UMA - Unity Multipurpose Avatar on the Asset Store!

As I said before, I cannot switch the isKinematic off because the avatar is pushed by some force.

Regarding the freezing Unity when selecting the DynamicAvtar, I fixed it by removing water (probably old one that was placed before upgrading Unity). The problem was described here:

https://forum.unity3d.com/threads/unity-hangs-when-selecting-objects-in-scene-view.380683/

And maybe that too:
https://issuetracker.unity3d.com/issues/unity-hangs-when-selecting-objects-in-the-scene-view

 

Ok, after many hours of thinking and working, I am able to animate my avatar from UMA. The only problem I had was not connected with UMA itself. The strange avatar behaviour was caused by too low global gravity that was 1.xxxxxx. Probably, some script in my project did that. Therefore, if there's no IsKinematic switched on, the avatar goes into the Universe. The gravity should be default -9.81 or bigger and all works. I wasted all my day to figure it out.

 

I keep getting popups in Unity saying UMA 2.5.1 is available and that I only have 2.5.0 installed.

No matter how many times I download+import 2.5.1 from the popup window, it still keeps telling me I have 2.5.0 installed and 2.5.1 is available.

I have also tried downloading UMA 2.5 from the asset store to reinstall. Nothing I do seems to upgrade to 2.5.1.

Any ideas?

 

I believe that the version information didn't get updated in that release. You can solve this by editing the AssetVersion.xml file, and changing the version to 2.5.1, and closing the update nag window.

 

[Posting this again since I posted it yesterday right before the many-hours-downtime and it seems to have been lost by what I can only assume was DB corruption during the downtime]

I am a long time developer who is new to Unity and UMA. I am trying to integrate UMA 2.5 with Final IK + Puppet Master and I am having some problems. I posted in the Final IK forum, but I think this might actually be a problem with UMA (or how I am using it) and so I'm posting here to find out your thoughts.

Scenario: Create a new scene. Instantiate a UMA/Getting Started/UMADynamicCharacterAvatar with default settings. Press Play. Everything seems to work.

The problem is that the Animator component is initially reporting Animator.isHuman = false for the generated UMA in Update. This essentially breaks Final IK; it does not automatically determine the avatar's bone structure in the case of isHuman = false.

I have noticed that if I wait a few ticks, Animator.isHuman does change to true eventually. Sometimes it takes 1 tick, sometimes maybe even 2. I'm guessing that it takes multiple ticks to fully create/instantiate the DCA?

Am I doing something wrong or is this the expected behavior?

Should I just wait however many ticks it takes to create the human avatar and then try to set up Final IK?

Thanks in advance for any insight you can provide.

 

Final IK expects the skeleton to already exist, so you have to add it at runtime. I haven't tried it yet, but I know others are using it. There is information on the wiki here on what to do: http://umawiki.secretanorak.com/3rd_party_integration

 

That should work fine.

 

I've plugged into UMAData.OnCharacterCreated and it's working now.

Thanks for the help!

 

For those that don't hang around in the slack channel, here's some pictures of stuff we're working on. We're trying to push the quality up, and WillB's texture and DNA changes have helped a lot. We have some more contributed artwork coming soon, including some new default clothing sets that I think really step up the quality, and some new hair too (thanks to isbit for allowing us to use their work).

Here's some work in progress:

 

"Like" is not strong enough ... we need a "love" button.

 

Hello,

not for my game, but for work for hololens I wanted to do a Little presentation.

I wanted to have a narrator Standing on a platform, very simple.

I made a new Project, build target is this time Windows store / universal 10.

I installed the latest uma Version.

I added the UMA_DCS prefab and a UMADynamicCharacterAvatar prefab. I dragged a wardrobe Shirt and Jeans onto it. Put a small platform under it.

When I press Play in Editor everything Looks perfect so far, only the Shirt is ugly as hell

But when I try to build, I get this error:

Assets\UMA\Core\Extensions\DynamicCharacterSystem\Scripts\UMAAssetBundleManager\WebServer.cs(13,9): error CS0246: The type or namespace name 'HttpListener' could not be found (are you missing a using directive or an assembly reference?)

I removed the file but it only got worse...

Runs fine in Editor. any idea, please? Thanks

PS: I think it is the Universal 10 build target. Do you really need the HttpListener?

