Does anyone use DAZ assets for Unity games?

Hi guys/gals

I've been looking at DAZ assets recently; I did look at it many years ago, when they had their Victoria 3 up for sale; and there was no license for game products from them, but then moved on since it was not worth it, was not legal and the amount of work needed to use their stuff in Unity was too much, compared to make my own.

Recently I discovered that they changed their license, from a massive game license for 1 game (was like 500 dollars?), to a per-item license, and considering their new figures, it may be worth the shot.

Did anyone tried their more recent asset? Are they worth it compared to the game assets you find on the Unity store for example? Got very little time nowadays for experiments so I would rather rely on someone that has experience already and can give a clear picture of the situation.
Thanks!

 

Review some of the older posts. Several people use Daz. And several people have import and setup issues.
I believe the default Daz rig requires extensive editing to get Daz content working with humanoid. Also some have had issues with eyes and hair textures. I cant provide specifics since I do not use Daz - they look 'odd' to me and recognizable.

 

From what I recall of the past thread most people thought the new license was actually far more expensive because you can and most likely will quickly surpass the previous $500 figure if you need more than the character itself as every asset has its own individual license.

 

In terms of licensing, it would probably be better to go with MakeHuman than Daz, as it has - as the MakeHuman folks claim - the most liberal license in the world. Basically, anything you create via the software is completely free for commercial use. The only restriction is that you cannot use any MakeHuman-created assets if you are developing a closed-source rival to MakeHuman itself. Other than that, you can apparently use them as you like.

http://www.makehuman.org/

 

DAZ stuff is basically only used for people's personal porno projects.

 

Thanks for your replies; I am still looking into the matter.

I did import one of their figures years ago in Unity, since I was helping DAZ as external tester for their game license workflow; and I do recall that the skeleton was a bit of a problem, but further builds of Unity did change that. I tried importing an exported figure from DAZ studio and use Unitychan animation controller on it; and it works almost perfectly without a single change.

License could be a problem if you use alot of assets, but if you have just few; it is probably not that bad (although the license they had before was more convenient in general, I agree).

The issue with makehuman and other similar products, is that you have to rig them, or if they can be imported with rig on; they are just the naked person...you have to put clothes on them, and just the idea of the workflow needed for that, is enough to put off many people. I am fundamentally a programmer, not an artist, so I would rather pay for the stuff that I do not know well, and focus on what I know very well; which is why I was looking into DAZ assets.

Sad that they are used mostly for adult content; but I have seen almost anything used for that purpose, included rip from video games mesh; so that does not surprise me.

On a side note, is there any software that allow you to have a rigged generic anime figure; and add clothes/hair/expressions on them, kinda like you do in many 2d applications? I did find a great one that was generating unique anime style characters; but that was onlyl for 2d assets. Useful if you need portraits in a game for the dialogues, but overall I need something that is 3d and not 2d.
Beside Poser/DAZ and anime studio EX, I found nothing that was like that (or maybe I did miss something).

 

I think Lane was being a little bit facetious as they have been used in quite a few game projects (Morph3D even more so), although with the new somewhat confusing licensing schema and costs I don't believe it's worth it.

You're going to have to do work to the characters anyway (as they are heavy out the box), whilst they are useful for prototyping / storyboards / test morphs etc. it only saves you so much time.. In an RPG etc. though having a creation suite is a necessity.

Under the old "cover all" license which pretty much said "if you use a Daz original (or have X creator license) w/ indie license you're fine". Now you have to pay for "interactive" licenses which sometimes costs more than the item, the old "cover all" could be had for less than $150.00..

The likes of @Ony has made a career from what you call "sad", I'm happy for anyone who does well in this industry.. What is "sad" is Daz could of been the ultimate character creation system for a vast amount of games, it could be the Speedtree of the character world. I do RPG's and it would be ideal, now I have to create a system that pretty much does the exact same.

The restrictions / policies etc. get in the way.. They should make blanket store / game licenses like the Unity asset store, allow restricted mod rights (like you have to add your own morphs, textures to the base model to release as a mod item for your game).. Then finish off their toolsets..

I make all my characters from scratch now, I've searched through every character creation system there is and ultimatley makehuman (or the addon for Blender) is probably your best bet if you can't do it yourself.

If you're serious that is.

 

@ShadowK Indeed the license is a problem; especially if you need to pay for every item, which in the case of a generic RPG, start to be very expensive.

Regarding adult content, I am mostly indifferent; if people buy these products (look at japanese games for example); then there is demand and someone has to do it. I had requests for adult oriented projects and I did that too; although I would rather not put my name on them, for the simple reason that I care more about "standard" projects. To each their own; mine was a "sad" out of the fact that the models are well made and used in that context seems a waste; not because adult products are sad (after all internet exist for porn, right?).

DAZ was planning to do something like you described, I was part of the tester team that was checking out that workflow to become a platform for 3d engines and game development; but I am not sure what happened next. After all, the models are not game-ready; they need work and I am not sure how much resource that company has, to deal with such high surge of requests. Morph3d is part of DAZ if I recall correctly; and you can see the limitations they have, due to the slow workflow to release new products, and some technical issues when using their products (which are fundamentally based on Genesis figure if I recall correctly).

I would love a system where I build what I need, like in Fuse; export it as game-ready figure; with different cloth set/hair/textures and the rig is already set to be compatible with the one in Unity; so all you have to do is to mix and match what you want, and you can focus on actually write the code for the game. As now I have yet to find a similar tool that allow for that; and even harder, since I am oriented to anime/cel-shaded style, so the options are limited.

