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

Sorry about the short response, I'm not trying to make anyone angry. There is just only so much I can say about certain topics. I also have to be careful about what I do promise. I'm not going to come up here and promise everyone something that I or our team can't deliver on. I'm also very busy with updating

Specifically for artist tools, I'm going to take all of your points and discuss those with the other team members that work directly on it and see what they have to say.

Regarding creatures/animals we have discussed this and we would like to work on this. It will be a large endeavour to say the least but we'd like to ensure everyone is happy with the humanoid tools first before and if we start to branch out. I'd rather see us nail human aspects and give it the fixes and polish it deserves and needs.

I definitely would like to see us able to get more customizations to all aspects of our system (hair, clothing, props, figures, textures, etc). We have been discussing how we want and need to go about this. I agree with your points on being able customize clothing very easily and in a few steps make unique looking pieces but that's also quite the challenge to say the least.

We are working on making more customizations for the figure and making them easier. I am pushing for us to get facial hair out. I know facial hair is a huge deal for many people.

I do appreciate your time to write all of this up; I hope you do not feel it's wasted effort, because I definitely do not think it is.

 

I think this one should be a top priority, from a technical perspective. Right now clothing poking through is a deal breaker for most, and it's been there for too long as an outstanding issue. I realize moving to Genesis3 was a big rewrite, and hopefully one we're already seeing the benefits from with better load times, but now it's time to get what is there working right and optimized so a stable release can be pushed out and people have a base point to go back to when new features or builds fail to live up... rather than reverting back to non M3D entirely. With the latest 1.6.1 release it's hard to get a clear picture on what is still not working correctly, so it may be a good time to take stock and request feedback on exclusively 1.6.1 to determine beyond clothing poking through other clothing what remains to be fixed.

Also still waiting to hear back from a couple people who said they were going to test 1.6.x with 50+ models to see what performance was like regarding MMO scenarios, from all accounts the latest build seemed to be loading almost as fast as traditional models, but there is still some performance reports related to LateUpdate and the morphs/transforms.
A request related to being able to bake morphs at runtime for performance reasons, where said characters often only change periodically if they change equipment or get an in-game haircut, limited and not needed to be running every frame if it can be baked fast enough at runtime. Though I personally see this very quickly leading into a desire to be able to preview equipment from items linked in chats and so on, another aspect of vanity that everyone likes to see how they'd look in something someone else received. So said baking should be very fast at runtime to account for short lived wardrobe preview models too.

 

These are my big two technical requests at the moment as well. Solving clothing poke-through, and being able to bake the morphs so that they're not constantly using resources to maintain their altered shapes (at least, that's my impression of how it works). We're making a mobile game, so any performance increase is good, and my company is only using the system to make different prefabs and not really for runtime character morphing, so the baking thing would be a big improvement for us.

The former is a universal problem and should definitely be the top priority from a development standpoint IMO, while the latter is mostly my preference given our current project needs. Though, I suppose if the performance is affected enough for everyone else, the lack of baking could be considered a pretty major issue too- I just don't have any data on that.

 

Again, I apologize that at times I come across angry. It comes from a place of passion. There is so much potential, M3D just needs to stop doing things that make us regret liking it, right now the business side of things is a very bitter pill to swallow even when we try to just focus on technical aspects for you. I appreciate that you have been much more active here, expect that for a while this may be a big part of your day until all the information is gathered and with each release, thorough feedback on testing by those who are sticking by you guys. Right now I'm mostly an advocate for the people who are too frustrated to even give you guys the time of day, but I am coming up on this decision myself and have not yet pulled the plug on importing MCS again, in large part due to the business side of things.

Great, I know it's not really fully formulated thoughts on the matter, but you'll have to excuse that this isn't the first time a few of us have gone into detail and then brushed off with no line of communication about anything important. I keep getting off on tangents and erasing bits here, so I really am trying to give you the benefit of the doubt here.

