[Released] Morph Character System (MCS) - Male and Female

As a new Morph3D Character System user, and hence spotting any ambiguity or issue with the interface and editors involved, can I suggest a small change to the interface too.... Add a label "locked" above the check boxes for the enabled items in the M3D Character Manager... see this image... and I don't mean for it to be in pink



Why not similar check box for the other content pack enabled items too? Hair, etc? It would be nice if the interface was all regular.

P.S. a link to this very useful thread and the documentation and info posted at its head would be useful on the main Morph3D web site at https://www.morph3d.com/, so everyone can arrive here...

 

You guys need to create some momentum and reach a critical mass. Right now, many of us have a ton of time and/or money invested in other systems. Your system looks great, but as soon as I read about the tools, and I don´t mean to offend, but it seems like you are more concerned about immediate profits rather than long term usability for developers.

Sorry, to me as neat as the interface looks.. the fact that content creation is being restricted just means there is always going to be less stuff available than we can make or buy with UMA and I really don´t want to have to think about being ´nudged´ to buy the advanced toolset to have full functionality. This is definitely on the backburner for me until I see how much content is being created, and having a restricted toolset isn´t promising.

 

Thought I would post this. It sounds great but a few issues as I mentioned above. https://www.morph3d.com/about/content-artists.php

 

Shawn67 - Teila - Carve - all bring up excellent points.
I'm a sole/individual developer so the determining factors for me in choosing one character system over another is modularity, simplicity and solid functionality.
Modularity for me to use new created content I create - content that I create that is unique from all other game content, not having to wait for content to be created for me - that the entire community can use - which makes my game look just like everyone elses game.
Simplicity for me is allowing me to use common tools to create content for my characters (Blender/Max/Maya/Modo) and following a step by step workflow to get my custom unique content into the system without difficult script editing and wonky workflows using proprietary content creation tools. I don't see any logic in having to use custom tools when modeling packages should be the tool used in conjunction with a nicely detailed workflow to get custom content into the system. I'm not a fuse user - but I've reviewed there workflow for custom content - check there user created content pipeline.
Solid Functionality for me is removing complications in the process for the end user (the game developer) and the system needs to be solid without bugs and odd workflows, it should be a straightforward design.

Will wait and watch to see if this evolves into something usable in the future.

 

Folks, the release of the v1.01 hot fix dll was a mistake, we apologize. The development team has NOT finished testing and doing QA for this code. We do not recommend using M3D_DLL_v1.01.dll.

 

@Carve_Online I think you're a bit quick to judge. I think you should show them a little more respect.
Give them time before you go off at them.

Also you speak as if it's wrong for them to want money.. what world do you live in? pfff

 

Actually all the concerns Artists have posted about Access to the Proper Tools is a Critical Concern. A few Pretty Models are of no use when a client is demanding custom options. I really like what you have started. But it is of no practical use until customization tools are available.
When that happens you will have me as a customer.

 

Yes I agree with what many are saying but to say "but it seems like you are more concerned about immediate profits rather than long term usability for developers" is not fair at all. no one here other than the developers of this product know what their long term plans are.

I would also would like these tools so as to make "my life" easier.. but then I also know that they the devs need to pay their bills too. So realisticly who is going to make all these tools and offer these features plus support for this price? how much money is all this worth?

For them to make all this happen they will either have to charge a lot more money (indie's here) or release some "pretty models" (modeled, rigged, uv's, professional textures and the options to modiy the character in editor or in runtime.) and make some money from them first and later make these custom tools. And correct me if I'm wrong but they did say that they plan to release these tools later.

Also you should understand that there're many non artists that dont care for these tools, and would just prefer to buy and customize them in the inspector.

I've purchased many models on the asset store and I don't expect them to provide tools to customize them.
So when I see this in the store I say to myself do I want to buy this professional 3d model that gives me the options to customize it in the editor or at runtime for this price.

 

Yeah, I think some of the accusations about restrictions and going for profits are farfetched. The devs of MCS have released a foundation for a character system with striking, flexible models. That foundation is obviously not enough for some of us posting on this thread, but it is likely sufficient for others here, and perhaps will be for a much larger audience with just the addition of more content.

I'm certainly one of those waiting for more information about custom content tools and workflow. Would I love that all to be in my hands now? Of course. But from a business perspective, and even from a development perspective, it makes sense to release this new system in phases, gauge reaction, and solicit feedback from the community to make future iterations better for them. It obviously means we have to wait, knowing that something more is supposed to be around the corner, but to me, that's better than the developers working in a vacuum, then releasing a fully baked system that is way off the mark.

