[Released] Morph Character System (MCS) - Male and Female

Well, I am sure I'm not the only one at this point, and it's been well spoken already about the concerns... I was going to do a bit more of a thoughtful writeup, but honestly... why bother. I'm setting M3D aside until enough people drop it for them to change things drastically, including agreeing to tow the line with the expectation that assets we buy on the asset store do not have hidden restrictions, whether it's legal or not... this is bad faith.
So, to that "upper management who makes more money", those sales you expect to line your pockets through your own store... they are fleeting.

 

After I took a look inside the, for the moment, free artist tools, the with the (fe-)male delivered prefabs and their used scripts on them, it only depends how much it will cost in the future. But it seems like with 1.6 it is easy to create content without the artist tools if you read through it. The prefabs are easy to understand and the used .mon-files (json format) are easily done by hand.

It would even be easy to create the needed artist tool workflow inside of unity.

 

Hmmm... I have bought a bunch of these assets - because they are pretty cool.

When I bought them there was no mention of any limitation in how I could use them in a game, and now there is. On top of this, the asset store does not mention such a limitation, as this has apparently just been released in the past few months.

This is like me saying, oh, by the way, effective immediately and retroactively, you can only have 2 environments have been generated by Gaia or Gena in your game - but hey, if you want more, just contact me and I will tell you how much it will cost you.

A indie friend of mine has spent over 300 pounds on these assets for his MMO, and now he can't use them, or presumably he can if he stumps up some unknown additional amount of money. And who knows when the author will decide to change things again.

I rarely weigh in on other asset publishers business but this is just wrong. How can we get our money back?

 

@Pathelion It sounds like you're threatening reverse-engineering the Artist Tools, but please refrain from such comments. It's one thing to not want the product, to want a refund, to want clarifications from the developers, or even demand changes to the EULA, but that kind of threat isn't a positive approach. Trying an end-run around a EULA by reverse-engineering the Artist Tools is actually illegal (even in Germany), and more importantly, if the developer calls it quits, the product dies, and any "alternative approaches" to Artist Tools won't be worth anything either.

We want no surprise restrictions, and after waiting a year for the tools to be released and the hundreds of dollars my studio has spent, I think we deserve that. We don't want to actually kill the asset though, or support for the asset, through legal means or otherwise. Threatening specific legal action is also in bad taste- I only brought up the EULA restrictions so that M3D can rethink their position and realize it's silly to restrict custom content in ways that they can't restrict direct Asset Store purchases of their product.

If I misunderstood your intent with that though, I apologize- it's a bit hard to read.

 

wtf?!? I literally just made an asset store purchase of more of the characters because they were on sale. I mean it is bad enough that the male/female that we paid $40 or $50 for is currently free. That is kind of a slap in the face of those of us who invested. A sale is one thing, but free?!? wtf is the purpose of the lite version if you give the full for free????

Now I'm finding you are changing the licensing? I'm half tempted to ask for refunds myself. It was a tossup between Morph3D and UMA. I have much more invested in UMA, but really liked what you guys were talking about doing. But if this is how Morph3D does business, I'm REALLY starting to question my decision.

Not a happy camper right now. Especially seeing that I just bought more characters prior to finding this crap out. Not doing a very good job of instilling trust, Morph3D....

 

Yeah okay this sounded strange... You really misunderstood.

I don't tell anyone to reverse-engineer. The prefabs like the hair show the added "methods" like "C IClothing" and stuff. So if someone would want to do a workflow inside of unity, this would totally doable at first sight at the prefabs. (Btw. there is no need for RE, as Morph3D uploaded a really good documentation about the used methods. So it would be totally legal to build upon this an editor extension inside of unity )

It's like with GAIA or World Machine. Sure I could buy World Machine and create some stunning heightmaps outside of Unity, but this is so annoying to do so many stuff outside of it, that GAIA is godsent for this task.

M3D should think about to create those Artist Tools inside of Unity and not only as some standalone window before someone else is doing this. 10+ programs outside of Unity are really cripling the whole workflow.

