UMA - Unity Multipurpose Avatar on the Asset Store!

You could let Mecanim use the regular bones and animate the adjustment bones at runtime though, non-standard transforms are what they are for.

 

OK scaling bones is checked off the list... but if I understand correctly if the elbow joint is bending then the bicep muscle can translate outward to create a flexing bicep through scripting....

 

Hey there,

Wonderful work, watched the secret anorak's tutorials yesterday and i felt like "hey im ready to go!".
I have 2 questions.

1 - How can i make new textures ? For example, i want to change malebeard02 texture, so what should i do? Export the male uma as obj. and paint textures on it?

2 - i just want to animate the head slot. There are 2 ways for me,
1, rig a custom head in blender, import to unity and swap the models.
2, export the uma from unity, animate it in blender and then import the animation to unity.

Which way is better? are there any other ways to do it?

Also,
Great job!

Br,
Ozan

 

Hi Suark,

The main reason I have not covered any type of asset creation is that you will need external tools to do so. Personally I've been using 3ds MAX for modelling and 3d Coat for texturing, but I did want to use free tools like Blender for those tutorials.

1: Grab the content creator's pack from the wiki and use your favorite app to paint onto one of the provided models. That's how I made the T-Shirt.

2: No need to mess around with new models, you can use one of the content pack models to make your facial animations and re-target them (on a second layer). Alternatively have a look at the new expressions features. Either way, facial animation is not for the faint hearted and is quite time consuming. I would suggest you get to grips with basic asset creation first and bolt your facial stuff on later, as you'll have a fair amount of work to do to get to grips with it.

I do plan to look at making tutorials for these down the line, but don't hold your breath.

Hope that helps.

 

@SecretAnorak
Thanks for making the tutorials Are you going to do anymore more?

 

A quick question on the mesh stitching part of UMA... Say I have a model with several parts, I know that UMA can stitch all vertices occupying the same space, but if I have body parts that I want to swap out at runtime or lets say swapping out parts in the slots, does the stitching happen during the build? or rebuild at runtime say you have a bloody stub you can switch out for the head, arms, legs... thinking dismember... "just a flesh wound!"

Of course the seams vertices would match

 

@Licarell Maiming can occur at runtime, there is no need to pre-bake your gore.

@DestinyComp Yes, I plan to make many more, when I get some spare time.

 

Hi there everyone =)
It's ready! Yay! I'll get all files into Unity tomorrow.
Cheers

 

Looks great, but now you'll see how that silly idle pose can butcher a great looking set of armor...

(I remember you said it's very easy to change, but it's still the only one I've seen - from screenshots to videos to almost full working games)

 

Have been trying to follow @neginfinity's video for Race Creation (incidentally this video was the first video that I've ever experienced not running properly in VLC, I re-transcoded it and uploaded it to here: www.blueomega.me/race_construction.zip and now works in VLC, let me know if this should be taken down though). I'm still struggling to understand how we arrive at the start point of the video. Taking any modifying the .blend files in the content creation kit lets us follow the neginfinity video up until the point where we select each mesh part individually in blender and then export that so we can make the slots.

We're attempting a low-poly "chibi" style UMA for use on mobile so having some fun playing with all this but getting quite lost while doing so

 

Are you talking about the A-Pose the character is modeled in? You'll never see that in game, it's just an alternate to the T-Pose designed to give you fewer problems with shoulder deformation. Or do you mean the Idle animation in the UMA example scenes? That's just a free clip from one of the Unity demos and is trivial to swap out for something you like more.

 

I was talking about the Idle animation in the example scenes, somehow in my opinion makes any character to look goofy and ready for a nap, not battle, no matter what they are wearing. Nothing wrong with the A-pose.

https://d2ujflorbtfzji.cloudfront.n...99b3f4-4f32-438c-999c-25368b20a51a_scaled.jpg

https://d2ujflorbtfzji.cloudfront.n...99b3f4-4f32-438c-999c-25368b20a51a_scaled.jpg

https://d2ujflorbtfzji.cloudfront.n...7f888a-c805-4d78-88d2-9d95f7860e43_scaled.jpg

My armors look great too in the A-Pose renders, but not happy at all with how they look "live" in Unity. And not talking about the materials, I know I still have to learn how to set them correctly.