Absolutely fantastic. Would you be surprised to know I've mentioned it a few times and this is the first of any sort of hint that it's even in scope of what you have in mind going forward. We understand there is no promises. But if you open up your communication with us, you're less prone to have big issues. This community has a collective intelligence that I'm afraid will rival what you know behind closed doors at M3D. Take advantage of that, poll the community for information about different technologies. Ask us what we think about moving to Generation 3, solicit us for our collective wants and needs. More open communication will indeed start to rebuild faith with us. When there are things that need to be done to achieve a hot-topic task, don't treat us like idiots (don't act like politicians), be open and explain the challenges you face and let us participate in thinktank to solve these problems. Maybe you'll spark a conversation that'll not only solve a problem but improve your product in the process. Sorry, might be getting a bit derailed again... so love that animals are on the table, I WANT to WANT to throw money at the screen, so just live up to the expectations that have already been set, and prepare for a flurry of cash when you move into these other areas.

I like that you're not writing it off as an excuse. I want to point out that this is the entire point. You want to make an exceptional tool, it's not going to be easy. If it was easy, it'd already be done and M3D would be someone's indie baby.
If you want to exist on the subscription level with tools that cost $10-20 per month, you've got a long long way to go to provide that value. Most of such tools existed first for a long time as a one-time purchase tool and eventually moved to a subscription model while the one-time purchase tools while capable, eventually became outdated. See Photoshop.
I have to ask you, as one developer to another, do you really believe the state of the artist tools as they've been described to us thus far is worthy of being told it'll be a subscription of an unknown amount as soon as June? Where's the feature roadmap? Realize we're already kinda burned by being promised these tools as part of MCS in the first place. And that some are still burned by the very idea that compensation on M3D store for price paid is not really solving the problem of broken promises for many people. Again, I don't want to harp on this point, it's to relate to the fact that right now, the artist tools are a pipedream and we have no idea if it's even remotely worth our further investment of time and energy into M3D if we'll just be kicked in the nuts with a $20 price tag on a subscription tool that adds blends to our clothing.

This is good news, one of the important things that has been often requested and I personally keep forgetting about because it should just be there already.

Well, as you can see I'm still willing to give you guys a chance. I want to see M3D succeed, but there is a lot of faith you need to rebuild. This more open line of communication is a good start, but we're still all on the edge about the EULA and that makes it tough to be positive about much else right now. More closed door policy, with no idea where this EULA is heading before it's slapped down onto the next version without any peer review? Le'sigh.

 

I figured that was the case, thanks for clarifying this. Honestly the Artist Tools don't seem like much of a real value ad that people should be paying for.

At this point it seems like the only purpose they serve is as a gatekeeper into the content ecosystem forcing anyone who wants to provide content for it to go through M3D approved channels.

I don't have a problem with that, clearly M3D is trying to go to a shaving/printer model where the figures are free (allowing more "creative" eula's in the unity asset store) and they make their profit taking a cut of clothing sales.

I don't have a problem with that either, if the EULA to end users is not confusing or too restrictive. I want to have a diverse library of content for the characters in my games, I don't mind paying for it and in fact it needs to get paid for if it's going to happen.

 

Here is the sad thing though. Lots of content made by users available to other users would explode the popularity of MCS. It is like anything else...the more useful the items, the more people use them and more clothing content, skins, body shapes, etc., will all bring in new customers. But by putting restrictions on sales, it will hurt them. Many developers feel comfortable using the Asset Store. We know it will be here as long as Unity. But all those outside stores will only survive as long as they make profits. If users feel restricted by the EULA, they will not make clothing. They will not sell if the tools, (including 3d modeling programs, MD, Photoshop) are too expensive or too difficult to learn. Time and money plus the cut of the sales PLUS the restriction imposed on people who might otherwise buy the items is too much at the moment and more than likely not make it profitable, meaning tools and time cost more than the return from the revenue.

