Desktop Mascot Maker

Hi, you can download exe-type demo from here:
http://panzersoft.web.fc2.com/assetstore_demo.html

If you want to try this asset, download trial project from here.
https://s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/panzersoft-assetstore/DesktopMascotMakerTrial.zip

 

"Desktop Mascot Maker : https://www.assetstore.unity3d.com/en/#!/content/23732"
Hi,in Unity2017and.Net4.6,error:"FileNotFoundException: Could not load file or assembly 'Microsoft.VisualBasic, Version=8.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=b03f5f7f11d50a3a' or one of its dependencies.". How to solve it?

Solved! I update the Microsoft.VisualBasic.dll to .Net4.x，more features can be use!

 

Questions:
1. Are there going to be any upcoming updates/features ?
2. Can we apply custom animations to the character and make it listen to events to play those animations (like single click on character or double click, etc.)
3. Relating to #2, how about being able to play voice/sound ?
4. Is this still considered a game playing with transparent window/background ?
5. To what extent can we use other custom code/libraries ? For example, what if I wanted to add a Voice Detection code (Voice2Text) to make it detect some voice commands and do something like "show time" etc.

My major interest in it is if this can be configured easily to do some simple tasks or show clock or GUI etc. to act like a personal AI/Assistant

 

Hi, thank you for your questions.

1. No, I have no particular plans for now.

2. You can use Desktop Mascot Maker's event system. See the reference page 21.
https://s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/panzersoft-assetstore/ReferenceManual.pdf

3. You can use AudioSource.PlayOneShot with Desktop Mascot Maker's event system.

4. Desktop Mascot Maker makes a mascot in the special form(Windows.Form) and does not make a mascot in the Unity's main window. So I think making a game with Desktop Mascot Maker is a little hard.

5. Desktop Mascot Maker supports uGUI so you can display the clock with your mascot. Ofcourse you can enable/disable the uGUI components through some voice detection modules.

 

Thanks for the reply, I actually sent you a email too (from your website address) but the reply took quite long enough that I took a leap of faith and bought it the same day itself.
I actually answered most of my questions by testing the asset and its quite amazing. I had a few followup questions.

1. So if I understand correct the asset is just using WindowsForms and OpenCV to provide transparency to the form's BG ? Other than that is there any other limitation to use custom code, functions or code-related APIs/Libraries of Unity ?
2. There is a demo scene but totally in japanese language which uses Alicia model. What demo does it provide ? I tried to use it but couldn't figure out. Is it for IK and uses mouse position as LookAt ?
3. Is there any performance overhead to the asset/windows form when compared to running it as a unity game/app ?
Specially when using animations ?

 

Hi, sorry for my late reply.

1. This asset uses WindowsForms' Bitmap display functions and OpenCV's image format transform functions. This asset have one limitation that the asset can't use Unity's uGUI intractable components (e.g. Button, SlideBar).

2. Yes, Alicia model's demo is just additional demo for a character. You can only learn new things about IK Look At and Blend Shapes.

3. Animations are not related to the asset's performance. The WindowsForm's width/height has great influence on the performance because the asset's main performance bottleneck is OpenCV's image transfer operations. So the WindowsForm's width/height should be small as much as possible.

 

Thanks for clarification, so for #1 to use button or interactable GUI component, how do we do it ? I wanted a right click menu on the character for a few options/settings

 

If you want to create a uGUI button over the mascot, I think it's easy to use MascotMakerMulti components and create "button only" mascot that separated from main mascot. Then you can simulate button interaction by scripting like following:
https://answers.unity.com/questions/820599/simulate-button-presses-through-code-unity-46-gui.html
Now I am testing a toy demo scene about this "button mascot" and it will be shared soon here.

 

Hi
There are two working areas: the red line (mascotte form size), and the actual working area (see yellow arrows).
I can not adjust the yellow arrow area (it is an unusable portrait resolution), which is more important for me (it cuts the characters when you want to draw them closer). When I increase the red line area, the yellow stays the same. Can you tell me, where to adjust this, plz?
By the way, great asset!

 

Hi, it's not recommended to attach two components(Mascot Maker Multi and Mascot Maker) on the same game object. Please remove Mascot Maker (or Mascot Maker Multi) component and then tweak Mascot Maker Multi component.

 

Still, the characters are too small. When I draw them closer, some parts will be cut off. I know, I do something wrong.

 

I have started a fresh scene and now looks everything perfect. Ty.

