UMA - Unity Multipurpose Avatar on the Asset Store!

https://github.com/huika/UMA-Extrafiles

UMA-Extrafiles/Werewolf contentPack_1.1.0.1/Blend/WerewolfRace.blend


I've removed the AssetStore Werewolf asset because it has not been updated to UMA 2 and PBR.
Cheers

 

The man has made more than a dozen videos, and while no video covers it all I guarantee you the data is there. But ok here goes.


The short story is that if you want to use the existing humanoid dna and dna converters you need to match the exact skeleton hierarchy. Your models must be imported into Unity using the same scale and orientation of the bones.

If you wish to create a base mesh that doesn't use humanoid dna or you want to write your own dna converter then you have full freedom in your skeleton structure. However then you have to design your dna (very simple script file) as well as a dna converter (long script file that modifies each bone to match your dna values).

There are no true documentation on that but the scripts are fairly simple to pattern match edit even if you're not a coder.

The true trick in how to rig for uma is not to skin to the shoulder! Instead you add a child "shoulder_adjustment" bone to the shoulder and paint your vertex weights to that bone instead.

So if the change is inherited to the arm/hands then the change goes to the shoulder bone. If the change is local to the shoulder only then it's applied to the shoulder_adjustment bone.

Also keep in mind that Unity doesn't support non-uniform scaling of bones with children. If you want non-uniform scaling of the shoulder then you have to apply it to the adjustment bone.

 

Does the extract T-Pose grab the muscle ranges? I thought it only grabbed the T-Pose itself.

 

The limits are part of the HumanBone array, so AFAIK it does save and load those as part of the T-Pose asset.

 

Here's the video where Fernando describes the rigging UMA uses to allow the non-uniform DNA scaling:

 

I know there was a discussion a while back about scaling issues in 3ds max... @SecretAnorak is there any closure to this?

 

I'm working on it at the moment. So far I can consistently get MAX models into UMA as long as I respect the content pack's original scale. However, in MAX units, they are tiny, which makes some tools behave oddly or with very little precision.

In the meantime, here is my workflow (based on fox video):

• Import a unified FBX from the content pack (ensure import scale is 1.0 in cm)
• Model around it or make your model conform to it's scale
• Use Edit Mesh on the UMA skin and attach your clothing to the mesh (do not change UVs)
• Use Edit Mesh on the UMA skin to detach your elements as a new object (this ensures Transforms are ok)
• Skin wrap your model using the unified skin as a base
• Convert to a skin
• Wiggle the bones around and correct any dodgy weights
• Hide everything apart from the skeleton and your new mesh
• Select them all and export selected (ensure export scale is 1.0 in cm)
• Import into Unity and set scale to 100 and anim mode to legacy before attempting conversion.

Bear with me, I don't have a lot of free time but I'm determined to find an easy path and will be looking to put a video together when I'm done.

 

Just thought I'd share an idea I am testing for combining male and female models into one which so far seems to be working out.

Excuse my inexperience if my idea is obvious... (Skip to 'BUT THEN below for my 'Eureka moment')

Anyway what I have been trying to use UMA for is creating my own race based on male and female models I have created and like from Mixamo.

My initial idea was to swap out the parts that were different between the M and F models as slots to save space (since they have the same inner mouth, eyes, hands, feet. During my experiments with this I have found that rigging, blend weights etc all need to be matched, transfered etc and its a big pain...

BUT THEN I realised that the meshes for both models have the same number of faces and verts.

So I painstakingly matched every vert of my male model to the positions of my female model and then applied these changes as a 'Femaleness' BlendShape/Shapekey.

Now I can easily switch between my male and female models by changing the 'Femaleness' blendshape value and I just have one rig, one set of blend weights, one set of UV's etc etc.

So far it seems like a great solution, anyone have any thoughts?

 

This is one of those details I wish was documented a little more fully. If I remember correctly, UMA started off as a single model that could blend - using a slider - between male and female.

 

Ok interesting... So I havent stumbled across some earth shattering discovery then!

But I wonder why the decision was made to move to two base meshes... I notice that the UMA base meshes DO have a different number of verts (male 3328, female 3488) but the Mixamo base meshes dont, both male and female are the same and use the same UV mapping- which Fuse uses to do its 'DNA'...