 

I think you're referring to me, I've been testing out M3D characters in a real-world ish scenario where I have them, running around and shooting at each other and the player who is also a M3D figure.

So far the most I've tried is 17 figures (I need to define more spawn points and possibly expand my test level to keep going beyond this)

With 17 (no morphs attached) figures at full LOD (not sure that matters for this) and shallow profiling on a 2013 6 core Mac Pro I'm seeing ~0.8-1ms per frame in JCTTransition.LateUpdate

There is about 0.06ms per frame spent in CostumeItem.Update as well (with 128 costume items according to call count)

And about 0.01ms per frame in M3dCharacterManager.Update/LateUpdate

 

@jjanzer_morph

M3D uses it's own LOD system, is there a preferred way to tieing this into Unity's built in LOD system and having it honor things like the LOD bias quality setting?

 

I tried re-importing the whole Content folder, and it has gotten rid of all the MON dependency errors, but now it has 14 warnings that say 'Replacing Prefab that is in an unworkable state'.

Attached is a screenshot of the Unity Console with the first of these warnings.

 

SALSA users: we have discovered a behavior in MCS’s 1.6+ update that reorganizes BlendShapes when new shapes are added to a Morph 3D character. The shape order is not necessarily maintained upon Unity Editor reload. This behavior breaks our 1-click SALSA setup. We have released an updated 1-click (v1.2) for MCS 1.6+ which addresses the issue by adding a “Remap Blendshape Indexes” button above the shapes in McsSync.

If you add new morphs to your character, after you close Unity and open it again, the shapes will likely not be mapped correctly. Simply click the button to remap the shapes if the order has changed.

https://crazyminnowstudio.com/posts/using-mcs-characters-with-salsa-lipsync/

Hope this helps!
Darrin

 

Does Morph3D allow to set your own character models and body types, example: fat, skinny, muscular, alien, etc?

Just want to make sure Im allowed to set my own characters and blendshapes and Im not constrained to the stock ones.

 

Not currently but that's a great suggestion. We do remove the LODGroup component on fbx import as it will interfere with our system. I think it would be awesome if we tied into this if users are interested.

 

You'll receive that warning when there is a prefab that for some reason during our import process can't updated. Instead it will create a new prefab and completely replace the old one. It shouldn't affect you unless the prefab is already being used in the scene.

 

If I understand your question right, you're asking if you can create your own custom blendshapes (say in maya or blender) and use them on our figures and have the clothing adapt? If that's the case, not currently. We do intend to have support for this and the 1.6 update certainly will make this easier on our end, but our tooling doesn't have this capability yet, unfortunately.

 

Not on your figures but on mine. I want to have my own models, with their own blend shapes, and own clothing. I want to use Morph3D system but not the content, since it's in a different style.

In other words, what do the artist tools allow you to import? can you import your own characters? blend shapes? clothing?

 

The short answer is no you can't bring in your own figures or blendshapes, but if you want more information or are really interested in making this a possibility...

Right now what Artist Tools does for you is that, if you make and deform a piece of clothing to fit onto a Genesis 3 Female or Male model, we can take that content for you and do a few things. Namely 1. Project our base set of morphs (the ones we ship with MCS) onto those clothes (aka blendshapes), 2. Create alpha injection masks to assist in preventing pokethrough from the skin of the figure through the clothing, 3. Setup the base AssetSchematics necessary to allow the asset to be used by MCS (this is like meta data), 4. Package everything up in a predictable way and pack the Morph files into something we call a M3DResource file.

There is a way to make this work, but it would be something that would require us to make it easier to get your custom morphs into artist tools. And either for you to create a blendshape that takes your figure and matches it to ours, or for us to provide a way for you to install your own figure. Even if we decide to allow this it would be a lot of work for everyone involved.

We did do something similar to this very recently internally though.

If you're still interested, please contact me directly.

