UMA - Unity Multipurpose Avatar on the Asset Store!

I have no clue, actually. Joen has a thread for the power tools here: https://forum.unity.com/threads/uma-power-tools-support-v-2-8-1.221290/

 

Thanks for the help guys, i fixed the issue by pressing Ctrl+A in blender, while having the mouse in the the 3dviewport and selecting "Rotation and scale" I did it for the character model but forgot to do the same for the clothing models. But now i have a new issue, setting primary bone to "X axis" makes clothing drop sideways instead of downward like it should, i was able to fix this by exporting the model with primary bone "Y axis" but this messes uma since it can only work with the former setting. Any tips on what to do?

 

Did you set all 4 properties?

Exporting from Blender 2.8 requires you to set the “forward axis” as “Z forward” and “Up Axis” as “Y Up”. In addition, you have to change the Armature settings, Primary Bone Axis should be “X Axis” and the Secondary Bone Axis should be “-Y Axis”. The asset will usually need to be scaled 100x in the import settings in Unity.

This works for me with slots. Make sure you have applied all transforms, and your model is rotated the correct direction (it's 180 degrees different in Blender 2.8 - if you aren't using the specific Blender 2.8 blends, you should use those.)

 

Hey there. Working on something that sounds similar in scope. We are also looking at having 3 UMA characters that are close to the camera that we are swapping out clothes for and we ran into memory issues as well since we are developing for both iOS and Android.

There are a few things we did to address this since textures were eating up the bulk of our memory:

-Go through the entire UMA library (if you are using o3n characters go through them too) and remove *ANYTHING* you don't need or want both from the project and from the global library

-Go through the textures on an individual basis and reduce them individually. A good way to start this process is by setting target specific overrides (like iOS or android) instead of just reducing the textures in an image manipulation program. See where you can get savings. In some cases, re-exporting the textures from photoshop with certain settings can also provide savings. Be careful with this as some of them you will have to do individually to avoid breaking existing UMA assets. For instance, you may need to maintain specific ratios where overlays are expecting them. Certain normal maps and metallic maps can also be picky about this, so some textures will need to have overrides set separately from others (pay attention to the data in the inspector for each texture and set overrides individually if anything looks different from one texture to another).

-As you're going through the process above, there are some cases where Normal maps and Metallic maps don't need to be the same size as the albedo and they can be reduced significantly without impacting the visual quality of the asset too much

-Depending on your needs, LOD textures can be reduced. If you are only using one texture since your LOD's aren't changing due to the distance to the camera, you can reduce any textures to any size you want or remove them altogether.

-Where possible, you can set up recipes to share overlays and textures. For instance, we have modeled several shoes that are supposed to be usable by both the male and female. In our case we are using the o3n male and the standard UMA female. I've modeled the shoes to fit the male, then for the female scaled them to fit and made slight adjustments, but when I set up the recipes for the female I plug in the overlays from the male. Sometimes you can get some stretching from the UV's doing this, so use your own discretion here on a case by case basis, but in some cases this is doable

-There are also methods to reduce memory per scene by allocating assets differently in the libraries but that is something I'm unfamiliar with and Jaimi would be better suited to explain.

By doing the above we were able to bring the texture usage in a particular scene from almost 6 gigs down to under 1 gig.

It can be frustrating and time consuming but it's possible. Also, as for texture Atlas size, we are using 2048 x 1. This should be high enough to provide reasonable quality on a mobile device as long as you are setting up your new assets with these settings in mind, but I guess this will depend on your projects needs.

 

Yep, this is what i did:

Using the parameters from uma manual this is the result i get. As you can see on the right image, the cloth drops to the left


Changing Primary bone to Y axis and secondarybone to X axis give the expected result, as you can see on the right image.

Edit:
Going throught the documentation, i found this: https://docs.unity3d.com/Manual/HOWTO-FixZAxisIsUp.html
Perhaps Y up works better with unity pipelines?

Also what do you mean by blender 2.8 specific blends?

 

If you are using Blender 2.8, the content pack has a specific folder for 2.8 compatible source files.