But again, I'm one of those waiting a bit on the sidelines for those custom tools, so I'm not saying MCS is perfect as-is just yet.

 

I've been following this - I'm quite interested in it. UMA is interesting, but quite painful to use oftentimes and requesting better documentation or usability came with calls to write it myself. Sadly, since I would have to learn and understand blendshapes, skinned meshes, and more - from the start of the process - I would rather pay for that set of tools and have it work well, and focus my efforts into other areas of my development.

All that said, I would also be definitively looking to hire on modelers and animators down the road that would need to be able to build custom and unique meshes specifically for my project; I want to be able to produce exclusive content, without an enormously complex workflow. That won't be me, but I have several part time modelers and animators already and asking them to learn a wholly new, long, complex process for this would be just as frustrating as dealing with the UMA process, except I'm paying for the hassle. The good tools are a necessity for developers looking to create a detailed game - not a mobile game - I cannot put out a game in the $40+ range that re-uses content from other authors, except maybe in the nature of small props. Clothing and more? Definitely not.

I've just been glancing through the thread - I won't make any assumptions about the goals of the developers here! I just want to be clear as to what the requirements are. I think that goes for most of the upper-indie developers - the ones that are indie, but actually have a budget to spend, and are producing higher-end titles. Taking a look at the agreement; I would suggest opening up a partnership option that does not require selling models on the store, ie, an avenue in which we can have access to those tools (for purchase, or anything) but retain exclusivity. Depending on the usefulness; if they are niche uses, then that's not as necessary, but if they have a general-case usefulness in speeding up a workflow, then yes.

However.. I'm not releasing right now. Placeholder content is fine for the time being. Is there additional content, preferably fantasy oriented, that can be bought? I've searched around for the library I can purchase from, but I cannot seem to find anything to even purchase besides the MCS Male/Female packages themselves. I cannot integrate the solution without reasonable placeholders.

If not, that's fine - I'll check back later and hopefully there'll be options like that. It looks fantastic already, and I'm quite excited to see how it turns out. We've really needed an alternative system for this type of character manipulation than UMA.

 

Hey all,
Wow, this has been a really great thread to follow!

All of you interested in producing unique content for MCS and your projects, thanks for sharing your thoughts and opinions on the matter, we haven't forgotten how important this is to so many of you. We really are paying attention to what you are saying and we wish we could have everything you need developed for you yesterday but, alas, resources as they are, one step at a time.

Also, to all of you who attempted to see things from our point of view and speculated as to why we might be doing things the way we are- well said, and thank you.

Finally, I know we went "dark" for a little bit there but we were completely absorbed in the effort of getting you MCS- and despite all of that focus and energy it still needs some tidying up! However, with that said, thanks for the reminder that consistent communication is important to you, we agree, and even before we launched MCS we took some measures to improve the quality of our correspondence with you. In fact, you may or may not have noticed that there are have been 2 Morph voices in this thread. That's a 100 percent increase

Keep the banter coming, it really is valuable to us and we truly appreciate your interest and consideration of our products.

 

They made a thread asking for feedback, I gave mine. Restricting the tools to create custom content is a mistake and will lead to low adoption by custom content creators, which will lead to low usage by developers. It is a chicken-egg thing. If there is a low adoption by game developers, then why would content creators pay for a tool to create custom content when they can use UMA which is free and more widely used.... and if there is little custom content, you aren´t going to get game developers to switch over to MCS, which is a ton of work and for most people, lost money.

Nothing wrong with making money, and certainly they should. But they are putting the dollar signs at the wrong places, which is going to lead to low adoption from both content creators and developers. They are competing with a free system, their dollar signs should be later in the process.

 

Well since I am not getting a response through E-Mail:
Really looking foward for this system. But we will also wait exactly like @Shawn67
We are working on a fantasy mediaval / victorian style game and without any clothes or tools to create those for this scenario we just can wait...

Anyway really looking forward to see some more clothes possibilites.
Ronny

 

I like your product but your aggressive marketingplan on youtube Banner is annoying me

 

I may be doing something wrong (totally possible), but when trying to build the project with a Morph character I get the following error: "The Assembly UnityEditor is referenced by M3D_DLL ('Assets/Plugins/M3D_DLL.dll'). But the dll is not allowed to be included or could not be found.". It works just fine in the Editor though, and from my dated research it may be an issue with the DLL. I have tried the .NET 2.0 and close and reopen without playing but no dice.

Another issue with building I ran into is that the HairShaderGUI script is trying to inherit from ShaderGUI, but that does not exist.

Again, I may just be dumb, but these are the issues I have run into.

 

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Noted Ian, that explains it... all hell broke out when I added that.... but you should remove the link that still exists (as I post this) on the front of this thread or otherwise others will go through the process of trying to update and messing things up.

I personally like the model of free simpler assets to let developers try things out and learn, as well as produce more free assets to share.. And then commercial add-ons that allow you to generate income for you and others.

Understood about everyone being patient as you create the system and tools. But I hope feedback that those trying MCS give will be helpful to fix things as you go along.

 

One other small improvement I suggest... there is an "ExpandAlongNormals.cs" script for some reason at the top level of the Assets on importing the unitypackages for Male Lite. If its required, it would be nice if it was placed tidily within the Morph3D/Scripts folder, which is where I moved it in my own test project. But it may not be required as I cannot see it in the Female Lite package.

 

One thing I'd like to clarify, I'm not sure anyone has complained about the speed that you are putting out the tools. At least I know I wasn't. I think the complaint was more the understanding (or maybe misunderstanding) that there would be different tools for people who design for your marketplace and people who need to design for yourself. Could you maybe give some insight to what you guys have planned there? If it is a misunderstanding, maybe this will clear things up. I think the initial comment was based off something someone had read on the Morph3d website. Hoping the two separate tools isn't actually the case.

I did notice both you and Ian posting and that has been great. I know things get busy and hectic in the development cycle. But if someone could maybe pop in at least once a week, it would do a great deal to keep the buzz going.

 

Berk (the cool guy behind the Morph3D account) and Ian are both out at the Unite! Boston conference so I thought I would jump in here and respond since they are going to be a bit slow this week between manning the booth and their presentations.

That page linked is old and outdated; it should have actually been pulled down till we have an updated one (notice no links to it from the current site). There is still a lot of discussion around which creation tools are public and which ones aren't. There are a lot of things to consider such as which tools need to have their source available for dev's to work well with in Unity, which tools are standalone to be available for free or purchase, and which tools utilize licensed tech we can't distribute and can only expose them through online services, and the interplay between them to create a streamlined and easy to use pipeline.

We want you to use our platform and tools to create your own content for your projects and have as many people doing it as possible. We want to have as few barriers of entry to that as possible and make it as painless as possible for you to create and use your own fully functional and integrated assets. But if artists want to take those add-ons and sell them stand alone and benefit from what will be a thriving ecosystem for character creation, we don't want to create our own competition with selling add-ons independently for our platform. It is similar to how game consoles actually lose money per console sold and plan on making it up by a percentage of every game sold for that console. Some won't like that sort of restriction, but with every platform comes pros and cons. With ours you have a platform that has the highest quality customizable figures that you can make look completely unique with add-ons that work with those customizations. It is easy to use and is only going to be increasing in power, flexibility, ease of use, and performance. It has a rapidly growing queue of content that will be available for it you will be able to create your own fully functional and integrated content for once we get those tools released with the main restriction being that if you want to sell the add-ons for other developers, you partner with us on it.

The short of it is we know how important it is to get the creation tools in peoples' hands to make content for the platform for it to thrive. We have a lot of experience with creating these types of platforms as well as the artist tools to simplify content creation and make a thriving ecosystem. That being said, we need to make sure that for those that want to sell that add-on content, we do it in a way that is beneficial for all of us so we can continue to invest in and grow the platform for everyone while not hindering the creativity or ability of creating your own content you want to use. How we get to that is not set in stone yet and will be evolving as we continue to develop the platform with as much feedback as we can handle from you all.

 

Is the LOD auto generated? Right now the topology looks a bit messy on the mid-lower poly versions of the base in the preview images. Are there plans to modify the topology on the lower poly so it's more even and has better edgeflow?

Would be beneficial for games that require less polygons ie. 4-8k tris.

 

@justb - Good to see you here Will! Your stuff is one of the reasons I hesitate switching to another system.. Encouraging to see you may be looking at expanding here as well!

 

@IanAtMorph3D In the reviews about the rigging errors and the twisted chest bones you write "No one else has these problems".
Are you kidding us?
Anyone can see that the chest bones are pointing in the wrong direction.

 

Jon, thank you for writing about our concerns. Your system really does look awesome, but like many people said, it will be difficult for us to switch over until we see a ton of custom content available and/or the full tools available to anyone who wants to create.