For the rest: To be honest I already got suspicious in which ways this all is heading when the prices of Male and Female packages changed... There was a massive discount and some days after they set it to "Free".
This is really creating massiv trust issues to buy something again from them.

 

Runtime Tools For MCS has hundreds of errors and may need a full re-write of some features, I don't even see the minotaur or reptilian characters on the asset store anymore and I just bought them to integrate with MCSRTT. I hope those characters aren't deprecated and/or it is just temporary thing and they didn't run off with my money and left me with outdated characters! I just spent all this time setting them up with MCSRTT. If I don't update my asset to 1.6 it is almost useless to those who purchased it since 1.0 to 1.6 is such a big jump... just my problems aside from the EULA restrictions I might have to tiptoe around in our commercial projects.

 

Yeah it looks like the whole system behind it changed.

Take a look at the morph sliders of the artist tool. It seems to me, that there are also some major changes to the blendshape setup. I don't have all the morphs in my mind, but it looks like they added some (like breast shape for females) and even removed some. Maybe that's the reason for the, at the moment, missing characters except the human models?

 

I think it is more of their shenanigans... Those are two specific ones I looked at to get while they were on sale. They are gone from the Unity asset store but still on the Morph3D main store site. (Which of course everything there is full price - which I didn't think we were allowed to do as asset publishers. I thought it was against the asset store agreement to offer offsite for different price. Granted, it isn't the problem of them being cheaper there but it is still a different price.).

 

I think they still have the same 400 blendshapes (however I still can't find release notes) I am hoping the other characters are just being updated although it is really weird that they are not on the asset store at all (I think the only way to remove them is to deprecate them) Overall I hope I can fix things so it doesn't hurt my company's reputation too, but this will set me back for sure.

 

Well at least those "special" blendshapes are still there.



We will see what the problem is, maybe they only haven't the update to 1.6 ready and don't want to sell the outdated version.

 

I might take down MCSRTT until I can update it since it is so broken when used with 1.6. I was expecting the update but this will take a long time to sort through. I don't know why they took down the standalone characters since they didn't take down the human characters before they updated. I probably should have tried to get a beta copy ahead of time but now I'm selling an outdated version of my asset =/

 

I don't know if you already saw this, but one or two pages ago someone posted the link to the new documentation.
https://www.morph3d.com/documentation/class_m_o_r_p_h3_d_1_1_m3_d_character_manager.html

So far good luck on your own asset. Should take some time but you will fix all of this for sure

 

I purchased the Reptilian and it is currently deprecated. I hope they are planning to bring it back in an updated form, with a free upgrade:

 

Is this EULA thing real? This character system would be unusable for me if true. Buying an asset from the asset-store and then being told there are limits on how you use it in a game can't be right

 

I'm using the latest Unity Plus 5.5.2f1
Just started a clean project, imported the new 1.6 male, female and a few purchased assets.

It is either very different from previous ways of doing this or installs appear to be broken.
I have tried to import without running the upgrade when it offers, with running it, importing core, importing male package, deselecting the warning on files from male package. Many different attempts and when you drag the male prefab into the scene, there are no scripts on it and if you add the scripts, the sliders appear but you cannot do anything.

Is there a new install docs coming or are others having errors? I have the luxury of starting clean as I'm still using placeholder art and plan to use Morph3D as I stock pile assets but those who have to upgrade, I fear they are in trouble.

 

Is this situation with MCS reminding anyone of the situation with a certain prominent SSRR vendor? Continually buggy product, promises that all will be well, you just need to wait another few weeks, and then another, and then another - lots of silence from the vendor - and a year goes by ... and then, to get a working version, you need to buy the upgrade. And then the company realizes they don't want to abide by the Unity asset store agreement, and they leave. Something like that.

Normally, I'm hopeful (see the username!), but I'm starting to feel like I've seen this movie before. I don't think they are ever going to provide the promised fixes for the product, I don't think they will issue refunds, and I don't think they will change the EULA in any useful way. I think they will just ask for more money, and hang around until either people stop buying or they get shut down.