It's really convenient when weighting to have meshes with the exact same vertex numbers (not only the same number of verticies) as you can then use 'topology' weight transfer mode in Blender and the weights come over perfectly even if the mesh itself is completely different... And I guess there are alot of other things that having the exact same vertex numbers would make easier too (matching normals across seams maybe?)

So I am interested to know what issues arose that prompted the switch- just so I know I am not running down yet another dead-end alley...

 

I have another question: can I change the base mesh slots to have additional separation, so that I can for example turn just the arms on and off instead of the whole torso? So that I can create slots that are vests that still show the original arms? I'm guessing to do this I would need to open the content pack with the separated meshes in Maya or something, split the arms from the torso along the edge loops, and export them back into Unity as FBX's, and use Slot Creator to make them new slots? And then just include those in a recipe instead of the original torso slot? Or is there an easier way to do this?

 

@makeshiftwings, yes just split the mesh into multiple meshes and make multiple slots.

UMA doesn't know or care what a human is!
If you say it's created of a million pieces it will dutifully merge all of them. If it ends up looking like a battleship uma will still be happy!
If you do not add slots with all the required Mecanim Humanoid bones the resulting mesh will fail to do humanoid retargeting but UMA will still be happy! UMA even has a toggle to setup mecanim generic if you do not want humanoid.

 

Might I enquire, what is the best way to get access to the bone structure, pre render.
Is it the Female Unified FBX (for example), am hoping to use the data to rig something, but it expects the rig /before/.

I am playing with shoving the scripts (via a component call or something) it in the Locomotion Slot OnDnaApplied, which seem to be the right place. As in the example.

However am just looking for some rig advice. Many thanks

 

Is anybody here still using Uma 1? (With modified source .dll for Unity 5) ?

I have found that it works great, but selecting "Optimize Mesh Data" In your player settings, causes Unity to delete the created UMA mesh upon creation and thus you have no character. Deselecting "Optimize Mesh Data" fixes the problem, but then you cannot optimize your mesh data for build, which isn't a huge train-smash - but still isn't ideal. Any ideas anyone?

 

Could I suggest that the armature that is animated to create the Expressions files (UMA_20_Expressions_F/M.fbx) be included in the content creator pack?

That file itself does not get imported into blender as an Armature properly so you cant use it for rigging or transfering the animation to the UMA_Male_rig for example...

Also what I am doing to set my race up is I am adjusting the pose of the UMA_Male_rig so that the bones are in the same place as the bones from the auto-rig from Mixamo- that rig doesn't have face bones so I manually tweak all those- and setting that as a new rest pose. And ideally I want do this on a rig that has all the expression animations, I'd have thought, to save me having to do any of that animation...

So basically I am moving the positions of the UMA rig bones, setting that as a new rest pose, and then binding my mesh to that- any chance that will 'just work' from UMA's point of view...I have one all nighter left and then I have to give up on using UMA, so anything that I can do to make things go smoothly would help alot.

If I do what I explain above and then attach my new mesh to that Armature, wont the result be that my new character can use the same DNA? Or does the DNA need to be told the exact location of every bone? If so where is that file, I couldn't see that anywhere...

And will I be able to use the exported character to generate the expressions aswell seeing as the rig has/will have all the expression animation on it too?

 

The expression animations files are built from exactly the same Blender source file as the Male_Unified and Female_Unified models which are included in the content creator pack.

 

I agree that OnDnaApplied is the most obvious place, but you can add your own callback to that rather than adding the code into the Locomotion Slot. You won't always have the final versions of the rig bones prior to that.

 

Yeah i realize that, but I tried importing those fbx files into the UMA_Blender.blend file and I didn't seem to get anything useful, what I'd have expected is an empty armature with animation that could be skinned with UMA_Human_male mesh or otherwise, or whole animation you could link to another armature- but that's not what you get, not what I got anyway...

 

If the final rig is close enough that those animations would still work then the expression sets will work as is.

The DNA doesn't know the exact positions of the bone, but it is customized to the rig and you'll certainly need to make changes if you've changed the rig. You could start with one of the Human DNAConverterBehaviors from UMA/Content/UMA/Humanoid/DNA but it wouldn't "just work" without adjusting it to account for the changes you made.