(I'm not criticizing anything here, just trying for the second time to make you considering to give it a better default image, just to increase its popularity)

 

I'll use the same answer from my last reply

Please take the time and learn how to change the idle animation, we are limited to the content Unity provide that could be included on GIT, but you have no limitation and is free to work with the content you would like to. UMA is mecanim ready, any idle animation can be retargeted.
Cheers

 

Here's the full rig/skinning video test:

 

@SecretAnorak
Thx for the answer.

We've managed to solve the texture/material/content case. thx for your help =).

However i've a question ama retargeting the animation.
I've imported the supplied meshes (from the extrafiles). Deleted all body parts except, eyes mouth and face.
Rigged the face, made a sample animation and loaded to unity.

However, when i try to retarget the animation to my UMA "Face" which has only eyes mouth and face; it gives errors like it needs the other body parts.
The animation type is generic.

What am i doing wrong?
br,
ozan

 

Do your eyes, mouth, and face have the entire, original rig?

 

Hi Fernando,
Sorry to bother you but I have downloaded the UMA 2 Update from Assets Store and I would like to ask you the following. What are the UMA 2 differences between this new version and the last? Would it be possible?
Finally, I am thinking in adding new characters to my unity projects, for it, Could you say me if there is any tutorial for this?
Thanks for your time
Alejandro Castan

 

In the asset store you can click on the version number to see the release notes.

• Removed compiler warnings in 5.1
  
• Fixed Compile and Continue!
  
• Fixed UMASkeleton.Reset (Expressions)
  
• Fixed serialization bug for slots added with inspector
  
• Allow ConvertMipMaps even when not ConvertingRenderTextures

The best tutorial is the Secret Anorak Videos

 

Hey guys, I am using UMA for my multi-player game but I am having some problems. When a client enters the game I generate the UMA's for both the local client and other players, everything works fine except if you enter a game that already has clients in-game then the textures of that UMA character wont load ( I think the atlas is offset, see image )



I have tried to refresh UMA's using

Code (CSharp):

1. UMADynamicAvatar avatar = gameObject.GetComponent<UMADynamicAvatar>();
2.         avatar.umaData.atlasResolutionScale = 1f;
3.         avatar.umaData.isTextureDirty = true;
4.         avatar.umaData.Dirty ();

I've tried setting everything to dirty all at once and one at a time but I just cant get the textures to re-render any ideas?
Thanks!

 

Hi UnLogick
Thanks for your help !
Best Regards
Alejandro Castan

 

Since you're testing in the editor it's trivial to check the texture it's actually generating and compare that to the working one. The SkinnedMeshRenderer is in "Root" under the top level character object. My guess would be it's not the atlas scale since you'd still be getting something visible, but the first check is whether you're getting any texture at all.

 

I get the textures ( atlas scale is in there as I was trying everything I could to resolve it ) and if all players spawn and stay at the default spawn point then all textures render fine. The minute a player moves away from that point and another player ( lets call him player 3 ) joins the game then player 3 would not be able to see the textures for any current connected players if they are not in the default spawn spot.

Hope that makes sense, I did check the "Root" to see if the textures had been generated and they are all there but the atlas seems to be offset so that you only see black. I was almost certain that calling umaData.Dirty() on player connect for all players that are not the local player would resolve this but it hasn't.

P.S. I really appreciate your help!

 

Thanks to the tutorials available we've managed to get somewhere with race creation however not fully understanding it, it's hard to figure out where we've made an error although the results are amusing:

The model that isn't backwards is just our imported model with an animation controller attached, the one that I increase the scale of and then walk around of is what it looks like after I've done all the steps in neginfinity's race creation video. Obviously I've messed something up somewhere but after going through it again, I've not been able to figure out where exactly. Has anyone else seen this funny kind of backwards, crossed legged action before from an UMA avatar after an attempted race creation?

 

@andrew210, we can rarely tell anything from a video of the game view. What we need is screenshots of all the inspectors.

