Skinning package for Unity Pro

*** UPDATE July 31st, 2012 ***

Hello everyone,

Sorry about the delays... real life, a game I'm working on, and a baby in the works has a way of interrupting the best of plans. However, I have been steadily plugging along, putting in a few hours here and there every week to refactor the whole Skinz framework and include some additional functionality. I can see the finish-line on the horizon so I'm posting some info on what to expect.

1) Skinz will be free to use with full functionality.

I simply can't bother with supporting this product as any revenue generated from it will not be worth the amount of time and effort necessary to support it and answer questions. However, I will be making the source-code available for purchase and it will be priced according to the time and effort I've put into it (ie. it won't be cheap). To those who are disappointed at this : you're free to invest the same amount of time and effort I spent in understanding all the technical intricacies of stitching together multiple meshes and optimizing them, create your own Skinning framework, and sell that for the price of a hamburger... I am sure that you will find after dividing your revenue by the amount of labor you've put in that you've earned a whole 5 cents an hour!

2) Unity Free and Pro supported.

That's right, I've refactored Skinz so that you can use it with either Free or Pro. To do this, I created an IO abstraction layer that lets you treat AssetBundles and Resources in the same manner, so those of you who don't have Pro will be able to use the Skinz framework and if you so choose, switch to Pro at a future date by changing only one line of code. This IO abstraction layer is available for use as part of the API so that you can use it in your own non-Skinz projects.

3) XML-based config

I have completely done away with the old filename based Skinning scheme; instead, you now specify your skins in an XML config file. This makes for a much more legible and flexible format and also means you can now share the same image over multiple skins.

4) New Atlas generation , MipMap, and Image Scaling functionality.

I have added my own version of Texture2D.PackTextures functionality that can generate multiple atlases, includes a rotate option for those who want to maximize their packing, and lets you decide whether or not you want it to resize your images to fit. The framework currently contains an implemenation for the MaxRects packing algorithm (considered one of the best packing algorithms) but is flexible enough to let you implement your own. The framework also includes MipMap creation and Image scaling functionality that currently contains an implementation for Lanczos 3 and 8 resampling (considered one of the best quality scaling algorithms) but is flexible enough to let you implement your own. I will add other filters as time permits (such as Box, Bell, Mitchell, etc...).

5) Animation Plug n Play, use across multiple models

The new framework now supports loading/unloading animations on the fly so you can optimize which animations are loaded at any time. You can also share animations across multiple models; that is, you can take the animations from Model A and have it run on Model B; as long as the bone names match, you're good to go!

6) General API improvements

As you can see, I've tried as much as possible to abstract a lot of the supporting functionality so that it's flexibile enough for you to plug in your own implementations. I've done the same to the core Skinz functionality which means if you choose not to use my specific implementation of Skinz you have the tools to implement your own.

Optional - I've been toying with the idea of extending Skinz to work with static meshes (ie. non-rigged), that way your static models can reap the benefits of the Skinz framework (such as combine and optimization features). The modification is fairly trivial, but it's bound to conflict with some paid assets on the asset store such as Draw Call Minimizer and Batching Tools; that is, I'm not sure it's fair to make similar functionality available for free as part of my package when those authors depend on their paid assets for their revenue... I'll probably put this on hold until people start rioting at my door.

*** END UPDATE ***


Hello everyone,

Within the next week (or two) I plan on releasing a Skinning package for Unity Pro users. This package gives you the ability to stitch together multiple body-parts at runtime that is extremely easy to use. It allows for switching between different skins on a character (like League of Legends) or switching between different body-parts on a character (like Diablo). It also allows you to remove body-parts which can come in handy for those of you making games where the character can lose an arm, a leg, or their head! When it comes to stitching the character together, it produces the most efficient mesh and materials/shaders combination for the least amount of draw calls and the best possible performance. It does this by combining all the meshes together while also merging all the materials/shaders together using atlases generated on the fly. Switching between body-parts is very easy as well, and all it takes are the following two lines :

characterWardrobe.WearItem("head", "HelmOfValor");
myCharacter = characterWardrobe.Generate();

If you want to make the head disappear :

characterWardrobe.WearItem("head", null);
myCharacter = characterWardrobe.Generate();

Switching between body-parts will not interrupt the animation in any way, so it is seamless and transparent. Importing your characters is also made very easy because of the declarative style. We have a mesh and texture naming scheme where your artists can specify pretty much any shaders they want to use, as well as which textures are the main texture, bump-map, parallax, etc... Then, when it comes time for the developer to import, it's as easy as clicking the fbx and clicking the import menu option. This is a very important and often overlooked feature since it means that the developer (or integrator) no longer has to worry about textures/shaders/materials that are supposed to be in the artist domain, you let *them* take care of it and all you have to do is click the import button and you're done! You're also not limited to having to put all your body-parts into one file; you can split your body parts into multiple files and let the importer take care of sorting it out. It makes extensive use of the Asset Bundles feature, and we make the bundles very small in order to minimize RAM usage.