Are you having trouble getting your slots to work, as modeled, or the cloth implementation? Cloth is very broken in many versions of unity, and I'm not an expert on that at all.

 

Isn`t the content pack just for making custom content for uma default models? I'm using uma with custom character models. I guess i'm having problems between unity cloth and blender, and the export parameters needed for uma. Do you know why uma needs that particular X axis, -Y axis configuration? Could it be tweaked perhaps?

 

Thanks for all valuable input, we are doing some of these optimizations already. The current overall atlas size is 4k and it still looks fairly pixelated for the clothes. When we increased the resolution of the pupil (128 -> 256) the clothes looks even worse. Shoes looks ok. Any ideas? Can you share some images from your avatar look and the resolution of texture in iOS? Many thanks. See below

 

I've fixed it by using R2017 to make the slots. Thanks for that tip, but just as a curiosity, do you know why uma needs that particular set of parameters?
Thanks for all the help, my friend. I appreciate it.

 

Can you show the atlas after the character has been generated? That usually explains why one area is unexpectedly low res.

 

It's because Blender and Unity use different coordinate systems.

Here's Blender:


Here's Unity:



Z is going up, and x is pointing in a different direction. Unity tries to correct this, and introduces some twists in the game object for you. this is not reflected in the actual mesh data. The parameters in the export are there to force Blender to output compatible vertex/bone positions in the mesh data.

 

Yeah, overfilling the atlas will cause some textures to shrink like crazy. I had a POC where I dynamically reduced the size of everything (instead of just the later textures) and it produced significantly better results when the atlas was overfilled. I'll need to dig that up and put it into release 2.10.

 

Gotcha. Once again thanks for enlighten me.

 

Hey all. Quick question.

I'm running into an issue where I have a character (standard UMA female) who is supposed to be wearing backpacks. Problem is that when choosing the pony tail as a hairstyle, the bottom of the ponytail clips through the backpack model. I noticed that there is a version of the ponytail with bones for animation. I'm wondering if there is a way to set it up so that it collides with the backpack using physics instead of having to animate the ponytail separately for cases where backpacks are worn?

 

From the screenshots, I would suggest you could probably get some savings by reducing the size of the texture for your characters body since they are more catoonish in nature and spending the extra savings in your atlas on the clothing/face. You're kind of in a tougher spot than we are because your camera is so close to the characters but you're also targeting mobile devices. It all sort of depends on what you're prioritizing. In our case we are prioritizing things like logos for shirts, hats, etc, as well as shoes, so it's sort of a balancing act of finding the right ratios.

 

Thats interesting, would it be possible to test it out early phase? Any other suggestions how to resolve? Would the reduction of skin texture help out on the clothing resolution? Would any other rebalancing of items on the body resolve the quality issue? Thanks

 

Please see the atlas. We are now trying different allocations of texture size for the body/clothing parts. Any suggestions? Thanks

 

Yes, I recommend reviewing all the textures. Your eye texture is taking up a relatively large amount of space compared to everything else. You can split the textures out onto more atlases if needed, by creating new UMAMaterials and assigning those to different slots/overlays.

also - To get a clearer picture of the atlas, you can dump the atlas textures at runtime using the "UMA/Runtime/Save Selected Avatars Atlas Textures" menu item.

 

It was just a POC - I'll be working it into the next version of UMA. However, the next version is quite a ways out, as I have to work in the addressables support, a new recipe editor, etc.

 

It's hard to see what's going on in your atlas, as it appears horizontally stretched. But I agree with Jaimi ... if that's the actual atlas, then the eye texture is WAY too big relative to what appears to be the main clothing.

Generally speaking, you want the texture sizes in the atlas to be roughly the same proportion as in real life. So that eye would be like maybe 1/64th the size of the main clothing texture. Or something like that.

 

Speaking of UMA updates ... how's the current one coming along? Close to heading to the store?

 

Yeah, just one more pull request. I'll have it up this weekend.

 

Hi


I asked this on UMA community but there wasn't a quick reply



I am currently using a set of prebuilt models for my game but would like to add facial customization for players.


