UMA - Unity Multipurpose Avatar on the Asset Store!

Try this:

Code (CSharp):

1. string JsonStriped = JsonContentFixed.Replace("\\\"", "\"");
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I need some serious help from this community.

I'm at a company that has adapted our character creation system around the UMA base to create character DNA.

In essence we have the UMA skeleton and all the slots. Our artists have replaced the default geo with our own. For the most part, it works. Here's where I come in-

As the animator/rigger/weight painter/etc over here it's my job to fix our model that's wrapped around the UMA skeleton. We are having a plethora of problems like the Right side of the face not responding to the vast majority of the sliders.

This is what we've done---

We took our new mesh and bound it to the UMA skeleton. I have done it 2 ways - Grab the hips, select hierarchy (select -hi) and then use Bind Skin options in the Wiki (Bind to: Selected Joints // Max Influences Unchecked)

So, this binds our mesh to the UMA rig.

Then, I simply click the UMA mesh, shift click our Mesh, and use Copy Skin Weights (have tried several different options, but obviously every possible combo).

Then, I also tried a method virtually identical to the above, but instead of grabbing the hips and the entire hierarchy (because UMA doesn't use every single bone for influence, mostly just the 'adjust' bones - 157 bones total, and only 102 are used for influence) I grabbed *ONLY* the bones that correspond to the weighting of the UMA model.

So, I knew that our model was weighted to the exact same 102 bones as the UMA mesh was - then rinse and repeat for the copy weights.

Now, there are some areas that need to be touched up, and I did polish them up a bit, but that aside, when I bring these versions into our branch to test them within our game the sliders break. The slots are built properly, the export is on point, the weighting in Maya looks damn near perfect, but we'll adjust something like 'Lip Size' and the top left and bottom right of the mouth won't move, or we'll use a slider for 'Ear Size' and the left ear works but the right side doesn't work - and again, in Maya, BOTH of those sister 'adjust bones' on either side of the head work perfectly with the same weighting.

I cannot for the life of me figure out why our character creation system is breaking. And, unfortunately, I always come to an impasse because I am an animator/rigger, and not a Dev/Unity guy over here.



Thanks in advance to annnnybody that can help.

 

Kenneth try sending me one of your fbx files and I'll take a look.

 

also we have a slack team for uma that you might wanna join, just pm me the email you want to use with slack and I'll get you an invite.

 

Hmm, sounds like you've done everything right. Time for some troubleshooting.

First, if you bring a raw head mesh (not processed into a slot) into a scene, can you get these areas to move by manually moving/scaling the bones from the hierarchy? If you can get the offending area to move then you know your mesh is rigged correctly and is not being mangled during export/import.

 

Dears. I seek a bit of help with creation of a new race. I really liked SecretAnorak's tutorials, which made me switch to max and I really like it. But, I cannot find a way of how to make my new "race" work properly.

This is what I did:

1. I have modeled my new race in 3DS Max and I used the rig from the Content Creation pack
2. I have exported the separated body parts into FBX along with the rig (in binary)
3. When I import these parts into Unity as Humanoid I can play all Mecanim animations with no issues

NOW

4. I have extracted the TPose from my imported FBX
5. I have changed the imported FBX back to Legacy
6. I have created all the slots and added them to the library

7. When I create an UMA without any animation it is generated sideways (as if lying on its side), other than that all looks good
8. When I add animation, my UMA comes all messed up, with feet and hands all tangled as per image. Any idea of what I could have missed? Thanks!

 

Ha! Almost there! My body is now rotated correctly as I had to rotate the rig in 3D Max file by 180 degrees. What remains is the weird behaviour of fingers. Please see the image. Any idea here? It also looks like hands are not properly sawn together, all other body parts yes.



[EDIT] I managed to solve the seams in 3D Max, looked like it was not rigged properly. But the fingers are still a bit messed up. This

[EDIT2] Solved .. had to redo everything as the problematic was initial Collada Import. So problem on modelling side,

 

@tomi.trescak - I appreciate it that you posted pictures of your problems and then gave the solutions. That's a big help for anyone else who is trying to research their own problems and solve them.

 

hello,

i am in the process of understanding the UMA 2 menu in Unity 5 (5.3.4f1). (The menu that exists in the menu bar of Unity when you import the UMA 2 package).

I am using the package from github.

• The 1st item in that menu "Load and Save" I do understand as I was able to find youtube videos by Secret Anorak and Fernando Ribeiro.

• I am now trying to understand the 2nd item called "Pose Tools" which included the sub-menu items "UMA Bone Pose Mixer" and "UMA Bone Pose Builder." There is also a "Set Clip Generic" and "Set Clip Legacy".

I found a post (quoted) about it on this page of the forum http://forum.unity3d.com/threads/uma-unity-multipurpose-avatar-on-the-asset-store.219175/page-70

I can deduce that these tools are building or mixing "poses."

I'm currently modeling in 3dsmaxnew and new to rigging and animation so I'm wondering what the final output of these tools gives you.

What is meant by "pose?"
Would this be like a beauty pose or a t-pose?
Are these tools intended to be used to just pose the UMA character in Unity like for animation?

Could anyone provide a demo of these tools?

 

hello,

I solved this issue see below

• i am exporting a UMA character with modified DNA (as you can see from the long arms) from Unity 5.3.4 using the Export OBJ function (image 01)

• i have imported the obj file into 3dsmax 2017 (image 02)

The obj from Unity exports into 3dsmax as a triangulated mesh.
I would like to have a UMA character with modified DNA in 3dsmax as quads so that I can use it as a base mesh for my own projects as I model in quads.

Could anyone help me turn this triangulated mesh in 3dsmax into all quads?

I noticed that when I import the obj file of the human mesh from the Content Creation Pack into 3dsmax it comes in as quads , but not when I import the modified DNA mesh into 3dsmax from Unity.

This makes me think that it is possible to import obj files of an UMA into 3dsmax as quads.





I have tried turning the modified DNA mesh into an editable poly object in 3dsmax then exporting the edit poly object from 3dsmax as another obj file then importing the new obj file into 3dsmax however it still shows the triangulated mesh.


SOLVED (see image 03)

I just found out how to quadrify triangulated meshes in 3dsmax.

This quick video shows how to do it in 3dsmax

[

As you can see the UMA with modified DNA that was exported as an obj file from Unity is now in 3dsmax as quads and also really does seem to keep the original edge flow including the triangles on the bottom of the foot

Well I'm happy about this ! because as a modeler I can use UMA to create different shapes from a realistic humanoid base mesh, like stylize it and use it 3dsmax for my own work.

 

This guy have been analyzing the UMA rig and propose improvement

I thought it's worth watching! The proposition about belly fat was very insightful for example.


He made an earlier one where he review the rig a bit more in depth

 

Currently those tools are only used during the creation of the expression player assets. The "pose" assets are much like a keyframe in animation; they are merely storing information about changes of bones from the default model.

 

Thank you for the information about what the "pose" assets are.
I will go ahead and try out creating expression player assets to learn more about the expressions.

 

Hi,
I have started using UMA about a week ago and since I am using Unity 5, I was thinking of using PBR for my character clothing but there is a problem with the materials used in UMA compared to the standard ones in Unity:

On the right you can see the nice and shiny PBR material with textures created in Substance Painter.
On the left you should see the same textures but for some reason every PBR textures I try to use with the metallic shader for UMA turns out black for me.

What am I doing wrong? Is there a specific import option for pbr textures I have to use?
Or can I not use the same export setting in Substance Painter?
Is the UMA metallic shader the same as the Unity one?

Sorry for the wall of questions there but I need this to work otherwise UMA might not work for my project

 

It's not UMA ... at least not in general, as you can have shiny metal PBR with UMA. (You do need the UMA PBR plugin, though.)

So it's some tiny detail that's being overlooked, like needing to bake the GI in the scene or something. Or maybe the overlay is set up wrong ...?

 

GI is set to auto for my test scene so would not be that, for the overlay though, I used the legacy material builder and switched the textures out later and set the right shader (UMA_Mat_Diffuse_Normal_Metallic). There might be something wrong there? What is the normal way to create PBR overlays?

Edit:
OK, tried to copy over one of the PBR body overlays and change the name and textures but the result is the same as before.

 

@Apolyon6k - This may not relate directly to your problem, but one thing to keep in mind is that UMA was originally designed back in the pre-Unity 5 days, when the indie version of the engine was limited to diffuse materials in gamma space. That's what "legacy" means. So, unless you really want to use that (for mobile, I suppose), you want to make sure your whole pipeline is geared toward Unity 5's PBR + linear space.

 

On the uma slack chat we're talking about preparing for a new uma release, some of the features would be to drop a lot of the old backwards compatibility, the currently released version has proven very stable. We have maintained Unity 4.6 until now and we think it's time to move on and clean up the code base.

This could also include removing legacy from the asset store version, legacy would still be available from git but I suspect what most people want is the pbr stuff.

When moving to 5.x we're thinking about raising the bar and jumping straight to 5.2 or 5.3 to take advantage of the latest api changes. There are some mesh stuff that can reduce garbage when building characters as well as the ability to throw in unet samples.

If you feel strongly against any of these initiatives please make your voice be heard, preferably soon before we actually do anything.

Edit: Unity 5.3 has the JsonUtility and that means we can get rid of our last 3rd party dll dependency. I've pushed branch Unity53 to git without litjson. We will begin to clean up and remove the uma 1.x upgrade capabilities as well as the support for older unity versions.

 

In that process if the team could improve the rig so the dna can display better results that would be amazing.

Also never did understand the reason for the scaling and rotation?. Please do keep in mind that not all users are prof. developers. Some are just hobbyist making small projects so whatever can be done to simplify the process of adding pre-made, or custom made items for overlays and slots would be greatly appreciated.

 

If we change the rig, all current assets will risk compatibility issues, even with small changes.

