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Free character creation in Unity

Discussion in 'Editor & General Support' started by getzel, Apr 11, 2017.

  1. getzel

    getzel

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    Hello guys !
    This is a message for users and Unity team.

    With the help of Mixamo and Adobe Fuse, programmers can concentrate on coding, need to do less graphism because they have free human models and animation.

    I would prefer that Unity make a tool or free asset to do that directly in their software. Because :
    - We wouldn't need to use a third party software (we don't know how long Fuse etc will be free).
    - We will be able to customize in game if there is a script.

    * Like in the free software open source Makehuman, we have a base nude human model and we morph it.
    Then we choose clothes. It creates a model that we can save in our asset.
    * We have also a script to do it in game. A player can create his own model, store and change it later, very useful for multiplayer games.
    Then for animations, we just put the mixamo one's because the bones are humanoid.

    I think it's an important feature in a game engine and a priority for Unity.
    What do you think about it ?

    Thank you for your attention.
     
    Last edited: Apr 11, 2017
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  2. neginfinity

    neginfinity

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    There's a character creation system called UMA, available on asset store and on github. Default body options are a bit lacking, though, but you can always add your own.

    There are also multiple products on Asset store aimed exactly at that. For example, there's Morph3D which comes with a free/lite version.

    And as you mentioned, makehuman can already be used in unity, although to be honest clothing creation process in it is a bit arcane.
     
  3. hippocoder

    hippocoder

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    https://feedback.unity3d.com/ is the correct way to request features in Unity, unless specifically asked for ie in beta or in response to [Official] posts.

    Thanks for your thoughts though :) just bear in mind traction might not happen on forums (it's not illegal to ask obviously!) - just makes it a bit easier for Unity to see what enough people might be asking for with the feedback site.
     
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  4. getzel

    getzel

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    hippocoder likes this.
  5. RavenOfCode

    RavenOfCode

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    Personally I think this is a terrible idea. You will end up with many people with the same models and animations and an increase in the asset flip mentality. As a programming I completely understand where you are coming from, but generic models/animations aren't a good solution. Just think of the amount of games that use the standard fps controller, most of them are pretty terrible and doing the same thing for art would be even worse.
     
  6. angrypenguin

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    If the tools are decent then "same models" doesn't have to be an issue. A lot of variation between human models can be pretty subtle, so having a reasonable library of different base pieces and then some scope to make subtle variations (scale, position, angle, color, maybe shape tweaking for the bigger parts) could make people look different enough.

    For animations... who cares? They're often going to be blended with other animations, they're going to be applied slightly differently in each game (different speeds and such) and in different combinations, and I doubt that most gamers would pick up on your characters using the same blended motions as other characters in other games.
     
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  7. Kiwasi

    Kiwasi

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    I prefer the idea of seperate software for specialist tasks like modelling. Same as I don't expect Unity to provide an IDE for me as a programmer.

    But it wouldn't surprise me if it happens.
     
  8. Dustin-Horne

    Dustin-Horne

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  9. theANMATOR2b

    theANMATOR2b

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    I do. :(

    Seriously - anybody else tired of seeing the side barrel roll monkey flip jump used initially in the gdc 2013 mecanim project?

    Unique animations like that can't be blended into anything else to make it look different, and a lot of people will see it and think it's a unique animation so they want to use it in there game.
    Those who tend to use non-custom animations (like the mit mocap library) tend NOT to take the time to do animation blending so 'stock' mocap animations will look the same as other products that use the same base animations.

    Although I agree walks, runs, and idles if blended well can look fine even unique if attention to detail and time is provided to make quality animations - same as the model, the texture and other elements of a character asset.
     
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  10. LaneFox

    LaneFox

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    Yes. So many times yes. It was cool for one demo in 2013, but then I guess people just thought "oh hey, this must be how you do character controllers and animation now! I think we're ready for a public demo!".
     
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  11. getzel

    getzel

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    I was thinking again that this kind of tool is essential.
    In a lot of games, we see a kind of character customization even if it's not very advanced.
    For example Diablo 2. It is old and seem simple.
    But your character finds clothes and change its appearance.
    Complicate to do that in Unity...