Female: assetstore.unity.com/packages/3d/characters/humanoids/ariana-character-118803

Male: https://assetstore.unity.com/packages/3d/characters/humanoids/pp801-character-112065


Plus a few other sets from this designer with the same skeletons and setups for animations. I chose them because stylistically they are the perfect match for where my game is headed but obviously custom faces would be a great bonus.

UMA offers so much promise as the one ring to rule them all of character optimisations in Unity - And I think if I can just get these characters into that ecosystem it would be an awesome jumpstart for my game.

These models are fully rigged with humanoid bones including face bones etc and the male and female versions are identical in bone setup so can reuse animations etc.

New Race?

I wonder what the process would be to import them as a new Race in UMA? The youtube tutorials I have been watching spend considerable time and effort to explain the need to configure in Blender etc and fine-tuning there before importing to Unity.

Would it be necessary to export these characters back into Blender to "clean them up" before I could add face customization?
I am hoping it would be enough simply map them into UMA and take it from there - letting the existing bones do the work without needing to set up blend shapes or remap the bones or anything.

Is this difficult?

Obviously I'm not a programmer or very tech - which is why I'm relying on assets to do the job for me.

Is what I describe technically feasible? Is it technically difficult? Before I went down that road with my limited skills it would be nice to know what's in store.

Outsourcing?

Last question: Is it the sort of job that is worth outsourcing? If the answer to the above questions was "yes but this is difficult and takes a lot of times and /or skill" then can anyone give me an estimate of what kind of time would be required and who could do it? If it's not insanely difficult dan can be done in days rather than weeks maybe I can look for a freelancer?

Also if there's anything from that work that could be offered back into the community (for example mappings to these characters so that others could easily do this) I would be very happy to share what we learn.



Thanks for your help.

 

It's technically feasible to import them into UMA, and setup a race without needing to do anything.

BUT

There are several things to consider. If the character has bones that are used for both customization and animation, you run a risk that there could be an issue with animations. What the sample characters do to address this is to duplicate the bone, make the duplicate a child of that bone, and then rename it to "bonenameAdjust" and rig to that bone instead.

For facial animation, this may not be needed - but it's defintely needed for things that are in a chain (like the Thigh bone).

Is this difficult in Blender? No - it's pretty easy in blender. You duplicate the bone, rename it, parent it to the one you duplicated, and then change the vertex group name, and it all "automagically" works - as long as you follow the directions in the content creation doc as you export.

But UMA can be confusing - it has a lot of features, and it's a lot to take in. If you choose to go down this road, feel free to post here on the Discord or Slack.

 

I'd go as far as saying that if you use the same bones for customization and animation there will be issues, unless you're running your own animation system with built-in safeguards to protect the adjusted state.

 

That was very interesting thank you - so I just need to download Blender and follow some tutorials to figure out how to duplicate face bones. And then fingers crossed it doesn't break anything. I can at least have a go!
Thanks for the answers.

 

UMA does already have some face bones which it uses for expressions. I don't know to what extent you might be aware of that or thinking of that.

Here's a tutorial video for UMA that talks about the expression bones:

 

Yeah - This is similar to the face bones already in place on Ariana etc for expressions. I've been taking a look and probably they won't suffice for actual facial modification like cheekbone adjustment / bigger lips / wider nose etc.. I think I need to go back into Blender and add some more facial feature bones which can be used to modify the head itself... Or find someone to do this for me.

 

Hi All

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Simply visit here:
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Choose a pack, and email steve@arteria3d.com or yertari@msn.com with your selection, you will then receive an email with your free download

Steve

 

Mesh Hide Organization

Is there a way to bundle mesh hide assets so in a recipe I have to define the bundle only?

Why do I think, I’d need it?

I have a set of garments I want to mix in any possible way. At the moment there are 35 pieces only but the number is growing. And I have some overlapping where I cannot hide the lower piece totally. Take as an example boots you wear together with a robe. I cannot hide the boot since then the char would be bare feet. To avoid clipping of the boot legs while running I have to apply a mesh hide asset.