 

Thanks @ecurtz... when you say 'you'll certainly need to make changes if you've changed the rig' is that because things will be totally screwed up or just 'not perfect'? I mean, what the script seems to do is say something like 'when changing the head scale, also change the eye scale by 1.5, the lips scale by 1.5 etc' Am I right? In this case, since my bones and the original UMA bones all start off at 100% scale, those existing links and functions should be roughly right no?

Regards that, I dont think that will work since I think I need to adjust the rest pose of that armature so that it matches the one I have matched to my Mixamo rig... I have done what I am talking about with the existing UMA_Male_Rig and it worked perfectly, so I am confident that it will work if I can just get the right expressions animation applied to the UMA_Male_Rig

I have battled and battled with this for nearly a DAY now... I can get the animation to apply to the UMA_Unified_male.fbx in 3DS MAX, and the result is nearly there when I import that into blender, it comes in as an armature, bones are in roughly the right positions, but its not exact. I am loath to spend more hours moving that armature to match my Mixamo rig only to find down the line that because they were not perfect to start with something else is screwed up which will take yet more days to fix...

All I want is the UMA_Male_Rig from the UMA_Blender.blend file with the animation from the UMA_20_Expressions_M.fbx files on it, cannot believe its proving such an issue...

 

If the scale is pretty much the same most things will just be not perfect but a few will be totally screwed up, like moving the hips based on the size of the character.

All of the expression poses are relative to the base position, unlike some of the DNA changes, so it really doesn't make sense to try and transfer them - the final expression set will work just as well (or poorly) as the transferred animations work. It doesn't look like I have write access to the ExtraFiles repo, but here's the Blender file if you really don't believe me: https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/8494826/UMA/UMA_20_Expressions.blend

 

Awesome @ecurtz ! I totally believe in your expertise and knowledge, has been totally invaluable thus far

I just know sometimes that it can be difficult to explain exactly what you are doing in text and when one is trying to understand what one is doing in the first place!

With my character it has a really big head, so I scale up the head bone alot and then apply that as a rest pose so that new scale becomes a scale of 1 again.. and there are other things where I do the same... I sort of understand in theory that bones animated relative to the head bone should all work regardless of the head bone size position etc, but am just really cautious now about checking everything I do, since I have been doing this for weeks now and everytime, I screw something up, or find that something I did at the very beginning wasn't perfect and causes issues later and have to redo everything over...

Anyway massive thanks for that file, it will if nothing else enable me to check what I am doing is right

 

Playing with it. Might have to mangle stuff a bit until I get it going but I will forge on.

 

@FernandoRibeiro - Can you comment a bit on why the unisex model for UMA was withdrawn? Also, is it possible to restore it, for use alongside the male and female races?

 

Just wondering if anyone knows why it is that when I import the Male_Unified/Seperated fbx files from the Content pack into Unity, they come in with 'Hips' set as the root bone but if I export the Male and Rig from the UMA_Blender.blend file to an fbx it gets imported with 'Global' set as the root bone? This is even when I haven't made any changes at all to the UMA_Blender.blend file...

Also does it matter? I know I can change the Root bone in Unity, but I find that if I do, the positions of the meshes in the model gets screwed up...

 

I really DESPERATELY need to know the answer to the above question. So many times now I have done stuff with this thing and thought 'oh it probably doesn't matter' only to find that it REALLY does and I have to do everything again.

It just seems wrong that exporting from the UMA_Blender file does not provide an FBX with the root bone set as Hips- like it is on the actual UMA_Male in UMA and like it is when you import the Male_Unified.fbx in the content creation pack, but I have literally been trying ALL DAY to make Blender export so that Hips ends up the root in Unity and just cannot make it happen.

I can make it happen if I import in and out of 3DS Max and use 3DS Max skin utilities to only set blendweights on bones Hips and below... But then I have all the scaling chaos that ensues when going between Blender and Max...(on that front I think Max considers 100 to be 100% = scale of 1 where as Blender considers 1 to be 100% = scale of 1) and you cannot just scale stuff in either program because that totally screws up any animation because f-curves dont scale- at least without doing every one manually...