    @BoredMormon You like to use other softwares.
    Sure, it will always be necessary in a big project.
    But for example Unity made a terrain editor in its software very early.
    However we could make terrains in Blender.
    Why they did that ? Because it's very convenient and faster.
     
    Last edited: Apr 13, 2017
  12. Kiwasi

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    You are kidding me right? This is one of my general concerns with a character created built in Unity. It might well end up on par with the Unity terrain tools in quality. Useful for a dirty prototype, but not much else.

    Unity doesn't need more prototyping tools. It's already awesome at prototyping. It's the high end stuff that needs more work. Stuff that you would see in a final game.
     
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  13. Ryiah

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    We often still have to because the Unity terrain system is simply that bad. We were promised a new one at least as far back as 2014 and it's still in the research stage of development.

    https://forum.unity3d.com/threads/official-new-terrain-system.255232/

    Create a copy of the body parts you want clothed and add mesh data to them to represent the clothing. At runtime simply replaced those parts with their clothed counterparts. That's how it works in Skyrim and many other games. From their tutorials that's how it appears to function within Adobe Fuse and Mixamo too.

    https://helpx.adobe.com/fuse/help/create-custom-fuse-clothing.html
    https://community.mixamo.com/hc/en-us/articles/203791536-Tutorial-Creating-Custom-Fuse-Clothing
     
    Last edited: Apr 14, 2017
  14. angrypenguin

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    Actually, they did it because terrain is a special case where having a pre-made mesh is often a sub-optimal way to render. If your terrain can be represented as a heightmap then it's more efficient to generate a mesh on the fly... which you can't do by exporting a model from Blender.
     
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  15. jc_lvngstn

    jc_lvngstn

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    What's interesting about this is (and I realize we are getting a little off topic but meh), on one hand this frustrates me because it is a prime example of my biggest frustration with Unity: They seem to struggle with improving their engine. I personally feel like it really says something that the terrain system has been in the state it's been now for so long. Thank goodness for the asset store, or just rolling your own meshes or finding decent terrain shaders.

    But... everyone wants a freaking voxel/infinite/procedural/floating islands in the sky frankenterrain system which is crazy and unrealistic. I guess in many cases, Unity's customers will just have to rely on the asset store for solutions. But that's STILL isn't an excuse for the abysmal progress, in my opinion.
     
  16. RichardKain

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    I don't think Unity should be building a feature like this into their own interface. Unity is not about producing art assets, which such a project would be very much focused on.

    That said, I do think that the Asset Store community should pursue such a project. This sort of content is right in their wheelhouse. A big problem with such a system is that you would have to dial back the personality of any such system in order to allow for the flexibility of creating reusable assets. Any personality, style or flair would have to be consistent across all created assets. Without this you would end up with very cookie-cutter, dull graphical assets.

    This is why I feel that the Asset creation community are the ones to tackle efforts like this. Just one single solution isn't going to suffice. But multiple different options might.
     
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  17. zombiegorilla

    zombiegorilla

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    I don't think that is an accurate assessment. Unity is always improving, a lot. Particles, rendering, effects, ui, animation, animation features, performance, vr, platforms and many, many more things. It is constantly improving, mostly in areas that are very common to most games.

    Sure, terrain is old, but it isn't exactly a deal breaker, clearly, it could be improved, but obviously it isn't a limitation. Not all games use terrains, and if the built-in terrain isn't a good fit, you can just model them, or pick one of several other options available. Improving the terrain will be helpful to some, at least those that use it. A built-in character solution is pretty much the same, but even less useful. Terrain is a tool and can be used for many many styles, and uses. Characters are completely different thing. UMA is useful, and about as far as it needs to go. Unity isn't a modeling tool. A generic built-in characters system isn't going improve the development of the tier of quality shipping games. (which is ultimately Unity's goal, successful games result in sales for Unity, crappy generic games help no one). It would only be a benefit for metric buttload of generic, one step above tutorial/asset flip games out there. While a terrain tool (improved or not) can and has been used in quality games, generic characters wouldn't be.

