Official "Sherman" animation project giveaway. Great scene setup + fur

We just finished project "Sherman" and are giving away the entire thing.



https://www.cartoonbrew.com/tools/y...-film-in-your-own-projects-annecy-175317.html

Here are the blogs on it
https://blogs.unity3d.com/2019/06/11/introducing-sherman-part-1/
https://blogs.unity3d.com/2019/06/11/introducing-sherman-part-2/

Here's a video on Layout (using Cinemachine of course!)

Here is where you get it (sign up, we'll send to you)
https://create.unity3d.com/sherman-unity-for-linear-animation

This project is built with the best practices from many other projects, from Adam v2, the Baymax Dreams series, work with large clients and numerous others. It's a great example of how to setup Unity for doing cutscenes or any other animation / episodic / show type format.

Lots of great info across the blogs and videos here: https://unity.com/solutions/film-animation-cinematics

Sign up, jump in, ask questions!

 

I have the Sherman.FullProject loaded up in 2018.4.2f1 and everything looks great when playing or scrubbing directly from the Timeline window but I can't get the scene to play correctly from the game play button and consequently I can't render out frames using the Recorder Track. In this case the GameView seems to default to the CM powerlinesShock camera view, the scene is stuck at frame 0 and the scene lighting is not evaluating correctly (too dark).

The Sherman.StarterTemplate project also suffers from the same issue, even with the simplest LookDev scene loaded.

Has anyone else encountered this problem?

System config: Windows 10 Enterprise 64-bit, Geforce RTX 2080 GPU, 32 GB RAM, Intel Xeon E5-1620 3.5Ghz CPU

 

Yes!...i faced same issue at first but after navigating to --->Unity "Tools" section then press "load film layout".
Walaa....! you found whole new level of layouts and then press Sherman on dashboard. load main scene settings .You can play this only through "timeline" though unless u start tampering with it.

 

Thanks for sharing this. Its fantastic. Great to see the workflow and process with it all in one scene. Will be looking through it in depth over the next few days.

I do have a quick question around the HD settings. Is the project using forward rendering or deferred?

It seems as though the settings are set to deferred but most of the lights have "soft shadows" enabled. In any build we have testedr HDRP (so far) only forward rendering gives me access to soft shadows.

Has this scene got an override which is forcing it to forward mode?

 

Hi Mike,

Your explanation about 'Play On Awake' being disabled on the timeline sequence makes total sense. Just to be clear I haven't found it possible to render frames to disk with the Recorder clip just by hitting the 'play' button in the Timeline window - the action plays through to the game view correctly but it's not rendered to disk.

I'm only able to render frames to disk when 'Play on Awake' is enabled on the Master Timeline game object and I hit the main editor 'Play' button in the top tool bar. Can you confirm that this is the correct workflow or is there a way to record frames to disk directly from the Timeline window 'play' button?

 

Same issue for me, plus that the render when in play(game) skips almost all frames.
Master timelines recorder clip is sat at 70ish seconds in also.

Will look more tonite

/Patrick

 

Oh, I was not clear, it skips rendering frames to disk, understand that real-time is not the goal here

My system is i9 with 64gig ram n multiple 1080ti's

But the few rendered frames seems to be lacking the motion blur etc

Will check more

 

Found solution to my problem, properties of MasterTimeline in project view was default to 24 frames, not 960 as pdf stated was needed for render

Now I just need to locate the shader for Hedge_Ver2 and V3 as they are nicely pink

//Patrick

 

Hi, On opening the project I'm getting an error regarding "No git executable was found' are you able to offer any advice on this. I can provide more info on the error if required. Thanks

 

Just install Git for your OS and restart Unity
https://git-scm.com/downloads

 

Hi. Nice framework. Nice project. Does anyone now how to repair the hedge?

 

Hi, just loaded Sherman project ( Not able to find Tools Menus to switch Film layout)

 

see my pink hedge screenshot.
After loading 01_episode_set_lighting.unity ....
click LoadFilmLayout button.

 

I have this problem MissingReferenceException: RenderTexture' has been destroyed but you are still trying to access it. Your script should either check if it is null or you should not destroy the object.

 

Do you have any documentation for how the eye shading/occlusion is done? I get the idea from the shader and scripts but a higher level overview would be helpful. Specifically, how you use raymarching to add the eye shadowing.

 

The download link for the "Sherman" project files is no longer working I filled out the form below, but the link in the email is broken! If anyone can help, that would be awesome!
https://create.unity3d.com/sherman-...2.1392296684.1576692183-2083697761.1562184565

 

@mikew_unity

I don't say these things to "hammer" Unity... I'm a fan of unity and a user of it... and despite what I say below... like it and plan on sticking with it... but:

There are all sorts of issues with the Sherman project... from the fact the PDF file references Sherman.Client and Sherman.Starter folders which aren't in the download file... the errors another person above talked about above... which no one has responded to... and it's been about 6 months... to it just not working. I have a powerful computer so it's not that... and I followed the instructions in the PDF file and the tips above... with no success.

Since there are no real definitive and thorough videos tutorials of showing how to make films using Unity (not just simple cutscenes but full length or even just short films)... I was hoping Sherman would give me some insight but it's confusing and falls a bit short.

