Character Animation Tool that works beautifully with Unity

We have invited Mr. David Helgason to give us a hands-on Unity course in Israel. We use Lightwave and we realy hit a hard wall trying to export Character animation into our Unity project. After much head scratching we did some research and came up with a realy simple and cost effective solution.

Download the free Daz3D Studio and purchase the 99$ FBX Exporter to have a realy easy to use tool for character animation (including BVH importer) and a seamless Unity (through FBX) exporter. Before we dumped the Lightwave in favour of Daz Studio, we did spend 24 hours trying unsuccesfuly to port a lightwave character animation to Unity, using Autodesk FBX exporter for LW.

We made a professional looking animation; inside Daz Studio, that played perfectly in Unity, in 20 secs. (!)

Keep in mind, Daz Studio is Universal Binary, but the FBX exporter works only on the PowerPC version, so if you run Studio on an Intel Mac make sure you tick in the Info screen to run using Roseta.

 

anyone know if this pipeline would work with blender?

 

Looks like it will import .obj files, which blender can export. I suppose it's a matter of animating in blender vs in Daz3D. I'm interested in doing animations but this very hurdle has kept me from going there. If it works though, I'm all over it.

 

same here ; )

i saw the obj import too, hopefully someone can figure out if it works correctly without one of us having to buy the plugin just to test it out.

sivian - also i'm curious, was the throughput simple? - in other words did you just import your animated model, then export to fbx or was there any intermediate setup required in daz?

 

"sivian - also i'm curious, was the throughput simple?"

DrJones - I just picked a model from the library, put a library BVH motion, exported using the FBX Exporter and BAM! there it was, walking with all the textures and glory in my Unity project

 

The FBX Exporter basicaly costs 99$ but...
If you buy a platinum pass for 7$ than you get an immdiate 30% discount and a 5$ (or 10$) coupon. So, instead of the 99$ it costs aprox. 65$.

I did the quick math and it seemed to me cheaper than buying Maya.

 

thanks for the info sivan ; )

yeah there are a few "cheaper" ways to get animations into unity other than maya, i was more hoping this could work with blender, which the total cost would then be $99 (or even approx. $65 with discounts).

 

Cheers, avec plasier

drjones wrote :"I was more hoping this could work with blender, which the total cost would then be $99 (or even approx. $65 with discounts)."

hmmmm
But, Daz Studio is Free. It's..errr...a Poser variant in a way, less extansive though, but simple, intuitive and...free! I wouldn't suggest you do Shrek 4 with it, but It seems perfect, combined with Daz Mimic, you can make preaty awsome animations (ingame and cut scenes). In my studio we use the Lightwave 3D package, which is a heavy weight package, not unlike Maya, but I sometimes happily use Poser/Studio to do quick things, with little effort, that sometime, once you are familiar with the tools, are not unlike other character animations you see out there. Keep in mind, that quite a few of the animations you see in games, even AAA's like Resident Evil 4 to name one, are motion captured, so, using BVH animations on models will yield preaty good animations. It is working for me.

 

very interesting - I'm w/ DrJones, direct Blender export would be better, but this is tempting.

question is, how hard is it to rig/animate in Daz when it's not a prefab'd model from the Daz library, but an imported *.obj modelled in Blender? I'm testing now...

 

_and does all the licensing allow for this behaviour legally?-great find, if so...
AC

 

I must be missing something. You apparently can't rig a character in Daz Studio directly; you have to open a file that already has bones in it. So methinks this isn't an option for Blender. Or am I missing something? Please tell me I'm missing something.

 

I'm not sure what Sivan_LYG is using for content, but I do know that using Poser and Daz3D content in a game is a violation of it's license.

Sure wish the Blender Collada plugin was 100%, then you could use the new MakeHuman and create any kind of character you wanted (latest version is already rigged I believe) then animate it in Blender and then bring it into Unity. But, alas, such is not the case :cry:

 

Perhaps you're missing that Blender does bones? Nifty solution, if it works.