    I would much rather Unity continue to improve and add features that are commonly used, and help developers improve the development and quality of their games, rather than build toys to help people just playing around continue to cram kongregate full of generic stuff.
     
  18. Teila

    Teila

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    It is the Unity Community that is building UMA. That is the Unity Community project.

    Problem is, although this is a great system, it doesn't please everyone. For some, it is too difficult. They want drop in. For others, they want high poly Daz quality characters. Others have no idea how to create their own content, or they own skins or put better shaders on the characters.

    So...the complaints about ugly, difficult to use, etc, come slamming at the all volunteer Unity community that builds UMA. It really gets tiring, you know.

    Now folks say that the Unity community needs to stand up and do this. But what they are really saying is that the Unity community members should volunteer their time to make a system up to AAA standards.

    UMA is not ugly. The characters are beautiful if you know how to enhance them or take the time to learn. You can make your own races or even convert assets from the asset store into your own races, complete with the ability to customize the characters in-game. In the near future, there will even be optional blend shapes. And you can EASILY make your own custom content if you can use Blender and now with Chris' Skinn asset, you can rig the clothing too.

    And who is doing this? A group of very dedicated people who work very hard to bring something amazing to you for FREE!

    I am just a mod on their Slack forum but I have seen how hard they work. If you want AAA, go buy a system out there that cost lots of money. Deal with Morph3ds limiting EULA. If you want Free, take what you can get and enhance it yourself. Making a game is something you do. Unity and UMA are tools to help you. But you still have to do it.

    Richard, please know this was not at all aimed at you, just the community in general. Your quote just sparked my interest in this thread.

    I defend UMA all the time. A system this powerful for free is absolutely amazing.
     
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  19. Kiwasi

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    Thinking about it none of the games I've made have used characters of any sort. Few of the games I play use characters of any sort, and those that do couldn't be built via a generic system. Looking around at local developers using Unity, very few use characters.

    It's a small sample size. But from where I sit the majority of Unity developers don't use characters at all. And those that do wouldn't be interested in generic ones.

    Which puts Unity back at improving fundamental things. Better particle systems. Better lighting. Faster everything. More threads. Less bugs. And so on.

    Incidentally the same argument probably explains why Unity is running slowly with the terrain system. The absolute number of devs who would use it is low compared to other features.
     
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  20. neginfinity

    neginfinity

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    Speaking of which, trying to get proper character from a generator... and attach animation to them is very difficult and wastes a lot of time.

    I recall going through what felt like a hundred of mixamo animations without finding anything suitable. Even finding the "right" walkcycle can be difficult too.

    On other hand... RPG maker is popular, and there are plenty of games in it. Face generator in it was cool, so I see the appeal. Howedver, rpgmaker has very small number of animation frames, meaning generating stuff for it is easier than for a 3d game.
     
  21. hopeful

    hopeful

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    UMA is a great framework for characters, and in response to the OP, the original work on UMA (it is now at v2.5) was financed by Unity in order to make a free character generator for everyone to use.
     
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  22. getzel

    getzel

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    I tried UMA.
    It's buggy and not easy or intuitive.
    This is a lot of work but not ok for an official Unity kit.

    It's sad to pass by Mixamo site which is slow and not always working.
     
  23. Teila

    Teila

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    I have been using it all week and the only bugs I have found were the Teila created user errors. :) It is extremely stable at the moment. However, it can be a challenge especially if one does not take the time to learn or ask for help. Once you get it, it is so easy. :) Like anything else worthwhile, there is a learning curve.

    Try Fuse. It uses Mixamo animations and easy to use.
     
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  24. neginfinity

    neginfinity

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    Make sure you used github version and not the one from asset store. There's significant difference.
     
  25. syscrusher

    syscrusher

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    I have been revisiting my character creation method lately, as I prepare to transition from one project to my next. I'm pleased to see that the number and quality of options seems to be improving.

