UMA - Unity Multipurpose Avatar on the Asset Store!

Hi, could somebody tell me if UMA2 is still being actively updated/supported? I notice the last update was a couple of years ago now, and the publisher website no longer works. Im basically looking to see if this is a good long term solution. many thanks!

https://www.assetstore.unity3d.com/en/#!/content/35611
https://uma.unity3d.com/wiki

 

If you check out the replies on previous pages you can find the active branch in github
https://github.com/huika/UMA/tree/unity53
and it will soon work on unity 5.5 too hopefully

 

nice! thanks for the heads up. Is there any reason its not being pushed through the asset store any more?

 

It will be pushed on the assetstore, it's just not ready yet. We are on the final stretch now though.

 

oh ok, cool

 

It's a big update. Lots of new, must-have features.

You should read the last several pages of the thread to see what's going on.

 

I have exported an animation from Maya using the Male Unified UMA rig for the UMA 2 Unified Male and using the Humanoid setting on the import setting. What we see in Maya is not what we see in Unity when applied to either the UMA avatar or even just the Unified Male model. In Unity, the arms and head sag. If we include the model with the animation FBX, it of course looks fine. Anyone have any suggestions?

 

Could you show some pictures please? Not sure what you mean. I have used Maya with the unified rig many times so might be able to help.

 

I just noticed the linked website (https://uma.unity3d.com/wiki) in the UMA2 overview in the assetstore is not working correctly. It gives me the error:
Error 503 Backend fetch failed
Backend fetch failed

Guru Meditation:
XID: 31792491

Varnish cache server

Thought I'd better mention this

 

I am currently following a tutorial to setup UMA, but it was for some previous versions.

I have now downloaded the UMA at unity53 but this one doesn't directly inlude the overlays and slots for the characters (at least I can't find them). Do I also have to download the UMA2 PBR in addition to this or?


Edit: nvm, it's in the ressources folder now it looks like? Is that the stuff that has been in UMA/PBR before? Cause I can't find the FemaleHead01 and that stuff anymore.

 

@Sheriziya yeah, it's been broken for quite a while now. New wiki is: http://umawiki.secretanorak.com

 

Hi guys! I was trying to enhance UMA human models. Working on the female model now (I will take a look at male afterward too) I attached some screenshots for what I got so far. The change is not so drastic.

What I've done is editing the existing female mesh (mostly legs and torso slots) and transfer skinning from the original one. Then changing the topology (increased polygons count, the one in the screenshots have about 24k polygons total on head, torso, legs, feet and hands) for better smoothing. (I'll try to make a low poly one too when I finish the high poly one)

Since I modified current UMA Female model, overlays and some slots (like hats, gloves or shoes) would be compatible. Actually currently I am using default female eyes and inner mouth slots with my modified slots. Also, all the DNA for default model works.

I am planning to put the model on asset store for free when I am done (if anyone would want it) or I can give it to the team so they can include it in the UMA package.

So what do you think?

* The one on the left is original UMA Female, the one on right is modified by me (the one on the left on the screenshots taken from the back).
** Beware of nudity (women in underwear)
*** All the overlays are used from default female. Underwear is where it is supposed to be but the shading of the bra is a little weird on front / upper section. The model looks more smooth and clean when underwear is not on.

Disclaimer: I am not a designer. Actually, I am more like an amateur developer. I am applying what I learn from the web (special thanks goes to secret anorak for great tutorials).

 

I know I am going off topic but, I noticed SecretAnorak liked my post so he's around here somewhere. I'd like to ask for some help:

@SecretAnorak, can you make a race tutorial video with two or more slots? Especially focus on losing the seams between slots. I followed your race tutorial (which is a one slot race) and applied the workflow to multiple slots. Everything is fine but the seams between the slots (neck, wrists, ankle, and waist) are not smooth. How to work around that?

 

Hi umutozkan, I'll take a look at it for you. Theoretically there are a couple of options:

1: Ensure the normals and skin weighting of the shared vertices are EXACTLY the same between the slots. If you're using 3ds max, make sure you use vertex transfer mode and not face transfer mode in the skin wrap modifier. You can also work on a single mesh and transfer weights to that before splitting your slots and transferring weights from your new single mesh. (Notice how the original UMA models have separated and unified versions)

2: You can use the seams mesh option in the UMA slot builder tool and supply it with a single unsplit mesh (as above). It should repair any seam problems for you. Unfortunately the last time used this, my slots wouldn't build. that was a year ago so it might have been fixed.

Either way, a unified mesh to transfer weights from is the way forward.