I built the system mainly for use in a game that I am developing, but seeing that there's not much out there in the way of skinning frameworks I decided to make mine available for purchase. There is, of course, the CharacterCustomization sample that Unity provides, but my system goes far beyond what that system is capable of and is also much easier to use. It was, however, a very important learning tool for me back when I first started getting my nose wet in Unity so I would like to thank it's creator Bas Smit for such an excellent resource.

I am trying to gauge whether or not there is much of a demand for such a framework since I don't see many people asking for it, so if you're interested at all in such a system please let me know by replying to this thread with any specific features you would like to see.

Cheers!

El Diablo

View the YouTube demo here

Download Fully-Functional Free Version Here : advanced dynamic atlas generation and material merge feature included but currently capped at a limited number of uses per game instance.

IMPORTANT : Before running the demo, make sure your stats window is up. While running, you can toggle the GUI on and off with the space-bar; disabling the GUI will let you see the actual number of draw-calls.


Setup Guide

Importing your characters into Unity

The automated import process requires that you name your meshes and textures according to our naming convention. This is done in order to match them up and create the appropriate shaders. In this manner you can specify almost any shader type (including custom shaders) and assign textures to them automatically.

Our system introduces two important concepts : the body-part and the skin.
Let's say that you have a character model in which you have it broken down into several conceptual parts such as Head, Top, Legs, and Feet (similar to the system used in games such as Diablo or World of Warcraft). You also have it such that there are several variations of each part. For example, you may have two different head meshes : one where he's bald, and another wearing a spartan helmet. In this example, the concept of a Head would be considered a "body-part", and the two physical head variations (bald and spartan) would be considered "skins". In our system, you would be able to easily swap from a bald head skin to a spartan head skin by doing the following :

characterWardrobe.WearItem("head", "spartan");

or vice-versa :

characterWardrobe.WearItem("head", "bald");

Now there are games out there that don't require the ability to swap out parts of the body. For example, the game League of Legends doesn't offer the ability to customize your character by individual body parts. Instead, they offer you different skins for each character. This is also easy to do in our system when you think of the entire character as a single body-part. For example, let's say we have a model of a mage containing two variations : IceMage and FireMage. Here we're not swapping individual parts, so what are we swapping exactly? Well, the entire character of course! So if you think of the entire character as one big conceptual body-part, then you'll realize that you can easily swap between Ice and Fire skins by doing the following :

characterWardrobe.WearItem("character", "ice");

or vice-versa :

characterWardrobe.WearItem("character", "fire");

You should now have a pretty solid understanding of the two important concepts of a body-part and a skin. Now we will discuss how to name your meshes and textures.

Naming scheme

Mesh/Texture names cannot contain the following characters as they are special characters reserved for use by our system :

Plus sign +
Minus sign -
Underscore _

Meshes

Mesh names must start with the name of the body-part it belongs to followed by an underscore (_) and the name of the skin.

Example 1 - character model contains individual swappable pieces (Head, Top, and Legs) :

head_Leather
head_Chain
head_Plate
top_Leather
top_Chain
top_Plate
legs_Leather
legs_Chain
legs_Plate

Example 2 - character model contains different variations of the same character (Ice, Fire, Lightning, Air)

character_Ice
character_Fire
character_Lightning
character_Air

Textures

Texture names must match the name of the corresponding mesh; however, this is not enough. In addition to that, you need to specify the name of the shader that it should use as well as specify which texture should be the main texture, the bump-map texture, etc... Let's use the "character_Ice" mesh from Example 2 and specify that it should be a Bumped Diffuse shader as well as specify which texture should be the main texture and which should be bumped.

