[WIP/Feedback] ezUnity:DAZ - Single Draw Call Avatars + DAZ Models, Morphs Clothing

I'd love some feedback on an Asset that I'm planning for release in a month or so. It combines the fantastic array of DAZ characters and clothing with a skinned mesh combiner (not just for DAZ characters) that can reduce clothed, multiple skinned mesh renderers to a 1 draw call model, with the capability of recolouring the baked mesh to make multiple characters from one simple model.



I've made a video to demonstrate some of the key features and if you've got time to look through it I'd love some feedback. There are still a few bugs at the moment, but it's pretty much there in terms of features. If you can spot something I've missed I'd be delighted to add it (if I can work out how ).

This is the basic feature description:

The ezUnity: DAZ system enables you to use the huge variety of DAZ characters with Unity, giving you an endless number of different avatars and a wide set of wardrobes for everything from casual to sci-fi!


With ezUnity: DAZ you can do the following:

• Create and clothe characters in DAZ, morph them and import them into Unity. With support for DUF files your can load different characters using the standard save file format from DAZ.
• Morph your characters right inside Unity, with access to any of the morphs you use. Morphing is high performance and minimises the number of vertices updated every frame (if any!)
• Morphed clothing is skinned against the skeleton of the model meaning that it has even higher performance when you are animating meshes rather than modifying vertices
• Bake high performance, 1 drawcall instances of your characters when you are finished modifying them, including all of their clothing.
  
  Imagine a dressing room scene where the full character is morphable by the player, then when they leave, bake a high performance version that is used in your game
• Animate and Pose characters right inside Unity using our integrated IK or Bone Sphere animation modes - or import your DAZ poses and use them immediately

 

I've attempted to use some DAZ characters several times in various projects. Combining all the materials in one is definitely a plus, but everything else with DAZ characters are just so inefficient.

For instance, some DAZ character packs with clothes can roll with over a million triangles. Literally, adding shoes on a character will add several hundred thousand triangles forcing Unity to split them again.

Speaking from a Mac user point of view, there is a decimator and a texture atlas built in with DAZ, but the results are incredibly poor. The decimator deforms you character terribly and the texture atlas leaves horrible artifacts everywhere.

This is a step in the right direction. This seems to do what Ultimate Unwrap provides, eliminating a step; however, DAZ models, from my experience are incredibly inefficient to use at the moment. The DAZ skeleton even seems difficult to use with Mecanim: hands cross on shooting, legs cross on running, etc.

DAZ seems to be made for poses and screenshots. They are great looking models, but their transition to Unity or any game project so far is poor.

My thoughts.