    I had investigated UMA 2 about a year ago, and although I got it to work, there were a lot of quality issues, and it was really hard to figure out how to customize. Today I started playing with version 2.5, and .... WOW! They've really moved this forward, a lot. I'll be spending some time digging into UMA 2 much more deeply, because it's now a serious contender. In particular, I want to see if I can get Substance working for clothing textures.

    I've also had good success with MakeHuman and Blender for creating premade characters. That's what I used in my last project, and the results were quite good. Initially, I had some crash problems with MakeHuman, but a software update seems to have fixed that problem for me.
     
  26. Teila

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    We are using substance painter to texture our clothing and it is working fine. :)
     
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  27. syscrusher

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    That's good to hear, Teila. I was actually hoping to use Designer, and perhaps offer some patches back to the community if I can make it work. Since UMA is so awesomely procedural otherwise, having procedural base textures would be really cool as well.

    Don't read too much into my post; it's still at a "concept" level of thinking here. :)
     
  28. Teila

    Teila

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    We do not use the procedural features of substance in your game with the UMA's yet. But since UMAs are just another skinned mesh, I do not see why they would not work. I think the issues would be the same as any mesh, especially a moving one...performance. Let us know how it works. :) You will probably get to that point before we do. lol
     
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  29. Not_Sure

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    While the democracy of Unity's assets is a fantastic feature, the other edge of the sword is that they can't just go and create their own versions of assets in the store already.

    Otherwise they risk cannibalizing the platform.

    How would you feel if you took a huge risk and put in thousands of hours on an asset, just to have the platform you developed it for make a free version and ruin your product over night?

    I bet you wouldn't do anything for the platform ever again.

    And I bet other people would see how you got screwed and also won't touch the asset store.

    Right now the only option they really have is to buy out assets that are clear winners of the product type.

    For example, no one was even close to Textmesh Pro and the market was almost completely dominated by TMP. So they bought it out and are integrating it into newer versions of Unity.
     
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  30. johnlanz

    johnlanz

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    I haven't tried UMA yet cause I've got a first impression that it doesn't look good on linear rendering and doesn't have a good PBR textures. I've been using Adobe Fuse since the PBR texture for fuse looks great especially if you're using post processing effect.
    But now I'm interested because you mentioned about Substance Painter.
    Does it mean that UMA with Substance Painter is now more realistic?
    Is there any tutorial out there how to use subtance painter with UMA?
     
  31. Teila

    Teila

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    UMA has PBR textures and has for a while now. :) The main UMA materials are all PBR. You can, of course, make your own materials too and it is not hard to change them out. I use an SSS material on mine and they look nice. I also use linear lighting. The video below shows some UMAs with SSS shaders and there are a few more demonstrations on my Youtube channel. I would have posted my female naked bodies but afraid Unity might censor me. lol



    We have used substance painter to paint clothing and it is beautiful. I am trying to motivate my artists to make some body textures as well, but will probably wait until Justb releases his new UMA models. :)

    As for using Substance painter with UMA, here is what we do. We take the fbx models of the clothing, or you can use the fbx for the character model (we have used the unified UMA for this) and just paint. That is all you really have to do. Save out the texture maps you need and create a material.

    I would show you some of our clothing we made but I cannot seem to find the pictures. I lost some when my computer crashed and burned a few months back so maybe I did not save everything I should have saved. lol If I find them I will post.

    Maybe I can get one of the artists to do a speed paint of a UMA object in Substance painter. It really is not any different from any other model. :)

    The benefits over Fuse is that your players can modify in runtime. :)

    P.S. Again, we have not used the procedural aspects of substances in our game so you will have to try that. If so, report back so others know it works. :) I imagine it will....but who knows. Once UMA is instantiated, it should work like any other skinned model.
     
