UMA - Unity Multipurpose Avatar on the Asset Store!

The strange thing is that I tried a backup of my game from last week and that one is having the same exact problem. Strange.

 

OMG I think I found out what is happening. Unity is pausing the game for some reason.

 

Did you build the bundles? Usually if you don't you will get some kind of error. Also, what version of Addressables do you have installed?

 

Oh, this usually means an exception has happened. Probably something in addressables -- label not found (will happen if you forgot to build the bundles, etc).

 

Yeah sorry to bother you.
I hit the pause on error button on the console.
I lost hours of work because I'm an idiot, lol.

 

Hi
I am trying to use UMA with EmeraldAI
All goes well until the UMA character dies
the death animation is played and is held for the requisite time set by Emerald, but then the character is set vertical
(being dead but standing up)
Can anyone help?

Mark

 

I don't have Emerald AI, but this seems like a bug in Emerald AI itself, not respecting the rotation of the objects under the main game object. If you can change the behavior of the death itself, you might want to just make it a ragdoll, and let it fall normally. (take a look at the ragdoll sample scene).

 

After updating to UMA 2.12 I keep getting this window every time I open my project.

And every time I hit rebuild index.
How can I get this window to go away for good?

 

That should only show if the preferences for UMA_VERSION doesn't match the UMAAboutWindow version number, and only during import. The only way I can see for this to not complete is if an unhandled exception occurred during the rebuild... So I would suggest to fix that first. But you can hit "do nothing" and it will drop down and reset the version in preferences.

Code (CSharp):

1.             if (EditorPrefs.GetString("UMA_VERSION", "0") != UmaAboutWindow.umaVersion)
2.             {              
3.                 UMAAssetIndexer UAI = UMAAssetIndexer.Instance;
4.                 if (UAI == null)
5.                     return;
6.  
7.                 int chosen = EditorUtility.DisplayDialogComplex("UMA " + UmaAboutWindow.umaVersion, "New UMA version imported. The global index should be rebuilt or restored (if you made a backup). (If you don't know what this means, choose 'Rebuild Index')", "Rebuild Index", "Restore from backup", "Do nothing");
8.  
9.                 switch (chosen)
10.                 {
11.                     case 0:
12.                         UAI.Clear();
13.                         UAI.BuildStringTypes();
14.                         UAI.AddEverything(false);
15.                         Resources.UnloadUnusedAssets();
16.                         EditorUtility.DisplayDialog(UMAVER, "Index rebuild complete", "OK");
17.                         break;
18.  
19.                     case 1:
20.                         string filename = EditorUtility.OpenFilePanel("Restore", "", "bak");
21.                         if (!string.IsNullOrEmpty(filename))
22.                         {
23.                             try
24.                             {
25.                                 string backup = System.IO.File.ReadAllText(filename);
26.                                 EditorUtility.DisplayProgressBar(UMAVER, "Restoring index", 0);
27.                                 if (!UAI.Restore(backup))
28.                                 {
29.                                     EditorUtility.DisplayDialog(UMAVER, "Error: Unable to restore index. Please review the console for more information.", "OK");
30.                                 }
31.                                 else
32.                                 {
33.                                     EditorUtility.DisplayDialog(UMAVER, "Restore successful.", "OK");
34.                                 }
35.                                 backup = "";
36.                             }
37.                             catch (Exception ex)
38.                             {
39.                                 Debug.LogException(ex);
40.                                 EditorUtility.DisplayDialog("Error", "Error reading backup: " + ex.Message, "OK");
41.                             }
42.                             EditorUtility.ClearProgressBar();
43.                         }
44.                         break;
45.  
46.                     default:
47.                         EditorUtility.DisplayDialog("UMA " + UmaAboutWindow.umaVersion, "You can rebuild or restore the library from the Global Library window accessable from the UMA menu above.", "OK");
48.                         break;
49.                 }
50.                 EditorPrefs.SetString("UMA_VERSION", UmaAboutWindow.umaVersion);
51.             }

 