First, we need to tell the system which shader to use as well as which texture is to be the main/base texture. We do this by following the texture name with a plus (+) sign and the short-name for the shader we want to use :

character_Ice+bdif.png

The system now knows to associate the above texture with the "character_Ice" mesh. It also knows that the "character_Ice" mesh needs to be rendered with a "Bumped Diffuse" ("bdif" being its short-name) shader. It also knows to use this texture as the main/base texture for the "Bumped Diffuse" shader.

Now we need to specify the other textures that should be used in the "Bumped Diffuse" shader, in this case the bump-map. We do this by following the texture name with a minus (-) sign and the short-name for the texture type :

character_Ice-bump.png

The system now knows to associate the above texture with the "character_Ice" mesh. It also knows that it is to be used as the bump-map ("bump" being its short-name) for the "Bumped Diffuse" shader used to render the "character_Ice" mesh.

So for a quick recap, the plus (+) sign is used on a texture to specify the type of shader to use and that it is to be that shader's main/base texture. The minus (-) sign is used by all the other textures to specify the texture's texture-type (ie. normal-map, height-map, etc...).

Advanced

Multiple skins per mesh

You are not limited to using one texture per mesh as our system is flexible enough to accommodate multiple textures. This may be accomplished by following your texture name with an underscore and a new skin name that overrides the one used on the mesh. Let's use the "character_Ice" mesh from Example 2 to show how we can specify three skins for it called BlueFrost, LightBlueFrost, and WhiteFrost.

character_Ice_BlueFrost+bdif.png
character_Ice_BlueFrost-bump.png

character_Ice_LightBlueFrost+bdif.png
character_Ice_LightBlueFrost-bump.png

character_Ice_WhiteFrost+bdif.png
character_Ice_WhiteFrost-bump.png

Since we are specifying three different skins for the character_Ice mesh, we can no longer refer to the Ice skin as we did previously :

characterWardrobe.WearItem("character", "ice");

The above no longer works because the Ice skin no longer exists; it has been replaced by three other skins. Instead, you should now swap between all the skins in Example 2 by doing the following :

characterWardrobe.WearItem("character", "bluefrost");
or
characterWardrobe.WearItem("character", "lightbluefrost");
or
characterWardrobe.WearItem("character", "whitefrost");
or
characterWardrobe.WearItem("character", "fire");
or
characterWardrobe.WearItem("character", "lightning");
or
characterWardrobe.WearItem("character", "air");

You should now be able to specify multiple skins per mesh.

Texture Propagation

Sometimes you may find yourself in a situation where you need to use the same texture multiple times. For example, in the "Multiple skins per mesh" section, we created three skins for one mesh and each skin required a main texture and a bump-map texture. What if we wanted to use the same bump-map for all three skins instead of having to specify it each time? In that case we would do the following :

character_Ice_BlueFrost+bdif.png
character_Ice_LightBlueFrost+bdif.png
character_Ice_WhiteFrost+bdif.png
character_Ice-bump.png

The above works because our system will propagate the bump-map to *all* skins deriving from "character_Ice", which in this case are the three skins BlueFrost, LightBlueFrost, and WhiteFrost.

If we want to specify a bump-map that would apply to *all* the skins in Example 2, we would do the following :

character-bump.png

The above would propagate the bump-map to all five skins deriving from "character", which in this case are the six skins BlueFrost, LightBlueFrost, WhiteFrost, Fire, Lightning, and Air.


Import Guide

Your model's project folder structure should resemble the following :

Code (csharp):

1.  
2. Characters
3.    Female
4.       Female.fbx
5.       textures
6.          ...
7.    Male
8.       Male.fbx
9.       Head.fbx
10.       Body.fbx
11.       Legs.fbx
12.       textures
13.          ...
14.  

Importing models whose components are all in one single FBX

Select the FBX (or more than one if you would like to perform this action on several models at once) and select "Import/Generate Materials" from the menu. Once that is finished, select "Import/Generate Asset Bundles" from the menu.

Importing models whose components are in multiple FBX's

Select all the FBX's containing each component (each FBX *must* contain a single part) and select "Import/Generate Materials MULTI" from the menu. Once that is finished, deselect everything, then select an FBX containing ONLY the rig (this *must* be your first selection) followed by each of the other components containing a single part each and select "Import/Generate Asset Bundles MULTI" from the menu.

 

make it so

 

Can you post a video showing armor or clothing being added or removed at runtime? This sounds like something I'd buy as well.

 

I'll do that this weekend and post a link to it here.