--Eric

 

Urm, no way I can see to make a suitable, weight-painted rig for arbitrary imported geometry in Daz. --> drawing board...

 

Hi, I'm a long-time lurker, first time poster.

I've experimented with this myself. You need Poser to do the bone-rigging and you need another app to create the figure in the first place.

The FBX exporter for DAZStudio and Hexagon (a modelling program) are being offered for $1.99 through DAZ3D Platinum Club for today and tomorrow morning. If you already have Poser, it may be worth it to get these.

 

Well, here's the glitch. First off Daz3D Platinum Club will set you back $29.95. Second, DAZStudio doesn't work on Intel Macs. Third, Hexagon (although a sweet app on a PC) has serious bugs and can have installation issues (especially on Intel Macs). I know, I tried several months ago...

 

[quote="DAZStudio doesn't work on Intel Macs. Third, Hexagon (although a sweet app on a PC) has serious bugs and can have installation issues (especially on Intel Macs). I know, I tried several months ago...[/quote]

Daz Studio is a Universal Binary and works very nicely on Intel Macs. The exporter itself doesn't unless you run the software through rosetta. After paying 60$ for the exporter it's a dissapointment that I could have owned it for a 1.99$. Oh well, things come to those who wait.

About Hexagon (And Carrera), well;;, actually there is a preaty mature pipeline there, perfect to create characters to bring into Daz Studio or Poser. Poser has, in a way, a rigging system, that while unconventional, enables you to rig anything you bring into the software with relative ease of use. Poser 7 itself has matured nicely, as well as Vue6.

I use Lightwave as my heavy weight production tool.
But the Poser7-Vue6-Hexagon-Carrera-DazStudio-FBX Exporter is Soooo sweet, that I sometime just don;t care that it's not the mainstream, it just enables me to do preaty complex stuff sweetly and easiely.

Who cares it's not called Maya or some other multy thousand dollars software,

 

Hey Sivan_LYG - Sounds like you've had a lot more luck than me. I use Hexagon on my PC but had no luck installing/upgrading Hex on my iMac. I had similar problems with DAZStudio, but I've got a question:

What file format are you using to go from Carrara to DAZ3D? I don't understand how you're getting rigs from Carrara to DAZ3D unless it imports native Carrara files? Or are you building in Carrara/Hexagon/Lightwave etc. then rigging in Poser, then importing to DAZ3D then exporting to FBX? Ouch, that's pretty involved...

 

I too banged my head on a wall trying to use Carrara/Poser/Daz Studio to create Unity content. It was very frustrating. Unity really wants FBX format content, but Carrara only outputs the geometry in the FBX format and all animation data is lost, as well as textures. Also Unity only accepts UV mapping, which is oddly implemented in Carrara, so much so that I couldn't figure it out. (I even bought the Baker plugin to try and get baked textures and lightmaps out of Carrara, but Baker only "bakes" one object at a time, so you can't say bake a whole scene (multiple objects) for import into Unity.

I got so frustrated there I didn't even get as far an taking everything into Daz (via OBJ) and trying the FBX exporter plugin. Instead I decided to check out Cheetah3D.

What an awesome app! It doesn't have nearly the feature set of Carrara, but it does have great modeling tools, texture baking, bone rigging and excellent FBX support, including exporting all animation data. And it has a super UV unwrap/mapping tool.

I have created several models, UV mapped them and animated them, them saved them and their textures to my Unity project folder and they opened perfectly in Unity!

But Cheetah 3D is not free, but it's real cheap. $129, unless you find it on sale for less. I figured by the time I bought the baker plugin for Carrara ($35) and the FBX plugin for Daz ($70 for PC members or $99 for non-members) I was just about at the cost of Cheetah 3D. And for all the headaches it saved me it's well worth it. And I can also import my work from Carrara into Cheetah easily too.

Hope this helps some of you out there on the same quest I have been on!