Excuse me ... I am sure this was asked before, but when I start a new project sometimes(?!) I don't get some other races (o3, WillB) to work (while the included races look as they should)
This is a new project in Unity 2020.3.7f with Gaia Pro, UMA 2.12 and o3 Stunner Jane/John 1.10 and this is how it looks:

I know, there was something about seting the skin weight to at least 4 bones, but they are already at 4 bones ...
The error message is:
AvatarBuilder 'UMADynamicCharacterAvatar': Transform 'Spine' parent 'LowerBack' must be included in the HumanDescription Skeleton
UnityEngine.AvatarBuilder:BuildHumanAvatar (UnityEngine.GameObject,UnityEngine.HumanDescription)

I am sure I am doing something stupid and something obvious wrong, but I don't know what.

 

This can happen if you have a skeleton mismatch. If you change the race on an UMA, and the skeleton is not the same, you need to make sure that "Rebuild Skeleton" under "Race change options" is turned on.
If that's not it, I would suggest to reimport jane/john, and then open the Global Library window (on the UMA menu) and from it's file menu, tell it to "Rebuild from project".

 

Hello, I've facial landmark points of the user's photo he takes through my application and I'm trying to find a way to properly set the DNA -> Eye -> Size value using these points. Is there a formula I can use to accomplish this? I haven't figured out a way.

 

The only way I can really figure it is to measure it at the extremes, and then use those values to extrapolate approximate settings.

 

Hello. I'm trying out UMA just to learn something different and to use it in my current project. When I load in the system and look at the female avatar the breasts are ... interesting. I'm gonna guess that it's not supposed to look like this. Since this is a fresh install (I haven't done anything with the system yet except convert materials to URP), is there a way to get this working like it should...or do I have to reinstall?

 

this is a common issue. The default races need your quality settings to have at least 4 boneweights per vertex in the quality settings.

 

Thanks for the assist. I have a couple of questions.

So I'm looking to bring over some Daz models into UMA. The main reason being there just aren't a lot of options for clothes that are more modern or sci-fi based. There are some tutorials for doing this out there, so I'm not too worried about that...but when porting over clothes, hair, beards, etc. are there any base rules that must be followed? I tried looking for some info on this, but I haven't really found much. However, I'll admit that my Google-fu isn't the best.

For something like this...is it better to convert a base model with a bunch of blendshapes that can be modified to create whatever character I want, or is it better to create each model directly (human male/female, elf male/female, etc.) and then port them over? Seems like more work that way, but I don't know enough to know what's the best way to handle something like this. Once the base model is in, then clothes can be added to that character via the UMA system?

I'll start here. Been watching a ton of videos on this and I think I'm about ready to pull the trigger, but need to make sure I don't run into some roadblocks before I start.

 

You can do body morphs two different ways. Both have pros and cons.

1. Blendshapes are freer. You can do whatever you want with a blendshape. Skeletal morphs are more restrictive, or require more bones to give the same result.
2. Blendshapes are by far slower to build the avatar than using Skeletal Morphs.
3. Blendshapes use way more RAM than skeletal morphs.
4. Blendshapes use less CPU when animating than Skeletal morphs do.
5. Blendshapes have to be propagated to all clothing. To add a new shirt, you must build every blendshape into it that might affect it. Skeletal morphs are much simpler - once the character is rigged, it's done. You can create new shapes and everything will just work. Unless you add bones. But you can add bones per slot without issue.


So in short - I recommend to use Blendshapes when you have either a very small number of characters on the screen at one time, and you need shapes that just can't be done otherwise. Or, if you have a small number of shapes (like you are mixing archetypes). I recommend to use skeletal morphs for most other uses.

It is usually better to have a single model that is morphed into the different races. The reason is that you can more easily reuse the outfits. If, for example, you create a seperate mesh for Orcs that are big and brawny, from the elves that are short and thin, then you can't really use the "elf shirt" on the Orc. However, if you use bone poses to create your races, you generally can.

Hope this helps.