    Last edited: Sep 21, 2017
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  32. Teila

    Teila

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    Wow, way too many smiles in that post. LOL
     
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  33. theANMATOR2b

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    You missed one - fixed for ya. :p
     
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  34. hopeful

    hopeful

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    UMA isn't an art solution. It is a way to apply procedural generation to characters to get - among other things - characters with unique looks instead of a bunch of clones. This approach also naturally works for player character customization.

    You can buy art for UMA or make your own. You can use the Unity standard shader, a shader from the store, or your own.
     
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  35. johnlanz

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    It doesn't matter if you're character looks generic as long as it looks great and realistic like this one:

    We don't see realistic characters more often in unity the close one I've got is the characters generated from Iclone.
    My point is a UMA character looks the same all the time, sorry but it doesn't looks unique. So maybe by using Substance Painter we can add more realism to it like the one in the video.
    Is there any character out there created in UMA that looks like or close like in the video? I'm exited to hear this.
     
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  36. hopeful

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    It sounds to me like you are actually looking for character art. Once you have some character art that you like, you can probably use it with the UMA system. For instance, if you like the MCS art ... you can use it with the UMA system.

    UMA is not the art. You are expected to supply your own art.
     
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  37. syscrusher

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    UMA solves a different problem. For all the realism of those characters in the video, all of them have predefined appearance (as @hopeful has pointed out, that is the character art). UMA is a procedural system for generating characters at runtime, whereas the ones in that (quite excellent, though...) video are premade ahead of time.

    It's pretty hard to make a software algorithm that can add all the fine touches of a human artist.

    Bear in mind, also, that UMA is free software provided by volunteers. Login to TurboSquid or a similar web site some time, and you'll see that high-poly character art can be very, very expensive (and with good reason, for creating it requires great talent and a lot of work).
     
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  38. mysticfall

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    I decided to use UMA for my game, but haven't yet spend enough time to study it thoroughly. However, that was the question I've been wondering about myself, so I'm also curious to know how close it can reach the level of photorealism shown in the above video, and how.

    I know that UMA itself does not restrict use of high quality textures or more advanced shaders, but I expect there could e some obstacles at least, when you actually set out to make your UMA character look as good as the one in such an example.

    Even though I haven't looked into the matter seriously yet, but I'm planning to do that very soon. For now, I only found that the default mesh and DNAs (pose bones and blendshapes) provided by UMA is somewhat limited, so I had hard time making characters to look sufficiently diverse (missing adjustment options for some facial features) and realistic (i.e. shape of female chest area). (I know I could overcome such issues, by creating a custom race but it'd be a tremendous task, adding all those pose bones, creating dedicated clothings, and etc.)

    As to textures, shaders and etc, I only guess it could be theoretically possible to add or change them, but I have little idea how much of a work it would be.

    I'm not really criticizing UMA or anything, because I know that it'd be good enough for large number of games, and I'm really glad such a flexible framework is available as an open source project.

    So, I'm curious to know what might be realistic limitations or obstacles in order to create a photorealistic character with UMA in its current form.
     
  39. hopeful

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    I would say there are zero obstacles to creating a photorealistic character ... and then plugging that character into UMA.

    UMA is just a system for helping you, the game dev, to organize and apply the meshes and textures you have created. When I say it helps you avoid clones, that's because you can take a pirate character - for instance - that you have created extra clothes and hair for, and have UMA randomly generate around that theme, so you can have pirate A, B, and C, etc., and they all have different clothing, faces, and hair, and they're also all of slightly different height and proportion and color. And you can keep getting random pirates every time you call for one. That's an example of why you'd want procedural generation.

    If you're trying to make a AAA main game character, you go and do that first. After you're done, you can apply UMA if it makes sense for your game. And if you don't need AAA art, you can take off the shelf art like MCS, MakeHuman, Fuse, or whatever, and run that art through UMA. You use whatever body meshes, clothing meshes, textures, and shaders you want.

    You can even apply UMA to animals, and generate herds of similar but unique sheep. ;)
     
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  40. mysticfall

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    Thanks for the answer! As I said in my previous post, I know that I can create a custom race in UMA and do what I want with it. But wouldn't it mean that I need to add a whole lot of pose bones, blendshapes, split meshes, clean up topology, create entire hair/clothes set just for that race?

