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procedural character generation

Discussion in 'Works In Progress - Archive' started by FernandoRibeiro, Oct 5, 2012.

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  1. FernandoRibeiro

    FernandoRibeiro

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    Hi there Broken Toy!
    Even being a Blender user, I didn´t saw that before! I´ll definitely take a look, thanks a lot for the link =D
    I´m just concerned about performance and memory management using so many textures as morphs, but I´ll give it a try.
     
  2. fano_linux

    fano_linux

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    Nice work indeed brow, btw that jeans... WOW jesus, textures are awsome
     
  3. FernandoRibeiro

    FernandoRibeiro

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    Hi there fano_linux, thanks a lot!

    I´ve took some days studying shaders (first tests with surface shaders) to better handle some model details and variation, but will be soon producing more content. :)
     
  4. fano_linux

    fano_linux

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    nice man, i'll be studding shaders too, just finishing some unity tools + game template, i hope we can share information.
    Great job so far
     
  5. FernandoRibeiro

    FernandoRibeiro

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    I´ve started here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-IEjJpyPe7I&feature=channel&list=UL
    Nice animations you´ve got on your site! =) Have you tested them with mecanim? What kind of mocap technic are you using?
     
  6. fano_linux

    fano_linux

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    Thanks for the link, sure i'll take a look soon.
    Thank you about the animations, sometimes i use a done mocap anim to start with, sometimes i do this myself. But i don't have a mocap hardware, btw i would love to have one, but i don't think it's possible for now, they are too expensive.

    Never used them at mecanim, i don't have the unity 4, waiting to get money to purchase it haha (S*** aways money, something that i don't have)

    Thanks again man
     
  7. Kaji-Atsushi

    Kaji-Atsushi

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    This is indeed most impressive :D, as others said keep up the fantastic work.
     
  8. FernandoRibeiro

    FernandoRibeiro

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    In my case, I´ve done a lot of tests using two kinects and iPiStudio, this setup can archieve good results :) I just used the 30 days trial, but I´m considering buying it.
     
  9. fano_linux

    fano_linux

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    Hmmm sounds nice, but i've read somewhere that you have to do some clean up, cause kinect has an unstable signal for fast tracking..
    Anyway could you show me a video or something that you do with this software without any change, and could you tell me if you would use it for game development.
     
  10. goat

    goat

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    This is really nice.
     
  11. FernandoRibeiro

    FernandoRibeiro

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    Thanks =D
     
  12. FernandoRibeiro

    FernandoRibeiro

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    Thanks =)
    More updates coming this weekend.
     
  13. FernandoRibeiro

    FernandoRibeiro

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    You know you´re going to have a long road in a project when you start naming your files with an _001 instead of _01... :D
    Right now I´ve reached GenericChar_117.blend Lol

    I´m posting some new images in the next hours.
    Right now I´m working hard to optmize the mesh to handle different clothes/hair/tatoos and keep drawcalls as low as possible.

    I won´t be able to generate a new webplayer right now because I´m already working with unity 4.0, but I´ll manage to post a video, at least :)
     
  14. fano_linux

    fano_linux

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    Bumping it for you cause this project is realy nice.

    congratz brother
     
  15. FernandoRibeiro

    FernandoRibeiro

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    Hi there! I hope everyone had a great weekend =)

    I´ve spent a lot of time today handling facial hair and the internal solution for clothing.
    Right now I´ve finished the system that will handle the use of upperbody/lowerbody/head clothing, I will generate some placeholders for cloths, so that I can simulate how it works while I don´t have the finished content.

    The image below shows the facial hair already under usage. For now it´s also placeholder, so quality will improve.
    About the hair shader, I´ll also have to develop a new one, the previews solution worked well with dark hair, but I will need to handle more variations.