I appreciate your efforts in making everything from scratch; although I wonder why do you re-make the same human figure when you can use the same base for anything these days (that's how many artists in game companies do: they have a base model and build on that). I do not have that patience; nor I have the artist skillset, since I am a developer, so to me the only alternative is hire someone, get pre-made generic models and modify them, or find a better solution (unlikely at this point).

 

@darshie1976

I completely agree, it is a waste.. How many characters are up on the asset store? All Daz need to do is keep making the base models, sort out the licenses and improve the toolsets..

Then they will attract many game artists that are happy with a Unity style licensing schema which they get a 30% or whatever cut for selling them.. It has a pretty decent animation system that just needs a bit of work for IK / FK / Physics.

Maybe at a stretch add a particle system / scripting API, then low and behold you have a complete creation system for cutscenes / characters / animations that is a one stop drop into the likes of Unity / UE.. Daz being a standalone creation kit is very powerful.

It is probably the closest I have seen to a complete solution for a very difficult and time consuming part of game creation, but they're going backwards not forwards. The games industry as a whole is massive, if done right it could be awesome.

I create them from scratch because there's no limitations, want a four armed character? No problem, want a talking tree again same ..

Although if you find anything that can really cut the headache down, bar the likes of Iclone / Makehuman let me know.

 

The asset store has a lot of characters, but they are mostly unique, and it is hard to get any sort of consistency.

You can recognize a game made with the asset stores from a mile away, and that is the issue with it. If the asset store had some sort of consistent artwork and assets, made by a set of curators for example (like DAZ does; you can tell from a mile the excellent work of Stonemason for example); I would be willing to spend much more than the average price.

Maybe Unity should start something like DAZ, although they are a company that makes a 3d engine, not assets, so ain't gonna happen for sure. What I don't get is why artists shoot high prices when you tell them you are going to use their assets for a game... the chances to be noticed if you do a good job in a game, are higher than in an animation or still render; so I would believe that it is in the interest of the artist to actually get in front as many people as possible, and a game is the right way to go. I did speak with some of the artists that make assets for various companies, and they all go full price craze when you ask them for assets to be used in a game Then we hear complains that indie studios hire artists from Asia, because they work for cheap; when the key of all is simply to use the right pricing.

Anyway; that is going in a tangent; the issue is not the asset price in the end, but the consistency that is lacking, unless you make everything in house; and some do not have the capability to run the code, design and do the 3d part too.

You have a point regarding the 4 arms guy I just do humanoids all the time; so for me; one single figure as base to start is more than enough. I just have no skill in making heads; while it is much easier for me to model objects like spaceship, cars or mecha

Is Iclone any better than DAZ? I never tried it because they do not seem to have toon/anime based characters; which is the only style I work with.

 

...heard someone call my name and thought I'd chime in...

We've been making adult games since 2000 and have always made our own characters up until a few years ago when we decided to try using DAZ characters (with the $500 license). We released two games using them, and are currently finishing up a third game for a client, which was forked from one of the others, so it too uses DAZ.

With that said, if we make any new games from this point on we are going back to making our own characters, with our own style. DAZ let us do some interesting things, but ultimately the characters tend to verge on the "slightly boring" side, at least from our perspective as artists. It's hard to do anything really out of the ordinary with them, not to mention that the characters look pretty much the same from game to game, and, again, as artists... meh.

DAZ characters are also obviously very high poly, so you have to decimate them properly so they look good at lower res, but even with using their Decimator you still have to keep them fairly high or they look bad. We had to rework the eyes because DAZ eyes just don't come into Unity properly. Things like that, basically. Clothing is a pain in the neck, with no consistency across the board from item to item, leading to much more time having to be spent making them look good and work in a game without a bunch of separate workarounds for each item. Way too much effort for not enough oomph, if you will.

So yeah, we used them briefly, but won't use them again unless a client really wants us to. Even then I'd try to dissuade them. Just not worth it in the end.

But, oh yeah, I'm not in this business anymore (hah, right!) so, what the hell am I doing here in this thread? Ciao.

 

That was a good feedback; thanks for posting.

From my perspective; the idea is fundamentally to use the characters as main character or side characters depending from the context. As you pointed out, they are fairly high poly; so I assume it may be OK for an adult game where you interact with few characters at time; instead than with a crowd (well, I guess the crowd is also an option in adult games; but moving on).

Regarding being "boring"; I can say that not being an artist, does not affect me. there is a decent amount of morphs on the face to give a decent look; and I don't expect to just use them as they are, since they were not meant to be used in that way; but I think I can manage regarding the look.

Clothes are the main pain here...I need variety and I need to fit clothes on any character; so I am not bound to a specific setting. That's why I did approve the move from DAZ to make Morph3d and focus on low poly assets with clothing that fit automatically; but sadly they went on the tangent and instead of converting the cool stuff and make new cooler stuff, they did settle for the avatar market; which honestly I don't know how much money can bring, compared to a great set of consistent clothes and characters....which is what most of the community is looking for a long time.

The thing that disappoint me is that there are adult games that has exactly what I am looking for; from the perspective of character creation; and ironically we can't get something comparable to the flexibility of Japanese adult games character creation for non-adult usage. While searching for anime content I did stumble in this 3d game that makes you create a virtual companion, which is then placed in various environment for adult action; but the screens from the character creation were the ideal setup that I wanted: standard bald character; you can put on clothes and hair to make it into different characters; and being the same skeleton, you animate it once and done. The only thing missing was the export function to save the FBX file; other than that, it was perfect.

If you have artists that can do your own model, you are good to go; sadly I am a one person setup; and I am a programmer, not an artist, so I rely on whatever artists make