 

At this time, a UWP/Windows store build target won't work with UMA. We're looking at various ways to support this, but the resolution will take some time.

 

If Microsoft is successful at pushing Win 10 S, the importance of this may increase in the not distant future, as they intend to block all software installs except Windows Store on that platform.

Not complaining or suggesting you change your priorities at all - just commenting on recent news I've read.

Thanks again for the amazing work you guys do. UMA is awesome.

 

They will hurt themselves really bad if they do something like that.

 

If I just remove the HTTPListener, may it work then? Can it be simply removed?

Thanks Jaimi!

 

Thanks! The problems mostly center around encryption and asset bundles. We'll come up with some way to get around it, not sure it will be short term though. Windows Store is interesting to me as well.

 

Unfortunately no, that will just start you down an even bigger set of issues - basically the encryption, and some uses of reflection. Much of it is in the asset bundles, so we could in theory just conditionally compile some of that out, but there are other things as well. And asset bundles are a big deal, so it's hard to just drop them. These things will all need to be refactored, it's going to be a big project it appears.

 

Okay, thanks for the info Jaimi!

 

Recently, I've been searching for options to implement character customization system for my game, and concluded that UMA would be the best (and probably the only) choice for me.

During my search, another character customization tool called Manuel Bastioni Lab(will refer as 'MBL' from now on) also came to my notice:

• http://www.manuelbastioni.com/

As some of you probably already know, it's a plugin for Blender and features high quality models for different ethnicity and gender combinations.

But even though the models it creates can be used elsewhere under CC license, the author explicitly prohibits such usage of the morphing data and source code.

I've been testing default human models provided by UMA briefly, and I found it to be a bit lacking in making authentic looking characters with diverse ethnicities. So, it came to my mind that what if I could use models from MBL as base meshes in UMA, thus combining the best from the both sides.

But as I'm still figuring out the internal workings of UMA, I'm not entirely sure if it would be the best, or even viable approach for me. So I want to ask a few questions about the idea.

1) Would it be easy, or even possible to apply UMA's DNAs to meshes from MBL? If so, where should I begin to work?
2) MBL provides different meshes per each ethnicity and gender. Does it mean that I need to make each as a distinct race (even if two models with different ethnicity, but the same gender share the same logical set of DNAs)?
3) If I need to create a distinct race per each ethnic/gender combination, would it mean that I also need to create a different version of clothes for each race? Is there any way I can use the same cloth for difference races?
4) Obviously, MBL's models look to be quite higher in quality than those from UMA. How badly would it effect to the performance? (I know it's an impossible question to answer exactly. But any wild conjecture would be welcomed.)
5) And lastly, if such a combination is feasible, would there be many people who might be interested in undertaking the task?

By the way, I'd like to thank the author(s) who decided to release this product under an open source license. I'm also trying to make an open source work with Unity, and I'm glad that UMA being one of the very few quality assets that I can use for such a purpose on Asset Store.

Thanks!

 

@mysticfall - This is already in progress.
These would be additional races (likely one for each base mesh). A gender could share the base mesh, it just depends on how well it's designed. I recommend to join the slack channel (send me an IM with your email), there is a section dedicated to this.
Also - the next release has higher resolution meshes for the default UMA, so it's a step up in quality also.

 

@mysticfall First of all i recommend you to join our slack channel, its a great place to get answers to specific questions. Just send me a pm with your email and i will invite you.

1) Its pretty easy to make your own base meshes, we have several ppl doing that already and i even thing someone is making some based on Bastioni meshes if i remember correctly. You can probably get more info about that in the slack channel. More info about content creation can be found here: http://umawiki.secretanorak.com/Content_creation

2) My guess is that you could get away with just creating different heads for different ethnicity and then use body morphs, but im not 100% sure about this. That way you could use the same clothing.

3) See 2

4) Hard question, it all depends on how many characters you need in the scene at the same time, and its always possible to create LODs if performance becomes an issue.

5) See 1, i think a similar thing is already underway. Come join us : )

Edit: To slow typing!

 

@Jaimi Just sent an IM for the channel. Thanks!

By the way, do you mean there's work going on to integrate MBL with UMA? I'm a bit confused as I thought the upcoming high quality model was something different from those from MBL, and also probably wouldn't provide different base mesh for each ethnicities.

But it looks very promising, indeed.

