEC 61966-2-1 Default RGB color space) when editing the image.

• Normal map: Optional OpenGL tangent space normal map, +Y up.

• Metallic-Roughness map: Optional

• Occlusion map: Optional We recommend to pack the occlusion map into the red-channel of the metallicRoughnessTexture. See Blender documentation on how to export it.
• Emissive map: Optional

• Texture Resolution: max. 2048 x 2048 pixels Texture resolutions must be square and power-of-two, e.g. 128x128, 256x256, 512x512.

• Texture files format: PNG/JPEG For PNG images, use 24 bits per pixel (RGB) or 32 bits per pixel (RGBA). Do not use palettes (8-bit color indexed). Do not include metadata or color profile information in the image files to avoid errors.

• Individual texture file size: max. 4 MB

• Vertex colors: No

• Skin weights: Optional No more than 4 influences per vertex. Weights must be normalized.

Asset Limitations

To prevent assets from clipping, the headwear asset replaces any picked hairstyle from the avatar in customization options. We highly recommend avoiding any gaps between the headwear and the skull, so the user will never see the avatar without the hair.

If the design of the headpiece does not completely cover the skull area, please combine one of the most common hairstyles with the headpiece asset and provide two hair color options (brunette and blond). The headwear combined with hair must still be a single object using a single material. See the example below. Furthermore, be aware that headwear meshes will pass through other meshes of the avatar, e.g. body or the torso garment, during animation and not react physically accurate (or at all) to colliding geometry.

Examples of headwear with hair to provide two asset variations for blonde and brunette.

Materials & Texture Maps

• The materials use the metalness PBR workflow.

• Keep the shading network of the material as simple as possible.

• Enable Backface Culling (single-sided materials). Only use double-sided materials when absolutely necessary. Otherwise, leave the box checked.

2. Export the asset

• Export the headwear model into glTF Binary (.glb). Below are the required export settings using Blender.

• Only include the headwear model in the export, not the head reference.

Starting with Blender 4, objects placed in a glTF_not_exported collection are excluded from the export.

Export Settings in Blender

Do not use custom glTF-Extensions extensions in the file, e.g. Draco mesh compression.

3. Upload and validate your asset

File Requirements

• File type: .GLB

• File Size: max. 10 MB

• Icon file size: max. 1 MB

Ready Player Me Studio

Using the Ready Player Me Studio interface, you can navigate to the Asset Manager, and then choose Add new asset, or directly go to https://studio.readyplayer.me/asset-management/new.

In the Type selection, you must select Headwear as the asset type.

In the Gender selection, choose Neutral to make them available to all stereotypes.

Upload the necessary files and Save. The asset is only saved when it passes validation. If any errors are detected regarding the compliance with the requirements, you'll get a notification and more information.

API

When you want to push your assets to your organization at Ready Player Me, use thePOST - Create AssetAPI endpoint with the data.type set to headwear. Once the asset is created, the files will be stored by Ready Player Me.

If you don't have the files yet available at a public URL for use with the Create Asset API endpoint, you can use the temporary storage solution provided by us via the POST - Upload Asset Filesendpoint.

Once the export is complete, open Ready Player Me Studio (Asset Manager) and upload your creation. The asset will be validated on upload. Learn more Asset Manager in Studio.