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

I don't expect a lot of support, myself. I'm happy with the models I've purchased. I intend to use my own shader solution and blendshapes solution.

And the pricing has been reasonable.

That said, I hope that when they finish their Ready Player One project, they'll have time to return to Unity and perhaps add more models to the store.

 

Hi edub101 !
I'm having a similar problem and also getting these errors :
"Array index (0) is out of bounds (size=0)
UnityEngine.SkinnedMeshRenderer:SetBlendShapeWeight(Int32, Single)."

Did you find a solution. Unity crashes whenever I change to the scene that displays these errors

 

Hi, I've encountered some problem with MCS:
My character looks all fine in editor and the build version in my office's computer.
But when I tried to test my build on other PCs, sometimes the character will be torn apart at the first time I enter the game:


All kinds of crazy.
Any idea what may caused this and how can I fix it?

 

Harekelas, I had an issue that looks somewhat similar to yours that was caused an LOD object being added by Unity.

Does your problem go away if you move very close to your character?

 

No, it does not look like a LOD issue, especially as the second and third pic shows, it looks like a malfunction of rigged bones been misplaced all around the character.
When the character moves or make interactions, the floating pieces of him moves accordingly, in a scaled way.

 

Hey guys i'm having an issue using overlays to change makeupa and facial settings at runtime.
The problem is that when i change the overlay through code, the material receives the overlay texture input but the character meshe doesnt show the overlay.
I can then click on the dropdown of the head material (runtime)inside the skinned mesh renderer and somehow updates the overlay making all overlays i set through code also work after that.
In the build without the inspectors i cant make overlays work because of this.
Any thoughts?

 

Hi there, I am using the MCS Male and the MCS Female. I have created some FACIAL animations using the blend shapes (LOD 0 ). In the Editor both body and face animations work perfectly , however In the build exe the Face animations do not work and only the body animations run. The quality of graphics is the Maximum available, it is a VR experience. I think that changes the LOD renderer but I am not sure. Could you provide me some advice what should I do?

 

In there any estimation as to when MCS will be upgraded to the HDRP ?
It would be great if in that update you put the source code instead of the dll, it won't be slower and it would make it easy for the community to help each other and make it better.
For example if I try to instantiate the same already loaded character a hundred time it takes seconds and I would have liked to debug it myself.

 

Have they added anything or commented in recent weeks? Seems like this is headed to the territory of abandon ware.

 

It does seem abandoned. I made sure I had copies of everything I had purchased from their online store just in case it suddenly went down.

 

Just about everything on their site is "coming soon". I wonder what's going on.

 

Last I heard they were working on some kind of big project for "Ready Player One" movie tie in. But given what a flash in the pan that movie was, I have to wonder if it wasn't scrapped.

 

It's on Steam: Ready Player One: OASIS. It's in beta, so they're probably still hard at work on it. Hopefully all their work will find its way back into their Unity products eventually.

 

hehe looks like a mix of Second Life and Star Trek Online.

 

Hoping some of you will find this useful.
I've written this script to fix an issue in the current MCS implementation where the vertex normals are baked at their original position regardless of the morphs applied.
What this looks like when you apply Morphs is artifacts that looks like "bags under the eyes (or breasts)" or vertex shading where you're not expecting it.

More detailed explanation: They're creating Morphs with a set of bone transforms they store as a JSON file alongside the model. When you activate one of these morphs they cook the 100% version as a blend shape onto the mesh then set a percentage. However they don't touch the normals in the blend shape only the positions.

This makes sense, simply because they can paint smooth shading and add features such as Abdominal muscles into the base mesh normals that aren't really there. However breaks down at extreme slider settings.

This script re-bakes the blend shape normals using the Unity Recalculate Normals function - Morph3D on the other hand leaves all the normals as they were before the vertices were moved.

Add it to the root node of the character in game then hit "Fix All".
If you want to revert use the Detach All button in the M3D Character Manager->Morphs section (on the root).

Code (CSharp):