 

There are videos for making races and adding clothing by Secret Anorak. But basically you use a 3D modeler to put the UMA skeleton into your body / clothing models, transfer weights from the UMA model's skin to yours (where appropriate), that sort of thing. It's fairly individual depending on your art needs and how far from the UMA demo spec you want to go. Some people use the default body art and add store bought clothes, for instance. They don't need to use a modeler. Others make their own body models (races) and craft their own clothing meshes, textures, and thus spend a lot of time modeling.

You can use your own shaders, if you want. You just have to set it up.

The best thing to do is start off simple with the 3D model. Run it through your UMA project and build it, to make sure you've got all the settings lined up. As you already saw with the bone quality, if you miss a setting at some point, the end result gets messed up. So make sure you've got all your creation / import settings correct, and you're able to make a super simple character or clothing slot from start to finish, and once you've got the workflow straight, then start pushing your content through. You don't want to be in the situation where you've spent hours making stuff, and then it isn't working right, and you have to go back over everything and figure out what's wrong and how to fix it. Get it straight from the beginning.

As for blendshapes, while I don't have hands on experience, to paraphrase what Jaimi has said, it's most efficient to enable blendshapes during character creation - whether in editor or runtime - and then get rid of them (bake them). "Live" (unbaked, dynamic) blendshapes are expensive. Try to minimize the need for blendshapes on clothing, because it makes a heavier art workload ... unless you have a method of streamlining it. Like if you were making helmets, you'd need to have head blendshapes on them, and you could do that by having a "blank" helmet with the blendshapes which you alter to make each new helmet. Something like that.

Definitely try to go with as few races as possible, because slots (clothing) are specific to each race. That way you keep from having to craft the same slots for each race.

 

I'm not gonna lie. Reading through both posts has me thinking I should just scrap this idea and go back to what I was using in the first place. I was hoping this would be fairly simple, but after watching a ton of tutorials and the like...it's super complicated and if I just want a couple of units to run around in my game and the sheer number of races I need (elves, humans, orcs, goblins, ogres, etc.) I think I'm headed into a pit that may not yield good results. I like the general overview of this, but there's a lot of prep to really do anything since all models will need a ton of work to get them to actually be ready for prime time. Not sure I want to spend that kind of time.

I'll have to think about this some more.

 

UMA is not for all situations, but it's not THAT complicated.

If your game has just a few set looks for critters of different races, and not much player character customization, then UMA is probably not necessary. It depends on the game. A lot of games don't even allow for customization of the player character.

Furthermore, you can go ahead and develop your game, and then if you think you need UMA, implement it at the end.

 

Well, the player isn't going to be adjusting characters. I'm just looking for an easier way to make a bunch of NPCs that can be used for different situations. It's more for my own development than the player. So looking at a generic base for characters, then doing some randomization to get different looks within the same race. Storing NPC data and then building that NPC when the scene is loaded. Heh, I was really just trying to make my own life easier. In this game, the player can't change armor so their model is basically static...but I did want a few outfits to use based on situation (like a sleeping outfit, an armored outfit, a dressed up outfit, etc.). I suppose I could easily build those models in another program and import them in and just have two or three different looks for each race/gender. Maybe build in DAZ and import them into Unity.

I use MCS for this. My thought process here was that I wanted to try something different since this new project afforded me that opportunity.

 

I need help. Recently I've got this error in console:
"Reference count is negative on AssetItem DiamondFace(this is custom name of slot item) of Type UMA.SlotDataAsset. This should not happen."
What does it mean and how could I fix the problem - race switch is not working anymore at game run.

 

You can actually ignore that error. It's a holdover from reference counting that wasn't fully implemented. Something else is causing the race change to fail.

If you select your character and change the race at runtime in the inspector, does it work? If not, does it get any error messages? Can you change the race at edit time without error?

First step is to always tell the global library to rebuild. If that doesn't solve it, and you get an error message (besides the one above that actually has no effect), can you post it and the call stack?

 

Thanks. I rebuilded global library as well but it is also requiring (if addressables bundles is once generated) to rebuild addressable bundles from Window/AssetManagement/Addressables/Groups. The problem is solved, error gone and races are switchable. Maybe that would be useful for somebody.

 

And, unfortunatelly, I think AddressablesAssetBundles should be rebuilded manually each time the UMAGlobalLibrary is changed.

 

I don't think UMA will make your life easier, from what you describe. It's really for games with a wide number of clothing items, multiplayer games with player character customization, and games needing better performance for a larger number of onscreen characters. It sounds like the system you already have matches your needs.

If you change your plans though, as I said, you can put your art through the UMA framework at the end. There isn't anything I can think of that would require early planning to accommodate UMA.

 

Yes - the bundles contain a snapshot of the assets as they were at the time they were built. If you make changes, you need to rebuild the bundles.

 

Heh, heh. The goal was to learn something new. I tend to use new projects to do that and this was one of those things. I might still use it, because why not, right? I haven't decided yet.

I don't want to appear ungrateful. This has been a great experience and why I decided to try UMA in the first place. I'm just not sure if the amount of work that will go into creating the DNA, recipes, etc. will be worth it when I want to have a few blendshapes for making races different and stuff. I could get a stock race set from the Asset Store, too. Just lots of choices and I'll need to nail down with one I want to go with...and how much I'm willing to spend.

I think you guys are doing a great job of providing information. I'm impressed.

 

If you want to play around with it a bit, all the essential parts are free. UMA 2 in the store, the o3n UMA stuff, and then there's some additional content on Github you might want to check out, like higher poly models, Blender files, and what not.

 

Quick question. If someone pulls a model from Daz (or FUSE) and they get it into UMA, then will that model be able to use all UMA clothes...or are you locked into only FUSE or Daz outfits?

 

It sounds like you're not understanding a basic thing here. What an UMA race is, is a rig or skeleton. You match up body parts and clothing parts to it in a 3D modeling program, then export to Unity to run in the UMA framework. It doesn't matter what the origins are of those clothing parts, they're just meshes, and you wed them to the race rig.

So you can use DAZ sourced parts, UAS sourced parts, MCS parts, your own art parts, whatever ... and mix them all around ... just so long as you've put the same UMA rig in them.

If you are using more than one rig / race - say a male skeleton and a female skeleton - keep in mind you cannot use a clothing item made for one rig / race on another rig / race. That's because the rigs don't match. So even if you're using the exact same loincloth or sunglasses mesh on the male and female, since they belong to different rigs you need a separate one for each race.

Once you've exported the rigged clothing meshes from the 3D modeler into Unity, you feed them into UMA. The body and clothing meshes become slots, and the textures for those slots are known as overlays.

Hopefully I explained this correctly, and hopefully it is easier to understand now.

Additionally, you can make your own rig / race, but generally it's desirable to use an existing UMA rig, because you get the adjustment bones, which can be difficult to set up due to the 4 bones per vertex weighting issue (which is no longer a strict limitation, but it IS still a performance issue).

 

Hello, I need some help. How I can fix seams on body? I use highpoly base race but looks like all races have this problem.

 

Spent all day trying to get my Daz model working in UMA. Whew. Long process. In the end, my blendshapes don't work and because I'm using URP, textures don't work, either.

I'll start with the easiest issue. Why don't the textures work when using URP? My model is pink.



EDIT: I looked at the overlays again and how the original textures were setup and changed them. Now it asks for the right textures. However, it didn't fix the issue. Character is still pink.

 

to addition to my previous question about seams, I have one more problem - eyebrows.
I have weird holes in them - any idea how to fix it?

 

Hey there,
I am new to UMA and I am currently trying to place a character in a sitting position in front of me. However, I can not figure out how to modify the rotation of the body parts permanently. Whenever I change something and press play, the characters attributes get reseted. I assume that this has something to do with the animator and locomotion animation, but I don't know what to do about that, since the whole generation of the character won't work without an animator.
I hope someone of you can help me there .

 

Since UMA is set up with standard pipeline as default, it would have been better to start there. Fewer complications. I don't use URP, but I'm sure @Jaimi will be along soon to set you straight. Probably you are telling UMA to use standard shader on the materials but using an URP environment.

 

I haven't been getting notifications on messages, so I've gotten behind. I'll go back through and try to address each message.

 

This is probably something simple, like the normal maps are not marked as normal maps. Are you using the standard shader and built-in pipeline?

 

The eyebrows are setup for the other head. To fix this, the slot will need to be rebuilt with the eyebrows offset a little.

 

Generally, this can be caused by several things.

The Materials are generated for the atlas on the fly from a template material.
UMA knows information about this material using an "UMAMaterial" class.
This points to a material, specifies how many textures need to be plugged in (called "channels"), and what their shader texture name is.

So in URP, the Texture Material needs to be a URP material.
And the "channels" need to specify the correct shader parameter names for the textures.

If the shader is wrong, it will be all pink.
if you get the "not set" pink texture, then the parameter name is not correct, so the default texture from the material is shown (which is the "not set" texture).

 

UMA's are standard, rigged, "Skinned Mesh Renderers". They have an Animator component, and the animator specifies what the character is doing. So to make an UMA sit, you will need to plug in an animation into the animator state machine that is "sitting", and make that the animation.

 

hmmm how to rebuild a slot? I cant find any decumentation about that.

edit.
changing race to human male fixed problem with eyebrows so its a problem with race but human male is not good for me so question about rebuild eyebrow slot is stands.

No. I use HDRP and I made custom shaders (tweaked digital human shaders). I already kinda fix it (by marking all textures in UMA material) but seams are still visable at some angles.

One more thing - what is the difference between Human male and Human male HighPoly? I went with high poly because I wanted to get best results but I guess using it might have something to do with all my problems.

 

Thank you very much. I'll try it.

 

Hi guys!! I noticed that UMA has its own resources management system with files link. The whole information was included in the build. Is it possible to create a dynamic loading system for UMA characters by using assets bundles?

 

"Human Male" and "Human Male HighPoly" differ by geometry. The Human Male has a medium resolution head and hands, and low poly body. The Highpoly model has a higher poly count, and a smoother look.

Seams can result from different issues. It can be the result of the textures being resized, for example. You might want to make sure the atlas is sized large enough to fit all of the textures in (at edit time, the atlas is purposefully made smaller to improve performance). You can tune all of that on the "UMAGenerator" component on the UMA_GLIB object.

To rebuild a slot, you would need to get the source, and modify it in Blender, then rebuild. I believe the "high res" eyebrows were made specifically for the Human Male. You can use eyebrows that are merged onto the head texture though.

 

Yes, because they have to be accessed at runtime, everything by default goes into "resources".
You can manually load/unload asset bundles into the system though, using "AddFromAssetBundle" and "UnloadBundle" on the UMAAssetIndexer.Instance.

But there is another option - you can enable addressables support. In this mode, slots and overlays are dynamically loaded and unloaded as needed (a copy is kept in memory of the currently "in use" objects). There is a help file in the UMA folder with more information.

 

EDIT: I did some looking at the slots and realized that the slots and overlays weren't using the same material. Switching to the correct material, everything shows now.

Okay. Now that I got that sorted out. I need to figure out why my blendshapes aren't working. They worked in Blender before I ported them. I see them in the figure in Unity, but when I try to adjust them they don't work. Are there any known causes that can affect how and why blendshapes work?

 

Since the texturing started working, I decided to try the clothes that are included in the example to see if they would work on the model. What I got was this...



I'm guessing there's something wrong with overall orientation of the model itself, since these clothes work fine on the default models. Is there a parameter somewhere that I need to adjust in order to make sure that the model is in the correct orientation in relation to the clothes/hair?

 

Are you using Blender? There's some specific export parameters that need to be set. Look in the UMA Content Creation PDF in the UMA folder for specifics.

 

Thanks for the heads up. I followed Secret Anorak's videos, but I'm realizing that a lot of info is a little outdated now. This now leads me to ask...in SA's video on this, he says to set "Root Bone" to "Global" in his video. When I was following his instructions, I realized that this isn't listed anywhere in the Slot Builder. Instead I see this...



I originally put "Global" in the "Keep Bones Containing" box, but later removed it. I take it the system doesn't need to worry about the "Root Bone" anymore or is that handled somewhere else?