In particular I want to see the t-pose asset that you're using. The t-pose asset has the bone rotation for the avatar, and this looks like the avatar have weird rotations. Did you setup your avatar correctly and then generate a new t-pose from inside the mecanim avatar customization scene? And link that correctly with your race data?

 

I've not seen it with race creation, but a while back I created a prefab with Power Tools and the limbs were cross-linked like what you have. It only happened once, though, and I couldn't get it to animate. Subsequent prefabs I created with the same version of Power Tools had other errors, but the cross-linkage never occurred again in my limited testing.

 

@andrew210, I did see that exact pose after importing the werewolf a few days ago, and I also do not know what caused it. I cannot duplicate the effect or the other bad effects I was seeing. If I recall, the model animated probably when I simply placed it in the scene without UMA and attached an animation controller. Only the UMA implementation failed.

I've picked up an almost superstitious when re-importing models, and I THINK it's been the solution to all my UMA animation problems. When exporting an FBX and am overwriting a file already in unity, I delete the original file from the unity project entirely. Maybe something is stored in the .meta that isn't entirely reprocessed? I don't know how that meta files work. And then I regenerate T-poses and slots, and anything else that utilizes the imported model.

Since I started doing that, I stopped seeing this ballerina pose, and the horrible pile of writhing limbs (another fun one) that I've been stuck with for a day. I don't know if this actually was the solution and I had actually fixed something else at the same time, but I've tried intentionally fudging with many other things, and I receive more critical errors like run-time exceptions.

 

So, I'm trying to update a set of arms... We already have a weird process with UMA where I'm using 4.6 & UMA1 to import the new meshes to create slots & overlays. Then in 5.0 I Find Missing References & optimize the Slots & Overlays....

Sometimes Find Missing References doesn't always work, but Reimporting, restarting Unity, and/or recopying the files over seems to 'work'. However, for these set of arms...which I already have working with a previous version but want to update the mesh, I get this error at runtime.

 

Hi all, I have just been asked about using custom shaders with UMA2 and wrote a quick guide. I thought I might post it here in case anyone finds it useful:

Now you can use any Shader you like with much less fuss. I say less, since there is still a fuss to be had, but once you get into the flow it's pretty simple. Let's step through an example with unity's standard shader:

1. Create a Unity material and switch to the standard shader with specular setup (so we can use Diff, Norm and Spec maps). You can add maps here, but they will/can be overwritten later.
2. Right click in the project panel and create a new UMAMaterial, Give it a name and set if you want it to atlas with similar materials or not. (it will only atlas with overlays using the same shader)
3. Set your channel size to 3
4. Set the first channel to Texture, and it's property to _MainTex (these property names are found by digging around in the shader code)
5. Set the second to Normal Map, and its property to _BumpMap (yes you use standard normal maps since this is not UMA's special shader anymore)
6. Set the third to Texture, and its property to _SpecGlossMap
7. Right click in the project panel and create a new UMA Overlay Asset.
8. Set the texture list size to 3 and add your textures in the order you defined above.
9. Set the Material to the UMAMaterial you created in the last few steps.
10. Bam! you now have an overlay that uses the standard shader.

NB: Slots also have a material property that MUST match any overlay you add. so you will have to change the slot definitions too before you can add your new overlay to them.

Bit of a slog, but if you're not afraid of digging through shader code, this process should work with any shader.

 

Thank you very much SecretAnorak!

 

Wow, I just downloaded the pbr textures and was about to do that. lol

How did you know?

Thank you!

 

Hi there!
You did checked that both slots and overlays are being correctly streamed, even on the avatars outputting only black, is that correct?
Could you share a screenshot of the slots of a generated avatar? if atlas is not entirely black, I would like to take a look on the resulting diffuse atlas.

I can also imagine there's another GO using Layer 31 (latest layer available) and it's occluding atlas generation, but in that case I wouldn't expect full black output.

Cheers

 

I'll be updating the Git with the PBR textures probably today, in worst case, tomorrow.
The challenger armor I'll only be able to provide at AS because of the license restrictions.

 

Okay, so we should wait for the new PBR textures.

I am happy that you are providing the armor at all! Thank you! It is beautiful and I bet the most popular armor in my game.