 

I am having similar rigging issues as mentioned by others. I have followed the directions and reimported the characters.

I am using unity 5.2.0p1

 

Yeah unfortunately to me it looks like they modeled a high rez character and then decimated the mesh for the lod's instead of modeling a low rez character and then subdividing the mesh for the higher rez lod's...

At least that's what I do, then I use my high subdivided mesh to bake my normals for the low rez game models. Nice clean loops up and down...

 

Can anybody else please confirm what is obvious? -> The chest bones are pointing in the wrong direction for both the male and female model.
I think @Morph3d tries to ignore this.

 

Here is how mine is.

 

Yes, your chest bones point backwards. This is wrong. They should be pointing forwards.

 

@hermie thank you for bringing the twisted chest bone issue to our attention. As @JonAtMorph3D noted in his post Berk, myself and the rest of the dev team are at the Boston Unite conference.

 

@IanAtMorph3D
Ok, but you should update your comment in the reviews section on the Asset Store because the bug report is legitimate, and Morph3D pretends it is a user problem.

 

This would be great if I was able to export the character to paint in an external program

 

The add prop system does not appear to work correctly. In the SciFi addon package, if I add "NadineRaygun" it does not trigger the "Add Prop" button for the hand attachment points... see attached image. That prop when added as a content pack does not seem to add the "AvailableProps" items into the project view under the MCS avatar items.



The "Electrolaser" does add the "AvailableProps" items and make the attachment point "Add Prop" button appear, but it does not seem to stick. And its invisible - the "AvailableProps" GameObject is marked inactive even after selecting the prop and attaching it to the right hand attachment point. And there are Unity 5 errors on loading the mesh.

Non-convex MeshCollider with non-kinematic Rigidbody is no longer supported in Unity 5.
If you want to use a non-convex mesh either make the Rigidbody kinematic or remove the Rigidbody component. Scene hierarchy path "Avatar_ThirdPersonController_UnityChan/MCSFemaleLite/AvailableProps/valSFPElectrolaser(Clone)/valSFPElectrolaser_23358.Shape_LOD1", Mesh asset path "Assets/MORPH3D/ContentPacks/ScifiFemale/props/Electrolaser/Electrolaser.fbx" Mesh name "valSFPElectrolaser_23358.Shape_LOD1"

 

When you folks get back from Boston.. it would be good to remove the Hotfix comment and download link pinned at the head of this thread so that others don't waste time trying that and messing things up.

 

Hey, PROMISING asset! I love it.

I'm using the male LITE asset.


I have a few issues compiling :

1.The type or namespace name `ShaderGUI' could not be found.
I moved the HairShaderGUI to an Editor folder to fix this.

2. After fixing #1, I'm now having this compile error : The Assembly UnityEditor is referenced by M3D_DLL ('Assets/Plugins/M3D_DLL.dll'). But the dll is not allowed to be included or could not be found.
UnityEditor problem again, IDK how to fix it this time :/


Here are the problems I have with the asset now :

3. I think it was mentioned, the teeth are not following very well when tweaking parameters.

4. The more I tweak FACE parameters, the character gets bigger spikes on the elbows, back and neck.


Feature suggestion :

I'm making a multiplayer FPS game, I'm using the full character to display other players, but I'd like to use it also for my character, but display the arms only. I thought the best way for that would be to make a cutout map to mask everything but the arms. It works, but with the cutout mode, all the transparent parts wont cast shadows. I'd like to see my full body shadow, not only the arms haha. Could you make a shader to achieve that? I think I won't be the only one seeking to achieve that.

Thank you and good job!

 

My teeth weren't following because I had an animation with a wrongly assigned jawbone, maybe you could check that

 

Seems promising but there's a lot of bugs and clipping trying to integrate female lite with the sci fi bundle. Also the polycount seems insane even if I change the LOD.

Clearly not ready for any serious use.

 

Been playing with the Lite version and so far I think this asset has the potential to be just what I'm looking for in my product - good job!

I wanted to ask if there was any possibility of you guys releasing the demo that you built (the sci-fi example on the website) as an example scene so that I could wrap my head around how you actually manipulate the data during runtime without using the editor. Some API reference documentation would also be great, but for something quick and dirty an example I can dive into would be super appreciated since at the moment I can't seem to hook anything up to my UI - admittedly I'm a programming noob. Good Luck at Unite.