Anyway it seems like there may be a clue there. Max doesn't seem to add any data to bones that dont have weights and so Unity appears to set the root as the first bone that does, i.e. Hips.

Maybe the current version of Blender has 'fixed' fbx export or something so all bones in an armature get some kind of reference? But this in our case is not what we want I dont think...

Also I see that the fbx in the content creator pack is ASCII so maybe it was edited manually somehow to have hips as the root? Thats fine but ASCII fines are massively bigger than binary ones so thats not an option for me...

So I think I need to have Blender export like the file in the creation pack, but it wont, the root is always 'Global'.

Please if anyone know what alchemy needs to be performed to make UMA_Blender.blend export with 'Hips' as the root, PLEASE share the wisdon

 

As you guys stated, my initial tests used a single basemesh for both male and female avatars, but using only bone driven deformation, neither male or female resulting avatars body volume looked really nice.
Many months later I've checked again with a diferent topology if we could archieve better results, and even being able to provide a better transition, I still believe having separated base meshes results in both better male and female body volumes.
It is possible to use blendShapes to handle a transition between male and female, but what happen with content? It would be necessary to have a blend shape for the transition in each mesh as well, and generating those in many cases can be harder and more complex than the skinning technique I eneded up working with.

 

Since UMA 2 don't use race prefabs anymore, I can only imagine the generated character Root bone is set dinamically after creation/update. I can't be sure because I'm not with a computer here with me to check and this new code isn't mine.
For the creation of Slots to be combined with UMA base meshes (not new race slots), I didn't even had to set root bone for the source FBX files at all.

 

Hey Fernando, that's not quite what I mean... Unity sets the root transformation bone when you Import the asset... you can see what it is if you drag the imported asset into the game scene and click one of the meshes...

With the fbx in UMA itself and when you import any if the fbx files in the content creator pack the root transform bone gets set as hips... BUT if you export the male for example from the blender file and import that then the root transform gets set as Global by Unity.

I appreciate that when using UMA you don't drag those imported fbx files into the game world but for testing sake if you do and manually switch the root transform of the import with the wrong root transform to hips, on any of the meshes then their bounding boxes all shift out of place... Changing things in 'configure' for the rig does not make any difference...

This just looks wrong to me and in my bitter and painful experience with this, if something looks wrong it almost certainly is. I expect that having the wrong root transform will screw up animating or something...

As I say changing it manually on the meshes puts the bounding boxes out if place. BUT somehow with the fbx files in the content creator pack you don't need to change anything because Unity imports those with the right root bone.

So what I want to know is how do I export an UMA armature from blender so that when Unity imports it it sets the root as hips or put another way how did you guys export your original UMA files from that blender file in such a way that Unity imports them with the root transform bone on all the meshes set as hips...

 

Slots will only use the root bone listed in the SkinnedMeshRenderer if there's no "Global" bone. It's hard coded because the root bone setting is unreliable. You're probably seeing different results because the FBX exporter was dramatically changed in Blender at around version 2.71.

 

Okay, so it's as I thought I remembered: the change was made in order to have higher quality M/F models.

But ... what about people who intend to use UMA for more toon-like models? Wouldn't the unisex version provide a good base for them?

I don't mean that the current male and female models should be abandoned. They're fine for realistic characters, and I intend to use them myself. But I am thinking specifically for games that use more cartoonish art, that maybe a 3rd base model - the unisex one - could be added.

... If the model is already made and just lying around, of course.

 

OK Update... I discovered that exporting using FBX 6.1 ASCII does import into Unity with the Root Bone set as Hips.

Trouble is that it is this that causes the exported model to be 100x too small and also that ASCII files are 3x the size of binary ones- which would wipe out alot of the size benefit that I started this whole mission to achieve in the first place...

So its a Blender FBX export issue I think- I am posting a bug report

 

@ecurtz Ok good to know, but my issue is actually the other way around- I will be needing to apply mixamo animations to my UMAs and those animations expect the root bone to be Hips...As I say i am not sure whether it will be an issue, but what I do know is that manually changing the root bone to hips in the skinned mesh renderer places the mesh bounding box incorrectly (i.e. it moves it up by whatever the distance is from the ground to the Hips bone)

 

@hopeful you could try using the 'shrinkwrap' modifier in Blender to shrink-wrap the Male to the Female mesh, this works pretty well as a starting point. then you can apply that modifier as a Shape Key.

