Character Clothing - What are your needs?

My name is Lori and I'm an advanced Marvelous Designer user. I wrote the book "Understanding Marvelous Designer: A Guide for CG Artists" and I need your help.

I was going to sell MD files with garments to game developers, but I'm not convinced that everyone wants to buy MD and learn to use it. I think most of you just want really great clothes for your characters. I would love to supply you those clothes, but I don't know what you need. I'm new to game development and I'm working through Unity tutorials to learn. There is so much I don't know that I thought it would be easier to ask you all directly.

MD does a terrible job with quads, so I know that the garments will need to be re-topologized, so that is a requirement. Do you want very detailed high poly count meshes that you can then simplify or do you want low poly, or do you want both?

Do you want the fabric textures (diffuse, bump, normal) to go with the garments or just the mesh?

What character should be used as the base for the garment creation? Should I just create characters (I use the Manual Bastioni LAB) and give them to you with the clothing? Bastioni is working on a proxy system that would allow you to resize clothing based on the character mesh. Would that be a viable option? I think the base character is really the biggest issue to solve.

Making very realistic, high quality clothing for game developers is my goal. I just need your insights to make it a reality. I really appreciate your time and feedback.

 

I can't speak for everyone, but I'd be very interested in low-to-medium poly meshes, with fabric textures, built for UMA characters.

Clothing designed in a modular fashion (pun intended) would be ideal; full-body outfits are of fairly limited use unless one has a large budget. For those of us making games with Asset Store sized budgets, being able to mix and match pieces of clothing is rather essential.

Will B's collection of fantasy RPG outfits for UMA is a prime example. Some combinations don't quite work, but for the most part you can mix pieces from different sets to create different looks. Most of his sets also include masked overlays so that you can adjust the color of two separate parts of the mesh (say the shirt and the jacket worn over top).

There is also a distinct lack of high quality moden-day clothing available for UMA characters, so there is potentially an underserved market there (no idea how large that market is). When I'm working on fantasy stuff, I use UMA; when I'm working on modern day stuff, I end up using Fuse characters (and losing the ability to easily change clothing meshes at runtime).

I don't know what the most commonly used character models are among Unity developers who rely on the Asset Store for artwork. I've seen one artist release some of the same outfits for both UMA and Fuse characters, so there's always the option of providing them for multiple character models, if you have the time to invest in learning the intricacies of each.

 

That is incredibly helpful. I had no idea about UMA, but I can definitely develop for that. I understand that this market may be people with a lower budget and less need for hi-res work. However, there are a lot more of these folks than those looking for AAA assets.

The mix and match thing is very difficult. The garment underneath really dictates how far out the second layer would be. A t-shirt pushes out much less than a button-down shirt. It is something I would have to play with to see if it could be perfected. I completely understand why you would want this, so it would be a viable goal in my work.

My expertise is in realistic fabric garments. I don't get into all the armor and hardware. I probably wouldn't contribute to the fantasy lines.

Thank you for taking the time to comment. Your insights are very valuable to me.

 

Is it possible to run the MD simulations in realtime on mobiles ?

 

I will echo Teagans Dads suggestion to align your efforts to work with UMA. This will require ample research but will be the best approach for your expertise.
Also steer away from any customer requirements to 'do' edits to content outside of Unity. Having that as a requirement to use your packs will reduce the number of customers greatly.

 

Glad you found my input useful!

If you're targeting the Unity Asset Store, then I think by definition you're generally looking at a market with hobbyist to indie level budgets.

Hi-res assets are great, but the best visual results come from maintaining a consistent aesthetic throughout the project (in my opinion). There are many high quality (and reasonably priced) but not quite AAA-level visual assets on the UAS (perhaps on par with industry AAA-level assets from 5-10 years ago).

Oh, it's definitely not a trivial task, and it requires a significant degree of planning before actually producing any models.

Personally, I care far, far more about being able to mix and match shirts and pants than about whether t-shirts push out less than button-down shirts. It's nice to have that level of detail, of course, but if I need to populate an area with a couple dozen NPCs, it's more important to me that player is able to easily differentiate NPCs at a glance than it is that individual NPCs are able to stand up to close visual scrutiny. Game development is all about compromises.

I think that most developers who are using UMA would be willing to sacrifice some of the finer details in return for greater versatility. I don't have any data to back that up though; it's just my gut feeling based on my experience so far.

Between Will B and Arteria3D, there are a large number of very high quality fantasy clothing and armor sets available for UMA (and both artists continue to expand their offerings).

As I mentioned above, there is a distinct lack of high-quality modern-day clothing sets for UMA characters. Even if one is able to cobble together a few clothing packages from the UAS, they're all going to be by different authors and thus aren't likely to be compatible with one another -- both in terms of the meshes fitting together neatly and also the overall visual style.

While I don't presume to speak for everyone, versatility is usually the key factor for me when deciding whether or not to purchase a package of art assets.

For example, Set A consists four very high quality and intricately detailed outfits (each one having a shirt, a pair of pants, and footwear, but pieces of each outfit can't be mixed). Set B consists of four high quality outfits where the shirts, pants, and footwear can be mixed in pretty much any combination. For argument's sake, let's say that they are both priced at $50.

I might buy Set A if I think I'll have a specific use for one or more of the outfits; even then I might wait to see if it goes on sale unless I have immediate use for that specific outfit.

Set B offers me much more value, and I would be much more likely to purchase it, even if I don't have a specific need for any single item in it, as it becomes a nice addition to my toolbox when creating NPCs for my game. Bonus points if each mesh has a number of different textures that can be applied to it, and extra bonus points if each of those textures has a corresponding alpha masked texture so that the "base" and "trim/detail" elements can have colors adjusted independently. I would purchase Set B with both of those bonus features without a second thought.

The entire product line wouldn't necessarily need to be cross-compatible to the point of always being able to mix and match upper and lower body clothing. Dresses, for example, wouldn't work very well this way. Casual wear doesn't need to be totally compatible with formal wear.

Anyway, sorry if that got a little bit long. Just sharing my perspective on this.

 

If you're interested in creating clothing for UMA, the content pack is here:

https://github.com/umasteeringgroup/content-pack

This includes the base models in various formats, plus Marvelous Designer avatars. In addition, there are some videos here that show how to rig the models: