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By Peter (RL) - 4 Years Ago
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Dear Character Creator Users,
Firstly we would like to apologise for the delay in providing you with an updated version of the Unity Auto Setup Tool, and also for the lack of clear information and communication to the community.
We do understand that the current incompatibility of the Auto Setup Tool makes it difficult for you to keep up with your game development, and not supporting the CC Digital Human shader mapping makes it impossible to deliver high quality characters without visual inconsistencies. Because of this we have been urgently looking to provide the team resources required to make up for this shortcoming, but unfortunately this hasn't been possible.
Therefore, we have decided to make some development changes this time around. The following is the current plan which we’d like to share with you all.
- We won’t be dropping the support of Unity Auto Setup, instead, we still expect Character Creator to become one of the best character solutions available for Unity developers. To achieve this we will seek to outsource future updates, and to reach this goal we are already in contact with some professional programmers.
- If the outsourcing plans do not come to fruition as expected, we will update the Auto Setup Tool ourselves to be compatible with Unity 2020.3 LTS, and also share the open source of Auto Setup to the public in late June. Meanwhile, we will keep looking for programmers from the community to maintain and develop this tool going forward. Someone who is capable of working with shader graph will be highly welcomed. If you are experienced in this field and interested in this position, please contact us.
Again, we do apologise for not responding to your concerns earlier. If you have any ideas or suggestions on how we can make this tool better fit your needs, please feel free to share your comments in this thread.
Thank you for your understanding.
Reallusion Team
UPDATE: The source code has now been released. Please find it in the post below.
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By Rowlan09 - 4 Years Ago
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Peter (RL) (5/13/2021)
Again, we do apologise for not responding to your concerns earlier. If you have any ideas or suggestions on how we can make this tool better fit your needs, please feel free to share your comments in this thread.
Thank you very much for addressing this. For one I have to say that I personally as a customer don't see any reason why you make this tool locked source. I don't see the secret with it. It is totally understandable that nobody can catch up with the mess the Unity Pipelines are. If you'd make it open source, we could address the problems at least ourselves in a timely manner.
What's really bothering - after you fought through setting up the materials and the open mouth - is the shoulders. They are just wrong and sticking out in Unity. It's the first what people say is just plain wrong and make the character look ugly when you show them an imported character.
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By jerome.dipietro - 4 Years Ago
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I'm a bit worried that you're just looking to hire "Someone who is capable of working with shader graph"... I'm no shader expert but aren't shader graph authored materials more likely to be less performant than something built from scratch, and more low level, like Jason Booth would do?
I don't see the point of having great looking mats with complex SSS if they can't run in a game. I know HDRP is shiny and new but in a real game (especially VR which is my bread and butter) loading full fat CC3+ characters with all those highpoly submeshes and tons of materials just won't cut it.
I'm personally less fussed about materials (I think many people use their shaders of choice to replace the standard ones, so for example Robert Ramsay's HumanShaderPack) but would much rather you spent your time and money fixing things like - adding the new ARKit blendshapes to the GameBase meshes, and - improving the texture maps of those game ready exports (i.e. better normals, added SSSMap, etc). - Not to mention better support for Unity-ready LOD export. You're using InstaLOD tech, after all, which has a great plug-in for that (in their stupidly priced enterprise-only standalone package). * that's where MetaHumans really shines - not just the mats and facial rigging (which CC3 can now do more or less on a par) but in the auto lodding which actually makes their characters game ready.
Re. the shoulder issue @Rowlan09 mentions, the problem lies in the avatar definition. It's totally possible to fix it by rotating down the clavicle and then raising the upper arm bone back up to compensate. But why should I have to do that? I find that CC3 avatars are never properly in T-pose when importing into Unity. Now the question is whether that's a Reallusion issue or a Unity one, and I just don't know. Again, spending time on that would be way better than fixating on shiny high end rendering and surface level detail.
Has anyone at Reallusion tried to import a scene from iClone into Unity (characters and fbx animations)? It's not a one-to-one import. Far from it. But it should be. Otherwise why should I spend my time working in iClone rather than another tool?
imho Reallusion's always had this tension between CC3-to-iClone customers who render straight to video, and game developers who use the tech for character creation (because they don't have the time or budget to model and rig bespoke NPCs). There's also perhaps been some bias in the past towards Unreal users, but with MetaHumans there's now strong competition in that space. I'd love to see more focus on CC3 and iClone integrating more effortlessly into a Unity game development pipeline. If you really want "Character Creator to become one of the best character solutions available for Unity developers" that means not just a better Auto Setup (and better exporters), but also more functional and stable tools in the application itself (mesh edit tools that don't mess up vertex order, ability to flip element normals, ability to actually delete geometry, not just hide it). Currently I have to make a round trip to Blender just to fix things before I even get to Unity.
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By Necka - 4 Years Ago
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Despite all the "we are not dropping support" it smells a lot like preparing us about dropping support for Unity.
Epic dropped the big ball with their Meta Human software and there is nothing comparable for Unity, you have the chance to take on some market shares here by making the only proper Character Creator for Unity with whatever tools and custom shaders required.
But here we'll get an outside company/individual support which is definitely not on-par with the scale and scope of your tools.
Also, reading about shader graph is quite frustrating.
HDRP is clearly a niche solution at the moment
URP is far from being ready
I'm pretty 75% of actual Unity dev are sticking to Built-In render pipeline, if you drop the support on that, it's a huge blow.
Making the Auto setup open source is a good thing though, I hope some skilled programmer will take on that. I already created a tool for myself to clean up the textures folders (renaming/organizing) but that could be built-in a more advanced AutoSetup tool with customization upfront.
My biggest frustration at the moment is clearly not having proper Eyes and Hairs shaders. I never found any shader to re-create the nice eye-occlusion. And as for the hairs well I've been through around 12 hair shaders from the Store and from the community (git-hub etc.) and it's almost like each hair type needs a different shader.
What you need is someone to create Hair and Eyes shaders for Unity that have similar functionalities as the Reallusion ones.
This needs to be compatible with the built-in render pipeline as well as URP/HDRP if you want to cover all bases. Many asset store creators are providing support across all three render pipeline, I hope you'll do the same.
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By jerome.dipietro - 4 Years Ago
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That's a great point about shader graph only being URP/HDRP compatible. 100% agree that many devs (myself included) are sticking to built-in for a number of projects. *Please take this onboard and feedback to the relevant people @Peter
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By ziadabusaleh1996 - 4 Years Ago
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I have been waiting for this! Any ETA's I purchased too many Reallusion product's and I am a little disappointed with how you deal with unity.
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By tantrum - 4 Years Ago
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Some of the reported problems impacting Unity look like they're not necessarily in the Auto Setup Tool part (import hooks when bringing into Unity) but with the mesh/materials/blendshapes setup that comes out of the InstaLOD bake and export.
Will you still be looking to update and correct issues relating to that, or does this new effort / direction aim to include some of that process too?
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By Photonic - 4 Years Ago
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Yes, please do not forget the support for the built-in render pipeline, because most of us are using it right now. And we really would love to have hair shaders that look at least ok. And better support for Unity-ready LOD export would be great, too. Thank you!
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By coach1 - 4 Years Ago
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Artcue (5/18/2021)
Yes, please do not forget the support for the built-in render pipeline, because most of us are using it right now. And we really would love to have hair shaders that look at least ok. And better support for Unity-ready LOD export would be great, too. Thank you!
Can i ask what is the built-in render pipeline that you mention? Thank you
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By jerome.dipietro - 4 Years Ago
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https://docs.unity3d.com/Manual/render-pipelines.html
Traditionally Unity only had a single way of rendering to the screen but they then introduced the Universal Render Pipeline (URP) and the High Definition Render Pipeline (HDRP) each of which have characteristics aimed at targeting different platforms. HDRP is for high end desktops and approximates light in a more realistic way. URP is intended for low end hardware such as mobile. You can also script your own render pipeline if you so wish (and have the expertise. Very few people do this). The render pipelines have been in a constant state of flux since they were originally released as betas and many would argue that neither URP nor HDRP are quite ready for production (despite Unity's assurances) Because of this, or because we have long-term projects which we don't want to port, many of us stick with the so-called 'Built-In' render pipeline, meaning not using URP or HDRP, because of their limitations, buggyness, etc.
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By merph - 4 Years Ago
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I have been following a bunch of developers who use HDRP with CC3. CC3 is usually used for realistic human creation and Built-in RP is nowhere near to Unreal's graphics quality. HDRP is much better on performance and fidelity for high-end graphics. Here is what we have done for example:
This is with default hdrp shaders btw, no custom shaders yet. Not even wrinkle maps etc. It runs 60 fps+ on gtx1060 laptop.
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By e1_scheer - 4 Years Ago
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Just read this post as it was sort of lost in between the other threads.
You would think this kind of information would be pinned so there was no way to miss it.
I personally invested heavily into the iclone tools and solutions (money as well as time) on the simple premise
that Reallusion claimed CC to be the ultimate characters solution for unity developers. A high claim to be sure,
and lot of this is marketing of course, but I did trust Reallusion to update the existing tools and keep them
functional at the very least.
I do appreciate the information being presented in an open way, but at the same time I do have reservations on
what's in store for CC3 unity users. At first glance I'm pretty frustrated with the strategy being proposed going
forward.
First of all it's not just a question of updating the Unity import/export feature, it's also important to have any new
features added to CC3 truly tested and integrated into the game engine pipeline. Take for instance the new
acculips feature that was added recently but doesn't support the full export of that data into unity. The same goes
for a lot of other issues I have raised in the past about unity export(like exporting merged materials and support
for the mouth open shape when using LOD's) and that have stayed unresolved, now more than a year later. And
don't get me started on the "appearance editor" for CC3 characters, that was released more than a year after it
was offically announced as part of the tool-set, or blendshapes or the lack of support of newer versions of Unity.
When you compare that to the CC3/Unreal pipeline there is a world of difference,but I guess that's where the Epic
Megagrant comes in. Unreal have made a huge effort in making a bridge between external content creation apps
and it's game engine, and I for one am seriously looking at using it as well as metahuman for future projects.
So what's the solution here? I think if you take Unreal as an example, they are showing a real long-term commitment
to providing game artists with powerful tools and pipelines to make their job easier and more reliable. I am not seeing
the same kind of commitment from Reallusion and outsourcing the Unity exporter is just another sign of that.
I do hope Reallusion reconsider and set up a team of game focused tool developers at the core of the company and
not just as a marketing ploy or a way to broaden their potential user base with sexy looking features and tutorials.
Just my two cents
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By Necka - 4 Years Ago
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merph (5/19/2021)
I have been following a bunch of developers who use HDRP with CC3. CC3 is usually used for realistic human creation and Built-in RP is nowhere near to Unreal's graphics quality. HDRP is much better on performance and fidelity for high-end graphics. Here is what we have done for example:
This is with default hdrp shaders btw, no custom shaders yet. Not even wrinkle maps etc. It runs 60 fps+ on gtx1060 laptop.
FPS are meaningless for judging performances especially with a scene involving a single (naked) character and absolutely no environment. or systems.
Stats such as Drawcalls, CPU/GPU times are what will tell you how many of those characters can be in a scene and what happens once you include all the systems (lighting, reflections, post-processing, AI, Character movements, etc.)
I highly doubt you will maintain 60fps on a laptop GTX 1060 with all the things I mentioned. You don't have to test we are many Unity dev who tested this and yes you can maintain 60fps on high end hardware with a lot of optimization but the HDRP is just not fully production ready at this stage. You can see that just by looking at how much change from one version to another of the pipeline...
Yes built-in is not going to have graphics on-par with HDRP, that's quite obvious. But we are not all looking for the most realistic graphics.
Also many of us are not artists/modelers and that's one reason we use Character Creator. That's also the reason why some of us would buy some assets on the Unity store such as particle effects. Which are then not usable in HDRP of course because it needs particles/shaders that are meant for this RP.
Here, what is asked by the others who replied including myself: Proper shaders for Hairs/Eyes on built-in render pipeline to at least look good enough.
If Reallusion were to drop support for Built-In RP it would be a huge mistake.
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By merph - 4 Years Ago
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Honestly... There are also many other devs that use HDRP with cc3 for high-end graphics.
So dropping support for HDRP is no go either. But the problem is, built-in doesn't have many things that HDRP gets in by default. Such as SSS,
better PBR model for hair and skin shading etc. Those things are really really costly to develop for built-in RP. So without spending a huge budget, I see no way built-in receiving
good-looking character shaders.
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By Necka - 4 Years Ago
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merph (5/21/2021)
Honestly... There are also many other devs that use HDRP with cc3 for high-end graphics.
So dropping support for HDRP is no go either. But the problem is, built-in doesn't have many things that HDRP gets in by default. Such as SSS,
better PBR model for hair and skin shading etc. Those things are really really costly to develop for built-in RP. So without spending a huge budget, I see no way built-in receiving
good-looking character shaders.
I of course would never say that they should drop support for HDRP, that's quite clear
Built-in look extremely good in Unity and if you uses specific shaders for the skin such as Uber shaders (and using Translucency etc) you get perfect results.
The only missing shaders at the moment are Beard/Brows/Hair and Eyes (to include eye occlusion). I doubt that would result in a "huge budget"
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By ivendar - 4 Years Ago
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Can someone maybe post a screenshot with the settings or tutorial how to exactly set up the characters to look good in Unity 2021 ? No matter what I select in the standard hdrp shaders it doesn't look correct. Either the whole character is transparent, or blue or materials look ugly. There's really the need of at least some tutorial what's the best way to set characters up. Even if manual that's better than nothing. At the moment there's simply no tutorials at all for newer versions or I can't find them. Also with newest CC3 version for me it doesn't seem to export as good as it did a few versions before. If I import a old export to Unity I have at least set up materials, even if wrong. With the newer version materials doesn't have textures applied at all. Everything needs to be done manually. Also it seems that the export for Unity is missing LOD0.
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By TonyDPrime - 4 Years Ago
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What exactly is the issue, that it looks bad in Unity once it gets there, or that it can't get there in the first place.
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By planetstardragon - 4 Years Ago
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just a left field suggestion -
Blender seems to have fine tuned all it's connections to game engines with all the custom plug ins created by it's users.
why not create a fantastic workflow with blender, which would probably be much easier to achieve due to it's open source'ness, and let blender handle the details of sending the projects to all the other engines it already has plug ins for while also bringing focus back to the real time animation software aspect that comes with blenders eevee render engine ?
why not make blender the grand central station of inter-connectivity with iclone ? why do work that's already been done ?
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By MilesV - 4 Years Ago
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planetstardragon,
I like that suggestion. In one of the recent webinars (Light-side or Dark-side, I can't remember) It was mentioned that a significant amount of time was being spent on the CC3/Blender workflow. So, hopefully we see something Blender related on the upcoming roadmap.
Still, having a working auto-setup will be important, especially for all the indie devs RL is marketing to that might not have experience with or time to learn Blender.
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By planetstardragon - 4 Years Ago
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agreed, there will always be a caveat with each niche community, but again on that logic, when you focus on a project for Unity, you are focusing on one community, when you focus on compatibility with blender, you focus on compatibility with many communities and many kinds of softwares including hollywood.
I don't use blender often myself, but when I need it for a specific thing - like converting a file or doing 1 specific task ...it's fairly easy to learn that one specific task that has a plug in to help make it easier, there is no shortage of tutorials of how to do most anything in blender either. Time being the most valuable resource of all, with the large community blender has, there is a ton of time already spent on all things unity...