@virror Thanks for the explanation! I made me more hopeful about the prospect of my project

 

Yes, the new highpoly slots are different from the MBL ones. Thats more of a personal project of one of the community members.

 

@virror Oh, I see. It seems there's another people who were working with MBL models though. Probably I'll find out how it's going once I join the channel. Thanks for the clarification.

 

There is work going on to create new base meshes from the Manuel Bastoni meshes. It's not official at this time, but there is a developer on the slack channel doing it. And you're right, that is different from the upcoming high poly meshes -- The existing UMA base meshes had High Poly versions that were previously sold separately. The author (Fernando) removed them from the asset store, and allowed us to add them to the base distribution of UMA. They will be in UMA 2.6. The nice thing about the high poly base meshes is that they are compatible with all the existing content.

 

@Jaimi Just found screenshots of MBL model prototypes on Slack. It surely looks promising!

I think I tried the high poly mesh you mentioned, but as it didn't really solved my problem with ethnic diversity so I had to search a way to use MBL models. Anyway, it's good to know that we'll have much better base models in the upcoming version.

 

Are there any (video) tutorials how to create cloth for UMA? Do I need Blender, Maya, 3ds Max skills and if I do, is it going to be complex OR could I create cloth with ProBuilder?

Is UMA compatible with MarvelousDesigner?

 

If you use the UMA unified avatar as the avatar in MD, then yes, it is compatible. We use it all the time. You just need to change out the avatar.

Remember, you need to learn to rig clothing to the UMA rig and transfer and paint weights. Secret Anorak has some good starting videos that will help you out.

 

Also, you can get the Marvelous Designer avatars from GITHUB here: https://github.com/umasteeringgroup/content-pack. Once you've created the clothing, you'll need to rig them to the UMA models, and create the slots/overlays:

Secret Anoraks tutorials are here (He uses 3dsmax):

You can also use Blender to do this - Wigifer has created some Tutorials using Blender:

 

But the official MD avatars are not the same shape as UMAs.

 

These are, right? If not, I've been steering people wrong! :O

https://github.com/umasteeringgroup/content-pack/tree/master/Marvelous Designer

 

Show me a picture and I can tell you. lol We just use the UMA avatars and it is fine. The separated is especially good because it shows you where the seams are so you can work with that rather than have to adjust later.

I see these are very high poly, which might be great for weighting. In MD, it doesn't matter what the polys are on the avatar since it just serves as a dummy to drape the clothing.

 

The Marvelous Designer files on Github are high poly versions of the UMA base meshes with the MD pinning points and volumes already set up.

 

Cool! I did not know they existed. lol Will try them next time.

 

Quick question: Is there a difference between the "HumanMale"/"HumanFemale" races and the "HumanMaleDCS"/"HumanFemaleDCS" races? They both work with DCS, and the only difference I could find was that the animator for the DCS ones has a layer added for the ExpressionPlayer, which seems unrelated to DCS.

Also, can I get an invitation to this slack channel I've heard so much about?

 

Send me your email via PM and I can invite you, unless you are already in.

 

@mysticfall The face pack has a couple different ethnicities. Works with high poly slots:

https://www.assetstore.unity3d.com/en/#!/content/73428

 

Its exactly the same mesh, the only difference is that the DCS one uses example dynamic dna, and the other one only uses the classic dna.

 

Thanks for the suggestion! I already checked out the asset, and it looked great. However, I wanted to have more distinctive Asian characters like ones provided by Manuel Bastioni, which I assumed to be missing in that item from what I've seen from the screenshots.

 

Having an issue: when i build an exe of a scene with UMA 2.5 the UMA character does not appear. However, when I run it inside the Unity Editor it works just fine. I'm using Unity 5.6.0f3. I've copied the error output below.

Repro Steps:
1. Create New Scene
2. Follow the "Let's get started!" steps in the DCS - Getting Started PDF
3. File > Build Settings
4. Add Open Scene
5. Build the Scene
6. Double-click the built EXE

