UMA - Unity Multipurpose Avatar on the Asset Store!

Seriously, I HATE this package.

Not that I hate the content. But I downloaded it into my existing project, as I thought it might help me out with it but I don't know why but I lost all my tags, all my layers, all my quality settings, all my player settings and so on.

I first thought I messed something up until I took a look into my player settings. It just changed everything. Product Name : UMA Power Pack, company name: UnLogick's Factory and so on.

Now it took me about 3 hours to get all those settings out of backup and resetting everything! I don't know why it happened but this is really annoying and I would rather have paid for a working package then download a package that destroys my project!

 

Hi. This is a great project. I was trying to integrated UMA to my game system but I just encountered some problems. Due to the game's mechanism, most resources are loaded dynamically at runtime. I read the example scene, where lists are set at compile time, so I'm wondering how to load the slot list, overlay list, etc at runtime. Any help?

 

I can understand your frustration, actually we never asked to be considered a "complete project" and it has annoyed others and raised the inevitable question on how to integrate this into an existing project. (The answer to that is to export everything into a package and then import that package into your project)

I'm gonna ask Caitlyn to move it away from a complete package because it's causing more grief than help.

About the reference to my project, that was a mistake. I accidentally committed that to git while changing some other files. It has been fixed in git and will be gone in the next update.

Sorry about the inconvenience.
Joen - UnLogick

 

Hello, when will the next version be released?

 

Hi all,
First though that occurred to me when I first heard about UMA was: "At last! At last Unity has some support (although third party) for multi-part models! At last they did it! Hip hip Hurray!" (and by the way my thanks for creator of this great asset). Then I've started watching tutorials and was completely confused about 3 (!!!) parts dedicated to crowd generator script. I could not understand why not start from the beginning, explaining how to implement UMA, create libraries, add models etc. Now I've reached content creation part and sudenly realized, that UMA is absolutely different thing! It is not something intended allow developers to use mylti-part models - it simply is an avatar - fu**ed single mesh and using UMA is all about exporting some textures from some third party applications and importing them in Unity! There is no way to use it in you game, unless you are going to use this mesh and build the whole game aroung this one mesh.
I was hoping UMA may occur to have blendshapes support, helping with face\body customization (silly me!), but now I see - the only thing UMA is able, is reposition bones to make models longer\shorter - a possible solution in some situations, but absolutely unacceptable for multi-part models.
Thanks for work anyway, but I wonder will ever Unity have even simplest support for non-casual games? Will ever Unity development team find fu***n time to address such concerns? It is a shame, that Unity still is a CASUAL GAME ENGINE.

P.S. I've noticed it now:

LOL. So we can expect billions of tons of sh***y creations on asset store now. My condolences to players.

 

I'd say to use the type of language you used to describe UMA and then thank the original developers for their hard work is hypocrisy. Unity funded the product and that funding ended several months ago. It is distributed with an MIT license.

Furthermore, there are 2 models with replacement parts on the head and the parts of the head, hands, feet, torso, and legs. You expose your lack of knowledge of UMA with your insulting and unknowledgeable critique. So if Unity is a 'casual game engine' as you claim then you expect UMA to make Unity a 'casual 3D modeling engine' as well? AutoDesk1234D UMA is not.

I don't think we have to worry about lots of poor creations showing up in the asset store; as you've proven, some effort has to be made to even know what UMA is capable of and is, let alone actually creating something that works with UMA.

 

Then go away, Mr Pro.

 

goat

Absolutely not! The author of this asset did his hard job and it is not his fault Unity's inability to handle multi-part models.

I've watched all tutorials on UMA site and downloaded 23 page "documentation" and there is not a word about UMA's capability to replace anything, except a single sentecnce in "documentation": "UMA provides two starting base meshes, a male and a female. It ´s possible to create completely different and unique base meshes and still take advantage of UMA." Yes, I know, that if you completely rewrite UMA you may be able to change something. What a delight! On the other hand, if UMA has capabilities, that you mentioned - why they are not documented? And you dare to address my lack of knowledge?! - This is of you great, 23 pages lenght documentation. So, please.

No, I was expecting ability to create something like multi-module pawn (in UDK), or some basic functionality, which is "must have" for engines, intended for something more complex, than casual games.

That's a relief. Really.

And again, for UMA guards: I am not bashing UMA. It seems a good asset and helpful for some developers with some needs. On the other hand, this is Unity forum and please don't forbid me to tell my opinion about engine. And yes, despite later improvements, especially important ability to import morphs, Unity is still behind of other modern engines and mainly good for casual games.

 

i don't see any tutorial on changing the BASE MESH ,is possible?

 

Yes, you can exchange heads, hands, arms, torso, legs, feet and on one heads the inner mouth and eyes and on the other heads eyes, inner mouth, perioribital area, nose, ears, and mouth. Those are mesh pieces. You can also replace overlays (textures).

You'll need to make suitable replacements beyond what is supplied which you can do in Blender.

Their are currently 2 base meshes, HumanMale and HumanFemale. Parts (overlays slots) in those are replaceable. If you want to replace base meshes completely or just pieces of then then it's really a matter of your self-tutoring in Blender, there is no way around that. If ambiguities in descriptive language led you to believe otherwise then now you know otherwise. Making meshes or textures requires you teach yourself 3D modeling somewhat.

If you want to blame anyone why there is not an avatar editor available yet then blame me. Still it's only changing of colors and shape and exchanging overlays and meshes from those available. You will not have a mesh or texture editor available such as the likes of Blender by installing UMA.

I've written some of the code. I haven't even bothered looking at the code in a week until my neighbors go back to school and work. If I don't make good progress by Friday I will turn if over to Joen and he can finish it as I'm sure he's just being polite waiting for me. I can point out the logic in the members he added if he needs me too, it's not rocket science but it's not exactly as easy as buying an oversized pair of sweats and putting them on.

Finally, I recommend all that import uncheck all the Project Settings asset files (e.g. TimeManager.asset) and rename the Company Name and Project Name to something of your choosing when importing UMA.

 

i am a programmer and also a modeller,i know about rigging but...anyways in my project i want to use DAZ model(micheal and victoria),so my task is use Daz Body shape instead of this BASE MESH...is a simple process or i must lose much time to rig ?

 

You'll need to reskin all of the bones manually, including the ones for the facial features.

 

a big work to do

 

Hi there!
What´s the poly count for Micheal and Victoria? You need to keep in mind how many avatars you plan having on screen and final performance.
I´m still not giving priority to explain how to use your own base meshes because those would break the link with UMA AssetStore content.
Cheers

 

Hey =)
I still need to correct a bug on OverlayLibraries not keeping track of how many times textures had been reduced between scenes. I plan having this fixed this week.
Cheers

 

The first two look like in Skyrim! By the way, is overlay.asset generated by serializing via Unity? e.g. MaleBeard02.asset

 

Hey =D Comparing those with Skyrim was a great compliment The seller of this pack will be happy to hear that =D

.asset files were integrated with Unity, you just need to click on create/UMA overlay

Cheers!

 

You don't want to use UMA at all. Try Mega-Fiers Chris's DAZ plugin.

 

Hi Fernando,

Does your avatars work just like the ones created in Unity 4.3.2? If so I would like to create a controller that would have one of your avatars wave. Can't seem to do it. Would you give me explicit instructions of how to do it. Thanks.

 

Have you looked at Unity's Mecanim tutorials? This is very simple.

http://video.unity3d.com/video/7362044/unity-40-mecanim-animation-tutorial

 

As @LaneFox said, it´s a good idea understanding how Mecanim works to get it done. Take a look on this video:

at ~9:30 I show the prefab, this is where you might want to change the animator controller to include wave animation.
Cheers

 

I have created many avatars using a fbx files in Unity(Mecanim). I have 2 projects load one with an avatar I have created using Unity and the other using UMA. UMA keeps using the locomotion controller no matter what I do.

 

Have you applied the changes done on animation controller/locomotion script to prefabs?

 

To get your avatar to idle do I need a script?

 

To set which idle animation is played, you would just need to swap them on the Animator itself.


I highly recommend not working directly on example files, as they will be overwritten when you update UMA though.

 

Fernando, messing with the locomotion controller is not the way to go. I hope I am not pestering you too much. If you could get a little time would you make short movie on how to make one of your avatars set in a plane and wave and maybe another on idle. I would really appreciate it. Thanks.

 

Hey Mikie
I guess the point is, this has nothing to do with UMA. UMA generates a fully animated mecanim humanoid avatar that you can attach any controller to. All you have to do is set the animationController property on the UMAData before you tell the generator to create the avatar. There is an example of this in Scene 2, the "Animation Controller" property on the "UMA Dynamic Avatars".

You can't wait till the UMA baking is done because Mecanim doesn't support run-time swapping of Animation Controllers. But if this is changed in the future it will also work for UMA.

 

Hi there guys!
Second part of UMA overview:

 

OK. I created a controller. Just using a wave animation and put it into the Animation Controller. I get Animation.GotoState could not be found.

 

Then you're using an old version of UMA.

Please download the one from the Asset Store or the one from github.

 

Hi, I tried to customize the code to fit in my project. However, I got nullreferenceexception at the code below.

Code (csharp):

1. Matrix4x4[] bindposesArray = umaData.myRenderer.sharedMesh.bindposes;

Obviously myRender is null. How can I assign the render in script? Thanks ahead.

 

How do you want it to fit in your project?, we can't do a lot for you with only a nullreference.
I suggest you to use UMACrowd for make the characters.
Cheers

 

Here is my code. http://paste.ubuntu.com/6706589/. The code is a little bit messy because in order to find the problem I moved many parts around.

The overlay, slot, and race are loaded at runtime, which works fine so far.
Only UMAGenerator and UMA Legacy Mesh Combiner are attached to an empty game object, and are set up according to the scene0 example.

 

Hi,there, I currently using UMA 1.0.1.0 downloaded from github,
and you guys did mentioned:
Known bugs / limitations
1.0.1.0 R - On windows builds and for some specific hardware configuration, Unity crashes on application quit. Unity team is


now every time I exit my build , it crashed
I want to know whether this bug is fixed?
And I'd apprreciate that if you are so kind as to tell me how to do sth like SaveUMATool at runtime .
thanks in advance

 

Hi there,
I´ve been looking for a reference where you instantiate the avatar prefabs, but couldn´t find anything but
GameObject obj = GameObject.Find("SimCreated");
Are you instantiating the male/female prefabs somewhere else?

 

Hi there!
As far we know, this bug is not from our side. It might be corrected on unity following version but it won´t depend on Joen and me.
About the Save/Load, this will be my next video tutorial

 

thanks, and here is a little suggestion, I downloaded the latest version of UMA, but the releaseNote stays the same as 1.0.1.0
I know you guys are busy working , but isn't that just a few lines to explain what is changed and what is added ?

Keep up the good work cheers!

 

Hi there!
Since the release notes document 1.0.1.0 there had been 62 commits to code on Git. I consider probably half of those won´t require extra information to be included, but there had been many changes, not only by me, but also from Joen and Eli, so I still need to get myself updated of everything so I can actually update the docs.

 

Well one of the advantage of github is that now you can see the commit messages directly.

A lot of the changes we've been doing lately is merely internal class restructure, moving functionality to base classes to allow more flexibility.

Also I've filled out the update text for each update on the Asset Store.

 

No, I don't think I have male/female prefabs included in my code so far. Where and how to load them in the script? Sorry for constantly asking you question, but I'm trying my best to follow UMA's logic.

 

Hey!
Take a look here, at 9:30

 

I checked my code. It seems that I just initialized the race library without touching it afterwords. I'll fix that. Thank you for your help!

 

OK, I'll keep an eye 0n it, I made a UMASystem as a prefab(a quite independent one), it can work just as I want in one scene
but when I drag this prefab into another scene, I got an error from RaceLibary :Could not find race:HumanMale
why ? I haven't change anything from the prefab and can clearly see the RaceLibary contains the same RaceList on Inspector.
what may be causing this problem?

 

Wow, go away for a few days and look what happens.

First, @Fred'sIphone: They did warn you not to load UMA into an existing project, or it would overwrite your settings. Not their fault if you didn't read the instructions, or at least watch one of the introductory videos first.