And here comes the issue. I’d need in every robe and dress (e.g. 25 different pieces) the mesh hide of every boot (e.g. 15 different meshes). Every time I change or add a boot, I’d have to edit all dresses and robes. The same issue I see at the connection of gauntlets to any long shirt as well as trousers under longer shirts or short dresses. Eventually the organization becomes confusing.

Having a generic mesh hide or mesh hide collection (e.g. bootUnderDress) would allow me to apply it to each dress and robe. Independently I could define with each boot the individual related mesh hide as part of the collection.

It would be great if there is a solution to make the organization easier.

Baylamon

 

Maybe make a boot for dresses where the top part of the mesh is already missing, and then switch to that version when the dress is selected?

 

The UMA models can, of course, do facial modification, but I don't think this part of the system has been upgraded since 2013. Maybe there was some modification when @ecurtz graciously added the expressions system. (?)

If you, or anyone else, comes up with a better facial system, please consider submitting it to the community.

One old constraint has been the max bone influence of 4 per vertex, which I believe applies for all platforms in Unity up till 2018 LTS.

Beginning with 2019.1, I believe there is also the option for unlimited bone influence per vertex, but it's restricted to platforms with GPU compute. I'm fuzzy on the details.

 

I'll think about ways to address this, maybe there is something we can do. However, it won't be in the pipeline soon. I'll add a trello task.

 

Thank You, so for the moment there is no integrated solution.
I'm glad you take it into consideration on the long run.

I'll try a way to add mesh hide assets to recipes dynamically on start via c# script. That way I can organize the situation in a way not to touch every recipe on any change. I haven't done it yet but as long as a asset value is shown in the inspector there should be a way to address it via code.
The way hopeful proposed looks not too convincing. It will move the compexity to the equipment code. Think about a trouser that has on top a hide area under long shirts, on bottom a hide area under boots and a third hide area under a dress where only the ankles are visible. That alone would generate 5 different recipes fo a single garment. It's much better the top garment know what to hide via mesh hide compared to the low garment know when to hide depending on the top garment.

 

I want to use UMA with HDRP, my understanding is I have to use the develop branch for that. Is there anything I need to do other than copying everything under UMAProject/Assets/UMA to my project once I clone it from github? Ie. I'm ignoring ProjectSettings and all the other directories as this is not a fresh project and I'd like to understand the dependencies.

 

Support for HDRP is in UMA 2.9, which has been uploaded to the asset store. However, it is still pending review. You can pull this from the Master branch (or the develop branch - they match right now).

To use HDRP will require you to setup the materials, and adjust the UMAMaterial for those to use the correct texture slot names for the specific material you use.

To use UMA from Github, just download the zip, and copy the UMA folder into your assets folder for your project.

 

Great, thank you!

 

When importing into 2019.2.5f1 I get the following error(error not warning), just a heads up:

Assets\UMA\Core\Editor\Scripts\OverlayLibraryEditor.cs(164,51): error CS0104: 'TextureCompressionQuality' is an ambiguous reference between 'UnityEditor.TextureCompressionQuality' and 'UnityEngine.TextureCompressionQuality'

 

I'm not exactly getting what you're saying here. The current system has the Mesh Hide asset going on the outer garment.

If you have a shirt that hides trousers, and a trousers that hide boots, then you have two mesh hide assets - One on the shirt (that hides part of the trousers) and one on the trousers (that hides part of the boots). If the shirt was equipped, the trousers mesh hide asset would be applied only if the trousers were also equipped. This way the shirt can occluded different trousers in different ways.

 

Are you using the version from GITHub? I thought I fixed this last week.

 

Yes, develop branch from github.

Looks like this is the culprit:
textureImporter.compressionQuality = (int)TextureCompressionQuality.Best;

 

I hate it when Unity moves stuff around. I'll fix that "the old fashioned way".