    I thought about doing that with a model generated with Manuel Bastioni before, and I know that one of the able members of the UMA community has actually done just that (minus the clothes/hair part). But if what you meant by 'run that art through UMA' is such a process, I'm afraid I lack sufficient resources for that now.

    So I'm more interested what can be achieved by using the default mesh, or with minor modications that don't break compatibilty with stock clothes and hairs, and possibly by creating some custom textures.
     
  41. Xype

    Xype

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    Maybe not uma but thats not uma either.... Try the unity demos, blacksmith, the adam ones from this year. I could point to a couple of good characters on the asset store that get increadible with the right shaders applied as well. Unity can look just as amazing as that. You just gotta work it.
     
  42. Xype

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  43. Teila

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    But they do not have to look the same every time!!

    First of all, they do not look all the same. lol You can change the shapes on the body and on the face and come up with some unique looks.

    And best of all, you can expand on UMA.

    You can add wrinkles, tattoos, add bones that will extend the ability to morph the face and body, you can change the skin colors, paint your own skin textures, etc.

    And all of this is relatively easy, even if you are not an artist. Easier and better results if an artist does it, but not impossible for anyone.

    Blend shapes have been added experimentally to UMA and will be improved I am sure in future releases.

    You can take ANY 3d model, turn it into a UMA, create your own monster race that you can modify in game, make your own races of any type if you have the skill and patience to do so. As Hopeful says, there is nothing stopping you.

    If you prefer drop out of the box, UMAs do not all look the same. The Barbarians above are the same exact face/body because I was not showing off the faces or body differences you can make, but the clothing and tattoos and skin colors. lol

    As I stated above, new models are in the works. They won't be free as they are third party, but they will not be expensive. :)

    If this does not make you happy, then keep using Fuse. Very little in game development is as easy as just dropping something into the game. If that is all a developer wants to do, his game will be as generic and boring as the UMAs if you never do anything to customize them.
     
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  44. hopeful

    hopeful

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    How far you want to go in developing your own character art is totally up to you, your abilities, and your pocketbook.

    On a very practical level, if you have character textures you like, you can add them to UMA and use them. If you have character meshes you like, you can skin them to the UMA model, and use them. If you want to use different shaders, you just have to link them up (it's not too hard) and you can use them. If you are using humanoid mecanim, it's not like you have to start from scratch for every new race. If you are using a different base model shape, you will have to refit all the clothing you buy to it ... but then of course that is what you would want to do, because it would look funny if you didn't. ;)

    In pretty much every case - that is, with anything that gets out of the prototyping stage - everybody who uses UMA is going to add new meshes, new textures, and many will add their own preferred shader. If you want to implement blendshapes within UMA you can do it, but you have to have some know-how on how to work with blendshapes. (Keep in mind that blendshapes by nature are not great on performance, so you need to know how to get good performance out of them. So don't implement them until you have mastered them.)
     
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  45. johnlanz

    johnlanz

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    Guys lets refrain a bit maybe you misinterpreted what I'm saying. First of all I'm not against UMA and I just wanted UMA to look like 2017 characters.
    So lets compare UMA with fuse, Iclone and daz3d. Fuse is 2015 technology since its has been abandoned I think. Iclone and daz on the other hand are 2017 technology same with UMA since it has been updated.
    So if you take a look at this iclone character that is rendered in Unity and Unreal:

    Compare this to UMA and UMA is a bit behind. Were talking about character creator here not an art because this is the default of iclone. If you compare fuse and UMA they are a bit the same on level. If fuse updated their software I think its close to what Iclone have.
    So the question then is from the character creator perspective how can UMA look like a 2017 characters?
     
  46. hopeful

    hopeful

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    With all due respect, you seem to keep talking about character art - meshes, textures, shaders, and so on - and not about UMA at all.

    All I see in that video is character art. There is nothing about that character that I can see that would prevent it from running in an UMA framework. If you create the character, create the coat (with cloth physics), you can run it in UMA, and use UMA's procedural creation to make an army of different looking characters using the same art.

    UMA is not the same sort of thing as DAZ, Fuse, or whatever. But you can take DAZ and Fuse models and use them in UMA.

    I don't know why this is difficult for so many people to understand, and believe me there have been a ton of misunderstandings about this over the years. But UMA is not the art. You supply the art.

    It's like the difference between a prototype and a factory. The character art you decide on is the prototype. And when you feed it into UMA, you are feeding it into the factory which can assemble many different versions of it on demand.

    So instead of creating in a modeling tool or in the Unity editor pirate A with the white shirt, and pirate B with the blue shirt, and so on till you have laboriously made forty different pirates by hand - and these are the only pirates that can exist in your game, and your game has to ship with them all taking up space (40x1) - you make the one pirate with a few different options, feed it into UMA, and you have virtually unlimited numbers of different pirates you can create as needed. Create 100 unique pirates, if you wish. Create a town full of them. But your game is very slender when you ship it, because you are only storing one pirate plus a few clothing options. It only takes a few different shirts, hats, boots, beards, missing teeth, etc. to allow for a super high number of unique combinations, especially when you allow for color options and variations in character dimensions.
     
    Last edited: Sep 23, 2017
  47. mysticfall

    mysticfall

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    But then, I'll have to add all the pose bones, refit hairs and clothes, clean up the topology, and etc myself, which might not be an viable option for me for I have only limited resources.

    I do love UMA and I'm determined to stick with it as long as it remains the only viable character system in Unity that is developed under an open source license. However, I do feel there could be some room for improvements.

    I just wish UMA shipped with an alternative version of default mesh and textures which are suitable for more realistic characters with more morph options. I'm not saying that UMA should be something like a Daz Studio, but I still wish its base model (or an alternative version of it) could provide as much variety and realism as Daz's Genesis characters do.

    Probably, it will reach that stage in time, but I was curious as to how much, and what kinds of work it would realistically take if someone wanted to create a photorealistic character with UMA today. And, because I haven't seen a single example from anyone shows it can be done, so I was concerned there might be more obstacles than I imagine there to be, and that was the reason why I asked such a question above.
     
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  48. hopeful

    hopeful

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    You're making this all sound so difficult. If you have goals that are beyond your abilities and resources, you aren't going to attain them. So you'll either have to rein your goals in to a manageable level or expand your abilities and/or resources.

    If you are waiting for UMA to "evolve" to a level where it can run photorealistic characters ... it can do that already, because that isn't really a property of UMA. That has to do with shaders and artwork. It was possible to create photorealistic characters using UMA back in 2014, with Skyshop, if you had the Pro license (which would give you access to linear color space). With Unity 5's PBR and the free version having all the features that used to be locked out ... what is to stop you?

    If you want to expand your abilities, I suggest using Blender and - if you want - the high poly meshes that I think by now come free with UMA. (They used to be sold by Fernando on the store, but he's donated them to the community. They won't be in the UMA download in the store, but they should be in the UMA github in a separate folder for art.)

    If having a native UMA high poly mesh doesn't get the look you want (quite likely, since most of the magic is in the textures and shader), try using a HQ texture, like the ones that come with the free MCS male and female. You can also UMA-fy the Challenger and Blacksmith characters, the ISBIT characters, and so on.

    I know Will B, who sells UMA art in the store, has been giving some free art to the UMA community, but I don't know where it currently stands on texture quality and polys. I would imagine they're keeping the free stuff basic.

    If you specifically want DAZ models and textures, you will have to pay for a DAZ game license in addition to the DAZ model expense. But once you've done that, you can begin putting them into UMA.

    If you don't use UMA, all it means is you will have to create all of your models by hand or pay for them to be created for you. You likely won't have access to any procedural creation. You'll have to decide which is the more practical option for your type of game.

    But you're on your own timeline. So if you can afford to be patient on art, then work on the rest of your game and see where the art is at when you're done with the game itself and can focus on art.