     
  16. FernandoRibeiro

    FernandoRibeiro

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    11x11 Character group

     
  17. FernandoRibeiro

    FernandoRibeiro

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    Hi there!
    Sorry for taking so long to answer! Didn´t read your question before.
    For high quality mocap, a lot of cleanup in necessary when using kinects.
    The webplayer at the beginning of this thread shows a rought animation captured with kinect with no cleanup involved, just an automatic filter.
     
  18. Gherid_lacksGPS

    Gherid_lacksGPS

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    Man has skills. Good stuff. Seeing that they are posed/animated, I assume that the intent is to have them rigged for the animator?
     
  19. FernandoRibeiro

    FernandoRibeiro

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    Hi there! That´s already done =)
    The solution is already integrated with mecanim animation system, so it can use any animation data.

     
  20. 3dDude

    3dDude

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    Very cool +1 for clothes
     
  21. FernandoRibeiro

    FernandoRibeiro

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    I'll try to post a video today with clothing tests using placeholders ;)
     
  22. FernandoRibeiro

    FernandoRibeiro

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    Here we go:
    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AGOxHTAIX-w

    Sorry for taking so long, I´ve spent most of the time trying to find a screen recorder, but at the end, used a camera to record from the monitor
    Next videos will have real quality
    Cloths are still placeholder, hope you guys see the potential behind them.

     
  23. janpec

    janpec

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    I didnt see it anywhere or maybe missed it, but are you developing this for asset store? I would need this kind of system a lot. If you are developing for asset store, are any items added on characters such as clothes being scaled and morphed acordingly to character mesh, or is that something that would have to be done by developer himself?

    Oh and about screen recorder, i would recommend Camtasia studio or Fraps, both of them do the job, but Fraps reduces frame rate more.
     
    Last edited: Oct 31, 2012
  24. FernandoRibeiro

    FernandoRibeiro

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    Are you developing this for asset store? -> Yes, but right now I still don't have any idea how much it will be. I'll probably ask you guys how much you would consider a fair price, but first I need to generate final content so that you have the right idea of final quality.

    Are any items added on characters such as clothes being scaled and morphed acordingly to character mesh -> Sure! Take a look at 3:15 on the video, it's still placeholder, but gives the idea.

    I would recommend Camtasia studio or Fraps -> Thanks a lot =) I'm also considering screenflick for mac =)
     
  25. FernandoRibeiro

    FernandoRibeiro

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    Render of Facial hair study. This will be used as base for the final solution.
    The same is being done to the hair.
    I do believe those will also be used for directx11 hair renderer ;)


     
  26. landon912

    landon912

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    I like the hair, is this in unity or in a 3d editor?

    Also, the only thing that I didn't like in the video before was that, if you increase the weight they still have the six pack :p
     
    Last edited: Oct 31, 2012
  27. FernandoRibeiro

    FernandoRibeiro

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    Hi there landon91235,

    if you increase the weight they still have the six pack -> I´m still working with only one male/female normal map variantion. When I generate more of them, it will be possible to get more character variations.

    The image of hair and beard above is a blender render, I´m still working hard to archieve the same quality in real time :)

    Thanks for the questions! =)
     
  28. Kaze_Senshi

    Kaze_Senshi

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    Oh Fernando I really like this project, great job. One absurd question, if I want to make a war game using these models and I throw a grenade on one of this guys, can I "dismember" them easily because they are generated in a procedural way or not?

    Cheers :)
     
  29. FernandoRibeiro

    FernandoRibeiro

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    Hi there Kaze_Senshi, thanks for your question :)
    What you´re asking is not that hard to accomplish, the problem here is that it requires an specific solution that couldn´t be used in a general purpose system.

    As you might see in the below image, I can handle proceduraly generated blood splatter, but for actual dismemberment the approach should be different.
    When a friend of mine saw this test, he sended me this publication, it might be a good start if you´re considering developping your own solution.
    http://www.valvesoftware.com/publications/2010/gdc2010_vlachos_l4d2wounds.pdf

     
  30. FernandoRibeiro

    FernandoRibeiro

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    Also have in mind that even when this solution is fully optimized it might not be able to handle more than ~150 characters at the same time on a complex scene on old computers. If you´re considering a FPS game, it should be enough, but this solution wouldn´t be recommended for most rts games, for example.