 

A clothing on clothing poke through solution is vital for games where mix-and-match clothing is normal (RPGs for instance). I split my clothing into 3 categories: Underwear (non mesh overlays), Midwear (tight meshes like jeans, shirts, shoes, etc), and Outerwear (larger meshes like coats, jackets, chaps, spurs and other shoe accessories, plate armours). As long as clothing from the outer groups works without poke-through on the inner groups - all should be well.

 

I sent you a PM with more info

 

Keep in mind your characters can't have facial hair, so you would have to use two systems anyway--a separate character system for any male humanoids with a mustache or beard.

 

While not entirely perfect, and we are working on doing hair properly. You can cheat and just process it as clothing. Not perfect, but for some it may be a workable solution for now.

 

Thank you, sir. But please, under no circumstances, do I want you to spend one second on the spike issue until the clothing poke-through and facial hair issues are addressed (unless the issues are related). The spike issue is somewhat rare, and may require more intensive labor to locate them and fix. We all need that clothing fix, and all of us either absolutely need or would very much desire (as close to need as you can get) the option to slap a beard on a dwarf or a wizard! I know you have many good ideas for future updates, and many sound almost critical too (I like the sound of baking a morphed character into a fixed mesh....leaving the facial morphs for speech if desired, of course). But speaking for myself, I can't do anything with MCS without clothes, beards, and a few new era-appropriate outfits.....so from my standpoint, the poke-through, facial hair, and usable artist tools issues should be the only things the technical team is working on at this time. I'm certain many others agree. I appreciate your efforts and any progress made.

 

REQUEST FOR COMMUNITY: The following is a request to the artist community that may read this post, from a person with no artistic skills. Assuming that Morph 3d resolves the outstanding issues they are currently working on--and assuming that I am still alive and not in the nursing home yet (Zing!)--I want to plant a seed for the artist community. Upon the release of a functional and facial-haired MCS, I would be interested in acquiring a set of MCS-compatible colonial-era clothing from the 18th century in the Unity Asset Store. Currently, nothing like that exists in the asset store (except maybe the female voodoo queen and Victorian lady). If a character would wield a musket or flintlock pistol, I would like his or her clothes. Specifically, I would like outfits like a British Redcoat (soldier and officer), colonial militia, Continental regular army/officer, pirates, Turkish Janissaries, French musketeers, Native American soldiers, European aristocrats, etc. I just wanted to make the suggestion, in case anyone with talent wanted to practice using the tools and didn't know where to begin. I suspect there will be plenty of fantasy and futuristic outfits competing in the future, but you could corner the market on the under-represented 17th and 18th centuries. For example, here are some pictures of outfits I would buy if they or similar outfits appeared in the asset store . I picked these examples because they are actually Daz clothing fitted to genesis 3 (like required by the new MCS tools, as I understand) so I think clothes like these are specifically possible (none of these outfits are available as MCS outfits as of now). Pencil me in for a sale.....

 

Hi @jjanzer_morph,
Thanks for actually showing some commitment to helping us out here.
For this I shall refrain from raging about the EULA and other issues for now and ask a few technical questions instead:

1. I added props to the left and right hands of the male and female model using the Morph3D-editor extension and noticed that, when picking them from the menu, said props are not referred to by their name but their ID instead.
   Also the weapons are shown near the hands in a wrong (default) rotation. And as soon as I run the scene those props just disappear. This is true for at least the Male Beast Warrior as well as the Female Clan Defender assets.
2. The Beast Warrior's hair (Elven Hair) seems to be broken, but I think I saw this mentioned earlier already.
3. The Female Clan Defender's hair is missing entirely, though.
4. This has been asked several times already (at least twice by me) before you joined the discussion, but I have not seen any answer to these questions as of yet. So once more:
   1. When will the Reptilian and Minotaur be upgraded to 1.6?
   2. If not at all, or "later this year": What is the workaround to get them working alongside the 1.6 system?
   3. If there is no workaround: Where do we request our refunds?
5. Is there any documentation available on the new system? If not, when is it coming?