 

The rig is there to show off the system, a lot of artists are making content for this rig and it's a strong base to build on. However if you want something else, more control, different style, different expression, different races, then you have to make the content yourself or hire someone to do it.

Unless a major content provider joins the uma team I doubt we'll see another free human base mesh with more control. It's a ton of work and most artists I know prefer to get paid.

And if the base mesh isn't free then other artists will be reluctant to make content for it, so for the time being I think subtle modifications like the orcs that uses the humanoid dna with a few additions is what we'll see.

 

We have released a Medieval Guard Set for UMA 2 on our store for those interested. This set is setup with PBR with 4 different sets of clothing for base guard, archer, swordsman and pikeman. The clothing are in sections so you can mix and match them. Here is a link to the store: http://www.neojac.com/index.php/atavism/uma2-guard-set

 

Wow, those look awesome!

 

I agree - looks great. Is this Wills work?

Edit: Wow, price is out of my range for the moment.

 

Looks great, glad to see more contents for uma.

 

Thank you for the reply. I am in no way talking about the need for a new mesh or even a new rig. All I was hoping for is a re-work of some of the issues with the old one. I though that there was artists on the team that is why I am asking, I saw people talking about adding new bones for tail, wings etc.

 

OK, I fixed my black texture problem...
I changed the texture for the color to not include an alpha channel and then everything showed up nicely. So using the same textures as for the Standard shader used by Unity does not work as the albedo textures uses an alpha channel by default. Normal as a normal map import as usual works fine in contrast to the method shown in SecretAnoraks tutorials but he was using the legacy shader for his stuff.

 

I suppose the main thing I'm looking for now is the ability - with Unity 5 - to have slots and overlays stored as asset bundles. Is that part of the new UMA?

 

Yes - this is coming. It's also part of the new CharacterSystem - David has done all the work for this.

 

Will did an AMAZING job with these! Thanks for sharing, Cookimage.

Those of you who may not have discovered Will's work, he is @justb on the forums. He creates the bulk of the clothing assets for UMA on the asset store. They are well worth the price if you consider how much it costs to hire an artist.

 

So happy to hear this! Thank you, David, wherever you are!

 

I've looked through about 30 pages of this thread today and didn't see any mention of the Blender to UMA content creation tutorials by Wigifer, they are pretty good.

Unity 5.3.4f1 displays a lot of warnings like this:

Do I have an older version of UMA (asset store from two weeks ago?) Edit: Yes.

Maybe a version check or "About UMA" option with a version info window containing contacts, contributions and links should go into the UMA menu?

Edit: Latest from Github download fixed my overlay error so I removed all that mess from this post.

 

That's a good idea.

 

I didn't know about them. Looks like I'll have to give them a view!

Thanks!

 

@ig3d You should get the latest from git, it does not have all those annoying warnings : )

 

Hey There is a problem when trying to do character randomization like in UMA (not using UMA but heavily influenced by it) in a custom system. When the character is randomized in the game, the head change but the body shape stay the same for some reason (do not happen in editor), did you guy had the same problem, how can this be solved?

More info in this video

 

UMA uses Humanoid animations rather than Legacy or Generic, but it seems like an export/import issue rather than a problem with the animator.

 

It do work in the editor and the humanoid have been tested too

 

It works in the editor because the animation isn't active. The animation is overwriting all of the bone changes because the playing animation clip has data for them which it shouldn't have. All I meant when I said it's an "export/import issue" is that data is in the animation clips because of an error with the export from Blender or the import of the FBX file.

 

Okay will double test thanks!

 

Fully updated documentation, walk-throughs are desperately needed. Videos don't help because they're not maintainable over time, and become quickly outdated, and they can't be searched.

 

Feel free to make fully updated documentation, we would love that : )

 

Obviously, if I'm asking, I need it, and have no ability to create it. Your answer is not helpful.

 

The thing is, everyone needs it, and no one has the time to create it.
No one gets a dime from working on this project, and since we are doing this on our spare time, the little time we have, we put that on fixing bugs or making UMA better.

SecretAnorak has made a huge contribution by making those videos and they cover pretty much all aspects of UMA, and this new update will most likely not touch on the API at all, so it will still be valid for quite some time.

 

Wigifer's tutorial series using Blender, which was recently started and appears to be still in the making, is also very good. It's up to 7 videos at the moment.

 

This is the reason for our much hated runtime Animator creation and destruction that makes it more complex to make networked games.

I am confused though why don't you just use uma to begin with? Making your own character system is a great way to learn, but the advantages of using a system like uma is that it contains 3 years of enhancing on the system so you don't have to figure out every little kink of the engine.

 

Excellent videos! I do no use Blender but I get asked about it all the time. Love the humor. I think our UMA video producers must all have a good sense of humor to stick with UMA.

 

@UnLogick

There is also use of shape keys and other stuff not supported by UMA

 

Then it might be a good idea to join our slack group and contribute those missing stuff? Probably faster and more stable than making your own? : )
We are currently very active in development preparing for the next release.

 

Yes please consider joining the team and help with the next release of uma. From what I have seen it looks like you have some great ideas that would improve uma.