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By Rampa - 4 Years Ago
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@PSD
That has been addressed by one of our users. Works very well. ;)
https://forum.reallusion.com/475005/Blender-Auto-Setup
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By tantrum - 4 Years Ago
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Add blender into the pipeline as well? I want less tools to chain assets through, not more. That was part of the allure for investing/using reallusion products in the first place.
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By planetstardragon - 4 Years Ago
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well part of an issue I'm looking at is none of the set ups are without their issues - the time you spend fixing one thing, an update came out for another software breaking another set up ....where as blender has the community and man power to stay up on everything - the time spent on making a unity plug in is the time not spent adressing issues on unreal plug in ...and that kind of puts rl in an unfair - never catch up disadvantage ... but if blender was the main hub ...the blender community has them covered with latest trends.
and @rampa - ya ...I saw that, looks good, would like to see that grow more and next leveled.. .....I'm looking for a 1 button in iclone - no drama "Send project to blender" button, and there it is, just like that.
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By jerome.dipietro - 4 Years Ago
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Don't get me wrong, I like Blender and use it regularly but I would hate for it to become middleware into Unity. The rendering pipeline is very different to Unity's and I personally haven't found the perfect exporting workflow. It can be done but it's one extra hoop I'd really not have to jump through.
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By TonyDPrime - 4 Years Ago
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What is the logic behind introducing Blender into the CC to Unity flow, does Blender have a well-established pipeline to Unity?
That would be fascinating if you could export to Blender and then have Blender transmit to HDRP correctly because of some conversion feature available in Blender. Then again it makes absolutely no sense at all to introduce it unless it does have the established pipeline. Otherwise, you’d just be randomly throwing in Blender just for the same of using Blender. Like, does Blender have a special plugin for Unity or a special set of keys to the Penthouse Suite of Unity?
Or like if I go to Unity and I mention to the bouncer that “Blender sent me”, do I cut to the front of the line and get hooked up with all the good S#!+? 😎
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By planetstardragon - 4 Years Ago
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from a quick search, blender does in fact have more than one solution for exporting to unity, unreal - and not only that ...they have solutions for cryengine exporting - https://blenderartists.org/t/addon-blender-to-cryengine-bcry-exporter/678095
the RL team would be doing itself a favor by focusing on a tight connection to blender and not continue to brand itself as a developer of incomplete plug ins that have lots of bugs due to the constant updates of all these engines
again, being that blender is open source and has so much developer and community support, it is much easier to achieve 1 quality plug with blender that opens them up to everything and an army that supports it. you really can't say you would get that level support by developing for 1 game engine that will only break your work with their next update.
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By tantrum - 4 Years Ago
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Referencing an add-on not updated in 3 years (except to make it usable in Blender 2.8) isn't the sort of update frequency that seems to lend itself well to engines that - as you say - are having constant updates.
Even if due to exposure and usage, the demand for Unreal or Unity addins should suggest higher frequencies, it still adds another dependency and risk into the toolchain.
It will be no good to have great exports to Blender if they stop being great beyond that point or stops working altogether.
So, thanks but no thanks to that idea.
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By TonyDPrime - 4 Years Ago
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PlanetStar, I think the idea is awesome, but from your own testing does it (Blender) currently transfer over the DH shaders, as they appeared in CC3/iClone, into Unity, with a then likewise menu system to, now in Unity, access all of the DH shader parameters? I think this has to be the case for it to be worthy of an ongoing development.
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By planetstardragon - 4 Years Ago
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@tony - that's actually what I think would make blender the superior choice - once in blender you will have more flexibility to fine tune any plug in to any engine, more freedom to make improvements with more developer resources, than waiting for 1 plug in to one engine on iclone.
Ultimately it's RL's decision, I've just seen this movie before and ends up eating time only to be broken again and shelved in less than a year. - I would like to see better utilization of their time and progress that breaks this rut
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By Melvin (RL) - 4 Years Ago
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Hi Rowlan & jerome
I figure out why there is a shoulder mesh problem.
If you are using URP to build your project, the skin weight limited setting will be 2 bone in default.
However CC3+ Character needs less 4 bone. So just go to Unity project setting and change the skin weight to 4 bone or unlimited ,then it will be the right result.
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By ivendar - 4 Years Ago
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Well this is how things look now if you export with newest CC3 version and import to Unity. No materials set up at all. This was using the Unity export. And this will be really annoying to have to set up everything manually.
A older export of a different character from earlier CC3 version works better but showing issues especially with the hair. Some kind of transparency combined with blue/metallic shine ? Maybe someone can give a hint what you have to select for hair, skin and clothes and how to export to have materials set up correct. A tutorial would be great, I really can't find out what's wrong exaclty or how to get a good result.
Oh and btw. I already tried Double-Sided as well. It doesn't make a difference.
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By philwinkel - 4 Years Ago
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@ivendar To get materials auto-assigning, there is an Auto Setup script for unity, that you have to download, and import into your unity project. Note that it only looks for characters in the CC_Assets folder, so you need to export your character as FBX into that folder within the unity project. I believe after the auto setup runs, you can move the character out of that folder. If you have multiple characters in that CC_Assets folder, it may be overwriting things or messing things up.
I believe there may have been some additional setup required for the auto setup script, in order to configure it to use either the standard 3d shader, LWRP (aka URP), or HDRP. But basically you import one of those packages , depending on your unity project's render pipeline.
One problem you may run into is that the Auto setup script has not been updated by Reallusion for a while, and at the time of this post it does not officially support unity 2020 and beyond. But i am using it in unity 2020.3.7f1, and it seems to work to some extent - a character Prefab is creeated, materials are assigned, etc.
To fix the hair transparency problem (URP in my case), i had to select each of the hair gameobjects, and change their Materials to Surface Type: Opaque, and enable Alpha clipping. Then if the transparency on the hair looks bad, you can adjust the Alpha threshold to fix that.
This is just to get the hair looking OK with URP's standard lit shader - which obviously is not the best hair shader. For better results, I think you'd have to use a proper hair shader. In my case if I want to make the hair look better in URP, i will either look for a URP hair shader on the unity asset store, or make a hair shader (Shader Graph, Amplify shader editor, etc)
the Blue shine you're talking about is probably global illumination from your scene lighting. If you have a character imported into an empty unity scene with global illumination , the global illumination will be shining funny on your character. try getting some geometry into the scene , some reflection probes affecting your character, and the shine should be gone.
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By ivendar - 4 Years Ago
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@philwinkel Thanks for the infos. Tried using lighting now. :) But about the materials. I use Unity 2021.1.3f1 and there's no auto setup for any newer versions. I would be ok to do it manual for now if I would just know how. Your options look a bit different than what I can choose in HDRP. Here's best results I could get and tried both opaque and transparent and different alpha clipping treshold.
About the materials not setup for the other model. I think something is different in the export already as it looks bit different. It would be great if Reallusion or someone else could do some new tutorials how to export and what to select for Unity 2020 and 2021 and the different render pipelines. And yeah of course there are better shaders but there is also other assets on the unity store with good looking hair that use the standard shaders. So it is possible to create good looking hair even with those shaders isn't it ? And the old tutorials from Reallusion show it has been possible in the past. Just need to show us how to do it now.
Sorry that I'm not skilled about this. Just have to admit without a tutorial I'm lost. ;) But I also think it should be easier to use CC3 for Unity engine and have tutorials that work. Then it would be a great solution to use.
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By Rowlan09 - 4 Years Ago
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- We won’t be dropping the support of Unity Auto Setup, instead, we still expect Character Creator to become one of the best character solutions available for Unity developers. To achieve this we will seek to outsource future updates, and to reach this goal we are already in contact with some professional programmers.
- If the outsourcing plans do not come to fruition as expected, we will update the Auto Setup Tool ourselves to be compatible with Unity 2020.3 LTS, and also share the open source of Auto Setup to the public in late June. Meanwhile, we will keep looking for programmers from the community to maintain and develop this tool going forward. Someone who is capable of working with shader graph will be highly welcomed. If you are experienced in this field and interested in this position, please contact us.
Are there any news on this? Or do you need beta testers? I'm about to import a new character. Fixing everything manually yet again just seems to be such a huge waste of my lifetime.
But please do share the source either way. Or do you have a good reason to make the source locked and have everyone yet again wait months for automatable issues to be fixed or not fixed. It would make everyone of your customer's lifes so much easier. There's a community that can fix issues with Unity as well.
Targeting 2020.3 LTS only is a bad decision anyway.
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By ouertal.r - 4 Years Ago
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Rowlan09 (6/3/2021)
- We won’t be dropping the support of Unity Auto Setup, instead, we still expect Character Creator to become one of the best character solutions available for Unity developers. To achieve this we will seek to outsource future updates, and to reach this goal we are already in contact with some professional programmers.
- If the outsourcing plans do not come to fruition as expected, we will update the Auto Setup Tool ourselves to be compatible with Unity 2020.3 LTS, and also share the open source of Auto Setup to the public in late June. Meanwhile, we will keep looking for programmers from the community to maintain and develop this tool going forward. Someone who is capable of working with shader graph will be highly welcomed. If you are experienced in this field and interested in this position, please contact us.
Are there any news on this? Or do you need beta testers? I'm about to import a new character. Fixing everything manually yet again just seems to be such a huge waste of my lifetime. But please do share the source either way. Or do you have a good reason to make the source locked and have everyone yet again wait months for automatable issues to be fixed or not fixed. It would make everyone of your customer's lifes so much easier. There's a community that can fix issues with Unity as well. Targeting 2020.3 LTS only is a bad decision anyway.
Agree. I think we are quite a lot of actual Unity dev on this forum and some of us could update the Auto setup if we could have the source.
Just make it open source until you have your own internal stuff made up
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By wally.cunha - 4 Years Ago
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Did they manage to hire a developer?!
Any new information?!
Any update?!
It's hard to continue to believe in you if you don't even respond to customers... I think I threw money away...
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By Peter (RL) - 4 Years Ago
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wally.cunha (6/6/2021)
Did they manage to hire a developer?!
Any new information?!
Any update?!
It's hard to continue to believe in you if you don't even respond to customers... I think I threw money away...
Hi...
We gave an update in the first post of this thread along with the time frame for the end of June. Please see below in case you missed it.
"2. If the outsourcing plans do not come to fruition as expected, we will update the Auto Setup Tool ourselves to be compatible with Unity 2020.3 LTS, and also share the open source of Auto Setup to the public in late June. Meanwhile, we will keep looking for programmers from the community to maintain and develop this tool going forward. Someone who is capable of working with shader graph will be highly welcomed. If you are experienced in this field and interested in this position, please contact us."
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By e.l.thomas - 4 Years Ago
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Just wanted to say I appreciate you fixing this, we're going to be using CC3 and the render pipelines for quite a while. I also agree with open sourcing it, will be less hassle for you in the long term.
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By MilesV - 4 Years Ago
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Crossing my fingers and hoping we're still getting an update this month. :D Thank you for not forgetting about us Unity Devs and have a great weekend!
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By ajf412 - 4 Years Ago
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So far I've held off on spending $749 or $1190 + tax on CC3, as I've been dabbling with what CC3 can do. However, I will quote CC3's front page, because this is what got my attention in the first place:
"Character Creator 3 is a full character creation solution for designers to easily create, import and customize stylized or realistic looking character assets for use with iClone, Maya, Blender, Unreal Engine 4, Unity or any other 3D tools. It connects industry leading pipelines into one system for 3D character generation, animation, rendering, and interactive design."
To give a potential customer's perspective on this: I want to stick with Unity, because I already have a small fortune invested in their asset store. However... As Unreal continues to release free tools on a monthly basis, my library there has been growing at a pretty steady pace. It's mostly Invector, Pixel Crushers, and Procedural Worlds that is keeping me in Unity now. If I do move to Unreal, it wont be CC3 that I end up buying and using. I already have access to and been dabbling in Metahuman. As well as the "Human Generator" plugin for Blender. I mean, if I can't get meshes looking right in an easier way than using MakeHuman, then why would I spend a grand on RL software? I've now spent the past two and a half days trying to get hair and now eyes to look nice in built-in and HDRP settings, and I've gotten rather frustrated, which brought me to the forums. Now I arrive and find this post, reading the frustration of folks, and I am feeling relieved that I didn't pull the trigger on my shopping cart, and instead invested in more core game mechanics through the Unity Asset Store. I promised my wife that core gameplay would be completed before I purchased CC3, and I am, at the moment, thanking the good Lord that I have kept that promise.
You want a hopeful hobbyist Unity dev money? You have to give me the tools worth my time spent caring for other people's lawns and listening to my wife complain that I'm never home to spend time with her, and when I am, I'm on the computer trying to make a game so I can quit my lawn care business. Even now, I put off my church's lawn until tomorrow, so I can read this forum, to try and figure out what I'm doing wrong with my hair and eye shaders, only to find out that RL hasn't even been picking up a ball to be dropped in the first place for the last 2 years or so.
TLDR: As a potential customer and Unity user, I am disappointed in all that I have read in this thread.
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By MilesV - 4 Years Ago
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ajf412,
I'm happy I've invested in this software as you can do a lot of really cool things with it and it speeds up my workflow, especially if you invest in some of the paid addons. But I definitely understand and share your frustration. I'm hoping the source code is released soon so the community can make it compatible and feature rich. I've debated a ton on whether or not to switch to Unreal, but like you, I've invested in those same tools and many more over the years, so its hard for me to pull the trigger. The support for Unreal and the community in the forum make it so tempting. That said, as MetaHuman matures, I would not be surprised to see a lot more RL support for Unity and think it has the opportunity to make its way into a lot of unity dev pipelines.
For hair in unity, check out this thread: https://forum.reallusion.com/485296/Unity-Dev-Thread?Keywords=unity%20dev%20thread
You might also find this helpful: https://manual.reallusion.com/CC_and_IC_Auto_Setup_Plugin/ENU/CC_and_iC_Auto_Setup/1.0/03_for_Unity/What_does_Auto_Setup_do.htm
I think focusing on your core game mechanics for now is a smart idea. And hopefully when you're done, there will be a smooth process for sending your characters into Unity. But for now people in the forum have come up with some manual work arounds, such as importing your characters into 2019.3 with auto-setup and then copying over to a newer version. Not ideal I know...
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By Rowlan09 - 4 Years Ago
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MilesV (6/25/2021)
I think focusing on your core game mechanics for now is a smart idea. And hopefully when you're done, there will be a smooth process for sending your characters into Unity. But for now people in the forum have come up with some manual work arounds, such as importing your characters into 2019.3 with auto-setup and then copying over to a newer version. Not ideal I know...
The only smart idea is to re-evaluate the options. It's too much of a waste of time to depend on "hopefully". Fact is you know nothing, so don't try to defend. And also a fact is that the transfer to Unity still doesn't work, we already are at end of June. It's also a fact that people kept on complaining for quite some time and weren't listened to. Then MetaHuman (for free) shows up and all of a sudden there is at least a post about Unity. Workarounds are just a waste of time when there should be tools that should ease the workflow. I've invested a lot of money into CC3, SkinGen and what not. As of now this has become a total investment failure. If I'd get my money back I'd drop it all and wouldn't think twice and move on to solutions that are actually supported and which work.