This company has lost my trust.

 

select it and reimport. Then it works Just follow the steps in the read-me file.

 

Everyone have been talking about the EULA, but did you have time to test the updates?
For me it works good, faster, no crashes or shader problems yet. this is a great update.

 

I'm not a lawyer but my reading of their EULA suggests this might not be correct.

As you have to agree to the EULA to sign up to download the Artist Tools, I'd be concerned about the implications for Morph3D content already purchased on the Asset Store.

That EULA and the Artist Tools apparently being Windows only are show stoppers for me. At least I was only just looking at MCS, hopefully things will work out ok for those of you more invested in it.

 

Whatever you buy on Asset Store , it works under Unity Asset Store License. You cannot add further limitation on top of that. It's clealry mentioned in Asset Store License. Different from stuff you buy on another store.
I would suggest to address any question to unity team and not to the vendor.
Change a license restricting the use adding such kind of restrictions, in my humble opinion, is really not professional becuase you are not protecting any IP but just trying to get more money, That's can be fine but not for stuff on asset store

 

The wording in their EULA is irrelevant because the Asset Store EULA literally can't be superseded- Unity staff have verified this. It doesn't matter if you implicitly agree to the M3D EULA by downloading the Tools, whatever you buy directly from the Asset Store uses the Asset Store EULA only.

As mentioned, they CAN place restrictions on content modified with the Artist Tools, and purchased through the Morph3D store though, so that's what everyone is upset about at the moment.

 

You guys need to take a second or third look at UMA2 that you probably discarded long ago for the sake of questionable stuff like Morph3D.
Open source will always prevail over corporate greed.

 

Which is a license between the provider and the user. If the user then agrees to a new license from the provider which replaces any existing licenses, section 4.2 of the Asset Store EULA would seem to apply.

 

No. The Asset Store EULA cannot be superseded or replaced, period. Ending your own license rights completely is an explicit act, and it's not the same as a third party claiming to "replace it". 4.2 doesn't apply.

 

Seems pretty explicit to me.

 

It does not work that way. The Asset Store EULA cannot be superseded or replaced. In order to give up your license rights for a product you received on the Asset Store, you'd likely have to send them (Unity) an email and have it removed from your purchased content list. 4.2 isn't what you're suggesting at all.

The license for the product you purchase on the Asset Store is through Unity, not through Morph3D- Morph3D literally doesn't have the ability to overwrite that license, regardless of what they put in their own EULA.

 

That's not how I read section 1.1 of the Asset Store EULA. It's either Unity or the Provider who your license is with. The Provider might not be able to change the terms of the Asset Store EULA, but you can voluntarily enter into a new license with them that replaces it. And that's what it looks like signing up to download the Artist Tools would do.

 

Again, the Asset Store license cannot be replaced. I've said it and the Unity staff have said it- I'm really not sure how much more peace of mind anyone here can possibly give you on this. If the product developer wants to offer an additional license that allows for more than the Asset Store EULA provides, that's one thing, but it's not a replacement- they can't make a more restrictive license, because your Asset Store license doesn't disappear or get overwritten.

 

Correct .. All the asset you buy on asset store follow the Asset Store License ....that's point is 100% correct.

 

No. When you buy on asset store the only valid license is the Asset Store one. If a vendor push a different one that does not matter .... asset store license is the only one valid for every product you buy on asset store. There is only one excpetion . that is in case of Open Source license ...

That the link to the license agreement ...
https://unity3d.com/legal/as_terms

 

I didnt get it to work at first. I updated, reimported, deleted and installed again. Nothing worked.
Got errors like below. What finally made it work for me:
delete MORPH3D folder
download asset
install asset
Run M3MALE (or what the name was). Not Core file
THEN right click content folder and reimport it.

Note that it didnt work when I runned core and then reimport content.

Im using Unity 5.5.1f1 and installing it in an ongoing project. And tried everything for about 1h.