Any ideas? Other information needed?
Thanks!
~Kris


Platform assembly: C:\Users\krmurray\Documents\UnityProjects\Exodus-GodofTheSlaves\Build\Client_Data\Managed\System.Xml.dll (this message is harmless)
Unloading 6 Unused Serialized files (Serialized files now loaded: 0)
UnloadTime: 38.582573 ms
KeyNotFoundException: The given key was not present in the dictionary.
at System.Collections.Generic.Dictionary`2[System.String,System.Type].get_Item (System.String key) [0x000a8] in /Users/builduser/buildslave/mono/build/mcs/class/corlib/System.Collections.Generic/Dictionary.cs:151
at UMA.AssetItem.get__Type () [0x00024] in C:\Users\krmurray\Documents\UnityProjects\Exodus-GodofTheSlaves\Assets\UMA\Core\Extensions\DynamicCharacterSystem\Scripts\AssetItem.cs:30
at UMA.UMAAssetIndexer.AddAssetItem (UMA.AssetItem ai, Boolean SkipBundleCheck) [0x00008] in C:\Users\krmurray\Documents\UnityProjects\Exodus-GodofTheSlaves\Assets\UMA\Core\Extensions\DynamicCharacterSystem\Scripts\UMAAssetIndexer.cs:505
at UMA.UMAAssetIndexer.UpdateSerializedDictionaryItems () [0x00054] in C:\Users\krmurray\Documents\UnityProjects\Exodus-GodofTheSlaves\Assets\UMA\Core\Extensions\DynamicCharacterSystem\Scripts\UMAAssetIndexer.cs:604
at UMA.UMAAssetIndexer.UnityEngine.ISerializationCallbackReceiver.OnAfterDeserialize () [0x002ae] in C:\Users\krmurray\Documents\UnityProjects\Exodus-GodofTheSlaves\Assets\UMA\Core\Extensions\DynamicCharacterSystem\Scripts\UMAAssetIndexer.cs:799
UnityEngine.Resources:Load(String, Type)
UnityEngine.Resources:Load(String) (at C:\buildslave\unity\build\artifacts\generated\common\runtime\ResourcesBindings.gen.cs:59)
UMA.UMAAssetIndexer:get_Instance() (at C:\Users\krmurray\Documents\UnityProjects\Exodus-GodofTheSlaves\Assets\UMA\Core\Extensions\DynamicCharacterSystem\Scripts\UMAAssetIndexer.cs:124)
UMA.DynamicAssetLoader:AddAssets(Dictionary`2&, Boolean, Boolean, Boolean, String, String, Nullable`1, String, Action`1, Boolean) (at C:\Users\krmurray\Documents\UnityProjects\Exodus-GodofTheSlaves\Assets\UMA\Core\Extensions\DynamicCharacterSystem\Scripts\DynamicAssetLoader.cs:609)
DynamicRaceLibrary:UpdateDynamicRaceLibrary(Boolean, Nullable`1) (at C:\Users\krmurray\Documents\UnityProjects\Exodus-GodofTheSlaves\Assets\UMA\Core\Extensions\DynamicCharacterSystem\Scripts\DynamicRaceLibrary.cs:132)
DynamicRaceLibrary:GetAllRaces() (at C:\Users\krmurray\Documents\UnityProjects\Exodus-GodofTheSlaves\Assets\UMA\Core\Extensions\DynamicCharacterSystem\Scripts\DynamicRaceLibrary.cs:324)
UMACharacterSystem.DynamicCharacterSystem:Init() (at C:\Users\krmurray\Documents\UnityProjects\Exodus-GodofTheSlaves\Assets\UMA\Core\Extensions\DynamicCharacterSystem\Scripts\DynamicCharacterSystem.cs:79)
UMACharacterSystem.DynamicCharacterSystem:Awake() (at C:\Users\krmurray\Documents\UnityProjects\Exodus-GodofTheSlaves\Assets\UMA\Core\Extensions\DynamicCharacterSystem\Scripts\DynamicCharacterSystem.cs:52)

 

What that error is saying is that the slots and/or overlays are not found. This is either because they aren't in any library, or they are in the Global Library, but do not have references. I would suspect the latter. Open the Global Library, and add the build references. If you haven't already, I suggest downloading the latest version of 2.5 from github here: https://github.com/umasteeringgroup/UMA

The newer version has a "Rebuild from project" button, that will go through your project and add everything to the global library for you. Make sure you also click "Add Build References". Usually you want to have those turned off because they slow everything down. However, they must be added before you build your project (you can clear them again after building)

 

Thanks Jaimi! Updating and adding the build references fixed it. Can this get added to some troubleshooting part of the documentation so others don't run into the same issue?

 

Good idea - I added a trello task so I won't forget.