Hope that helps, I'll have a go myself some time this week.

 

These are lovely! Too bad they probably won't work with Will's clothing. The old meshes really did need an update.

 

Hands, arms, head and feet are almost the same (except for maybe the areas connecting to other parts) but legs and torso clothing slots won't match with this model. UV is close enough that overlays would work though.

 

Yeah, but too much money spent on clothing to toss it all. lol Still, nice job. It shows that it can be done.

 

I totally forgot about seams mesh option in the slot builder. Tried that and worked quite well. Almost as good as the original female neck seam

Thanks a lot!

 

Ah, thanks for that link! Good to know I'll book mark it.

 

Assuming it's possible to adjust one base mesh to approximate the other using only modifications to the bones and not the mesh you should be able to transfer slots from one to the other. We'd need to make a tool for it, but it wouldn't be very difficult.

 

In this case, unfortunately, it's all mesh modifications, not bones.

 

Right, but you only have to be able to match the volume, not the actual mesh, i.e. if you can transform (in the mathematical sense) the shape of one into the shape of the other using the bones you can apply that same change to all your slots and they'd (pretty much) fit the new base mesh.

 

This is always a problem, i guess that sooner or later we will be forced to "upgrade" the base mesh to keep in line with the times (UMA3).

Edit: @umutozkan whats the poly count on the new versus old mesh?

 

Problem is our custom content won't work with a new mesh, so be very careful about changing it too much. Will just made a new one that works with his clothing bits but anyone who has made their own won't be able to use a new model unless the changes are not major.

 

What would we be looking for in a new base mesh?

If it's just more polys, is that a situation where we can opt to use tessellation?

 

That is pretty heavy for a character, don't you think? I think textures and normals would be the best things to change with minor changes to the form without actually changing the shape beyond the bounds of current content.

 

IDK, you'd only have to turn it on when closer than LOD0, right? So it would hardly ever apply to more than one character at a time. It would also increase the apparent detail on all parts of the character, so clothes too, not just skin.

I think the bigger problem has been getting tessellation to work properly with normals (if I have that right). But a new shader in the store - Beast - does it. So probably before long it will be a common technology.

Edit: Oh, maybe I misunderstood. But as for textures, you can already go up to 8k on the character atlas probably, right? IIRC, that's the current Unity limit.

As for tessellation, the shader makes it look like there are more polys, but the source is unchanged.

 

@Teila im fully aware of this. Just saying its something we will run into sooner or later. I dont see a big need for it right now though.

 

Hello friends.
Prompt please, I'm trying to figure out how to work with Dynamic Character System. Assetbandls I created, but I do not understand where they need to save to use in Windows build.

 

I currently don't have access to my files but on top of my head; face, torso, hands, legs and feet had total of 24K'ish polygons. I tried to decimate the model and cut the poly count by 50-60 % but it screwed up the topology. I guess what I had to do in the first place was to make the low poly first, then convert it to higher poly

I don't remember what the poly count was on default female model. About one foufth of what I have probably (need to check)

I do want to have one low poly and one high poly model. So I'll probably redo the meshes starting with low poly.

What I intend to do is change the shapes too not only the poly count. I am not too happy with current shape of chest area, bottoms and the legs (especially below the knee) on default female. (And male model is too bulky, I want the male with default DNA values to be more natural, not all muscles)

I should stress that I am not trying to replace the current models but add additional races. So anyone can use the one that suits their needs. So no compatibility issues for people who invested on content so far.

 

If it is not too much trouble to ask, is there any sort of ETA on the release of the update? Doesn't have to be an actual date, but is it coming out in March or some later month?

 

This is configurable - click on the DynamicCharacterSystem object in the scene - it will have two fields to show where it's expecting characters and recipes to be found. This is relative to any "Resources" folder.

 

Literally, "Any day now"

 

If the shapes are the same, and the seams are in the same location, then everything should "just work" (like it does with Fernando's high poly meshes). I'd be interested to try your updated meshes, and see if they will work, would be great to get some higher poly meshes in the base release!

 

The one I am working on is not exactly the same shape actually. Seams are at the same locations on the mesh but the mesh itself is changed so it wouldn't match with the current slots.

And it would take some time before I could produce something usable. I probably can't make it to Literally, "Any day now"


*Edit: I added a screenshot of how shapes are different. First two on the left shows new model's vertices selected. Two on the right shows original female model's vertices selected. You'll notice that head, hands, and feet are practically same but the seam where legs and torso meet is kinda moved to the front by a couple centimeters.