 

Thanks Fernando.

 

I'd like to echo the need for a dedicated UMA forum.

I can provide hosting space if it's needed.

 

It has been tried in the past, but there's simply no one with enough time to moderate it.
As far I remember it was closed a couple weeks later filled with random bot porn messages = PP
We do have our wiki though: http://uma.unity3d.com/

 

Would you let one of us help moderate? There are also great ways to cut down on the spam and bot registrations. I have run some huge forums in the past and it really helps to use the tools.

 

To be honest, I think hosting a forum on the Unity3d.com space was the mistake. I'd do as @Teila offered and see if others are also willing to help. Build a forum team to help run/moderate and once you have a team put together, then make decisions on structure/software and set it up on your own domain.

 

I'm not sure another forum is needed.

But once the PBR version of UMA is out, maybe it's time to open a new thread for UMA2.

 

I was not actively participating when the wiki and forum were created. The guys at the skype group worked hard to get everything working but I believe most people had no previews experience with forum hosting.
I tried to help for a couple days but realised it would be impossible to provide enough time and attention for those.

 

A new thread would help. However, there is no way to search for anything on these threads so one must ask the same questions over and over again. A forum would be less work, honestly, especially with a good spam filter.

However, it is up to you guys. The wiki is nice but it is very underutilized. There really is very little up to date information on the wiki...or there is, it is not easy to find.

 

You need some antispam registration plugin/settings. For example for PhpBB I recommend question and answer settings (you will prepare question like how much is ten devided by 2 + 7). I am using this for years on several forums and spam bot gets through rarely and for users it is far more comfortable than captcha. So moderators are not needed that much.

 

Yeah, we tried setting up our own forum with a simple captcha but within a week it was detected by bots and completely killed by spam.

If anyone in particular have experience with setting up forums, we do have server hosting available and I think it would be great to have dedicated forums to discuss the various plugins, content, workflows etc.

 

I've managed a PHPBB forum for a few years and right now I'm paying far too much for a server thats being used far too little so I would be happy to provide hosting + a PHPBB installation for UMA.

Am agreed with l0cke about anti-spam bot measures, the best way we've found is by doing questions and answers related to the topic of the forum.

@UnLogick and @hopeful and @DrangidThanks for your messages! It's nice to hear that other people have come across the same sort of thing as me, I've reimported and remade a whole new project with the same backwards ballerina effect so will go back to Blender and recheck everything there again and hope for better luck next time

 

Sounds great! If you need help moderating, let me know. I agree, a phpbb forum is the best and I get little to no spam on mine using various means.

Looking forward to a new UMA forum.

 

Going to +1 this. Been a few years since I did any forum moderating, but willing to chip in too to help moderate.

 

While I might not be available to do daily moderation, I do have forum moderation experience and would be happy to contribute some time a couple days a week to help with a moderation team if you need an extra person to help. Just let me know.

 

What would be the best way to do multiplayer with UMA? I am not really to sure where to start at on this. I want to use this with my game but I would like to make multiplayer. Does anyone have a photon example I can learn from?

 

@Snownebula - UMA was designed with networking in mind, but I don't think there are any examples of it that are using a networking system. Space Dwarves (IIRC) once had a setup where UMA was working over Photon, and they were selling it for about $20, but support was abandoned for that about a year ago. (I wish they'd open source their code, since they're not using it any longer, but so far to the best of my knowledge that has not happened.)

Probably once Unity gets their own networking solution in better shape, someone will make a plugin pairing UMA with UNet.

The basic idea, though, is that you send UMA text recipes across the net so each client can build all the players' customized characters. And if you have UMA Recipe Tools, you can get a concise binary version of the recipe to send.

Once you have the same characters appearing on all the clients, you run the game as usual.

 

Using UMA in Multiplayer is not so hard using Photon. Once you get the hang of syncing position,rotation and animation(check out the marco-polo demo) you just need to learn about RPC's. These babies can send any data you like, whenever you like, so you can inform an UMA on another machine to change it's clothes. That demo in my first video is multiplayer, the UMA stuff is half baked but it works,......... Hmm yet another idea for a series?