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By MilesV - 4 Years Ago
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Projecting your anger on me doesn't do anything. But I get it. They got a lot of us to invest with the promise of a smooth AAA-quality workflow. I'm not trying to defend RL, and I'm not happy about all this either, but I'm already invested so I'm going to do what I can to make it work. Everything an updated version of the tool will do, are things you could figure out how to do on your own... even though you shouldn't have to after your investment based off their marketing. But if it keeps getting pushed back long enough I'll have the budget to re-evaluate.
And it is a smart idea to get your core game mechanics working and make sure you have something that is actually fun before worrying, investing, and spending too much time on the visual aspects of your game (that was my point for people who haven't invested yet). Once you have that, spend time evaluating your next steps/investment. But you're right, basing any of your development on the hope of the unknown and what isn't in your control is not a good idea. At the end of the day, you can spend all your time and energy being pissed off, or figure out how to accomplish your goal with the tools at your disposal.
Unfortunately, Unity Devs seem to make up a small portion of their user base and they have many products they're working on and promoting throughout the year. So, until there are a lot of Unity devs here, it is going to take us being the loud, squeaky, annoying wheel to get what we want/need.
As for MetaHuman, I've started playing around with it and it is very impressive. Competition has always either pushed people/businesses to innovate and work harder or die.
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By Rowlan09 - 4 Years Ago
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MilesV (6/26/2021)
Projecting your anger on me doesn't do anything. But I get it. They got a lot of us to invest with the promise of a smooth AAA-quality workflow. I'm not trying to defend RL, and I'm not happy about all this either, but I'm already invested so I'm going to do what I can to make it work. Everything an updated version of the tool will do, are things you could figure out how to do on your own... even though you shouldn't have to after your investment based off their marketing. But if it keeps getting pushed back long enough I'll have the budget to re-evaluate.
And it is a smart idea to get your core game mechanics working and make sure you have something that is actually fun before worrying, investing, and spending too much time on the visual aspects of your game (that was my point for people who haven't invested yet). Once you have that, spend time evaluating your next steps/investment. But you're right, basing any of your development on the hope of the unknown and what isn't in your control is not a good idea. At the end of the day, you can spend all your time and energy being pissed off, or figure out how to accomplish your goal with the tools at your disposal.
Unfortunately, Unity Devs seem to make up a small portion of their user base and they have many products they're working on and promoting throughout the year. So, until there are a lot of Unity devs here, it is going to take us being the loud, squeaky, annoying wheel to get what we want/need.
As for MetaHuman, I've started playing around with it and it is very impressive. Competition has always either pushed people/businesses to innovate and work harder or die.
That was simply towards your choice of defensive words like "I think" and "hopefully". You try to argue, but in fact you know nothing. You use "smart", but if you face the facts then it's definitely not smart to work on something without having the architecture set up including a time plan with effort and money. If a major part like character export multiplies in time, effort and money by the number of characters you create, then it's worth evaluating if the tool you use is worth it or not. Currently it's definitely not.
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By MilesV - 4 Years Ago
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I'm not trying to argue and text is a poor form of communication. I think we are interpreting things a little differently and I don't really disagree with what you've said. Your comments just seem contentious towards me for no reason, we clearly want the same thing, for this tool to work as advertised.
But whatever, have a good weekend and good luck on your game or whatever project you're working on.
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By gekido - 4 Years Ago
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There is nothing preventing you from USING CC with Unity - the FBX exporter works perfectly fine, everything comes across well.
The MISSING part is that you currently have to manually setup materials (and if you are more OCD, clean up the models a bit due to duplicate materials / textures) but nothing too dramatic).
CC / iClone is by far the best / most flexible character pipeline that exists out there - being able to get AAA characters created in a matter of minutes is pretty amazing no matter how you look at it.
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By gekido - 4 Years Ago
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For the Reallusion folks - I have a team that specializes in pipeline work like this - would be very interested in helping to improve the CC => Unity pipeline! Definitely hit me up and we'll figure out how to make it work!
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By Rowlan09 - 4 Years Ago
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gekido (6/26/2021)
There is nothing preventing you from USING CC with Unity - the FBX exporter works perfectly fine, everything comes across well.
The MISSING part is that you currently have to manually setup materials (and if you are more OCD, clean up the models a bit due to duplicate materials / textures) but nothing too dramatic).
CC / iClone is by far the best / most flexible character pipeline that exists out there - being able to get AAA characters created in a matter of minutes is pretty amazing no matter how you look at it.
Feel free to join here and prove me and others wrong:
https://forum.unity.com/threads/character-creator-3-tutorial-part-1-exporting-a-cc3-character-base-to-unity.599911/#post-7122614
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By ajf412 - 4 Years Ago
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gekido (6/26/2021)
There is nothing preventing you from USING CC with Unity - the FBX exporter works perfectly fine, everything comes across well.
The MISSING part is that you currently have to manually setup materials (and if you are more OCD, clean up the models a bit due to duplicate materials / textures) but nothing too dramatic).
CC / iClone is by far the best / most flexible character pipeline that exists out there - being able to get AAA characters created in a matter of minutes is pretty amazing no matter how you look at it.
While their assets are absolutely fantastic in their own program, I have to disagree with you about "nothing preventing" me from using them with Unity. The reason I am here, is to speed up my (solo developer) workflow, not bog it down with having to troubleshoot their "one system for 3D character generation." If I was troubleshooting their software, I would be expecting some kind of paycheck from them, not giving them my money. However, I'm not exactly the Michaelangelo of shaders and materials. I bungle my way around until it looks good, looking up YouTubes for help in the process. I already have to do that with my own assets, I don't want to have to do that with assets I've had to pay for to have it done for me. Kind of defeats the purpose. If we're just accepting haphazard characters for our Unity projects, then why not use UMA? For me, it's because UMA does not work well with Invector Third Person Controller. Thus, my search for another character generator, and why I'm here.
Reallusion doesn't need to listen to Unity users... unless they want our business. Then it's a requirement. Figured I would give my perspective on the issue, because I am the Unity user that found them, and is currently looking at their product and putting it into comparison with other products.
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By ajf412 - 4 Years Ago
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MilesV (6/25/2021)
ajf412, I'm happy I've invested in this software as you can do a lot of really cool things with it and it speeds up my workflow, especially if you invest in some of the paid addons. But I definitely understand and share your frustration. I'm hoping the source code is released soon so the community can make it compatible and feature rich. I've debated a ton on whether or not to switch to Unreal, but like you, I've invested in those same tools and many more over the years, so its hard for me to pull the trigger. The support for Unreal and the community in the forum make it so tempting. That said, as MetaHuman matures, I would not be surprised to see a lot more RL support for Unity and think it has the opportunity to make its way into a lot of unity dev pipelines.For hair in unity, check out this thread: https://forum.reallusion.com/485296/Unity-Dev-Thread?Keywords=unity%20dev%20threadYou might also find this helpful: https://manual.reallusion.com/CC_and_IC_Auto_Setup_Plugin/ENU/CC_and_iC_Auto_Setup/1.0/03_for_Unity/What_does_Auto_Setup_do.htmI think focusing on your core game mechanics for now is a smart idea. And hopefully when you're done, there will be a smooth process for sending your characters into Unity. But for now people in the forum have come up with some manual work arounds, such as importing your characters into 2019.3 with auto-setup and then copying over to a newer version. Not ideal I know...
I backed out of using HDRP, and returned to built-in rendering. Just running into too many issues with lack of support for HDRP. If I had others on my team, then I could continue with it, but as it's just me... I need to go where most of the support exists.
Thank you for the link! I will look into the manual some more. Still wish I didn't have to troubleshoot it though. If it's "just fix the materials..." then RL should have it done already. Kind of why we're paying them.
Great responses though. I hope they're listening.
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By Rowlan09 - 4 Years Ago
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Everyone who tells you it's "just the materials" is playing the issues down. Or do the mouth and shoulder issues here look like material issues?