 

Ok here is what I am aiming at:

Quads : It's the low poly model same shape with original UMA but polygons are quads.
Quads HighPoly : It's detailed versison of Quads. (same shape with original UMA)
o3nLowPoly : It' the same polygons with quads but torso and legs are reshaped.
o3nHighPoly : It's the detailed version of o3nLowPoly

I am going to need to have the Quads and Quads HighPoly while making the new model so I thought I could share those too. So people using current model and have tons of stuff for that can use the high poly version of the current model if they want.

UMA Female model Polygon count (Edit* I replaced the text with the picture for readability)




Screenshot showing Original UMA, LowPoly (quads) UMA, HighPoly (Quads) UMA Female in 3ds Max.

 

I'm pretty sure that the original UMA models were done as quads and triangulated at export. Did you look at the original Blender files from https://github.com/huika/UMA-Extrafiles/tree/master/ContentPack_1.1.0.1/Blend

 

Doh! I did not! I imported the fbx files in the UMA package's content folder.

If that is the case I may have to start over

*Edit : And btw is this intentional? I mean do the fbx files need to be tris? I thought quads were better for games. It seems 3ds max converts the quads to tris at export (a behaviour that may be changed hopefully). Does UMA require the models to be tris? Or using tris have any advantages over quads? I'd appreciate some feedback from you guys before I put more effort to this.

 

if I point out in the column resources "items"
assetbundls I need to put in the directory: c:\game\game_Data\items\items.assetbundle
correctly?

 

Everything is always tris in the end, modelling in quads is just a nice way to get straight lines everywhere.

 

You can actually have Unity send quads to the gpu instead of tris, not sure if there is any benefit though

 

But when exported as tris doesn't poly count get doubled? If I remember right 3ds max shows double the poly count for the model exported as tris. Or is it only vertex count that matters for performance?

So what should it be? Should I try to export fbx files as tris or quads?

 

Unity will convert your model to tris by default even if you export it as quads, unless you specify that it should be imported as quads in the import setting. So exporting as quads gives you the most flexibility i guess?

Edit: After some googling i cant really see any benefit of using quads in Unity, but since Unity converts it by default anyways, i dont think it matters much.

 

Alright, I'll just export as quads as you said. Since unity auto converts it to tris then it's the same thing as exporting as tris. And if we ever find some benefits of quads later on, we can switch easily.

 

Not sure if this is a valid consideration, but I guess the modeling is done as quads so you get nice seams on your slot boundaries (making art easier), but you use triangles in Unity because it deforms better during movement, improving resolution?

Also, I could imagine it is possible that one quad could save very little over two triangles in the GPU. Anyone know for sure?

I think these are some of the determinations made early on when UMA was initially developed.

 

I doubt quads vs tris has any deformation difference in Unity since thats already setup in the modeling software, so should be identical?

 

Well, whatever I do I cannot import to unity as quads anyway. I check the keep quads option but when I turn wireframe view in the scene all I see is tris.

I'll just export quads from 3ds max and import tris to Unity... :/

Following is a comparison of current UMA model and low poly quqad model I imported to Unity. By Unity's triangulation quad model (on the right) looks exactly like current UMA female (on the left).

 

If you do the conversion yourself then you have better control over which direction the quads are split, which can make a difference on how well your model bends in some situations.

 

Triangles versus quads.

If you are modeling something in a modeler software, you should work with quads. The reason is, you can work with quads more easily. You can subdivide them, you can create edge-loops, etc. And when you're working on a single mesh for hours, your brain can solve the quads, vertices and edges more easily.

But when it comes to render, all your stuff will be triangulated and displayed triangle by triangle. Because most of (if not all of them) the graphics cards work with triangles. That is the most basic 2D shape you can have and build a 3D object with it. You can divide a quad into triangles but if you divide a triangle all you get is two triangles (and if you have a triangle, the entire face is on the same plane, unlike the quads - you can have morphed quads, when the four vertices define a face which is on more than one plane).

So my opinion (and it is strictly an opinion, because I'm not an artist, I'm a developer, who likes to know the entire workflow at least a little bit), you should build your meshes from quads and at the end, you should triangulate them at the end. It is because at this stage you have control over the conversion and you can adjust things if something isn't right. But the other hand, most of the time, if you design in quads and leave the triangulation to unity, will work just fine.

This is my $.02.

 

I created the slots for the high poly version of the current Female race. It's exactly the same shape, so if anyone is interested here it is. (download link). Rar file includes the fbx files and slots, race and recipe.

@Jaimi you may include it in the UMA release if you find it satisfactory.