 

This sounds very interesting, although I have something similar I would be interested, if only to buy to look at the coding to see how to possibly improve my own, or to replace.

Seems most of the stuff I buy, I never actually use as delivered, just parts of these days

Regards

Graham

 

I am very interested by this package!

Please make sure to include guidelines/examples to create assets that work well with the package.

Cheers,

 

I am including Unity's Female model in order to demonstrate the system's capabilities as well as a guide on how to set things up correctly.

 

Sounds very interesting. Looking forward to seeing the demo.

 

I would really be interested in getting this.

 

me too

 

I'm very interested in this as well for a project I am working on.

 

Is there any reason why this requires Pro?

 

Dude, of Course people are interested in it! You've seen the rest of the boards? Looks like Everyone wants to make RPG's! Go for it!

 

Because of the asset bundles. I will try to make a version that will work without it after I release this one.

 

I have posted a youtube link of my Skinz demo at the bottom of my original post so check it out and let me know if you have any questions, feedback, or requests.

 

Looks REALLY good. The video really defines a lot of the key points. Very interested in seeing the best character layout and naming conventions for this. Any thoughts on price of this?

 

Well, I've been trying to gauge demand and that would determine the price. Unfortunately it seems that not many people need it lol! I'm working on documentation so I'll put up more details soon.

 

Well please keep me posted. If it doesn't go to the asset store I will probably get it from you directly. Thanks

 

I am looking into using resources in addition to asset bundles so that it will work for any version of unity and I hope to be done this week; I'll keep you posted.

 

I was interested until I read the last post...

Calling resources.load is simple as pie but requires a large file size. I've been busy on making one using assets bundles and got darn near close but the variations between assetbundlerequests and assets and main assets and keeping references and downloading some etc, it throw up a few glitches. I would have loved to see how you handle that. But loading in parts from the resource folder is no challenge so no longer of use to me Pity

 

No need to be so gloom and doom mr dude, I'm including both options!

 

Now you're talkin!

 

I'm not an asset bundle expert, but perhaps I may have an answer to something you're stumped on. I remember how happy you were when I helped you with another issue you were having (re: FBXPostProcessor.cs file) so it would be nice to see you happy again instead of bashing your face into a bloody-pulp on your keyboard! Send me a private message when you can describing your problem.

 

Added Setup Guide to top post

 

Added Sample Unity Project for download to top post

 

When I click on the attachment I'm getting a message that says, "Invalid Attachment specified. If you followed a valid link, please notify the administrator"

 

Sorry about that guys, I don't know what's going on with the unity forums file attachments; I can never seem to get them to work for me.

Here's an external link that should work

 

Posted Import Guide

 

I tried to run the project and received the following error:

FileNotFoundException: Could not find file "/Users/jaimi/Desktop/Skinz Demo/.\Assets\Plugins\Shaders.txt".

it looks like some path name is hard coded or something, or didn't use Path.Combine. The file does exist at this location:

"/Users/jaimi/Desktop/Skinz Demo/Assets/Plugins/Shaders.txt".

----
FileNotFoundException: Could not find file "/Users/jaimi/Desktop/Skinz Demo/.\Assets\Plugins\Shaders.txt".
System.IO.FileStream..ctor (System.String path, FileMode mode, FileAccess access, FileShare share, Int32 bufferSize, Boolean anonymous, FileOptions options)
System.IO.FileStream..ctor (System.String path, FileMode mode, FileAccess access, FileShare share)
(wrapper remoting-invoke-with-check) System.IO.FileStream:.ctor (string,System.IO.FileMode,System.IO.FileAccess,System.IO.FileShare)
System.IO.File.OpenRead (System.String path)

 

Hello Jaimi,

I just downloaded the demo to my (Windows 7) desktop and it ran just fine. I do not use Path.Combine there, I use a relative path. I haven't tested this on a Mac, and I'm wondering... are you running on a Mac?

El Diablo

 

Yes, I am using a mac. I've been working in C# since before it was released, if you would like, I can look at the section of code where it does this, and I can help you out.
I do plan on purchasing this when it's out, assuming that I can get it to work of course.

 

Hi Jaimi,

Actually I'm a C# guru so that's not the issue, I didn't realize relative paths would screw up on the mac. When I get home I'll install unity on my mac laptop so I can test the fix and I'll post it tonight.

Thanks!