    Anyway, there's nothing in UMA to stop people from making photorealistic characters using UMA. What you're thinking of in terms of photorealism is probably fancy skin textures, hair tech, and shaders, which is something in the art department, and not really related to UMA at all. Also, once you get the AAA character created, you'll want to have top notch lighting and shadows to make it photorealistic, and again, that's not an UMA thing. ;)
     
    Last edited: Sep 23, 2017
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  49. mysticfall

    mysticfall

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    I don't want to be confrontational, but are you saying that duplicating all the posebones that UMA's default mesh provides into a custom mesh isn't a time consuming task?

    And it's not even the only task that can be time consuming, if I'm not mistaken. Are such tasks like creating photorealistic skin textures in Substance toolset, and refitting clothes, and etc really something easy that any casual user of UMA should be familiar with already?

    I visit UMA channel on Slack from time to time to see what's happening. And recently, one of the more experienced members of the community shared his progress of creating new UMA races based on Manuel Bastioni models.

    From what I've seen, the task didn't really look trivial, and that's without considering all the additional work that might be needed for creating new textures, refitting hairs, clothes, and etc.

    For one thing, the default races are still missing quite many DNAs to create realistic characters with sufficient variety. Try creating an Asian, or obese character, for example, and see if you can get it to photorealistic level. Or create a female character and compare it to Genesis model from Daz to see how much anatomical details are missing.

    And the default textures and hairs it provides are nowhere near photorealistic level and there's no 3rd party vendor that sells such items to my knowledge yet.

    Meshes, textures, DNAs for default races are all parts of UMA, not something everyone should obtain from external sources. If people are not supposed to use them as they are, I don't see any point in selling clothes, hairs, faces, and etc. for UMA characters on Asset Store, because everybody should create their own art.

    Again, I'm not bashing UMA as I do like using it. But I feel you sounds like there's absolutely nothing that can be done on UMA's part to make it easier for its users to create photorealistic characters, or as if it's already so easy that people shouldn't have any difficulties if they try, which doesn't really corresponds to my own experience.
     
  50. Teila

    Teila

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    You CAN make them look however you want. You could pay someone to make you new base models or buy them on Cubebrush or Turbosquid or make them in Make Human and then turn them into UMA's very easily. UMA is the system, any character model can be made into a UMA.

    Of course, if you want to purchase the clothing on the asset store rather than make your own or hire someone to make the clothing, then you need to make sure your new UMA has the same body sizes where the clothing meets the seams, such as the wrists, ankles, neck, and any other seam edges on the clothing. Not an easy task.

    If you go to this thread: https://forum.unity.com/threads/mal...tipurpopse-avatar.262391/page-48#post-3230301

    You will see that Will is making some new models for UMA. They are very good, as good as any I have seen. On our UMA chat I see folks making UMA custom humanoids. They are beautiful!

    As for "getting to 2017", you do realize that everyone who works on UMA is doing it for free. They get no money from a free asset. A few folks sell assets on the store and you can buy those. But to expect a character artist, with the skills you seem to want them to have, to do something for free is really a huge problem. One of the problems that is making the asset store and forums much less enjoyable. :(

    Unity does not have a free character system, and honestly, I am not sure how they could do it when we all want something different.

    However, if you can save a bit of money, mow some lawns, give up cable TV, whatever, then you can buy Morph3d and it's myriad of clothing choices. You can use Vuforia, which I think is also free. You can use Fuse, which you seem to be happy with, or you can make your own characters/character system.

    Everyone wants something for free. I probably said this above, but it is worth repeating. Nothing is truly free. Even UMA, unless you can do your own art.

    UMA's system is very good, and since others above have said this before, I am only repeating what they said. You are talking about art. I get that. I am not a coder so the art part is what interests me too. However, art is subjective and the art style is unique to each of us.

    You may not like the looks of UMA, so don't use it. There are plenty of options for you. If you want free, you need to be willing to work a bit harder and learn the skill so you do not have to buy assets or hire anyone.

    No other choice, really.
     
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