 

Hi community,

I posted a problem I'm having a week ago regarding the attached picture.
I've gone through the support channels (sent an email and had a reply from Jared saying its a bug). I don't really want to get a refund but I'm not getting any more responses via email. Can anyone help? Can anyone from Morph3D provide me a patch to download temporarilly so I can use the asset I've paid for?

It would be really great to get a response!

 

1. For the showing of the id instead of name we will get this fixed, it's an easy fix so expect it in the next release. I'll look into the problem with the props disappearing as well.
2/3. This is probably content issues, we're working on updating, testing, and releasing both a code update and content update that should helpfully address all of these issues.
4. 1 - I'm not sure, when the content team gets in tomorrow I will ask and see if there is a timeframe and see if they have a timeframe. 2 - I'll take a look, it might be something that I can do on just on my end, but I have a few other things that are higher priority. 3 - our customer service can issue refunds.
5. Not yet, I know that's not good. I am planning on working on this over the next few weeks. I'd like something better then just a doxygen generated api dump.

 

Which asset is that (sorry I don't recognize it from the screenshot), I'll take a look and see if the injection mask is wrong. If it's not the mask, I may need some additional information. What happens if you hit play and then stop, does it work in play mode but not when it's stopped, does it not work in both?

 

For everyone interested in different skin textures, I received a reply by mail for a bug report I filed:

-

The addon textures for Voodoo queen and Shadow Man are not UV compatible with the new MCS 1.6 figure. Our art team is working on updating these for 1.6. When they are ready they will be packaged in with the MCS Male and MCS Female figures respectively (not the Voodoo Queen and Shadow Man products). It should be pretty soon.

Jared
-

So, hoping that's really soon but it's good I think that this becomes default available in the models, which also would hopefully make it easier to add more skin textures.

 

Looks like Vintage Cover Model.

 

Hello.

I wanted to try making a simple t-shirt to basic female character 1.6.1 in Blender.

But after you import the model I have a stupor. What's with this "studded frog" do? There are some tutorials? I'm a newbie-hobbyist in 3D (started a year ago), with the DAZ models turns out to do good things, but it is unclear where MCS even start.

 

Its the vintage dress asset. I've got a response last night and its a bugged being fixed this week
Thanks
Paul

 

I came across this video which solved it for me, look from 7:43 onwards

 

Thank you. I'm previously imported Genesis into the Blender through the .obj and was not aware of the specifics .fbx

 

I vote for a fix to clothing poke through. Facial hair would be nice at some point, but certainly not a show stopper for me. And artist tools don't even enter into the equation for me at this stage.

 

@jjanzer_morph
As it's now Tuesday and we were told that "early this week" we'd get an update on the state of matters regarding the EULA, I respectfully request (but shouldn't have had to) an update on this matter.

Thank you.

 

I just drag M3DMale Prebab to scene, than i drag AUG2M Boots to Content and than:


Could not locate any clothing, hair, or props in content pack, aborting object: AUG2M Boots Left
UnityEngine.Debug:LogError(Object)
ContentPack:setupWithGameObject(GameObject, Boolean)
ContentPack:.ctor(GameObject, Boolean)
MORPH3D.EDITORS.M3DCharacterManagerEditor:OnInspectorGUI() (at Assets/MORPH3D/Scripts/Editor/M3DCharacterManagerEditor.cs:200)
UnityEditor.DockArea:OnGUI()


and

Exception: Invalid content pack
ContentPack.setupWithGameObject (UnityEngine.GameObject obj, Boolean clone)
ContentPack..ctor (UnityEngine.GameObject obj, Boolean clone)
MORPH3D.EDITORS.M3DCharacterManagerEditor.OnInspectorGUI () (at Assets/MORPH3D/Scripts/Editor/M3DCharacterManagerEditor.cs:200)
UnityEditor.InspectorWindow.DrawEditor (UnityEditor.Editor editor, Int32 editorIndex, Boolean rebuildOptimizedGUIBlock, System.Boolean& showImportedObjectBarNext, UnityEngine.Rect& importedObjectBarRect) (at /Users/builduser/buildslave/unity/build/Editor/Mono/Inspector/InspectorWindow.cs:1234)
UnityEditor.DockArea:OnGUI()


If I delete the StreamingAssets and Morphs from Army_Uniform and import again, works... BUT when I import other content like Lawless Survivor, stop works!