1. using System;
2. using System.Collections;
3. using System.Collections.Generic;
4. using UnityEditor;
5. using UnityEngine;
6.  
7. public class FixM3DBlendShapeNormals : MonoBehaviour {
8.     [Tooltip("Enabling this will reprocess all meshes in this character at game start. If you enable it on multiple characters it'll reprocress the same stuff many times.")]
9.     public bool runOnStart;
10.     // Use this for initialization
11.     void Start () {
12.         if (runOnStart)
13.             FixAllBlendShapesInHierarchy();
14.     }
15.  
16.     // pass -1 to do all blendshapes or a specific blend shape index
17.     // note: we need to clear all the blendshapes and rewrite them regardless
18.     // returns null if no error, otherwise an error message and no changes were made
19.     // Expect this to be slow and to use a lot of memory and cause GC
20.     public string FixBlendShapeNormals(Mesh mesh,int blendShapeIndex,Action<float> progressDelegate=null )
21.     {
22.         if (!mesh.isReadable)
23.             return "The mesh " + mesh.name + " isn't read/write.";
24.         if (mesh.blendShapeCount == 0)
25.             return null; // nothing to do here
26.         int vertexCount = mesh.vertexCount;
27.         // retrieve these once for speed
28.         Vector3[] verts = mesh.vertices;
29.         Vector3[] normals = mesh.normals;
30.         Vector4[] tangents = mesh.tangents;
31.         // storage for the existing blend shape copies
32.         Vector3[][][] blendDeltas = new Vector3[mesh.blendShapeCount][][];
33.         string[] blendShapeNames = new string[mesh.blendShapeCount];
34.         for (int i = 0; i < mesh.blendShapeCount; i++)
35.         {
36.             if (mesh.GetBlendShapeFrameCount(i) > 1)
37.                 return "Blend shape " + mesh.GetBlendShapeName(i) + " has more than one frame, you'll need to modify the code as this wasn't expected.";
38.             blendShapeNames[i] = mesh.GetBlendShapeName(i);
39.             blendDeltas[i] = new Vector3[3][]; // 3 buffers
40.             for (int j = 0; j < 3; j++)
41.                 blendDeltas[i][j] = new Vector3[vertexCount]; // nasty jagged array
42.             mesh.GetBlendShapeFrameVertices(i, 0, blendDeltas[i][0], blendDeltas[i][1], blendDeltas[i][2]);
43.             // are we fixing this one?
44.             if ((blendShapeIndex==-1)||(blendShapeIndex == i))
45.             {
46.                 Vector3[] deltaVerts = verts.Clone() as Vector3[]; // take a copy of original positions
47.                 // apply the deltas - we only care about position as we're about to recalculate normals and tangents
48.                 Vector3[] deltaV = blendDeltas[i][0];
49.                 Vector3[] deltaN = blendDeltas[i][1];
50.                 //Vector3[] deltaT = blendDeltas[i][2];
51.                 for (int j = 0; j < vertexCount; j++)
52.                     deltaVerts[j] += deltaV[j];
53.                 // build a crude mesh from the blendshape
54.                 Mesh blendShape = new Mesh();
55.                 blendShape.vertices = deltaVerts;
56.                 blendShape.normals = new Vector3[vertexCount];
57.                 blendShape.tangents = tangents; // use original tangent space
58.                 blendShape.triangles = mesh.triangles; // we don't bother with submeshes
59.                 // recalculate normals - note we leave the tangent space alone, Morph is using a single tangent space for the entire model
60.                 blendShape.RecalculateNormals(); // the built in Unity Normal recalculator is pretty bad
61.                 Vector3[] newNormals = blendShape.normals;
62.                 for (int j=0;j<vertexCount;j++)
63.                     deltaN[j] = newNormals[j] - normals[j];
64.             }
65.             if (progressDelegate != null)
66.                 progressDelegate((float)i / (float)mesh.blendShapeCount);
67.         }
68.         // now rebuild the blendshapes
69.         mesh.ClearBlendShapes();
70.         for (int i = 0; i < blendDeltas.Length; i++)
71.             mesh.AddBlendShapeFrame(blendShapeNames[i], 100.0f, blendDeltas[i][0], blendDeltas[i][1], blendDeltas[i][2]);
72.         // commit changes
73.         mesh.UploadMeshData(false);
74.         if (progressDelegate != null)
75.             progressDelegate(1.0f);
76.         return null;
77.     }
78.  
79.     int currentRenderer;
80.     int totalRenderers;
81.     Action<float> progressAction;
82.     void ProgressCallback(float progress)
83.     {
84.         if (progressAction == null)
85.             return; // shouldn't even be here!
86.         float globalProgress = ((float)currentRenderer + progress) / (float)totalRenderers;
87.         progressAction(globalProgress);
88.     }
89.  
90.     // fix all the blend shapes in the entire model
91.     public string FixAllBlendShapesInHierarchy(Action<float> progressDelegate = null)
92.     {
93.         // locate all the SkinnedMeshRenderers and fix them
94.         SkinnedMeshRenderer[] allRenderers = GetComponentsInChildren<SkinnedMeshRenderer>();
95.         totalRenderers = allRenderers.Length;
96.         if (totalRenderers == 0)
97.             return "Didn't find any Meshes to fix, did you attach this to a Morph3d character?";
98.         // if caller passed a progress delegate - use ours otherwise null, avoiding ()?:
99.         progressAction = progressDelegate;
100.         Action<float> ourProgressDelegate;
101.         if (progressDelegate == null)
102.             ourProgressDelegate = null;
103.         else
104.             ourProgressDelegate = ProgressCallback;
105.         for (int i = 0; i < totalRenderers; i++)
106.         {
107.             currentRenderer = i;
108.             string result = FixBlendShapeNormals(allRenderers[i].sharedMesh, -1, ourProgressDelegate);
109.             if (result != null)
110.                 return result; // if error
111.         }
112.         if (progressDelegate != null)
113.             progressDelegate(1.0f);
114.         return null;
115.     }
116. }
117.  
118. [CustomEditor(typeof(FixM3DBlendShapeNormals))]
119. [ExecuteInEditMode]
120. public class CopyNormalsHelper : Editor
121. {
122.     void ProgressDialog(float progress)
123.     {
124.         EditorUtility.DisplayProgressBar("Fix Mesh Progress", "", progress);
125.     }
126.  
127.     public override void OnInspectorGUI()
128.     {
129.         DrawDefaultInspector();
130.         EditorStyles.label.wordWrap = true;
131.         EditorGUILayout.LabelField("Click to fix all blend shape normals. Use Detach All in the Character Manager to revert.");
132.         if (GUILayout.Button("Fix All"))
133.         {
134.             FixM3DBlendShapeNormals instance = serializedObject.targetObject as FixM3DBlendShapeNormals;
135.             string result = instance.FixAllBlendShapesInHierarchy(ProgressDialog);
136.             EditorUtility.ClearProgressBar();
137.             if (result != null)
138.                 EditorUtility.DisplayDialog("Error", result, "ok");
139.         }
140.     }
141. }