El Diablo

 

Hi Diablo,

nice work so far

I got a question regarding your bodypart implementation,I saw you hardcoded the available bodypart names in Main.cs. I played a while with Unity's Character Demo some time ago, they used this "CharacterElementDatabase.assetbundle", which contains all item names and is loaded ( or streamed ) on runtime.
So, is this a favour from you, not to use this container bundle,
maybe for presentation purpose, or is it possible to bring it back in?

Greetings

 

So less drawcals, so this will help on ios or mobiles too i think?

 

Hi Baroni,

Actually the bodypart names are already included in the bundle via their assetname. Of course you need to be able to specify which bodypart you need to change, so you need to know the name as well. Does that make sense?

 

Diablo - did you have a chance to fix that relative path issue? I'm eager to check this out, I have a definite need for it.

 

Hello everyone,

It came to my attention that the demo I uploaded wasn't working on the mac. It turned out to be a back-slash instead of forward-slash filename issue so I have uploaded a fixed version that should now work on both the PC and the Mac. Thanks Jaimi for notifying me of the error.

El Diablo

 

What about your pack for mobile. Will it run on ios like iphone 4 and ipad 2?

 

It should, I don't see any reason why not... is there any reason why you think it wouldn't?

 

Well, yes i got that
I will try to rephrase my question...

Especially this code brings me to stumble:

Code (csharp):

1. // init skinNames for use in body-part selector GUI
2.  
3.      skinNames.Add("eyes", new List<string>() { "blue", "brown", "green", null });
4.  
5.      skinNames.Add("face", new List<string>() { "1", "2", null });
6.  

and so on.
Do I need to initialise all bodypart names in a script or could I use a generic initialisation, like within the old Character Demo?
They used this "CharacterElementHolder" class / "CharacterElementDatabase.assetbundle" I mentioned before.

Code (csharp):

1. // This class holds a CharacterElement array and can be saved
2.  
3. // as an asset. This way MonoBehaviours can reference
4.  
5. // it, or it can be added to an assetbundle, making this
6.  
7. // a convenient way of storing procedurally generated
8.  
9. // data on editor time and accessing it at runtime.
10.  
11. public class CharacterElementHolder : ScriptableObject
12.  
13. {
14.  
15.     public List<CharacterElement> content;
16.  
17. }

You did not use a generic version like this, am I right?

Greetings

 

How is the pack coming along?

 

Hello Baroni!

To answer your question, they do not need to be initialized at all; the only reason I have those names listed is for the GUI selection process since I want you to be able to select every skin available for it. I uploaded a cleaner example of the demo for you to see what I'm talking about, just ignore the skinnames dictionary which is used by the GUI and focus on the CharacterWardrobe.WearItem parts... those are the only lines of code you need. Let me know if this answers your question!

El Diablo

 

Hi Jaimi,

I have been testing the pack with several people who wanted to get a sneak-peak and everything seems to work well, so I just need to get my site up so I can post the pack as well as package it for the asset store. I'm also working on a section for a blog and forums so it's consuming a lot of my time, but I'm aiming for this weekend if all goes well!

El Diablo

 

Alright, I played a little with your code, disabled the GUI and implemented another button
which calls your CharacterWardrobe.WearItem(...) method. I see, no initialization is needed, so that answered my question
Thanks for clarifying this and nice to hear your package will be released soon!

Future buy reserved within the next few months, because I am currently stuck on another project...
Just another quick question, full source code will be provided, am I right?
Many thanks so far!

Greetings

 

What is your price point consideration on this?

 

I too am wondering what the pack will cost and if the source code is provided. I'm also curious if you have an "early adopter's price" and am assuming commercial use is okay. Any thoughts that you can talk about?

 

Hello everyone,

Sorry about the delay on answering questions, have been busy working on our game as well as some enhancements to the Skinz package. I have decided it's time to finally release it, so I will be doing so by the latter part of the week, most likely Thursday or Friday. I am working on the pricing specifics and will have all questions answered on the product page.

Anthony

 

awesome, can't wait to check this out.

Looks like a good solution to handle multiple mesh components.

-Dane

 

Diablo - how is the package coming?

 

Hey Jaimi,

Sorry, I've been inundated with work, and I've been waiting to release on my website, but my artists are still working on the art. I have, however, released a free fully functional version of the Skinz package with no time limit, and it includes the advanced dynamic atlas generation and material merge feature as well, though these advanced features are capped at a certain amount of uses per game instance. I have updated the download link so feel free to download and enjoy.

El Diablo