Sometimes I receive message that assets have the same GUIs.

Can help me please?

 

Hi,

Other issue, for no reason, sometime just close the project and open again, than disappears the body, look screenshot.

 

We have a written EULA which we feel will address most of the concerns raised in this thread. We're holding off on pulling the trigger until we can get with the Unity people and discuss it with them first.

 

Are you planning to sell new content packs in the Unity Asset Store?

Are you going to allow people to sell their own artist tools created content in the Unity Asset Store?

 

Is there a simple script to add cloths at run time with 1.6 ? Can someone please guide/help me ?

 

Those would be the correct questions

 

M3D WARNING : Costume Item is of MESHTYPE UNKOWN. There is something wrong with the incoming FBX metdata for : Boots Left
UnityEngine.Debug:LogWarning(Object)
M3DIMPORT.M3DCustomImporter:OnPostprocessModel(GameObject)
UnityEditor.AssetPostprocessingInternalostprocessMesh(GameObject)

why do i get this spammed into my console? I'm using an official asset "Fire Guard"
Also props never work for me, despite following every tutorial I can find. They get a message saying I don't own this mesh?? and they either stay at the T pose position on Play or appear on the ground between the toons legs?

 

The props are broken since the 1.6 release of MCS. A fix is supposedly on its way.

@jjanzer_morph
When can we expect those remaining fixes?
Also, you wanted to ask your content team about the Minotaur and the Reptilian. What is the situation there?

 

1.6.1 still is the latest version ? Support talk about that We are still using 1.6.1, in asset store continue 1.6.1, are there a new one?

 

I'll look into this today and tomorrow. I know the content team is going through each piece and resolving issues.

For your second issue, what happens when you hit play, does everything start working again or is it still invisible?

 

Generally speaking this is how you do it, I'm assuming characterManager is the component of the GameObject that is the M3DMale or M3DFemale, and that you know which GameObject (the prefab of clothing) that you want to load.

ContentPack cp = new ContentPack(TheGameObjectYouWantToInject);
characterManager.AddContentPack(cp);

If that's not enough info, I can create a simple script that you can attach to your figure, just let me know.

 

I'll look into this one specifically after I finish checking out a few other assets. I know the content team is still going through and updating assets.

The entire prop system leaves a lot to desire, we're planning a complete overhaul to it in the near future. In the mean time if you want you can simply parent the prop to a bone if the attachment system isn't working properly.

 

Yes 1.6.1 is the latest version. I have a few fixes that are pending testing and I'm planning another deployment early next week, hopefully on Monday.

 

I'm going to try to get a few fixes to help deal with props in by next week but they may require content updates. I'll make an update here to let everyone know what I find, if they require content updates it may take a bit longer to get them all back and working again but I'll make sure we make that happen.

For the Minotaur and Reptilian packs, we need to migrate them up to 1.6 along with their supporting content. As soon as I have some time I will take a look at these and see what level of effort they'll take so we can figure out where in the priority they need to land and then get them updated. If they require major work we may push them back a bit, but if they only require a little I'll expedite them up the list. I'm hoping they don't require much work and that we'll be able to have them updated and working with 1.6 soon.

 

continues invisible.

 

I was able to verify that there is a problem with the Lawless set. This is a similar issue that I'm hoping is something I can work around with a code update (hoping for a release on Monday). I assume you're seeing the "I do not own this mesh..." log entries when adding/attaching/etc the pants in that set? I'll keep you posted.