Notes:

• This only alters the blend shapes - it won't affect the base mesh. (100% morph you see it, 0% morph you don't).
• This will alter all the project base mesh blend shapes so will alter all copies using the blend shape, but bear in mind they're temporary. MCS doesn't generate a blend shape till it needs it then keeps it for all instances.To reset, just "Detach All" from any copy of the mesh.
• This won't fix blend shapes for LODs that MCS has never seen, If it matters slowly scroll the LOD slider on the M3D Character Manager to zero and back. (you can double check by looking at the LOD renderers in the hierarchy - check if they have Blend Shapes).
• An easy way to debug this stuff is to swap the shaders used in LOD0 with !Debug/Normals.

 

Hello

Work morph3d only in Forward rendering mode ? Because then Global Snow not work

But when deferred rendiering the Morph3D Character look crazy weird


Anyone know how to fix it ?

Regards

 

Is it possible to edit the base character mesh?

 

I am using 2018 and on a fresh project i have 3 morph3d shader errors where certain shaders show up pink. Just a heads up.

 

I'm using Morph3D in Unity 2018.2 and I keep seeing an issue where something I've changed reverts randomly. Specifically, I change the material head/body shaders from the default Volund to either the Skinned Deferred or Standard shader. It works fine for a while, but then randomly without reason they get reverted back to what they were. Anyone else see this? Is there a fix coming?

 

This has been an issue for a long time now. It was supposedly fixed in an upcoming build, but we haven't gotten that build yet. Maybe they'll get around to it at some point.

Has anyone gotten a response from them on their website?

 

I tried e-mailing support, but have not yet received a reply. This is very disappointing since I've invested a lot into these assets and I need to to work. I'm going to have to figure out a solution on my own it seems, but I'm not sure where to begin.

 

Check out this post here:
https://forum.unity.com/threads/rel...s-male-and-female.355675/page-65#post-3430318

He gave a link to an unreleased build that fixes the materials reverting. There are now slots to fill in with your customized materials.

HOWEVER: I have had problems importing custom-made clothing from Asset Tools when this unreleased DLL is used. So I recommend you do all your clothing customization and importing first, then switch to that DLL. and switch back to the older if you want to import any new custom clothing. it's a pain, but I don't see we will ever get an official release.

 

Awesome. Thanks for the link. I was unaware of this. I don't do any custom clothing so that's not a concern for me. I will give it a try tonight.

 

Change the shader type of the skin material to deferred

 

There is a specific Morph3D/Skin Deferred that is supposed to be used, but I've found that, although it solved the deferred craziness, it doesn't behave correctly with lighting, fog, effect, etc. The other day I tried just using the Standard shader on skin and not only did it fix the deferred craziness, but looks better and works correctly in all situations.

[EDIT]
Just found a flaw in my use of Standard shader. Apparently, the alpha injection mask won't work with that and you get bad skin poke-through. So I guess that's not the solution. Back to using Skin Deferred and horrible lighting/fog.