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By Necka - 4 Years Ago
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Rowlan09 (6/27/2021)
Everyone who tells you it's "just the materials" is playing the issues down. Or do the mouth and shoulder issues here look like material issues?
The mouth issue is because of the animation you are using.
If your animation does not use the Jaw bone then the jaw bone will be by default open. If you don't need to animate the jaw just remove the bone assignment on your Avatar in Unity. If you need it sometime, then just add a layer in your character animator that is using only the head and create an empty pose animation with the jaw closed that is default for this layer (layer should be probably in override mode)
The shoulders, it depends on the characters. Sometime there is an issue sometime not.
And that's kind of a Unity issue too. You can go in your Unity avatar configuration to rotate a bit the should bone to correct the issue, it literally take 5 seconds per bone.
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By Rowlan09 - 4 Years Ago
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Necka (6/27/2021)And that's kind of a Unity issue too. You can go in your Unity avatar configuration to rotate a bit the should bone to correct the issue, it literally take 5 seconds per bone.
Can you show that in a video how you re-export a modified character, navigate there and rotate each bone "a bit" or multiple bits until full correctness within "literally" 5 seconds per bone? Because that's the full steps, not just the end of a process. Thank you!
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By shikha.chaganti - 4 Years Ago
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With the script not working properly, I have rolled out my own script doing:
* Automatic avatar setup to fix the mouth
* Automatic material setup
However, it would be great to have at least the source code of the Auto Setup plugin, so people can fix their scripts accordingly.
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By Necka - 4 Years Ago
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Rowlan09 (6/27/2021)
Necka (6/27/2021)And that's kind of a Unity issue too. You can go in your Unity avatar configuration to rotate a bit the should bone to correct the issue, it literally take 5 seconds per bone. Can you show that in a video how you re-export a modified character, navigate there and rotate each bone "a bit" or multiple bits until full correctness within "literally" 5 seconds per bone? Because that's the full steps, not just the end of a process. Thank you!
I really have no time for a video. I don't get your point about "re-export a modified character"
There is no re-export. You export your character to FBX into Unity, once processed by AutoSetup you move it out of the CC Asset folder. Then on the FBX you go into the avatar rig configuration
And from there you adjust the bones to fix them, it's really 5sec per bone I mean it's nothing complex or crazy.
Once you're done you click apply and done.
Also I've added in Green where you can remove reference to the Jaw bone if you don't need it in your animation. If you do then it's up to you to handle that on the Animator level. It has nothing to do with Character Creator, you'd have the issue with any character which have a Jaw Bone referenced in the avatar rig.
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By staron - 4 Years Ago
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Necka (6/28/2021)
Rowlan09 (6/27/2021)
Necka (6/27/2021)And that's kind of a Unity issue too. You can go in your Unity avatar configuration to rotate a bit the should bone to correct the issue, it literally take 5 seconds per bone. Can you show that in a video how you re-export a modified character, navigate there and rotate each bone "a bit" or multiple bits until full correctness within "literally" 5 seconds per bone? Because that's the full steps, not just the end of a process. Thank you! I really have no time for a video. I don't get your point about "re-export a modified character" There is no re-export. You export your character to FBX into Unity, once processed by AutoSetup you move it out of the CC Asset folder. Then on the FBX you go into the avatar rig configuration And from there you adjust the bones to fix them, it's really 5sec per bone I mean it's nothing complex or crazy. Once you're done you click apply and done. Also I've added in Green where you can remove reference to the Jaw bone if you don't need it in your animation. If you do then it's up to you to handle that on the Animator level. It has nothing to do with Character Creator, you'd have the issue with any character which have a Jaw Bone referenced in the avatar rig.
What rotations do you set the bones to?
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By Necka - 4 Years Ago
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staron (6/28/2021)
What rotations do you set the bones to?
There is no standard answer for this, for some characters I don't need to touch it, for others (usually male) I need to adjust, but that something you visually see, you can always compare with some standard character free assets from Unity to see how the shoulder/arm should look like
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By hjohnsen - 4 Years Ago
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Photonic (5/18/2021)
Yes, please do not forget the support for the built-in render pipeline, because most of us are using it right now. And we really would love to have hair shaders that look at least ok. And better support for Unity-ready LOD export would be great, too. Thank you!
I think that the Auto Setup tool should not have hard coded material mapping ; I don't want to use a standard shader for the skin for example (whatever the pipeline in use), I want it to use the material that I have preset. So some additional configuration is welcome to reduce the work on character import.
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By ajf412 - 4 Years Ago
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Some fixes that I have found:
Open Mouth: Set "CC_Base_JawRoot" as a child to "CC_Base_UpperJaw" and I *believe* that the mouth will still work with animations that use it. Haven't tested this, but it does close the mouth without deleting the bone, at least.
Hair translucency Built-In: Set rendering mode to "Fade" on hair and scalp and Advanced Options > Render Queue for scalp at 2999.
Hair translucency HDRP: Set "Transparent depth prepass" to true.
Shoulders: Rotate down and lift location of clavicle.
Eyelashes: Export them as a separate piece from CC3, so you can set their options separately in Unity.
Still not sure how to fix the eyes yet, but I *think* I'm getting close.
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By wally.cunha - 4 Years Ago
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So... It's the end of June and so far nothing has been said.
Can I already request a refund?
I don't think I can continue to support and invest my time in a product that doesn't respect its customers.
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By michael.pickering - 4 Years Ago
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wally.cunha (6/29/2021)
So... It's the end of June and so far nothing has been said.
Can I already request a refund?
I don't think I can continue to support and invest my time in a product that doesn't respect its customers.
I've felt much the same way since... well, basically since I bought CC3 myself and tried importing into Unity!!
FWIW, if the powers that be are serious about finding developers to update the Unity setup scripts, they should post something on this thread! I actually have a small team of developers so might be able to spare one or two to do the work -- especially given that we're roadblocked getting any new character imports working anyway!
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By Necka - 4 Years Ago
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michael.pickering (6/29/2021) especially given that we're roadblocked getting any new character imports working anyway!
How so?
If you use 2019.3 or 2019.4 built-in or hdrp it works fine. Just as a gateway.
Once you're done just copy the character folder to your desired Unity project and it's all good. Consider it a sandbox project. You most likely need one anyway to test things before sending to your productive project.
I've imported a lot of characters (clothed, with smart hair, beard and brows as well) recently into Unity 2020 and 2021 and had no road blocking issues.
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By Necka - 4 Years Ago
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michael.pickering (6/29/2021) especially given that we're roadblocked getting any new character imports working anyway!
How so?
If you use 2019.3 or 2019.4 built-in or hdrp it works fine. Just as a gateway.
Once you're done just copy the character folder to your desired Unity project and it's all good. Consider it a sandbox project. You most likely need one anyway to test things before sending to your productive project.
I've imported a lot of characters (clothed, with smart hair, beard and brows as well) recently into Unity 2020 and 2021 and had no road blocking issues.
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By Rowlan09 - 4 Years Ago
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Peter (RL) (5/13/2021)
If the outsourcing plans do not come to fruition as expected, we will update the Auto Setup Tool ourselves to be compatible with Unity 2020.3 LTS, and also share the open source of Auto Setup to the public in late June. Meanwhile, we will keep looking for programmers from the community to maintain and develop this tool going forward. Someone who is capable of working with shader graph will be highly welcomed. If you are experienced in this field and interested in this position, please contact us.
Reallusion Team
Any update on this? It's 30th of June.
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By ajf412 - 4 Years Ago
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Rowlan09 (6/30/2021)
Any update on this? It's 30th of June.
I feel like we're all foaming at the mouth at this point. lol I can only imagine what I'd feel like if I had made the purchase.
My wife has just said, "Buy what you need to, just get the game finished." My cart has had 3 items in it for a couple days as I ponder my situation.