 

I'm sorry to say that as far as game development goes, Carrara and Hexagon, although two of my favorite 3D apps, are a dead end. I've waited over a year for Daz to fix / finish their .FBX exporter, but it keeps on getting put off.

From what I've observed here on this forum and from my own observations, the best tools for Unity content creation seem to be Cheetah 3D, Blender, Cinema 4D, and Maya.

 

hmmm how can you say C4D? with no 2uv export... I think you forget 3dsmax here

did open a can of worms now?




Its a great disscution keep it up, we are about to do some rigging and animation, so we are experimenting/learning about animation/rigging. We are working on pc and mac inhouse...

 

I would go for Blender for character animation. Cheetah3D is a very robust modeller, but the animation tools are not enough for any serious animation work. And I don´t know anything you can do in Maya that you cannot do in Blender.

 

If you can handle the blender interface. I've tried so many times to do simple little things in blender but it always ends in me quitting the app angrily with little or no progress, and thats not indicative of a lack of effort, its just frustration at an app that wont work like a 3d app should. Cheetah on the other hand is a breeze. I really wouldnt wish blender on anyone personally, It should come with a big pack of meds, some painkillers, anti-depressants, and valium. I get chills when people recommend this to others...

If your beginning in 3d and have no money, Id say use wings instead. Dont do your head in with blender. And for the price of Cheetah, well whats the debate really...

Cheetah does have an f-curve editor.

AC

 

I find Wings to be quite obnoxious to work with (the interface is just so '80s) and would highly recommend Blender instead. Just goes to show, eh? Particularly the UV mapping seems better than most.

--Eric

 

Blender´s UI terrible difficulty is just a myth. I have teached Blender to 3D begginers and they had no problems at all for understanding and use it. And it offers such a so powerfull toolset and quick workflow, of course once learned enough, that I cannot understand why some people keeps saying bad things about it in public.

I will not say more bad things about Cheetah3D, it has a very nice modelling and now rendering toolset, but as an animation tool you just cannot compare it with C4D, Maya or Blender. An F-curve editor is not enough, and even Martin agrees it needs more and deeper animation tools.

 

*Particularly the UV mapping seems better than most.

Good luck getting that far if you've never fired it up. One of my drag blender to the trash moments was trying to Unwrap A plane with a few extruded faces. For the amount of effort required to get it do such a thing, It doesnt seem worth it to me. Such A thing took minutes to figure out in cheetah, and seconds to execute. Id favor that "UVMapper" freebie app in the free category over putting my head in (a) blender.

But I suppose this is a thread about character animation, and as far as I can see Cheetah works well,

Preferences huh? Oh well each to their own..Im just glad Unity works so well for us all.

>"Blender´s UI terrible difficulty is just a myth. "
Sorry I completely disagree. :roll:
AC

 

Uh-oh, another "which 3D app is better" debate. Time to feed this puppy...

I've got to say that Blender's interface is unconventional but once learned it is very efficient and straight-forward. But the problem I've found is that once you've learned Blender, every other app on the market will seem difficult, almost impossible to figure out, which leads me to believe that Blender has some how reprogrammed my brain. Perhaps theres some subliminal cold-war era hypnotic system hidden somewhere in Blender's UI that does this, I'm not sure. All I know is that now when I try to learn Cheetah 3D (which everyone says is easy), C4D (which everyone says is better) and Modo (which everyone says is slick) my brain just goes blank. What do you think, maybe therapy will help?

 

LOL

I cannot agree more, I am also "blenderized"...
I feel the same with Blender as with Unity: once you have tryed it enough, there is no way to go back to any other engine...

 

Dont know how I missed this post...

Sivan_LYG

I use lightwave and while it was a bit tricky, I can export an animated FBX every time.

Please let me help you.

 

I'm a Wings 3D fan as far as actually modeling goes, mainly because it's so fast. (I can model an iPod nano in 53 seconds.) It does lack a bit in (read: doesn't support) things like animation and rendering. But I love it anyway