 

OK, so I e-mailed the website support e-mail 7 days ago and still have not received a reply. It looks like they are ignoring all support requests, which is definitely a bad sign. I did notice that there is some big project on their site called Ready Player One Avatar Creator. It would seem that they are holed up working on this other project and have abandoned, at least for now, the Morph 3D character system.

 

I'm not surprised. I e-mailed them a while back and still haven't heard anything. My guess is that they've given up on this or don't care about it right now and are focusing on the Ready Player One thing. I thought they would at least answer their support e-mails, but they're not even doing that.

 

I've been trying to resolve a couple issues but can't find any support channel for this product. Is MCS not supported any more?

 

All indications are that support has been non-existent for quite a while. I myself tried every support channel available and have received no responses. Others have had same results. Now that's not to say the asset is dead, but the company is choosing not to support this at the present time. That may change in the future. No one in the community knows.

 

Should MCS be listed as "Deprecated" in the store, since it has been abandoned? I'm concerned people might not realize that, and spend money on a non-working and non-supported product.

 

That's a good point. Perhaps we should all complain to Unity about the lack of support, which might prompt a conversation between Unity and the dev. If that happens then support might pick up again if the dev doesn't want their products deprecated.

 

We haven't found a way of reading the clothing morphs from a folder outside the streaming assets ( we are downloading clothes + morphs at runtime through asset bundles ).

Is that possible?

 

I received the following message in response to an PM to @jjanzer_morph. I assumed he would also post here after I prompted him to let the community know what was going on, but since he has failed to do so, I am making his response public. It is very concerning:

"The short answer is we've been extremely busy working on other products. It's not a good answer, but that's what's happening.

I have only had time to deal with direct emails/messages for support as I've been slammed for a long time with these projects.

I think the reason no official announcement about support/updates/etc is just because as a business we haven't been able to make a decision on how to move forward. I am pushing internally to get a public decision out so no one is left in the dark."

When I responded to his message, I never heard back from him.

 

Well, at least you got something! we bought the whole collection from their website and since last year we lost access to all downloads as they closed shop

 

MCS are actually pretty similar to Daz characters that can be exported into .fbx. I've been testing them.
What is missing are the morphs. You can always set up the shape in Daz studio( which is free). The expressions are missing as well, although the facial rig is pretty complete.

 

You should still be able to access them from here, provided you have your ID and password.

 

I also considering using DAZ and export .fbx. It should export morphs too, so it seems like viable solution for runtime character customization.

Found this helpful video, how to import properly and fix materials:

 

Thanks for the Link @hopeful
Didn't load everything before and was afraid of not getting it now.

@Michal_Stangel
Well or we move to Character Creator 3, which simply does everything better than Morph3d and much more. It's also based on Daz3d I mean.
But well, a little bit too pricy...

https://www.reallusion.com/character-creator/

Perhaps someone has already experience with it.

Cheers
Ronny

 

Been considering that too. But unfortunately it's no go for me, because body morphs cannot be exported, even in the newest CC3 And I want players to be able to customize their character at the beginning.

 

You do realize I hope you can't use Daz Characters or clothes in a game without buying a special "Interactive License" for each item:
https://www.daz3d.com/interactive-license-info

 

Yes, it's an expensive one, if you want to buy more items from them. Unfortunately it's the only option I see at this moment (for my scenario).

 

@magique Thanks for the update. Not sure what to do now since I was REALLY hoping they would get this whole thing nailed down properly, but I wonder if the fact that they never could figure out a good (and easy) way for people to use assets without a lot of overhead really hurt the sales potential for this. I guess I'll have to figure out what to do at this point.

 

Hey, is it worthing add this in a project ?

 

No.

 

Hi did you fix this issue? I don't understand why to bother making lods if I can't use it with the LOD Group

 

Need a fix for HighDef

 

This asset is dead. The company has not been supporting it for a very long time.

 

Too bad, this asset had good quality at reasonable prices.
I hope they get back to it someday.

 

The m3d assets could be converted to the UMA framework, and that would fix most of the issues that people are having with it - it would no longer need special shaders, poke-through would be fixed, etc. Would recommend ditching most of the blendshapes though - they take up enormous amounts of space.

 

The thing that pisses me off the most about this is that my project is heavily using this asset and they kept promising they were going to make it better and easier to use. We waited and waited and they were never able to deliver. Now they seem to be dropping the asset to chase something else they're probably going to do a half-ass job on and leaving those of use who were going all in on this to the wolves. They haven't been answering tickets about the app, or at least working on getting it to a nice stable state before leaving it to dry. It's super frustrating.