    Hope it helps :)
     
  31. Khyrid

    Khyrid

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    I don't mind nudity, it's natural and normal and as artist and creators we work with the basic forms of people. Butt cracks and nipples are necessary for accurate anatomy as they both effect the contour of the parts they are connected to. I understand some people find it offensive, but I find it offensive when creative developers are hindered in any way by unnecessary prude-ism. Nothing about his post was remotely erotic, there is no need to put any clothes (just for the sake of covering the nudity) on or any warnings. This is perfectly normal stuff to post on a developer's forum, just like it's normal to draw nudes in life drawing.

    When somebody suggest that this kind of thing may be offensive, that is an insult to the professionalism of the artist and the community. That nudity is worked with in an aesthetic way for these kinds of models (base-meshes, under-structures or whatever you want to call them) is and should be assumed.

    Unity can obviously make it's own rules on the matter for their forum, but this is my opinion.
     
    Last edited: Dec 17, 2012
  32. FernandoRibeiro

    FernandoRibeiro

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    Hi there Khyrid =)
    As artist I do agree with you, it´s so natural for me that when I first posted an image here I didn´t even considered advising about nudity or covering some image areas.

    But at the same time, I do consider that there might be young users on this forum (Don´t remember if there´s any age restriction to create a login).

    In fact, at the end, this talk is about what is offensive or erotic based on cultural definitions (and that changes a LOT for different places)

    Unity itself didn´t oriented me to include advices or black tags, it was a choice that I took. Considering that at the end, if you try the webplayer or watch the video, it´s all there, theres not much I can change or censure if at the same time, I have to show the solution I´m working on. In fact, probably youtube might restrict acess to my video soon (Just thought about that right now lol =p ).

    I´m really happy to see this kind of talk here, because it´s also something that have to do with how we develop games and how content is being shown in games.
     
    Last edited: Nov 4, 2012
  33. FernandoRibeiro

    FernandoRibeiro

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    I'm sorry to give you all those bad news, but I'll stop developing this procedural solution, looks like selling jeans is a better business nowadays =D



     
  34. FernandoRibeiro

    FernandoRibeiro

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    Fun with hair =)
     
  35. janpec

    janpec

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    Wait i am all fan of irony and sarcasm but please say that you are using it on that sentence i am really looking forward to that tool.

    I was wondering are you using 2k normal map for whole characters body, or do you perhaps have head normal map separated? whole body normal maps are quite heavy on performance and with separating head from body you could also achieve much more variety on head creation. Just suggestion:D

    Also if i would start preapring armor and clothes already for this pack, how do you suggest me to start with i mean what size of clothes should i be doing, i am guessing clothes should be made for medium sized (default) character right?
    Would it be possible to get one model of medium character for reference?

    One more thing, are fingers being rigged with bones at all?
     
    Last edited: Nov 6, 2012
  36. FernandoRibeiro

    FernandoRibeiro

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    Wait i am all fan of irony and sarcasm but please say that you are using it on that sentence i am really looking forward to that tool. -> =D Jeans are not that good at all, getting back to this project... sold only for virtual avatars, but none in real life Lol :D

    whole body normal maps are quite heavy on performance and with separating head from body you could also achieve much more variety on head creation. -> Yep :) Body and head are separated textures/materials, it gives way more combinations. It also gives an aditional drawcall, but it's a worth trade.

    Also if i would start preapring armor and clothes already for this pack, how do you suggest me to start -> In fact I'm following a different approach: I'll generate a variety of basemeshes for cloths, and the cloth variation will come with normalmaps and diffuse/specular. This way, as a rought example, a tshirt can become an chainmail using tha same base mesh. This solution handles the adaptation that is necessary between cloths and body changes automaticaly.