NullReferenceException: Object reference not set to an instance of an object
MORPH3D.M3DCharacterManager.initCharacterManager (Boolean refresh) (at C:/Users/jjanzer/Documents/Morph/mcs-1.6/M3D_DLL/M3DCharacterManager.cs:617)
MORPH3D.M3DCharacterManager.Awake () (at C:/Users/jjanzer/Documents/Morph/mcs-1.6/M3D_DLL/M3DCharacterManager.cs:361)

I have no user jjanzer on this com

 

I did only just hear about the update and tried to read most of the comments that happened afterwards, and I'm like WTF!
I didn't get to test any of the new stuff, but guys! It seems there is finally the tools you've all been waiting for, I'm sure the MORPH3D team has been working their ASSES off to bring you these, and all you do is just S***ting all over them again. MORPH3D put a few license limitations on their practically free assets to make sure you don't make a fortune with MORPH3D's assets without them seeing any of it, and that's only god damn fair!
If your payment model enables you to produce revenue out of MORPH3D assets over and over with no work at all, while MORPH3D invested years of development to bring you this ability, be fair and allow them to ask for a tiny bit more than $100.
And anyways: those limitations should not even touch most of you guys' use cases, especially the 50 players at once limitation is nothing to worry about at all as you can just hide any player that is further away than the 49 closest ones to you without anyone noticing. I'm not even sure you'd be able to render more than 50 at a time, tbh.

Guys, please take a moment to take in that you finally seem to have gotten what you've been asking for for months. Then, if you really are hitting the license limitations and have no way around it, write to the MORPH3D guys and clarify how you can agree on that issue, and, if need be, THEN you can complain, but don't create a S***storm out of nothing.

 

Seems like Morph3D better come here and explain how their EULA supersedes the Unity one, as Unity's would seem to suggest that it doesn't. Next step would be contacting Unity.

 

Did anyone manage to export a working custom item? I skinned some shoes and imported to tools. Processed and exported them. Bu no fbx file is generated in the project folder. Am I doing something wrong? Screenshots are attached.

* Edit : uploaded the files now

 

Well, the only thing that we'll get from this is that MCS will take its content out of the Asset Store and only offer it on their website. This will lead to a smaller customer base which will increase the chance of us using a system that eventually gets discontinued. But yeah, sure, go that way.

 

Wow, what was intended as a bit of feedback about what put this potential purchaser off has gone a bit crazy. I read any contract or license trying to take the worst possible interpretation of the words, because somewhere there's a lawyer that would argue they meant that. I then try to avoid any situation where I might have to pay another lawyer to argue otherwise.

 

You're looking at all of this rather backwards. It's the customers that paid a hundreds of dollars for assets that just had the prices suddenly reduced to practically nothing. It's the customers who had to wait a year for the artist tools in order for those assets to actually be usable in a real game. It's the customers who now, after all of this time and finally getting what was promised so long ago, are suddenly being told the tools will need to be purchased separately, and the assets can't be used in MMO environments without forking out more money for an additional license.

I totally understand your concern that complaints here may force them off of the Asset Store, where they will, sooner or later, perish in obscurity trying to sell on their own store. That's a perfectly valid concern, and one I share. What you're getting wrong is any of that being the fault of the customers.

You're afraid of backlash from legitimate concerns being voiced for a product? Get over it. Victim blaming is pretty ugly in any situation. Their business practices have been shady, their communication has been horrendous, and now their terms of use are not acceptable for a lot of people. If they take these criticisms as reasons to run away from the Asset Store and basically give up on their product, then that's just the kinds of developers they are. I would rather have that out in the open sooner rather than later.

I sincerely hope that they aren't those kinds of developers though, and that they take this opportunity to fix their EULA instead of continuing to kick a community that's still bruised and bleeding from their last encounter. I'd like to believe they can become the backbone of the character models on the UAS the same way SpeedTree has become the backbone of the vegetation models. They can't do that with this EULA garbage though, and you aren't helping either.