 

The general issue is that Unity tends to overwrite changes to any bone that it's animating without letting your code know so it's very difficult to mix Unity animation and anything else (such as DNA modifications.) UMA and the expression code can work around that because we store the state of all the bones after they have been changed by UMA but before they have been animated so we have a base transform we can reset to before doing the facial animation. Any 3rd party facial animation that wants to have Unity play the actual animations will either need to keep all the animated bones separate or do something similar.

 

This is fixed in master/develop and in the pending upload now. Depending on version, that enum exists either in UnityEngine, UnityEditor, or in both places simultaneously. Code is now:

textureImporter.compressionQuality = 100;

 

UMA Release 2.9 is out on the Asset Store!

• Renderer Manager - allow you to specify visibility, shadows of specific model parts.
• Render Manager scene - hides head in world, but not in shadows, reflections
• HDRP and URP compatibility. (Note: assets will need to be modified).
• Option on Generator to force all pending UMA's to be built on the next frame.
• Updated Documentation
• Updated hair shaders for Smoother hair blending.
• Two sample wardrobe items that modify the bone pose.
• New menu item to generate all the Controller and Bone Pose DNA for the new Physique slot.
• Various bug fixes/enhancements Character colors not saving in the recipe editor. infrequent DNA obj ref error when switching races. Will build from settings if invalid file or options specified. Keep Avatar option Ability to move InternalDataStore folder (name must remain the same, but location can change)
• UMABoneCleaner - cleanup after adding extra bones
• UMA Jiggle slots for extra realism
• UMA Sway Bone - for ponytails, etc.
• New menu item to extract the Mecanim avatar from a UMA at runtime
• Default Mecanim avatars added race folder
• Experimental - Ability to specify position of overlay in Texture Atlas
• Asmdef files now optional. Use menu item to install.
• New context menus on DCA to improve workflow.
• New user fields on wardrobe recipes.
• Drag and drop folders onto DCA to add default wardrobe.

https://assetstore.unity.com/packages/3d/characters/uma-2-unity-multipurpose-avatar-35611

 

Thanks tons, @Jaimi and anyone else who contributed to the latest update!

 

Hi Jaimi. Thanks for all your hard work. Some quick questions about the most recent asset store build:

1) For the ability to specify position of overlays in the texture atlas, would this allow us to visually set up overlays? I'm still running into some issues with memory usage and if I could reduce things like logos to 256x256 in certain cases and line them up where they need to be on the atlas I think it could shave a significant amount of memory usage off of our current profile.

2) For the UMA Sway Bone, would this allow the ponytail to collide with other wardrobe items? I think you may have missed one of my questions earlier in the thread but I'm wondering if there is a way to set the female ponytail to collide with other wardrobe items since right now it is clipping through backpacks.

3) I'm guessing this release doesn't have the memory saving features you guys are looking at implementing. Is there an ETA on when those might be functional in one of your github builds?

4) For those of us that have gone through UMA and cleaned up a bunch of stuff to squish the memory profile down as much as possible, is there an efficient way to safely update UMA without overriding changes to the default texture sizes, overlays, etc?

Your time is appreciated as always.

 

I would love to know this too. Kind of worried about updating in the morning although I am sure in the end it will be worth it. Please let us know about any issues we should know before we update. Thanks guys and congrats on another release!

 

1) this is an experimental feature - actually contributed by a developer here in the forum. Yes, it does exactly what you are saying - it allows you to specify the rect coordinates that the overlay will occupy in the atlas. While I hope not to break this when i do the atlas rework in 2.10, there is always the possibility that there could be an issue that requires changing or reworking this feature.

2) Sway bone is really simple - it just sways. It does no collision at all. The existing physics-based ponytail can do collisions if you setup the collision matrix, and add the appropriate colliders.

3) My guess would be about 6 months maybe?

4) This is a tough one - maybe get rid of all the .cs files, then copy everything over the destination skipping duplicates? Not really sure. Be sure to back up.

 

This should generally be an easy update. I'm assuming most of your changes will be in the content folder, so you can copy that out, delete the UMA folder, and then copy everything back in. If you've touched some of the core items, you might need to do what I said in the previous message.