@Fufurata1234, How can I put this... Just... CHILL! UMA is a toolkit that simplifies the process of creating large numbers of similar but different avatars, based on a common humanoid base mesh. With a little work, it can be extended to include non-humanoid base meshes as well. It provides a framework for doing certain things with them, but it won't solve every problem. Some tasks are beyond its scope, and you'll need to look elsewhere for answers if you need that extra functionality. Or you can wait and see what UMA based middleware solutions appear over the next few months. The Unity community includes a lot of bright people. Some of the solutions they come up with might surprise you.

On a related note, you might want to check out this video, by Lois C.K., in which he explains to Conan why "everything's amazing, and nobody's happy". Pay special attention at about the 1:30 mark, when he explains that "we live in such an amazing world, but it's wasted on the crappiest generation of spoiled idiots", and at the 2:00 minute mark, when he talks about "how quickly the world owes them something they knew existed only ten seconds ago". Just remember, UMA, as well as the Indie version of Unity, are FREE. If they don't do what you want, feel free to BUY something that does.

@Mikie, and all the other people wondering how to change the animation controller, or other features of the UMA generated avatar, the important thing to know is that you don't change the generated avatar, but the base model, located at "Assets\UMA\UMA_Assets\Races". This is what UMACrowd uses as a template.

1. If you already have a working Mecanim avatar, take note of the controller used, and any additional scripts, tags, or other settings needed to duplicate its functionality. When I tried this, I used the "Character System for Mechanim" Ninja as my starting point, which needed a few additional scripts and project settings to function properly.

2. Drag either the male or female prefab, from the Races folder, into an empty scene, and give it a new name. This protects it from being overwritten if you update UMA later on.

3. Go to the first level down in the avatar's hierarchy: "Male_Unified" or "Human_Female_UMA" in my version, and change the Animation Controller in the "Animator" section, and/or add any additional scripts from your previous working Mecanim avatar.

4. If you want to add weapons, or other components, be sure to place them at equivalent points in the hierarchy that they occupied in your original model.

5. If any scripts need to have variables populated in the inspector, such as weapon prefab locations, or root bone assignments, do that as well.

6. Test that everything works, and then save the changed avatar, again being sure to use a different name than the original UMA supplied one. You'll also need to duplicate the associated RaceData file, rename it, and set the Race Prefab field to your new avatar's name.

7. Load Scene 1 (UMACrowd), and add the the custom character created above to the Race Library, or replace one of the existing ones. It should then just work using your new controller and settings whenever a character from this "new" Race is created.

8. Once you have the other options set up using UMACrowd, you can save the resulting character as an asset file using the UMA > Load and Save menu, and use it in Scene 2 (serialized), or export it for your game.

I'm still trying to figure out how (and sometimes why) some of this stuff works, but that's what I have so far.

 

weird stuff:
first, I had my artist colleage modified the a new model from Male_Separated fbx from UMA Project.
I try to replace the the old slots like this;

but I got a freak that may give me nightmare:twisted:


what's the problem? I guessed it might be scale factor when I imported the FBX
but I change it from 0.01 to 1, I still got the strange look?
help, pls

 

It's definitely a problem with the bind poses of the skinned mesh. Usually something like this happens if your meshes doesn't use the exact same rig as the base mesh.

Try using the DefaultMeshCombiner, it is more robust when it comes to such things.

My Power Tools pack is almost complete, I just need to finish the threaded texture atlassing that works without the Unity Pro license. After that I'll complete the wings pack and work a bit on the work flow for content creation.

 

thanks . it actually is the meshCombiner problem , now it works

 

Screenshots or it didn't happen!

 

Thanks for this great Christmas present!

Quick question: Are the ZTL files in the Content Creation pack setup with the proper UV Maps? When I open either ZTL in ZBrush and UV Master -> Work on Clone -> Flatten, the result is junk. This is the same for any function in ZBrush that requires the UV Map to process. For example, if Load either the Male or Female ZTL into ZBrush and try to generate a Displacement map the results are a mess. Any ideas?

Thanks again!