Custom character system

Hi all

[video=youtube_share;7ZNwIOb9sss]http://youtu.be/7ZNwIOb9sss
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7ZNwIOb9sss&feature=youtube_gdata_player


Just wanted to share something I'm busy creating. I don't get a lot of free time to work on my own stuff so this is still going to a take a little while before it is ready but I thought I'd give you a head's up and get some feedback in the mean time.

Basically, it is custom character kit that allows you to create a couple hundred variations (if you count every possible combination of every available part) of the Japanese female school uniform. It features various hair styles, various tops, different textures for the skirt (I like to think of this as meaning a different school's uniform) and various variations of neckties.

What makes this system so cool is the fact that, unlike Unity's sample project, this kit actually uses local prefabs instead of asset bundles meaning you don't need an internet connection, you don't need to wait for parts to get downloaded and you don't need Unity Pro to be able to use bundle streaming or creation etc etc etc.

Also, a nice little feature is that the body is split into 4 distinct parts and each part of the body has it's own region in the texture map so you can easily create new textures per body part, not per character and with the system having clearly defined areas for the various body parts, the different textures are provided as separate files and the ACTUAL texture used by the character is generated on the fly. The relevant body part is copied into the texture and that texture is applied to the model meaning you have a single material for the whole body! Well, the hair is a separate material but still, the actual character itself with all the variations and customizations all create a single texture meaning a single draw call.

Unfortunately, the model itself is still rather high poly at just over 6k so not as useful for mobiles but I think it might still work. To aid in mobile deployment I made the system use different sized textures so the kit comes with 3 folders of textures for high, medium and low quality textures. When using the high quality, the final generated texture is 4096 x 4096; the medium quality generates a 2048x2048 texture and the low quality generates a 1024x1024 texture for the character. If you want to go lower then simply duplicate the entire folder, open the textures in Photoshop and reduce each by half. Done. All textures are placed inside a "Resource" folder so all you need to do is select the one you want to use and rename the folder to "Resources" (with an "s" at the end) and the system will use that set of textures. No further configuration required.

The hair color can be changed to whatever color since the hair textures are either empty or just contain shadows and get copied onto a solid color. At some point I might create a functional color wheel but for now I just plan to create a whole bunch of preset colors and let you choose a color from that.

Another cool feature of this kit is that it comes with a CML component database meaning you can actually go in and SEE what info is stored about the kit, as opposed to the Unity sample that stores a database of info you will never see. This also means that you can go and change the data if you so choose but I would strongly advise against that as everything is rather precise and needs to be that way for the system to work... But the hair color database you can modify to your heart's content. And the textures database, sure. Just create a new texure, name it according to the naming convention, add it to the database and you are set.

In the sample video I show the generation of the character using Unity's sample system but my system is actually quite a lot more versatile. In RPGs and MMO's you tend to have a list of icons you can click (like in Tera, for example) instead of just click back and next buttons. This system caters to that also. Each separate segment (i.e. head) can have multiple different meshes and each mesh can have a set of textures that work only on that mesh or that is shared between that mesh or others. This system looks at what textures are compatible with what mesh and generates multidimentional arrays that you can query to see how many textures there are for the current mesh and allows you to select the mesh or the texture by index by simply clicking on a button. Simply have an image with the same name as the texture but append "_icon" to the name (for example) and you can show any graphic you want to represent the mesh / texture you want.

[video=youtube;xvONeVSFA-Q]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xvONeVSFA-Q&feature=youtube_gdata_player

In this second video you can see how the models each have multiple meshes but they each only have one texture. You will notice that as I select a different body part, the available textures for that mesh updates below it. Unfortunately, each mesh only has one texture so all you will see is the name of the texture changing. The head, for example, has 3 different meshes (normal, with an eye patch and with the eye patch on the other eye) but it only uses 2 textures. The flipped one doesn't need it's own texture but still knows it CAN use the texture belonging to the other mesh, but it knows it can only use the texture with the patch on, not the texture for the normal face. Clever, aint it?

In contrast, there is only 1 mesh for the legs and skirt, but I have 2 different textures for the skirt so you will see there is only 1 button to select the legs but there are two textures to choose from. When you change the body part mesh, the texture automatically updates with the relevant texture updated for the body part and if you just select a new texture it updates the texture also.

Furthermore, not really sure if this might be useful or not but what the heck You can choose to load saved characters from either a local file or from PlayPrefs meaning it is possible for you, the developer, to play around with various combinations, save any favorites with a name and then include them in your final build. Obviously you can't send your PlayerPrefs with a build but this way you can now play with the system and create pre-configured combinations of body parts to include in your final project.

Now what I want to do is to create a streamlined loading class that doesn't need to load in all the body parts before building the character. Sure it takes almost no time at all to do, but it just feel messy so I wanna make it a bit more streamlined.

So to recap:
- Uses Mecanim controllers so you already have access to hundreds of motions for this system
- Many, many, many possible characters
- Unlimited hair colors
- Offline system
- Unity Free as basic requirement
- Single texture per character
- Multiple resolution textures
- Mobile friendly (sort of)
- Dynamically changing texture
- Smart updating of the texture
- Select via next/previous or by index
- Created a system where certain meshes are dependent on other meshes (i.e. the normal tie doesn't work with the sailor suit but the bolo tie does and the normal face should have two eyes whereas the eye patch version should load one or the other, etc etc)
- Predefine any number of hair colors
- Save / Load character configurations to file or PlayerPrefs
- Allow the character to be generated from a saved config without having to load in the database and all the various body parts first
- Create a Fancy GUI interface

What I would love to know from you guys is what else you would like to see. Obviously Kaori and her various forms are rather useless as characters on their own so I am preparing to release a male school uniform version also but what else do you want? Samurai? Maids? Kittens?

Of course, you are not limited to anime style characters, so even more soldiers or zombies, whatever. What would you like to see?

I would greatly appreciate any feedback in this regard

Thanks

 

Pic with the hair color selector active. You can define as many as you want just by modifying the database.

That simple The name part is entirely optional and not currently used for anything so you can leave it in for your own reference or take it out, doesn't matter...

More updates over the weekend hopefully

 

It actually does, in both posts. The forums are just weird like that. Or browsers, not quite sure which one.

On topic though, cool stuff!

 

Thanks for the head's up. Strange, though, it is still not showing in my browser.... Very strange indeed

Oh well

 

Very strange.... So I just edited that previous post of mine and then suddenly the image stopped showing up again in the new post also... What the heck is going on? Let's see if the image appears now...

According to the edit page it loads but I can't see it so I hope you can...

 

Brilliant, for me, what is missing is more face customization.
Just don't only change face texture, make it somewhat like Mii creation, allow to change Head (Head Shape), Eye, Mouth, Head Details (Freckles), and Head Acessory (Glasses, Bandage, ...).
I'd love to see how is your system with my chibi characters

 

Can i use this to use my own more mobile friendly body parts and textures maybe also with lod too?
If so i am very interested.

Will this be on the asset store soon?
What price will it have round about?

So can i use this for my mobile game so the player can customize his character and will it then be saved and used all the time he plays the game?

 

Okay, this is just annoying. I was very disappointed in the lack of feedback on this thread only to find out now that I simply never received notification of your feedback... Very disappointed.

Right, so let's get the big news out of the way, the kit is now available on my website. It's been submitted to the asset store so now we just have to wait and see how that goes...

Have a look here:
http://www.mybadstudios.com/?wpsc-product=custom-character-bundle-kaori

Thing is, I was intending to make it work with Mecanim only but changed my mind and decided to make it work with Mecanim AND Legacy which means this ill take longer to get done but with my limited time this might actually kill it off instead so I decided to release it as is. It SHOULD work with Legacy also but I haven't tested it yet. I also wanted to include some more features like support for different material types etc etc etc.

Ever since Unity announced blend shape support I've been very eager to get my hands on 4.3 to try it out and see if I can support that also! That would be awesome! So yeah, the kit is ready and working but I would like to do a lot more with it before I say "Here you go, people, enjoy!"

To that end I have decided to keep it in beta version and not offer it up for sale, but instead I include it for free with the purchase of any content packs I release for it until I am ready to release it on it's own. I intended to sell it for $35 and each content pack for whatever the pack is worth, based on content so for now if you buy the school girl bundle for $40, you get the character system included for free. Enjoy.

RandAlThor, this system will work with mobiles, yes, however the Kaori model is perhaps a bit much for mobiles to handle. Perhaps you can try running the model through Simplygon before you extract it and see how that looks? Otherwise, if you have your own characters, then yeah, sure.

To give you a quick over view of how it works:

The Kaori bundle comes with 2 prefabs.
The first one you just drop in your scene and hit play and there you have it. Kaori will load in your scene and you can customise her to your heart's content till you finally hit save (which then loads the next scene). There are a few settings you can change but they are mostly only cosmetic or else you can leave it be. The only thing you would likely change is the skin to make the whole thing feel more like your game.

The second prefab you load into your game scene. It will then build the character in the scene. You have some fields you can set in the inspector that will call a specific saved character if you already have that character defined or if you just saved a character in the previous scene it will attempt to load that character instead and if all else fails it then loads a random character.

In order to achieve this I wrote a rather complex script that does a lot of if-else and calls one function to do the loading that then calls another function to do the loading if an if-else fails etc etc etc. Both of these prefab's code I wrote in a seriously overcomplicated way in order to make it easily extendible and/or to give you options/choices but if you can delve through the fodder of if-else code and get to where I actually DO what the scripts are supposed to do, you will find it is insanely simple to use.

For instance, say during development you use your Disney bundle (Disney.FBX) and you create a version of Mickey Mouse wearing pajamas and you save it as MickeyPJ. You then create another version of Mickey wearing only his shorts and call it Mickey. Now you can actually delete the customisation scene completely and remove the player's option of making custom characters. The details are saved and that is all you need. To load your character you simply do this:

Code (csharp):

1. public enum eTimeOfDay { Day, Night };
2. public eTimeOfDay TimeOfDay;
3.  
4. GameObject Mickey;
5.  
6. void Start(){
7.   MBSImmutableCharacter c;
8.  
9.   if (TimeOfDay == eTimeOfDay.Day)
10.      c = new MBSImmutableCharacter("Disney", "Mickey");
11.   else
12.      c = new MBSImmutableCharacter("Disney", "MickeyPJ");
13.  
14. Mickey = c.BuiltCharacter;
15. }
16.  

That simple...

So yeah, if you are interested, get the Kaori bundle, play with the beta and give me some feedback so I can make this kit as awesome as possible.

Enjoy

 

More interested in the character system than Kaori. So does buying this get future updates to the character system?

 

Interesting point... getting it for free but then having to pay for it again afterwards... hmmm.

Unity said that they are planning on doing a voucher system whereby you can give assets away at reduced rates or for free and apparently this is a high priority so it should be implemented soon. I think what I'll do is give everyone who buys Kaori a voucher for the character system so they can get that for free once the voucher system is introduced. That way you will get all updates, yes.

Alternatively, if you want to keep it simple and avoid any issues, I could always release it as a standalone version now and just clearly mark it as being a beta... But I'd prefer not to release code that is not 100% up to my standard. In fact, I've already updated the kit to now support two different material types (the diffuse you saw in the screen shots and the self illuminating diffuse which gives it a fantastic cartoon look!). Before being released I also want to add in the ability to use a specular bumped diffuse material so yeah, not really ready to distribute the kit in it's current state. Too much I still want to add Perhaps I will release it sooner rather than later and add my new features via updates... Also an option.

Okay, I am rambling now. Short answer:
- Buy Kaori, get the kit as part of the product.
- Once the kit is released, it will be removed from the character bundle(s)
- People who have already bought Kaori by then will get a voucher for a free copy of the character kit ( if / when Unity introduces the voucher system).

 

better idea, you can sell on your own store using fastspring, digitalassetstore, or payloadz. You can then control updates yourself, not to mention they take much less than 30%

 

Not really sure I follow what you mean...

if you go to my website you will see Kaori is there already. You will notice that all my assets are there so it makes sense to assume that this will be available on there also... So not really sure what you are trying to say, I'm afraid. The CCK will be available on there also, yes.

having said that, I have found that people are much more likely to buy from the asset store than from my website. I am able to run specials on my website at any given minute and often do. Some times my assets cost half the price it does on the Asset Store but I still don't sell even 1 copy, but, looking at the asset store sales, people still bought it at full price on there, rather than getting it for half price on my website.... Interesting, huh?

My products have been on sale since 2 years before the Asset Store and some months my sales (back then i had only 1 product) were encouraging enough for me to want to quit my day job. Then the asset store launched and my store nearly died. Seriously. Even with sales and specials and discounts I still get only 3 to 8 sales a year. All the rest of my sales come from the asset store. I have considered closing my store completely, just linking to the asset store, but decided to keep it open simply for the reason that it is already up and running and costs me nothing to keep it so. But yeah, website sales suck...

so yes, I will place it on my store also but no, I don't see that in any way making any difference at all. Heck, you yourself are a good example. You want the kit, the kit is on my store, you still haven't gotten the kit... See? people love the asset store.

Viva le Asset Store! Viva! he he

 

I try to buy from author is possible, because the assetstore is such a mess and badly managed. The reason I have not bought your kit because I don't have unlimited money to buy kit that is released. It's in the queue to buy, when it matures, shows it is not vaporware (unless there's a great discount) . I see in your other kits, you do not link to your own site, that explains the low sale on your site.

 

Point taken.

i resubmitted the package last night with some model and script improvements. The kit now offers you a choice of two shaders in stead of forcing you into using a diffuse. Will add support for bump maps and specular later also.

Testing legacy today so fingers crossed...

 

Here you go... Perhaps this might eb of interest to some on you...

[video=youtube_share;bO_TBGMvvig]http://youtu.be/bO_TBGMvvig

 

Can this kit also be used in multiplayer games?
I have bought tnet some time ago and would like to know how the cc can be syncronized so the players can use the customized characters over a network game.

 

I can't see why not.

When you've completed customising the character, you save the character to the Characters Database as cmlData. This means that you have one single variable that holds all the info you need to create this character. From what character this is to what the UV layout is for the various meshes to what shader you've used for this character... Everything.

So when you start the game itself, you tell the prefab : "Load Kaori using the 'MostAwesomeConfig' saved character" and it then goes looking for it in the database and builds it from there.

As such, if you transmit that data and just insert it into the database on the client's end, the client will be able to load the same character, yes. The only problem is, of course, if two clients save their characters with the same name then sends it over to each other.... Hmmm... An easy solution is to NOT let the player CHOOSE a name to save it under but rather to save it using the player's log-in name so it is guaranteed to be unique. Problem solved.

I think I'll add in an extra function for you to build the character direct from cmlData. This will eliminate the need to add the character to the database first. I think that makes a pile of sense, really. Thanks for the suggestion.

So yeah, natively it doesn't support sending and syncing etc but since it does load from saved configs and each config can be sent via the WWW class, I can't see why not.

 

Well, the asset store denied the kit due to there being a visible seam on the model if you zoom in far enough and the light hitting the model at the right angle. So yeah, that was a bust. Turns out the problem was the import settings on the FBX. When using "Calculate normals" it looks al crappy. When using "Import normals" it works just fine.

So those of you who were holding out to buy this on the asset store are now out of luck Those who purchased the kit from my website, you still qualify for both kits. The kit is now readying completion and now supports both Mecanim and Legacy models with some basic animations being playable during character customisation.

Fixed the bugs, found some more, fixed them... then found an interesting problem when I tried to convert the Unity sample characters to include with the kit. Turns out the female character imports at a scale of 0.01 like all FBX files, but the meshes and the hips bone have a scale of 100 while the rest of the bones have a scale of 1. So, one model with scales of 0.1, 1 and 100 for various parts. This posed a problem since the model I build has a scale of 1 but the Unity model requires a base scale of 100 so I modified the kit to also take into account the scale of the first bone when it creates the character database and to set the scale to the correct value when creating the character from parts again. Works perfectly

The kit now also supports two different shaders: Diffuse and Self Illuminating Diffuse (though the illuminating texture is currently left empty). Will be working on bump mapping next. So yeah, the kit is almost complete and now includes the features I wanted to include at a later date also.

So yeah, the standalone version will be submitted next and the kaori kit will be submitted separately.

As for Kaori herself, she now has a new Goth look also and comes with a Halloween costume also.


And that is the latest progress update...
See you soon...

 

Just Super Sweet!!

 

The day has come...

It is available... now!

I've set the price for the system on it's own at $30 and it includes the 2 characters from Unity. One still uses Legacy animations while the other has been made compatible with Mecanim. When using the Mecanim character you can actually run around in the demo scene.

I've set the Kaori Content pack to $50 and it now includes 8 different body styles, 4 hair styles, 2 looks for the face, 2 skirt textures, 3 feet textures over 2 variations of the feet and 4 neckties including an alternate texture for the one. This includes the halloween special character.

And finally, I've kept the bundle as a third option at $65 and it is now a zip file containing the zips from the previous two packages.

Feedback welcome, as always.

http://www.mybadstudios.com/?wpsc-product=custom-character-kit

 

Sorry guys...
Slight delay...
Resubmitted...
Fingers crossed...

 

And the day has come...
It is now available on the asset store...

Currently the kit only, the Kaori character will be uploaded separately.

Enjoy

https://www.assetstore.unity3d.com/#/content/11808

 

HI, look interesting
bu what is it for (sorry for the question ) it may sound stupid but is it for us developers to create a character that then we can use in our games or is it a character generator for players to use in our games to customise their avatar look?
Can we easily add our own models/parts to the system?

Thanks

 

Personally I would have thought the purpose of this kit was rather obvious but you are the second person to ask me this exact question...
Go figure. I guess it does need explaining after all.

The purpose, basically, is to allow you to offer your players a character and some variations to make the character look different from what his mate's character looks like. I had this first character created so I could demonstrate the system and then, just prior to release I was contacted regarding price. Some people said they didn't want to pay the full asking price cause they didn't want the character, just the kit.

I wanted to release the character as a separate kit but then ran into another hurdle: Will I sell the kit without any characters at all?

Well, THAT was never an option so I turned to the two characters Unity provided and I just tweaked their UVs and texture names and there you have it. Two new characters to include in the pack and it only took about 2 hours from tracking them down to having them ready to be included in the kit.

I want to release more character kits in future but I have also started speaking with a few artists to release their content for this system also. Waiting to see what they come up with. The basic deal is this: I help them understand how the system works, they make the models, they sell the models, they keep the money, you get content for the kit. Hopefully if this takes off then this kit could really turn into something truly amazing. Touch wood. So yeah, if you have models you might like to sell on the store, let me know if you need help setting it up

As for adding your own characters to the system, definitely. There are a few things to keep in mind, obviously, but follow the following guidelines and your character will be compatible with the kit.

- Place all the body parts in one file, but each body part should be it's own mesh, then skin it to the same skeleton (or just upload to mixamo to make life easier)
- First create your mesh's UV map as if it is going to have it's own texture file (i.e. use the entire UV map for the head and use the entire UV map for the legs etc etc etc)
- Export your UV maps and use this to create your textures with (test it to make sure it all looks good)
- Create one single material for the entire model plus one more for the hair
- Scale and move all UVs (minus the hair) so they fit on one UV Map
- Name the textures and body parts according to my naming convention
Done.

Let's say you buy my Kaori kit and you decide you want to add a new hair style to this existing kit... Or perhaps you want to create a completely new face.. what now? Simply make your meshes as explained above, place them inside the file as described above... basically, do everything as above... when you are done, select the model and run the included script from the main menu. This will then create the prefabs and update the database to now allow these to be used.

So yeah, not only can you add new characters for use with the kit, you can also add content to any character at any point. Just click on the script from the main menu when you are done and that is all there is do it. Oh, and of course run the second script to update the textures database also, and you are done.

 

This is very exciting what you've done here!

I would love to use the character builder in a project.

 

Ever Heard of Unity multipurpose avatar AKA UMA?

 

Of course...
You ever heard of Mutable ? https://www.assetstore.unity3d.com/#/content/10768

 

Cool looking tool you got here.

Oh snap that looks pretty amazing I'll probably give that a try.

 

One of my customers just experienced a hickup with this kit that had me stumped for a while. I figured it might be a good idea to share the solution to this problem with you guys here in case any of you run into this same problem later on...

The problem
What happens was that in the editor all works as expected but when the project is built the characters simply don't appear...

The cause
Turns out to be the fact that the kit currently supports two shaders for the character: Diffuse and Self-Illumin/Diffuse but Unity only copies over stuff you actually use in your scenes so, in his case, he only used Diffuse shaders in the entire project but was trying to load a self illuminated diffuse shader at runtime.

Since nothing in the project used that shader, Unity didn't include it in the build and thus at runtime the kit failed.

The solution...
Just make sure that something, somewhere in your entire project, actually makes use of the shader you want to use for the characters and then Unity will copy it over and all will work as expected.

Alternatively...
There is also the option of Edit -> Project Settings -> Graphics and add any/all shaders you need to the "Always Included Shaders" list but I can't yet see how to include the built in shaders to that list so it seems the former method is going to have to work.

After all, I sincerely doubt that you will use Diffuse for the entire game but self illuminating JUST for the character or vice versa... If you use the same shader for both your characters and your game, you are sorted by default... This tip is basically just for early days in the project.

 

Moved to the "Assets" section of the forum.

 

Thx

 

Hi MrDude.
I have some questions because i want to use this now.

You wrote that the player will be saved in a cml database file so is this working on all platforms that unity support?

I read that you are interested in the blend shapes too but at that times you would not include it because it was to new. Will you make an update that support belnd shapes for mecanim now?

Is this working with Unity 5? (I got soem yello errors and i can not stear the female character in the demo)

Can i use now more then the two shaders i.e. special ones for mobile or desktop, with or without normal maps or specular maps?

You wrote that you want to make it more multiplayer friendly is this already in it?

I want to use final ik (from the asset store) with it but do not know how to attach it to the player when it will be loaded first when the scene is started. So i can not or do not now how to set it up right. Can you help?

I also want to use mount points from the store on the characters and now that i think about it i have to set it up upfront also for final ik, right?

https://www.assetstore.unity3d.com/en/#!/content/14290
https://www.assetstore.unity3d.com/en/#!/content/16318

Edit:
So when it support blend shapes, can it then be also better for some customization like the size of the ears for example?

Also how can this be customized so so player can choose for examle also the gloves and color of it and what kind of belt he want?

Edit 2:
Forget to ask if you will make this so we can use it with the new unity gui?
Also how can i get it so that the camera goes near to the face if i change things on the head?

 

that is a lot of questions, Rand lol

I'm gonna answer that via email, okay?
Gotta go to town quickly. Will reply later today...

 

No problem.
I also read in the read me file that the female character is not setup.
Thank you for your support.

 

The system supports legacy and mecanim animation and includes one example of each. The legacy one does not have a controller setup and only contains the idle animation, true. The mecanim one has a controller attached.

Please take note: Before calling the script to split your model into the various parts used by the system, make sure you correctly set the animation type to Legacy or Humanoid in your model's import settings as all parts generated will have the same animation type as the source model. If you intended to use Humanoid but selected Legacy by mistake, no problem. Just change the import setting on your model to Humanoid and select my script from the menu again. Done. All parts will be regenerated accordingly.

 

From 17 to 27 February, buy the custom character kit and send me your valid asset store receipt (or buy it from my website directly) and get a free copy of the Kaori character kit.

That's over 1000 characters absolutely free! Enjoy

 

Huh, new update!?
Any infos what changed?
New shader support

Did not find new things in here so maybe just something so it works with unity 5+ or so. Also i read that you will take this away from the shop by the end of the year

 

Nothing's changed. Unity requires that we re-publish all our assets using Unity 5, is ll

Sorry for getting your hopes up.

Send me an email, we need to talk....