Then you'll need to export that and import it as an FBX- and you'll then run into the same issues I am having with Blender incorrectly setting the Root Bone if you export as FBX 7.4 or incorrectly scaling and giving you an un-necessarily large file if you export as FBX 6.1

 

Yeah, I need to look into that shrinkwrap modifier, as I've not used it yet ...

But what I was thinking is that so many people seem to be starting out by creating their own race with UMA ... maybe there is something they are looking for that is not in the basic set.

So, is there a natural role in game dev for a unisex toon model? The one Fernando developed early on ought to have all the sizing bones and be configured for UMA, so if it still exists, maybe it could be used as the basis of an official 3rd race.

I guess it could also be used to model children.

Anyway, it's just a thought. One way to see if it would gain any traction would be to pop it into an alternate content pack on github and see if people start using it.

 

If you're converting the FBX files to UMA slots it doesn't matter what size the originals are, you don't even need them in the project after you do the slot building.

Also, I'm pretty sure people have used the import scale on the FBX files without any issue.

 

I'm converting the FBX files into UMA Races though- does that matter?

(update on blender fbx issue: I have also contacted the coder of the import export script now too)

 

The scale matters, the file size doesn't, should have been more careful in my terms. The race (mostly) consists of the T-Pose which doesn't know about root bones, and the slots which are going to end up using Global as the root unless you go out of your way to keep that from happening.

 

I saw this when i did the elf ears above. Just setting the import scale on the model fixed it.

 

Hmm... exporting as 6.1 seems to screw up the scale- which may affect my animations negatively (since they are based on moving the mixamo auto-rig)- but gets the root bone correct- which may affect my animations positively... Exporting as 7.4 the opposite is true...

I am extremely confused about this scaling stuff to be honest, when I apply the UMA_20_Expressions as an animation to the UMA_Male in Unity for example, as a game object with animation controller, the expression animations dont seem to work anyway- or at least only the head movements and jaw movements work. The rest are I think just moving a miniscule amount- like what happens in fact if you scale up the model 100 times in blender and apply it...

And its the same if you export the Male-rig and body from Blender with animation, the facial animations dont work...

So I have no idea really how I can test anything to see if I have even got it right- it doesn't seem to be 'right' even in UMA, and I dont really understand what UMA does to make it right, assuming it does...

 

Thats true, but scaling the model affects how much animations affect those bones (see above)

 

I was seeing issues in root motion when models were scaled, but I think that particular issue was fixed in Mecanim a couple releases ago, and it's verified working for me.

 

Ok yeah, I just discovered that to see the facial bones work you have to set the rig to be 'Generic' Doh...

 

Will UMA care if in the TPose for my new race I set the bones for my body to be 'Hips->Lowerback->Spine' rather than 'Hips->Spine->Spine1' as the UMA Male/Female races are defined- bearing in mind that I am aiming to re-use as much of the UMA Male/Female Race features as possible (DNA - Expressions etc)?

Its just the animations I am using work much better with that setup...

 

@davidosullivan, changing the T-pose and the human definition is entirely between you and Mecanim, uma handles this in a generic matter and it should just work.

 

If you're talking about uma expressions that should work in both generic and humanoid. If not so please be loud.

 

@davidosullivan The import scale is an issue with Unity not Blender it's self. Also in Max you have to export as Binary.
It hasn't caused any issues with animations in my experience. As long as the animations follow the same scaling or were created in 4.6.

 

Is there documentation of that in the videos? Would it be possible for someone to do up a quick tutorial or video if not?

 

I actually create a specific DNAConverter for the werewolf race based on the humanoid one and including some fes changes, it's probably on the last video series of the race tutorial.
The converter code is very simple and is probably easier when you have experience with skinning/rig because it's basically a process of defining how bones will be deformed based on the dna values.
Edit: it's this video at ~8min

 

Nice. Thanks Fernando. Will check it out.