Unity has been contacted. If any action needs to be taken, they said they'll take it up with the developers themselves. I should note that I did not contact Unity over this issue in particular, but rather a third party developer being told that his MCS editor extension was breaking M3D's EULA, which it wasn't, since their EULA doesn't apply to Asset Store items. Just good timing *shrugs*

 

While I don't think they've done everything right, I think your assessment is extreme. I have faith that this product will be stable and usable and deliver on its promises. I'm not jumping ship.

 

That's okay. I understand that. But if they want me back, they'll have to fix the EULA situation and actually deliver on the product. I don't think that's an unreasonable position to take.

Those additional restrictions in the EULA ... I don't think users are as safe from them as they may believe. It looks to me like they are structured so as to be invoked at any time, requiring anyone to buy additional licensing. In court, what will "streaming" and "on-demand" mean? Will it mean loading a scene? What about loading from asset bundles? How about the total number of pieces of content being limited to 20? Are the pieces whole characters, or does each mesh and material count as a piece? In which case, nearly every whole character would qualify as 20 or more pieces.

I don't know what Morph3D is thinking by imposing such restrictions, which would affect many games. It's not to protect their business from injury. It looks like they want to use enforcement of vague rules to sell more licenses, and they have not disclosed the price or terms of those additional licenses.

The plain fact is character art is cheap and getting cheaper all the time. The main competitor to MCS in Unity is free. There is nothing technologically advanced here, it's just meshes, textures, blendshapes, and shaders, plus a method of adding or subtracting clothing items and adjusting the blendshapes.

If MCS fails to properly deliver their product, by next year at the latest there will be another solution, and it will be better, less restrictive, and cheaper. That's what happened with that SSRR product, if you recall.

 

They seem to have remove the ability to create blendshape groups and set blendshape group values via code from the character manager and the documentation does not reflect this as of right now. This breaks the way I wrote MCSRTT to handle character races, if I cant find a way to create/ set blendshape groups again I might end up removing that feature from my asset or manually typing out every set blendshape line. I don't know why they moved this from the character manager (if it was moved and not removed). I am still looking into this but for them to remove a feature from something I have paid for and used without a clear replacement doesn't seem fair.

Edit: also the GetBlendshapeById method is gone and that was the basis for all the UI for the systems in the character creator, this update might have killed my asset.

 

Like Adam, I'm not in the practice of chiming in in the negative, especially on another developers thread, but Lysander makes some solid points(and I am one more than a little pissed looking back at what I spent, versus what I received.).

These are core issues and manipulative practices that are truly bad form, I will wait for Unity to chime in, until then I'm not giving Morph3D any more energy....or money for that matter.

I might remind people that the surest way to protest in a monetized situation, is a silent wallet.

Edit:

Also as hopeful was implying it is situations like this where something better always comes along, there is always someone that will see a need and fill a need, and create something new and amazing, sometimes it will just be their approach and philosophy that is the necessary missing ingredient.

I'm not going to shamelessly plug a certain AI, but know, that is the what, how, and why it came into being.

 

Apologies for the trimming of your quote (because I agree with every word), but THIS for emphasis:

Also please notice the actual cost of buying the two base figures has fluctuated between $100 and $0 within a year. This was always the game at DAZ3D too. Wait 1yr and they will give you the base figures for free, and never pay more than 50% for anything.

Morph3D are, of course, free to pick any and all price structures they choose… as erratically as they wish. And TBH thank you for actually putting a date on the Asset Tool free trial deadline. Hopefully customers finally get the chance to see if MCS works for them…. Who knows, maybe the eventual content will honestly be spectacular, and the real potential of MCS is to provide a shopping mall for game avatars.

It might help everyone emotionally to separate what MCS *is* vs the Super-Versetile Universal Game Figure That Pleases Everyone™.

Choose MCS because you like their all-in-one system, and you want to offer your players lots of attractive clothes that you do not wish to create yourself.