I hope Unity will eventually task/hire someone to make a solid set of tutorial videos of how to setup your project to make a film... even if it's just "Indie style" (ie. not from the POV of a 100+ person studio) and using timeline, cinemachine, animations, etc... and show how to make a short film using Unity.

And do these tutorial videos from a small studio POV... ie. as if it was a small team or even solo and not a team of 100 people working on it. I'm sure I could spend 50 hours trying to aggregate through all of the limited tutorials on the internet... tinker around Unity for weeks on-end and then sort through it myself... but why not save us customers some time and the frustration and just put out a proper learning pipeline?

The "film" used in these videos doesn't have to be an award winning one... but just show us how to use Unity to make a short film... ie. this is how you setup your project... this is how you set up your master track... this is how you take different clips and animations and shots you made from different "Unity Scenes" / environment / locations and bring them into the Master Track... this is how you use the "Beats" concept... this is how you setup and use a lighting tack... a VFX track... this is how you declutter all of your shots, tracks, etc. etc. in the timeline and in the hierarchy and in the project... this is the best way to record/export your movie into a final video file so you can now show the world... this is the best way to export your movie from Unity and into Adobe Premier Pro for final editing, polishing and finishing... etc. etc.

Simply pointing to the "Ferrari" engine and saying, "see how fast that is... see how it sounds... it's great... now you go make one"... isn't all that helpful.

It doesn't even have to go into detail the process of lighting, VFX, SRP details and settings all that much... as there are a ton of videos on that already (although not many focused on movie making)... I (and from what I can gather... many others) just need the core fundamentals of using Unity to make films and the best practices of it. Now, with that being said... a movie making oriented set of video tutorials on VFX, SRP, Lighting, etc. would be helpful... but at this point... I would be just happy with the core items that I mentioned above.

I find it strange that Unity is starting to push other use-cases with Unity (other than just making games) such as Movie Making... but the video tutorials are all either lacking, limited, old or just not thorough and clear. Unity seems to think that pushing out (what are now dated and not maintained) "projects" is good enough... it's not.

It seems to me that they are just working with the bigger film studios, who seemingly get a direct channel with Unity... but everyone else is kind of left to fend for themselves. If that's the business plan... let us know... otherwise serve all of your customers... not just the select "elite" ones.

The growth with "regular" users and people looking to be movie makers and therefore potential Unity users... would seem to me to be the better business model for the long run as the "pool" of potential "customers" is much larger... rather than catering just to larger film studios (and/or good sized and well funded so-called Indie studios). Going after larger film studios seems to be capped out from a business POV... where going after everyone else would yield much bigger growth... and to be practical about it... Unity is big enough now... and has enough resources to probably go after both.

I'm not trying to "bash" unity... I like it... and will keep using it... but with Unreal being a viable and real competitor... and clearly trying to go after the same users in the same marketplace... I think Unity is at risk here... and it's focus and use of resources seems "confused."

As a committed Unity user, I'm hoping Unity does a better job in the future with the things that I mentioned above.

 

I have the same error. How to fix it?

 

what is "recorded"?

is there a way now to show the tracks when selecting a gameobject? like dopesheet in maya

 

Thanks a lot for the project! Is there any chance this will be updated to work with the latest Unity release (2019.3.1)? In particular, we are trying to port the fur and motion blur features.

 

This fur is much light i thing, please integrate it in HDRP.
https://github.com/Sorumi/UnityFurShader

 

Guys one more thing! Is it better to move characters manually with animations and keying in film projects or to code them with AI/Navmesh like in games?

 

In films the main characters are hand animated, large crowds gets the AI. Watch the making off of the last Lord Of the Ring, the battle.

 

Hi I'm trying to use the sherman project for a study at the university. I installed the project on unity following the instructions in the Readme but when I click on the button play in the game view I get some errors, including this one:

MissingReferenceException: The object of type 'RenderTexture' has been destroyed but you are still trying to access it.

Your script should either check if it is null or you should not destroy the object.


can you help me I don't know exactly what the problem is.

Also I don't know how to import or import the video with the recorder clip in the Timele. Can you enlighten me better on this subject as well, thank you very much.

 

anybody figure out how the correct setup is .... i m using 14 julne 2019 updated project and nothing works even models are broken any idea ?

 

Part 1 - "check out Part 2 for more details on fur"

goes to Part 2 - "check out part 1 for details about the fur implementation"

The only information I have been able to get from this is the maps were painted in Mari.

Can anyone point to actual information about generating fur and shaders for an enterprise project?

 

project opens with 591 errors in 2019.4.9f1 - is it worth pursuing to get this up and running?

Nothing is working.

Is there a more up to date sample of fur in Unity?

I'm considering a film project in Unity - it's scary to find out that a year later (shorter than some project's lifespans) you won't even be able to open your files. Can we please get a response from Unity regarding this issue?

edit 2: found this in the readme file
"Detailed description of the implementation and how to author the specific comb maps for the fur will be covered in a separate blog post."

Anyone have a link to that separate blog post?

 

Cam_Crichton, open the project with Unity 2018.4.3f1, it is mentionned at the beginning of the part1 they worked with 2018.3 and now with 2018.4LTS. I'm able to open it on my end see below. best