    I'll probably give acess to those base meshes, so that Dev groups with artists can create their own highpoly meshes/normal maps and so on.
    In the end, what will make the difference are the textures that we apply to the base meshes, and the number of available base meshes.

    The same for head/body. One base mesh to handle all possible variations.

    One more thing, are fingers being rigged with bones at all? -> In this LOD yes, other LOD' s might have only ~6 bones on each hand, instead of 15, or even no bone at all. For this LOD I've considered full hand rig important. The same for facial rig, This LOD handles facial animation/expressions.

    Hope it helps :)
     
  37. FernandoRibeiro

    FernandoRibeiro

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    Sexy lady =)
    New hair shader test, using vertex color as ambient occlusion in combination with a modified version of Anisotropic Highlight Shader by Farfarer.


     
  38. FernandoRibeiro

    FernandoRibeiro

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    In your opinion, do you prefer the left or right one? I´m testing opacity variation.
     
  39. janpec

    janpec

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    Fernando Thanks for answers, thats great to know that you are using head and body separated. I have no idea how do you hide seam between two different materials, i spend like week trying doing everything possible to come with seam hiding solution and it didnt work in the end:D

    For hair left example is looking much better.

    Its interesting one thing, i am able to run your test scene perfectly with great FPS, but my PC runs so hot that it would shut down laptop if i wouldnt close demo in half hour i am wondering what is going behind the scenes to put such heating on processor. Is it due to all animations that are executing some update function?
     
  40. FernandoRibeiro

    FernandoRibeiro

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    Hi there janpec!
    In fact watching the video I've posted some days ago there's a junction between upperbody/lowerbody where you can notice the seams, but they will always be occluded by cloth and won't be a problem. For head/upperbody connection the same (seams) didn't happened because I was able to use a diferent approach, that couldn't be done at lowerbody/upperbody.
    In your case, you might want to split tangents across seams, that's an importing option that you can activate when importing the mesh. This usually solves the seams that appears between different materials in the same mesh.

    About your computer getting hot, what's the FPS that you're getting? If it's very hight (higher than ~200fps), this might be the problem. Higher FPS might overload processing power of your machine and GPU. I'll have that in mind for the next webplayers, just reducing framerate to 60fps max might solve this.
    This situation happened a lot with StarCraft2, when players were at the interface, the game FPS was so hight that computers got really hot.

    Hope those answers helps =)
     
  41. cynel

    cynel

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    is it possible to morph the characters into stylized toons
     
  42. FernandoRibeiro

    FernandoRibeiro

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    I't funny, I was talking about this with a friend just yesterday.
    I'm still considering this possibility, but for now I can't focus on that because it usually requires different texturing techniques to get it right.
    but yes, it's possible to handle that.
     
  43. ecurtz

    ecurtz

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    This is looking really great. I'm working on something similar for a personal project, although focusing on a few high detail characters more than performance.

    Do you have any plans for implementing separate clothing meshes or will they all be implemented as morphs of the character geometry?
     
  44. FernandoRibeiro

    FernandoRibeiro

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    Hi there ecurtz!
    Thanks for writting.

    Do you have a thread showing your progress so far? I'm really curious to see other solutions concerning procedural characters! :)

    Do you have any plans for implementing separate clothing meshes or will they all be implemented as morphs of the character geometry? -> All clothing are separated mesh, they don't depends on morphs ;)
     
  45. IndieScapeGames

    IndieScapeGames

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    I like the one on the left!
     
  46. FernandoRibeiro

    FernandoRibeiro

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  47. cynel

    cynel

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    good but i will have to model and rig my games characters on blender then move them to unity but your character generator is perfect for random NPCs in my game
     
  48. FernandoRibeiro

    FernandoRibeiro

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    A Cartoon version might come in future, but can´t guaranty right now ;)
     
  49. cynel

    cynel

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    dont worry my game is in pre-production
     
  50. FernandoRibeiro

    FernandoRibeiro

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    =)
     
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