Do not choose MCS because you want a DIY indie figure to build on, or you love to kitbash, or you have skills to make a lot of custom parts – MCS is moving in the opposite direction.

 

With all do respect, your assessment falls incredibly short of the reality of what was promised, and failed to be deliver on, and moves dangerously close to blaming the victim as it is their fault they made a purchase based on how something was bait and switched.

An informed discussion over a clearly unsettling practice is not "kitbashing", and I for one won't be shamed for it.

@wetcircuit Know that this isn't an attack, but a forum by it's very definition is geared towards discussion, and people that don't allow their voices to be heard, can be assured their thoughts, opinions, and concerns won't be heard.

Dan.

Edit:

@wetcircuit , I also want to add I've followed your work, and REALLY liked backscatter, and blood disco, and enchanted garden.

 

Personally I would never use stock art in a commercial project and completely rely on custom art developed in-house, I only use stock art for prototyping/testing. I don't like that the artist tools are not unified with Unity's workflow and are in a separate application but if that is what we HAVE to use to make custom content we have to comply with their EULA or just not have tools for custom content. Originally I worked with UMA but found MCS way easier to use from a programming standpoint, unfortunately it is art tech. Maybe they should have designed the system to not need a external art toolkit to begin with and made making art more accessible like UMA.

 

"Kitbashing" is assembling something new from a mishmash of parts that may or may not be related to each other. It's a term for model making in the real world that has moved into digital modeling. I still agree with everything else you said. It's naive to totally ignore that EULA.

 

LOL, I'm not saying "ignore the EULA". I'm saying "don't pay money for this". At the very least don't pay full price!

Not sure how that get's turned around into "blaming the victim". There are plenty of instances in this thread where I called Morph3D out for STRAIGHT UP LYING at last year's introduction where they very carefully and misleadingly implied the Asset Tools would be available "tomorrow". I even posted the video and the time when you can hear them say it. Go question someone else's purity. LOL

If you really want an indie figure that can be all you need it to be, I don't know how you're going to get that from a single company that intends to hold close licensing strings and emphasize canned content. Reallusion did this with their Crazytalk/Unity plugin and that was a nightmare too. They wanted total control and they wanted it to "phone home" to confirm licensing and it didn't function half the time because of their own restrictions…. Eventually it wasn't worth it. Money down the drain.

In contrast to some of the other posts here, I *can* imagine a scenario where someone is paying a license fee per outfit per 20+ users because they are simply offering retail access to a "shopping mall" of clothes. That is not what I am interested in so I have gone back to Adobe Fuse which is a good base system with a free workflow for DIY add-ons and no licensing restrictions whatsoever. I did learn a few things from working with MCS, but I don't want to be limited to a restrictive system that's primarily about reselling other people's content. As a matter of fact, going back to Fuse I now appreciate how they chose a different path from MCS (I'm not saying "better, I'm saying "better for me"). As @hopeful said above. There are other options that are closer to the Unity indy developer spirit, and there's nothing that MCS is doing that can't be matched with other assets that give me more control (in stages, as I learn).

I'm sorry if you feel some need to shame me for not having an identical group-think opinion…. Oh wait, I'm not sorry. LOL My opinions are just fine. Thanks for the concern though.

 

Appologies, that is the first I've heard the term, so withdrawn, with humility.

Edit:

My mistake was posting beyond my initial one.

 

Every point of view is valid, and every use-case is another to consider.

 

Yeah, I was wondering last night if that's part of the purpose of the MCS DLL ... to phone home and report on how the product is being used. That would be the real reason why you don't get source code.

And if you think Morph3D is going to be generous to indie developers on the terms of the EULA, well, then what happens to your game after Morph3D is bought out by some other company? Still feeling safe? (That's just a general comment, by the way, not directed at anyone.)

The EULA needs to be a standard EULA that protects the rights of Morph3D over their property, so it can't be resold without their permission. They need to give game developers the space and the right to make whatever game they wish, no restrictions, otherwise the art is just a lure used by lawyers to catch the unwary.