help with creating characters for game.

[cabley123]

i currently have a character i want to import into my unity project.
its a hack and slash style rpg and im hoping to add the option for swappable amour, hats ect.
what is the best way to do this?
i have seen people create multiple meshes on the same rig and use a script for hiding whats not in use at the given time but wouldn't that get clunky?
the characters are low poly like 500tris. i dnt think its an issue but i can see this getting messy fast wit the amount of items i want to be in the game.
are there better ways to do this? like a list to call on? keep things in separate files?
but if it was in a list to call on for the item in use how would i get that to comply with the rig of the character?
i am using 3ds max for the creation of the characters and like i said before untiy as the engine.
cheers.

[Giometric]

The tri count isn't much of an issue since Unity doesn't waste any time rendering GameObjects that aren't enabled. I myself have done the method you mentioned where you have the objects positioned in the character's hierarchy beforehand and simply show/hide what you need, and it did work, but it got cumbersome pretty fast, and that was with only like 8-10 different objects.

For, say, something like hats, Unity does have functions for messing around with objects' hierarchies, so it is definitely possible to just instantiate the objects and have them put in the right spot through the script (or perhaps make sure that coming out of 3dsmax their center/pivot is placed exactly where you need it). If you're going to have a large and/or variable number of objects, you might want to develop some system to help keep you from having to set everything up manually, but other than that, at the most simple level, just instantiating the object you need and destroying it when you don't need it anymore should work.

For things like armor, which are more than likely going to need to be skinned to the same skeleton as your character, it'll probably be a bit more complicated. It may be possible to have your model made in parts (not unlike how games like Morrowind/Oblivion/WoW do it) that are all rigged to the same skeleton, and show and hide the various mesh components as necessary. I'm not completely sure how well that would work in Unity but it doesn't sound too farfetched.