 

@hermie the feedback we get from interested parties and customers is VERY important to us, if there's something broken or unclear we'll do our best to correct or explain what's going on. As Berk stated in the comment you're referencing:

All we ask is that you give us as much information as you can about the bug or issue so we can accurately diagnose what's going on.

Thanks again for your interest.

 

@IanAtMorph3D, can you perhaps explain a bit about why the chest bones are angled the way they are? I think this might be more of a perception issue than anything else. If you look at the skeleton, it looks "odd" that the chest bones are angled up instead of straight out from the chest. That doesn't necessarily mean the bones are wrong, but perhaps some developer context would help.

Also, any updates post-Unite you can share, please do.

 

@IanAtMorph3D I need to animate breasts. While other people may not notice it at all, I can not do this with the wrong angled bones.
To check this, just import your character into a clean Unity project, click "Rig", "Muscles & Bones" and zoom in to see the problem. Several people have already posted their screenshots, and they all have the same problem.
And about the rigging problems: Do the above and have a look at the red rigging warnings given out by Unity. Other people have already posted screenshots of this bug here already as well.

I am not a fan of private bug reports, I am a big fan of sharing the problems on a forum because other people might have the same problem problems, especially when the product is new and not fully error-tested yet.

 

I think this was the important piece of information missing. You kept saying the chest bones were the wrong way, without clarifying why that was an issue to you, so to them it seemed like the character wasn't able to walk around and such, which it certainly can.

I don't see how they are asking for a private bug report either. The asset store comment specifically says "or post your issues on our forum thread" with more information, such as you need to animate breasts, which is why the chest bones is an issue.

 

Hey there @hermie thanks for the further clarification, as @Acissathar mentioned, it was hard to help you as we didn't know your objective and from our perspective functionality seemed to be just fine. That said, the bones certainly look poorly placed and considering your objective I can understand your concern.

However, in regards to the "chest bones" and their seemingly twisted and odd placement. This, as a matter of fact, is by design. See the screenshot below of the rig in it's original form before being exported into Unity (this is from DAZ Studio, btw):

You'll notice that DAZ displays bones differently than Unity does but the roots/orientations of the chest bones were actually intended to sit behind the spine but with the vertex weighting affecting the chest. If you have a 3D modeling package like Maya you'll be able to confirm that the bones look the same as they do in Unity ie odd, but still function as they are intended. You'll observe that you'll get very natural breast movements with the pivot points being where they are when rotating and translating the bones.

Have you had a chance yet to try manipulating these bones or bring in any .fbx animations with breast (aka chest bones) movements to add to your Mecanim animation tree? Perhaps you can give it a shot and then let us know if things are still unsatisfactory?

Thanks!

 

Hey! I was wondering about when are you planning to release a fix for all the issues that were mentioned? I just can't wait to play around with your asset. I'm waiting for the fixes to do it.

question 2 : Is it possible to tweak the parameters at runtime, on a standalone player (not inside unity) or does "the magic" only works inside unity?

Thank you very much!

 

@JoRouss, do you mean whether you can alter a character's shape (i.e., change the morph parameters) at runtime? That is possible. It is perhaps one of the key features of this system even!

 

Good, that's what I thought at first but then I got a bit worried because I got some EDITOR compile errors, I thought maybe it's meant to shape a character from inside unity, save as a prefab and use in game

I'll work on my customization interface until they patch the bugs then!

Thank you very much, can't wait to use it!

 

Hi just a quick query, will players be able to customise characters at runtime and will you be able to save / reload the settings by the API? I can't find any API notes to read through.

 

You're missing the point... artists like yourself are not going to be the ones that make or break this products success. Theres just not enough of you lol .. there are many programmers that will buy this product.. enought to keep this a success. They don't need to get UMA's userbase to switch over.. it's tiny.. not many people use it.

 

@Morph 3D Yes, I know all this. It also happens when you import Genesis 3.
I think it has also been reported as a bug in DAZ but not been acted upon yet.

I believe this is a bug in the DAZ fbx exporter, right?

Yes, I have played around with a breast animation, and it was not satisfying. The incorrect bone placement is a show-stopper.
Otherwise I would not have mentioned this bug.

 

Can you provide an animated gif or video of the issue? "Not satisfying" and "showstopper" are more emotional descriptions of your problem. You should provide more objective details so the developers can really see what's wrong.

 

So...the breast bones are backwards or twisted or whatever, but that is okay? I don't get that. Why would people accept that for a paid asset just because it still works? lol They are pretty? Is that the reason? Or no real competition.

And..it has been reported in Daz so a known issue.