I'm waiting for July 6th sale at Unity for their 3D assets to go up on their big sale. CC3 is on their "Mid-Year Special" that ends today, but they haven't posted on this thread since opening it, except to point back to the original message. I don't want to miss a sale on a software package that may be very important to my pipeline, but I wont waste hundreds of dollars on something that doesn't get the customer service that is expected, ESPECIALLY when the update THIS MORNING is:
Fixed:
Hair exported to Unreal with vertex color applied will adversely influence the physics weight map settings, giving the wrong result. So, apparently, Unreal is being actively supported, but not Unity? Did Reallusion apply for an Epic mega grant? Why yes... yes they did. Reallusion Receives Epic MegaGrant Award – Reallusion MagazineThe puzzle is coming together for me at this point. I know money talks, and Epic is throwing around a lot of it right now. But peeving off your customers is never a good idea. I just wanted to say that Unity devs have a bit of money too, and we're NOT developing MetaHuman competition. Give us some love. |
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By staron - 4 Years Ago
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Necka (6/29/2021)
How so?
If you use 2019.3 or 2019.4 built-in or hdrp it works fine. Just as a gateway.
Once you're done just copy the character folder to your desired Unity project and it's all good. Consider it a sandbox project. You most likely need one anyway to test things before sending to your productive project.
I've imported a lot of characters (clothed, with smart hair, beard and brows as well) recently into Unity 2020 and 2021 and had no road blocking issues.
Yes, it can of course be imported, but requiring us to take these steps (using several Unity versions, rotating bones to arbitrary numbers etc) aren't really acceptable when we've paid a lot of money for a product that claims to support Unity.
But I think what upsets people the most is the silent treatment we've been given for a year now.
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By MilesV - 4 Years Ago
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They're saying that they'll continue updating auto-setup and share open source code in early July, in this thread. See the link below for that announcement, some upcoming iClone8 features, and a CC4 tease:
https://forum.reallusion.com/486954/What-to-Expect-in-the-Second-Half-of-2021
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By ajf412 - 4 Years Ago
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I like that something is mentioned, but they didn't really say.... anything, really. They just repeated the original message from this thread. "We might do something, or we'll make it open source and hopefully somebody else will do something."
What I would like to read is, "We've heard you, we're working on hair, eyes, shoulders."
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By Necka - 4 Years Ago
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staron (6/30/2021)
Necka (6/29/2021)
How so?
If you use 2019.3 or 2019.4 built-in or hdrp it works fine. Just as a gateway.
Once you're done just copy the character folder to your desired Unity project and it's all good. Consider it a sandbox project. You most likely need one anyway to test things before sending to your productive project.
I've imported a lot of characters (clothed, with smart hair, beard and brows as well) recently into Unity 2020 and 2021 and had no road blocking issues.
Yes, it can of course be imported, but requiring us to take these steps (using several Unity versions, rotating bones to arbitrary numbers etc) aren't really acceptable when we've paid a lot of money for a product that claims to support Unity. But I think what upsets people the most is the silent treatment we've been given for a year now.
Yeah silent treatment is annoying but again I don't find the Unity version to be an issue. The shoulder topic is something you'll always have to deal with if you have characters of different proportion etc. I highly doubt this would be on CC side of things, but I might be wrong. Rotating bones has always been a topic for Animation retargeting, for any game engine or 3D modeling software.
And again, for any serious project you should never have tools such as Auto Setup or other tools that could interfere with your FBX files within your productive project.
Sandbox projects are there for this kind of things. A productive project needs to be sort of a sanctuary were nothing can mess it up
But hey, if one extra step, that is also a protective step, is too much for you then it's completely understandable.
I personally don't care about the version issue. I really care about Reallusion providing some custom shaders for Unity to be on-par with their CC shaders (skin, eyes, hair).
That would be the thing that would save time for everyone as we could have a real 1:1 quality result from CC to Unity (outside of Scene lighting of course)
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By michael.pickering - 4 Years Ago
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Necka (6/29/2021)
michael.pickering (6/29/2021) especially given that we're roadblocked getting any new character imports working anyway! How so? If you use 2019.3 or 2019.4 built-in or hdrp it works fine. Just as a gateway. Once you're done just copy the character folder to your desired Unity project and it's all good. Consider it a sandbox project. You most likely need one anyway to test things before sending to your productive project. I've imported a lot of characters (clothed, with smart hair, beard and brows as well) recently into Unity 2020 and 2021 and had no road blocking issues.
Thanks Necka for your helpful suggestion. I didn't know if something like that would work, glad to know that it should. I am in fact targeting HDRP, and my reason for stating that we're roadblocked is that so far, essentially nothing has fully worked as documented by RL, and even worse is their total lack of response to any of our requests for clarity! Frankly, their complete lack of support for the Unity export pipeline is shameful! At the very least they could provide some documentation about how to complete an export for a character using the latest CC release, into some specified Unity version, in a reliable and repeatable way!! As far as I can tell, the only such documentation that's available has been provided by other users such as yourself!!
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By MilesV - 4 Years Ago
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I like that something is mentioned, but they didn't really say.... anything, really. They just repeated the original message from this thread. "We might do something, or we'll make it open source and hopefully somebody else will do something."
What I would like to read is, "We've heard you, we're working on hair, eyes, shoulders."
Yeah, it would be nice to have more information like that. Sadly, I've come to expect moving timelines with RL. So, don't be surprised if early July becomes late July. After a couple of years of delays on the wrinkle system I assumed it would come out in the next versions of the software, and they just confirmed that.
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By wally.cunha - 4 Years Ago
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I contacted support and told the whole story, I asked for a real appointment regarding the deadline for the feature that doesn't work. If it was not possible to give a deadline, what would the refund process be like if I bought in February.They preferred to support the refund request even outside their policy, meaning there is no deadline for that! It's July and nothing more has been said!
I recommend to everyone who has this problem to request a refund in view of this, repurchase the tool later if they listen to your community. Only sadness and regret here. :/
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By Necka - 4 Years Ago
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Don't be over dramatic with the sadness and regret bit.
The stuff isn't perfect but it's working fine overall. I don't think asking other people to request a refund is a clever thing to do. Let people deal with that with their own terms.
Things are moving forward. The guy behind the Blender pipeline tool is clearly working on something great for Unity (see Unity dev thread).
I don't see the point of getting a refund and re-buying a month or so later. I mean CC3 and other the other tools are still amazing and you can prepare a lot of things for your actual game in the meantime.
Also, you can still import characters in Unity with 1 extra step, which is like 1 minute in the whole pipeline once everything is setup.
I'll repeat it for those who wonder but:
Setup: A sandbox project in Unity 2019.3 or .4 || A productive project in 2020.X or 2021.X
CC 3.4 => Auto setup in your sandbox project => copy the configured character folder in your 2020.x or 2021.x project => done, rinse and repeat.
You can even setup a little script or batch to automatically sync the configured characters to your productive project if you want to save a copy and paste.
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By Rowlan09 - 4 Years Ago
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Necka (6/30/2021)
And again, for any serious project you should never have tools such as Auto Setup or other tools that could interfere with your FBX files within your productive project.
Sandbox projects are there for this kind of things. A productive project needs to be sort of a sanctuary were nothing can mess it up
But hey, if one extra step, that is also a protective step, is too much for you then it's completely understandable.
For any serious project you don't waste time with ridiculous and repetitive steps like this and instead rely on proper working automatism. Time is money. And it would be nice if you could stop playing down the issues. If you change the shoes it's another step. If you change the jacket it's another. And then you have to do the "literal" 5 seconds rotation as mentioned above. Per shoulder. While moving the mouse alone to the target position and rotating takes a few seconds, let alone fine tuning it. Plus fixing the materrals. But hey, it's just one extra step ... and another and another. For every single character one creates.