 

Hello All,
First, thank you very much to those who made this awesome project what it is and keep it going for free for the community. That being said I am new to UMA, and still a little wet behind the ears with Unity in general. I've done some poking around and experimenting with UMA, watched a bunch of tutorials, and read through the forums. But trying to transition to a deeper understanding and doing things right to move ahead. So I started a fresh project and imported UMA 2.5.1. I got these errors on import and was just curious as to their implications. (I am not yet a coder)



I have seen these line ending warnings in a handful of other assets and ignored them. And if they are in a script I was modifying I told the IDE to leave them be and nothing seemed to be bothered by them. But again, trying to move from guesswork and experimenting to doing things right. And there's the rig import warnings also.

Also I found previously when I updated from 2.5 to 2.5.1 some of the wardrobes that didn't work before without some tinkering (like the wrapped pants) worked now and some of the stuff that was working in 2.5 had stopped working (like eyebrows 2 and 3 and I believe the two male hairs other than the shaved head). I tried reloading everything into the Global Library but no luck for the eyebrows or hairs. Also I think the mesh is missing or something for some of the Challenger set. Those wardrobes didn't work so for the boots I tried checking that the mat, overlay, and slot were all there and referencing the right names then using those to remake a new wardrobe. But got hung up when I couldn't find the mesh for the Challenger boots. Couldn't get any of the Challenger set working in 2.5 or 2.5.1.. Not like any of that is a huge deal as I imagine myself and most other people will want to create original gear anyway. But it's convenient stuff to get some clothes on your toon initially. And a bit of a hands on exercise in how the equipment worked after watching some of Wigifer's tuts on youtube but I would like to know if I'm missing something.

 

Hello! I can somehow dna transfer to a blender to add my clothes, since the clothes are made for another character's collection, or is it just necessary to add a new race?

 

Some of the items are in "asset bundles". (such as the challenger outfit). Currently, the global library ignores those, as that would force them to be compiled into the application. To get those working, you would need to build the asset bundles, or move them out of the folders that are marked as asset bundle folders.

As for the other two male hair slots, they should have worked right off. If you have the latest version of 2.5x from GitHub, I'd suggest to rebuild the global library from your project. I suspect that something happened during the upgrade, and some recipes were not updated. It might be worth it to pull the latest from github and replace the entire UMA folder.

 

Blender is kind of goofy in this. If you change the bones in the skeleton so your clothes would fit, and then rig it to the model, it won't work like you expect (even though it might look correct). That's because Blender will actually rig it to the "rest pose" of the model (the chunky version).

In theory, you would need to change the rest pose to match your new model. Rig to the new (skinny) rest pose. Then manually change your skeleton back to the default, and apply the armature. Then add a new armature modifier and reattach the clothes to the skeleton. This is a ton of work that should be easy, but is not.

What I do is scale the model until it's "close", then use a lattice to get it closer everywhere. Then use the sculpt mode to push and pull the clothing as needed to make it fit. It's best to create special slots (like in your case, partial arms and neck) to avoid poke through and get best performance), but sometimes (like at the waist) it's not possible, so you have to tune with the sculpt brush.

Then I transfer the weights from the base mesh to the shirt, and then tune using weight painting. Takes an hour or two per clothing piece.

 

Is it easier to create a new race? Since I have a lot of clothes, and in another 3d editor it's easier to do it? To make everything work it is necessary to customize all the clothes for a standard set-up, otherwise it will not work? If I export dna to .obj, then I'll add the skeleton and attach the clothes

 

Yeah, it's pretty easy to create a new race in UMA. But to create a new humanoid race with all the same ability to configure is much harder, unless it's all setup with the bones for everything already. All of the customization in UMA is done with bones, and all the pieces that are used in animation (such as legs/arms/feet/head, etc) are all done with special "adjustment" bones, that are duplicates tied to the standard bones. So you would need to re-rig with that setup in mind. I find it much easier to just rerig the clothing.

 

Hey
I tried creating a helmet for my UMA character but I've run into a problem with the material. The picture below shows two helmets, the one to the left was created using the standard material and looks like I expect it to.
The helmet to the right was created using a Slot and an Overlay using the Diffuse_Normal_Metallic material. Problem is I need to change the smoothness to get the result on the left and I can't find a way to do that using the overlay. Any idea what I can do to get around this?



Edit: Nevermind, I found this video showing what to do: