Adam and Eva Base Characters.

I hope you are able to figure out how to work with UMA, Mr. Necturus. With your experience, I don't think you'll find it all that difficult. As l0cke said, UMA is just a framework that facilitates compatibility. The creativity still comes from the artist, and the limitations are only the ones the artist chooses.

 

Yay, you wont be disappointed. I promise once you start producing UMA ready meshes you will have people wanting them because they're UMA ready. The hardest part you already know which is the rigging and weighting of the meshes. You already do all of that, so its just changing what you do slightly to do it in a way that works with UMA. I am hoping once I am finished with the Adam mesh it will give you a good example, using a mesh you're intimately familiar with. The rest of the UMA setup is pretty straight forward from what I understand (I will have more to say about it once I am there).

 

Hey @l0cke I'm not saying UMA is a bad tool. I think it's a really great tool for modular characters and games that need/want to have randomized characters like open world games, mmo's, rpg's - basically any type of game with large amounts of 'different' kind of characters.
But I stand by what I said - for a high quality main characters I don't think UMA meets the quality needed.
But I don't think UMA is a static tool either, it seems to be always improving in quality and modularity so I'm really interested in seeing it develop - as you are.

The Last of Us, Drakes Fortune, Gears of War, Mortal Kombat, and Final Fantasy game since 10, etc etc.

l0cke is right - 3D Max has a skin wrap modifier which allows one skin to assume the skinning information of another mesh (even with different polygon resolution) and - it kind of just works.
I've never performed this process on a complete character before, but I bet with a little massaging, vertex weight blending, it would probably work pretty well - without having to completely re-skin to the UMA rig.
May want to look into that @boysenberry - next time you are skinning a human male character. It may save you a lot of time if you get a good workflow down.
There are some quality skin wrap video tuts on youtube. Mostly dealing with accessories and clothing but if the characters were similar size I bet it would work - with some tweaking of course. Beats re-skinning (vertex mapping) a complete character from scratch.

 

Thank you for support guys. I decided I will go and learn how to create UMA from my characters.

I know MAX pretty well, 20 years with it already. Simple and friendly program. I hope UMA rig support twisted bones for.... Lets see actually. I promise after I will finish all collections which included to Mega Medieval Animation Pack I will look on it.

 

I'm sure you are more experienced and know more about it all than I do. Pretty much everyone is ahead of me.

What I don't understand is your view that UMA isn't suited for use with a main character. I was going to respond to this earlier, but I thought maybe you were referring to a type of game in which a very small number of characters are uniquely modeled, and thus - for that type of game - there was no need for UMA. Because UMA does not improve the quality of a model over what you can create in a typical editor. It's not that kind of tool.

As l0cke pointed out, UMA is a framework. You can put just about anything within that framework. Higher detail mesh? Check. More bones? Check. Different sizing bones? Check. More and different slots, like wings, tails, horns, mermaid type fish tails, rat heads, and so on? Check. Use any material? Check.

And if your goal is to sell your characters in the asset store, having them set up in UMA framework means they have resizing, expression, and network-friendly capabilities built-in that some customer might appreciate having. If the models happen to be built with the idea of compatibility with the default slotting that comes in the UMA examples, then the slots can be interchanged with the slots from any other similarly created models.

Also, if the customer isn't an UMA user, the base model will work in Unity without UMA as a standalone character.

So ... if your point was that UMA doesn't help the artist make a character for their own game - provided it is a small game, not a MMO type - I can see where that's true. But it ought to help an artist sell his models, and it does help non-artists build up a broad inventory of interchangeable character parts, which they may need for their game.

It can even be useful in a small number of characters type of game. Let's say I'm not much of an artist, I'm someone who buys art in the store. And I want to have a combo fantasy - modern world game. So the Elf Witch is pursuing the Dragon Queen across the dimensions, and she tracks her to Earth. With UMA, I can apply the yoga pants and hoodie I bought separately to default UMA compatible Elf Witch and Dragon Queen models, and thus I can realize that part of my game that happens on the backstreets of New Jersey.

Is there something else about this process that I'm missing, that makes UMA characters necessarily of lower quality than main characters?

 

Not everyone wants their main character to be adjustable nor have you modify them. So having a fantastic modeled main character will always be better then an uma adjustable character. Plus you don't need all the extra stuff that uma then brings in order for you to use it.
I have one fbx awesomely modeled main character that I can use as I want.
All depends on the type of game you want to make will determine what you want to use.

 

I just don't see how you can reach this conclusion:

It's comparing two different things.

A fantastically modeled character is superior to a non-fantastically modeled character.

But to say that a fantastically modeled character is always better than the same character using an UMA framework is like saying Galaxian played at an arcade is always better than Galaxian played on a home computer, because the home computer uses the internet.

It makes no sense (at least to me).

 

I said based on your game and if you are allowing the player to customize the main character. Back in the day it was one main character that you played and none of this playing with hair, size, color of hair etc that you can do now.
so if I am making a samurai game that is single player where you play the samurai. I think it's better to have that character as a highly detailed and beautifully modeled character instead of something that you can modify and dealing with all the extra things you need to run a configurable character.
again this is me. You can have a totally different thought pattern which is great.

 

@hopeful
We agree. Uma is a great system for modular characters and a system to support a game like that.
When UMA can create a character comparable to a Drake or Joel or Marcus - it will then be up to the quality expected for main characters.

One other point which I think is negotiable - and I have no idea about - is if youd like to use just one character from UMA but without the customizability built into your game. How well does the character stay together when ripping out all the customize functionality.

Im still learning as well. I think together we all can improve UMA to benefit a lot of games beyond what it already does which is not minor.

 

I like your thinking

PS Just to add my opinion to the mix, any character can be made to be UMA ready, beautifully rendered or not, thus I am making @mr_Necturus beautiful Adam model UMA ready. I just look at UMA as making a mesh modular, altering the look and feel of a model after becoming UMA ready becomes a moderately easy task that works in any game (so this nice Adam mesh can be in any kind of setting with any kind of clothing, etc.). So in my opinion all making a model UMA ready does it make it better. But, as pointed out, if you don't need to make a model better than it is after its initial single mesh stage, then its less work to not make it UMA ready.
Also, for the 3D artist I would think UMA presents a special opportunity to unify one's efforts making clothing, gear, etc. that works with multiple meshes.

 

If you don't have a need to customize the mesh, there is probably no reason to use UMA, in that situation I would suggest sticking with the single mesh non-UMA version of the model (hopefully there is one included, they're not required anymore.)

 

There is a similar process to auto-rigging that will transfer weights, etc. I tried it and it failed pretty bad. I am not sure if its just because I am new and still learning Blender or if its because the meshes are so different. Adam is pretty detailed, and relatively high poly count compared to the default UMA mesh; I am guessing that is why it barely worked. One thing it worked really well at though was creating all of the default vertex groups for the UMA Male rigging. That saved me a considerable amount of time. Learning the best workflow for this process is also an ongoing thing, so there are improvements to be made there as well. Right now I am basically re-rigging the Adam model by looking at the UMA model and approximating the same map on the Adam model. Its a slow and tedious process that will need a lot of back and forth between Unity and Blender with slight adjustments until I get it right I'd imagine.
On Eva I will try a different approach and ditch the UMA rigging in favor of the Eva rigging and see how that goes.

 

Done that many times in the past - my friend. I know your feeling on this.
Not for UMA - though Im looking to 'process' several characters in the future as you are doing now.
If I had a day to spare Id gladly offer to help just to trouble shoot the process in Max - but at this time I can not.
Keep chugging! You'll get it.
When I do eventually go through this process for UMA - I will definitely update here so I can share the process, any tips & tricks to help others as well.

 

UMA isn't replacing the artist with a machine. The artist still creates all the art.

What UMA does is it facilitates the process of sharing art among several similar models. So you may have a High Priestess main character who is very imaginatively decked out - with specific art for the face, hair, and special features like draped cloth, and so on - but using the same body mesh and body texture as her handmaidens. Both the High Priestess and the handmaidens can be UMAs, or just the handmaidens ... your choice.

The handmaidens could have different 3D art for each of their faces, but in most cases that is probably a waste of time. Instead, they could all use a generic handmaiden's face, perhaps with small customizations done either by hand in UMA or randomly using a template (where you set a range of lip thickness, nose flatness, and so on). The skin color of the High Priestess can be hand-picked, and the skin color of the handmaidens can either be handpicked for each individual, or be determined at random from a color range that you select. The clothing and makeup for the handmaidens can either be identical to one another, or there can be a small variation of items in a theme that can be used to individualize each handmaiden.

You can use UMA to assemble your handmaidens by hand within Unity, clicking to create combinations of the gowns, sashes, slippers, and bangles you made in your 3D modeling software, and save them off. Or you can have UMA generate a group of handmaidens using random factors, and pick a few that look good and save them off. Or you can just tell UMA to make random handmaidens each time the scene is run, so the handmaidens are never exactly the same. Whatever works best for the situation.

I'm not exactly sure what you mean, but an UMA character that is in use is normally a single mesh. All those slot meshes are joined during the character generation phase. The character could also be a single slot to begin with - no slot options, just texture overlays, expression bones, and sizing bones - which is what the unified UMA male and female meshes are.

A game dev doesn't have to expose every - or any - form of customization to the player. You can restrict the color palette, the sizing options, the available slots ... everything. Or just use the UMA customizations as you wish in the editor and prevent the player from making ANY modifications in the game, if that makes sense for the character or game.

Once an UMA character is generated - whether in game by the player, or in the editor by the game dev - there are a number of optimizations you can use. You can run the character through a quick bone removal process which takes out any extra bones. If you want the character to retain some of the sizing bones for some reason, or if you have tail bones or cape bones you want to keep, you can do that. Normally during this step all non-mecanim / non-expression bones will be eliminated as an optimization, but you pick which bones are to be kept. (For distant LOD models, you can further optimize by choosing to remove finger and expression bones.)

UMA will also auto-generate a character atlas, and this naturally keeps draw calls low. (If you have Mesh Baker / Mesh Baker LOD, I believe you can get further optimizations on atlases at runtime, which is helpful if you have a lot of characters in a scene.)

If you have SimpleLOD, you can create multiple LOD meshes for the custom character (including at runtime).

If you have a networked game where there is no customization of characters, character references over the network will already be highly efficient. But if you allow for customization of characters, either made by players or programmatically, UMA greatly simplifies the process of sharing these custom characters over a network by allowing for serialization of an UMA as a text or binary recipe - a very small packet of bytes - which can be easily sent over the network for 100% faithful recreation of that character on another computer.

This same serialization method can also be used to efficiently store in memory or to disk large libraries of characters that are based upon a shared UMA art pool.

 

I meant assets available to Unity community, not products from studios with $millions budget. Give me $10m usd and I will improve graphics of my game to similar level. Uma is by far the best character solution available to this community and you can shape its face to almost any expression. For any level designer is better to do this in engine via defined controlls instead of using 3dsmax.

 

I agree. I find myself having to defend UMA to so many people. Thank you for this discussion.

 

I took a look on these videos.... Hm.... From what I understood. It seas to me pretty difficult to convert my Adam And Eva into UMA new race.

If understood right my models don't fit UMA requirements in any aspect. Not in figure proportions, not in UV mapping and even not in mesh grid structure, which is important for cutting parts borders, not for bones, not for modeling pose...

There is many things must be changed or rebuilded before even to start to setup my models with UMA framework.

Its simpler to make something new then try to fit my models to UMA requirement.


In any case I don't see how I can do it by myself.

 

I think things must going in another way. UMA team need to works together with artist or artists in order to make new race if they want.

To make new race for artist like me without close support of UMA team from the start, seams to be very difficult task. Don't speaking about setup in Unity which someone from UMA team better will take on himself.

 

Now this Assets supported by 8 animation collections of UNITY MEDIEVAL ANIMATIONS MEGA PACK

List of animation collections:

1. UNITY HERO 2H WEAPONS ANIMATION COLLECTION
2. UNITY HERO GENERAL ANIMATION COLLECTION
3. UNITY HERO Weapon&Shield ANIMATION COLLECTION
4. UNITY HERO BOW ANIMATION COLLECTION
5. UNITY HERO HORSEMAN ANIMATION COLLECTION
6. UNITY HERO SPEAR/STAFF/HALBERD ANIMATION COLLECTION
7. UNITY HERO 2 WEAPONS ANIMATION COLLECTION
8. UNITY HERO WIZARD ANIMATION COLLECTION

 

Understandable. UMA is difficult to use and lacks good documentation.I don't blame you at all.

 

I take it Boysenberry wasn't able to get Adam / Eva working with UMA?

I must be misunderstanding something about how this is done, because it doesn't seem like the problems mentioned should be real problems. If I'm not seeing where the glitch occurs, maybe someone can point it out for me? It would be helpful.

Here's how I think you go about it, conceptually:

Bring the Adam / Eva mesh into the modeling program along with the matching UMA model, and hide the UMA mesh.

Lay the Adam / Eva mesh on top of the UMA rig at ground level and begin adjusting UMA bone lengths to fit the Adam / Eva mesh.

When this is done and the Adam / Eva mesh is joined to the UMA rig and weighted - just like how it is done when making any slot - and saved out, this should be an example of a new race using UMA, capable of being adjusted the way UMAs can be adjusted. I don't think there's any faster way to create a new race in UMA than this.

Next is to decide how to do the slotting. If the desire is to have Adam / Eva match up with default UMA slotting, the Adam / Eva meshes need to be cut in the same places (wrists, ankles, etc.) and the meshes need to match the UMA ones at the slot edges. Every place where the slot edges can be made to match up is a place where Adam / Eva slots can be exchanged with default UMA slots.

If for some reason the slot matching is difficult or undesirable, the Adam / Eva race meshes can be divided however you wish, with compatibility limited to art created for those models.

And that's about it, right? I don't see where UV issues come into play, except where you have to break up Adam / Eva into slots. And that's because if the meshes weren't designed to break into slots from the start, any changes to the mesh will result in new UVs.

Once you have the final UVs, you can make an overlay material, and then you're done and ready to start making alternate slots (like clothing items).

Keep in mind that before randomized generation can be done, since these new UMAs are using a different racial proportion, they will need a new DNA ... a new set of what are considered normal proportions. This is just a list that gives a range of how short or long a given sizing bone should be.

 

Hm... And how many chances that someone except me will develop this new race even if I will break my head and be able to do all this way, and all will work smooth, in which I doubt?
_________________________________________________________

What about support if something will not work in future in case someone else will want to use my race in game or to develop it as publisher?

I see much work and troubles with almost no profit if I am going to setup my charter with UMA without support of UMA team.

I can make may part - prepare model in right way even rig and skin it, if UMA team take care of the rest. Without this it worthless in my opinion.

 

You still dont understand UMA. Rigging on UMA skeleton and cutting into parts (optional) is everything you should as artist do. UMA team does not have to care for anything. By having UMA skeleton you are UMA compatible, if anybody wants use it as UMA he can, if no, he does not have to. And profit is obvious.

1) you will gain capability of character morphing (size, face...) without almost any additional work (only rigging). We have 2015, static character models are 10 years absolete. I havent seen static main character for a long, long time.

2) you will have much wider audience, you will target UMA community as well.

 

How much time you need to setup one character with UMA framework and solve all problems?
With cutting of course. Plus setup it in Unity with all stuff. I want two new race ready characters Adam and Eva. Working the same way as regular UMA one. Do it for me, if it so simple, I will pay reasonable price.

 

You dont need any setup in Unity, you can leave this to UMA users as with rest of your assets. Technically you dont even have to cut charaters in parts, this is optional. Your characters will be UMA ready, thats all. You dont sell character scripts/controller with other assets too.

 

I ask another question. Why you so want I will do it? Just please don't tell that is because you wish me every good.

 

To cause you grief and a massive headache

 

Eva face textures...

 

Eva is beautiful but for our games, we need customizable faces and bodies. Our players in this day and age will not be happy if all of them look alike, or even if they share 5 faces.

No matter how beautiful a character model might be, without the ability to morph and customize, it will not be useful for certain applications. That is okay, still a lot of single player games out there and as long as they can get multiple different characters from the same artist, then it all works out. But even single player games sometimes benefit from different shapes and sizes of characters.

If I play a game, even a single player, and all the models look basically the same, I notice, which is why in most AAA games, the artists make different models. They might differ only in hair and skin tone, but at least they are different. A party of characters in a rpg will need very different models...changing only hair and skin color is not enough.

So..there is a market for your Eva and Adam as long as you make other characters to go with them. For example, if I needed a few elves, a couple of Asians, and a Caucasian female and male, I would use yours. But if I needed more than you offer, then I would have to look for a different artist....or more likely, one like UMA or Morph3d.

As for quality, that is all in the eye of the beholder. I have this argument in our development group all the time. I love beautiful scenery and worlds that feel alive. I don't like 100 exceptionally beautiful NPCs running around in my world, but prefer some ugly ones, some plain ones, some grizzled ones. As for quality, I want a balance between performance and graphical quality. I don't need Daz characters in my game, but I am not overly fond of the default UMA.s...which is why I will use custom content with my UMA's. Also...customizing characters is a feature, a selling point, that many games require today. You just can't compete without it in some cases, such as multiplayer, unless everyone wears a helmet all the time.

If someone were to make a better body for the UMA's I would use that. I imagine a lot of people feel that way. The more we have to choose from, the better we all are, right?

 

OK I understand.

But I think I have nothing to do. Even if I was able to setup my characters with UMA (I don't see how I can do it alone in the way it will share armors which already done for old UMA character) The chance that someone will develop my race together with me is very small. I will need to do all alone. So I will continue to develop my Adam and Eva in hope someone will need it like they are.

Of course I will not be able to make hundreds variants of face, armor and all... But will do something for sure.

About quality. These are only 3 textures 2048x2048 here. No something special. Of course size may be reduced.

Only with help and support of UMA team new good races may be done for UMA framework.

 

I agree..the documentation needs to be clear and concise, easy to understand. It is not very good at the moment. One must spend a lot of time figuring it out on their own and then you need to remember it for the next time you try.

UMA is free, which is probably part of the problem. I would pay for good tutorials...good ones, especially if I thought I could get money from assets I sell after using the tutorials.

 

Let me ask you. Lets say I setup my characters with UMA framework and started to create stuff. Only me. Will you prefer my race or you will prefer old race with many extinctions already done?

UMA team ned to support artists like me, not only technically. They need to setup official UMA races library and extend it ftom time to time.

So if I, or someone else will make new race I will be in good place for sale and with good support.

 

Not sure what you mean about extinctions, but I suspect you mean assets specifically for the older race.

That depends. If we are close to release, we might stick with what we have already but if we have the time, and you are making assets we can use (clothing and such), then we would use yours if we like it better. The money invested so far in assets is a consideration but that doesn't mean that you won't get sales. There isn't much out there yet.

But in general, not everyone is at the same stage we are. There are new games being started every day and customers coming to Unity who need a character system solution. Some will choose yours, some will choose UMA. At the moment, there is only one asset developer who is making quality clothes in any quantity. I think there is plenty of room for more and definitely plenty of space for more races/character models.

The excitement of Morph3d is proof of that and the one thing about Morph3d is at least in the foreseeable future, is that we can't make our own content. That is an important feature of UMA. While I do buy a lot of assets for UMA, I can also make my own clothing. So you must realize too that people will make their own stuff using your models...but my guess is, like me, they will also buy content. Sometimes though, a game requires content that is not the "norm", such as a unique culture that can't wear medieval/sci fi/modern clothing. I am in that situation and I don't expect asset developers to provide me with non-exclusive items that they may not be able to sell to anyone else due to their "weirdness". lol

Of course, the vast majority of people will not make their own assets and if your prices are reasonable, then they will buy instead.

 

There is one more approach to make indie games which is optimal I think.

You purchase assets but your team modifier and optimize it for your game. Not only scripts.
There are 3D artists like me which make content for sale. And there are artists which may take this content and prepare it for indie games.

This approach save time, money and may be released by small team programmer+artist.

 

There is high poly version + 3dscan textures for long time. With that you can achieve quality surpassing anything else available to Unity community.

 

Looking fantastic.

 

Thank you Archania!

 

nice models with awesome price

 

Thank you Asset4Indie!
These textures will be part of "Adventurers" characters pack? which will be done on base of Adam and Eva characters.

 

You are right and those are beautiful. A bit too high poly for our game though but I do use the Athena and Dionysus textures and love those.

 

Realistic natural textures for Adam:

 

Realistic natural textures for Eva:

 

Eva - adventure character. Work progress....

 

Damn she is looking hot. Beautiful work.

 

Thank you Archania!

 

Underwear texture...

 

Adam and Eva characters was upgraded today.
Now it is Unity 5 asset. Also realistic human textures was added.

Unity Store link:https://www.assetstore.unity3d.com/en/#!/content/37507
My store link: http://mr-necturus.com/store/index.php?route=product/product&product_id=582

 

Kia ora

I do love these, I would like to see maybe a headsplit option so that people could put a different head with other shape's and face features, I brought the Elven Sister too, the one downside is that they all look like family, as people are saying it's hard if the char's look to much the same, see Morph3D's adds their char are all blood relatives it wood seem.

Would having a headsplit so another head could be applied not make these much more use able content?

Bingo a new char, I'm assuming copying skin data would rig the new head to the current skeleton that I did not learn yet, sems you can do that with eye balls too

 

A downside from the models originating in Daz.

 

Thank you!

Actually I have divided versions in several Adam and Eva packs except this one for $4. It was the first one and I added this option later.