It's always the same with that kind of fanboyism when some people just can't accept that their software doesn't work and is unsupported. Or do you read anything official other than the broken promise in this thread from reallusion? But if you want to waste your time with steps that can easily be automated, it's fine. But there are also others that don't want to. And then there are new customers who just don't know why the purchased export to Unity doesn't work. Been there, done that. It's not funny how many people join and help you on discord while you realize that the software is bugged and unsupported, because they keep telling you they complained and weren't listened to.
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By wally.cunha - 4 Years Ago
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I'll be dramatic if part of the marketing that made me buy the software doesn't match reality. I wasted my time studying a tool that becomes useless for me.
Even doing what you saying the software just doesn't work! I can't publish CC3 shaders in an HDRP project, the auto-setup has a lot of problems when configuring the material for clothes and hair and this in the 2019 version, that's when it sets it. Try creating a material on the substance and importing it into CC3 and then import into Unity... For each character I need to spend a huge amount of time making fine adjustments, and even without using post processing the results of what you see in CC3 and Unity are totally different.
I've tested it with several characters, it seems that autosetup always uses the same shaders with the hard-coded options instead of using what was tweaked in CC3, the result is not nice.
This same flow works perfectly for Unreal.
If I'm going to use Unreal I honestly don't think I need CC3 with MetaHuman coming out. With the refund I can redo a good part of the project in Unreal and invest the money and assets or addons for blender or UE4.
Working around what the company promised and you paid for is completely stupid.
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By Necka - 4 Years Ago
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Rowlan09 (7/2/2021)
For any serious project you don't waste time with ridiculous and repetitive steps like this and instead rely on proper working automatism.
If you are in the game dev industry you absolutely know that a LOAD of things are stupid and repetitive. And for that you should be prepared to create your own automatism when they don't exist.
I never said it's perfect, but some things take time.
There are tons of products that don't have a proper pipeline with Unity. Including popular 3D modeling software, animation software and cloth designing. Oh I could absolutely include Substance here because tuning is always required in many situation.
But those examples can all be automatized and you, as a Unity dev can take things in your hands. Or someone from your team if you're an artist and have programmers working with you.
In my case, I created a simple script that adjust all the materials to what I need in my project, with my own shaders (not literally my own, but the one I need to use) and this is now automated after the auto setup ran. It also rename all textures, materials and tidy up the folders, deleting all unused textures and having a hierarchy that suits me
I can't ask RL to make this for me, it's tailor made.
I created automation to put all blend shapes in expression sets that I created and that I need for my project's character so they can have pre-made facial expression so I don't need to do that for each and every characters.
I'm pretty sure the shoulder rotation could be coded as well based on some constraints, but literally taking 5 (ok let's go: 10 if you want) seconds for 2 bones isn't going to ruin my life (if you plan on importing 200 characters you need to automatise that, yes) .
But anyway in many cases you would require to do that for proper animation retargeting anyway. Same in UE.
Game dev isn't easy, and there are some studios around who are using or used CC Characters, they just decided to not rely on RL for this.
It works, it's not a show stopper, it's just some extra work and in most cases the extra work can be automatized to be tailor made for your own project.
UE has indeed more attention, but I didn't pay the UE pipeline plugin for $300 or whatever the price is. The auto setup is a good baseline, the rest is up to the dev.
Yes RL is slacking on this topic, that's absolutely true. But honestly that could be worse. There could be nothing and like with other 3rd party tools you'd need to setup everything by hand.
Are you importing some assets from Blender or else? if so you must know that you have to manually setup things in Unity for those assets. Or you'll automate it yourself and just speed it up.
Is RL reliable on the Unity pipeline topic? no they are not.
Is the product you paid for working as intended? yes it does. CC and Iclone are working standalone.
The Auto setup is in a poor state but again, things take time.
Does your game release date rely on the auto-setup working in Unity 2020+ ? if so I would question your decision to rely on 3rd party without a direct support contract (which you can't get from RL if I'm not mistaken)
Rely on what you know and have, not on roadmaps from RL in the middle of a pandemic (especially when RL doesn't deliver in time outside of a pandemic situation)
If your game is in a stage where all the design, logic, script (story etc.) has to be made, then you have time and can work with placeholders for characters if you really don't want to go with the extra steps.
At the end I was just trying to explain that it's over dramatized.
And I'm almost 40, I'm not what you call a fanboy, I spend my money on what I know and I do my research. I won't consider myself a fanboy if I spend $2K+ on a product which I researched and studied first. I just know what I bought, pro, cons, limitation.
I'd consider myself a fanboy if RL would have given me that money to promote their products. I don't know another way.
My point here on the last bit was: don't go on a personal level with me, that's irrelevant to the whole topic.
That said, I hope you can get a refund for this product and move on with another solution, hoping that RL will deliver to you all the things you need for your project. And I wish you success with that project.
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By wally.cunha - 4 Years Ago
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@Necka, I didn't take it personally.
But the problem is that my investment in CC3 compared to a similar tool in blender is much higher.
One of the features that made me buy the CC3 was the autoSetup which is very manual in blender.
I tried to do the workarounds in CC3, but there was always one more step, first the materials, then the clothes, then the shoulder, then the mouth that doesn't close, Daz's animations that never go right (coming from blender this was simpler ) in the end the maximum I got was very different from what I saw in CC3 even more when using materials of substance (beautiful in CC3, horrible in Unity).
So I spent usn 2 months studying the tool I used to buy from the demo videos and the result was very different, very manual...
If it's so manual I can just invest a lot less money and do everything in the blender, the blender allows you to do automations in python and it's relatively simple...
Another thing that disappointed me is that RL does not have a hair creation tool, in fact they are doing a promotion where you get the blender hair tool. Again, the lack of support for some features is a problem for me, because I can always spend less.
Yes I regret the time I spent because I could just continue in the blender as I already had a few things, but the headshot and auto setup caught my attention....
Anyway, I asked for a refund, fingers crossed. :)
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By Necka - 4 Years Ago
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Might be that it wasn't the right tool for you at the end.. the autosetup isn't that magical and some things are also inherent to Unity lacking a LOT of stuff too (compared to UE)
Just one point for the mouth open topic: that's going to be with absolutely any character (CC3 or not) that has a Jaw bone referenced in its rig and no animation using it, it's part of the game engine and can be solved for all your characters at once by creating an empty animation using only this bone
I don't know for how long you're using Unity but you might also be missing some knowledge on that front? (weren't you the guy coming from UE ?) that would make sense too
Cheers, good luck with your projects anyway
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By Peter (RL) - 4 Years Ago
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For those that may have missed it, we announced at the end of June that we will provide the open source for developers to quickly customize the Auto Setup tool for their projects. This doesn’t mean that Reallusion will stop updating the Unity Auto Setup plugin. Reallusion will continue updating it and sharing source codes to the community beginning in July. More information will be revealed on this soon.
Thank you all for your patience over this matter.
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By vadim+2 - 4 Years Ago
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Peter (RL) (7/5/2021)
For those that may have missed it, we announced at the end of June that we will provide the open source for developers to quickly customize the Auto Setup tool for their projects. This doesn’t mean that Reallusion will stop updating the Unity Auto Setup plugin. Reallusion will continue updating it and sharing source codes to the community beginning in July. More information will be revealed on this soon.
Thank you all for your patience over this matter.
A bit out of this topic, but do you guys have any plans on releasing open-source files for UE Auto setup or\and LiveLink as well? I think it would be awesome to be able to modify it or write some kind of a plugin in addition to existing features.
For example, I have created a dynamic wrinkles system, but the installation is complex and unintuitive for common users. I think it would be awesome to release my own version of the Auto setup plugin so it could be installed automatically in just one click.
And last but not least, the community will be able to compile the plugins to the newest versions of the engine (5.0 EA) before the official release. It might save some resources for the Reallusion team and improve the product for the community at the same time.
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