 

Did you get to test or make buttons usable ? I wanted to create a menu or a settings screen but not quite sure how to go around other than using that window opacity thing and creating a single settings screen in it and hide/show it using opacity

 

Hi, now I submitted new Desktop Mascot Maker Version 2.0.0 to the asset store.

2018/04/15 Version 2.0.0:
New feature, uGUI Interactions. Added new demo to use interact components (Button, Toggle and Toggle Group) on the mascot. Please see the scene Demo08_uGUIInteract.

Version 2.0.0 will be available within a week.



Also I uploaded new demo program made with Version 2.0.0 here. Please check the Demo08.
https://s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/panzersoft-assetstore/DesktopMascotMakerDemo200.zip

 

Woot nice, thank you. Will update once its live.

Also, I am getting this weird error and a crash when trying to play a animation clip

Code (CSharp):

1. ObjectDisposedException: The object was used after being disposed.
2. System.Windows.Forms.Control.CreateHandle ()
3. System.Windows.Forms.Form.CreateHandle ()
4. System.Windows.Forms.Control.get_Handle ()
5. (wrapper remoting-invoke-with-check) System.Windows.Forms.Control:get_Handle ()
6. DesktopMascotMaker.MascotMaker+MascotForm.Repaint (System.Drawing.Bitmap bitmap, Byte opacity) (at Assets/DesktopMascotMaker/Script/MascotMaker.cs:200)
7. (wrapper remoting-invoke-with-check) DesktopMascotMaker.MascotMaker/MascotForm:Repaint (System.Drawing.Bitmap,byte)
8. DesktopMascotMaker.MascotMaker.UpdateCore () (at Assets/DesktopMascotMaker/Script/MascotMaker.cs:896)
9. DesktopMascotMaker.MascotMaker.Update () (at Assets/DesktopMascotMaker/Script/MascotMaker.cs:923)
10.  

As for more details, animation is working fine when I spawn the prefab/character initially but if I destroy it and spawn a new character/prefab, its then when clicking on it causes that error (I am using mouse click event handler to play animation).
Animation itself is otherwise fine




#2 There is another weird problem/bug that many times the mascot window/frame appears blank without mascot and you need to change the value of window/frame size to anything +- even by 0.1 to make mascot character to appear

 

Just to update, both problems solved:

1. That error was being caused by event handler probably trying to still access the destroyed object. I debugged more and figured that the crash/error was whenever new object's event handler was caused and it would Log new object's name/reference but crash at that point as it was trying to access the old object's delegate method too (since the object/class subscribes to event handler).
The fix was to unsubscribe (-=) from event handler before destroying the new object. When new object is created/spawned, it subscribes (+=) to the event handler against.

2. This problem was being caused by both MascotMaker and MultiMascotMaker component being on object. Even if one of those is disabled (like in my case), it causes that weird issue of object not being visible. Probably the cause is that whichever component you added the last (MultiMascotMaker in my case) considers itself the latest instance/singleton but since its disabled, it doesnt shows the object.
By making any changes to the MascotMaker component (which was enabled) I think it was reloading the instance to the active one and thus showing the character.
Removing the disabled MultiMascotMaker component solved the issue.


I think you can add a safe check in both those components to check if the other component is also added to the object and give a warning or fail to run.

 

Hey, any plans for this on Mac/OSX or can you point me in right direction for porting it to mac

 

Unfortunately this asset uses Windows API deeply, it's difficult to port to mac. I tried to use some utility software(winebottler/easywine/nxwine) but could not run on mac.

https://www.winehq.org/
http://winebottler.kronenberg.org/

 

I have sent you a Private Message here on forums, please check. Its quite a weird and bug-looking performance issue.

 

Had sent you a email and PM both yet no response :/ That performance bug and issue really needs a fix. 30% usage is no joke on small and high end (G4560, i5-3570, i7-7700 and i7-8250) CPUs alike

 

Are the performance issues intended/as expected then ? Its a real bummer as they seem somewhat like a bug which can be optimized/fine tuned. So if you are not getting the time to do it, please point us in the right direction to do it ourself.

 

A great asset sadly abandoned :/ Quite unusable with the performance bottleneck it currently has. 40% CPU usage on a i7-7700/GTX1070 is no joke.

 

I tried the demo but it was incredibly slow and took over my mouse, took me a while to work out how to kill it. I love the idea but doesnt seem great on this pc, cpu usage was very high.

 

Hi, this asset is not so good performance when you use large mascot size, sorry. If you want to use large size mascot (for example, Screen size), please try this asset.
https://github.com/kirurobo/UniWinApi
This asset "UniWinApi" makes Unity's main widow transparent so it's performance is better. Also, this is free.