Available on the Asset Store here…All Star Character Library Package
price:$150
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more shots…
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Looks good. I’m subscribing to this
: )
Very nice library of characters. The female models seem to outshine the male (plain) models.
Do you have a list of the 200 animations?
Are the 200 animations unique, or are they re-edits of previously created animations?
What does mecanim animations mean? Does that mean these characters are setup for mecanim humanoid rig?
How are the long cloth pieces rigged/animated? If by bones, are the bones layer masked?
How are the long hair pieces rigged/animated?
Are the eyes separate mesh objects, and rigged to look around and blink via bones/morphs?
How many bones does each character use?
A video of 2-4 of the characters performing the animations would be a nice advertising component. Especially if it showed the bones while the animations were playing.
Very ambitious pack. Looks like nice quality.
theAnimator2b, Thank you for your interest, these are great questions…
females vs males:
I agree the girls look better, I seem to enjoy working on them, however some of the best sci fi models start on the male skel. In terms of the ancients…barbarians and the like, the males are more plain as they are VERY generic…that’s dilerberatey so…if anything the girls are too detailed and not stereotypical enough in my opinion as they cannot fill a generic roll very easily. i have some more designs to remedy that. The general goal is to give a developer the abilty to create games or at the very least prototyping to secure project funding. There’s a ton of data in here and that saves an awful lot of time for a small group of indies that may be called upon to produce a vertical slice in a short time frame. I’m a bit off topic for the question, but it does relate to the general flow…I have more designs coming soon.
200 animations are not unique…they are a matrix built upon weapon(less) states…so there’s currently your VERY basic set of core animations x each weapon state and those states are as follows…
2H - 2 handed (longsword for example)
Bow
Spear
Dual - DualWield
SS - SwordAndShield
Pistol
Rifle
UN - unarmed
The animations for each are…
Idle
WalkF
Attack
CombatIdle
CombatRunF
CombatWalkF
Pain
DeathA
DeathB
DeathC
Mechanim questions:
All models and animations are currently on the basic machanim skeleton
There are no extra bones for anything. In all honesty I’m a complete noob to Mech so any advice, recommendations or requests are VERY welcome.
in addition to a regular 2 spine skel with 30 finger bones, there two weapon points that are used in all animations, 3 bow bones that are only used in bow animations, a one visor bone that is only present in the knight base file(requires a layer or coded rotation)
Cloth is split between legs, with a bit of clever masking into the leg texture underneath in a few cases. The amazons specifically the second one n green seems to work “ok” but not good in my opinion.Unless someone else helps me understand a better option, I’ll go an entire legacy set with full cloth support.my understanding is that if someone wants to use mechanims from another source that extra bones will not be present and present a huge problem for a coder for example.
Hair is currently rigged to the head neck and body, again…my understanding is that if someone wants to use mechanims from another source that extra bones will not be present and present a huge problem for a coder for example.
So in both cases…although those things are not rigged and animated to the best ideal methods…they are compatable with any mech-humanoid IK anims.
there are no eye bones in as yet…or other face bones…when I do add them…it will be a separate hierarchy that is linked to the head and each character will have their own facial “poses” or anims for those. This way I can have dramatically different faces.
videos
Yeah I definately need to get the Youtube shots for each out there, but I think getting the avatar interface for doing texture comines and draw call combines needs to take precedence. the below image shows all the characters in one scene. in editor, stats is reporting 90+ fps on an Athlon II 3.2 Ghz with a GTS 250.
I think fps will increase about 40% when each characters components are combined down into one draw call. Also the Avatar interface will allevaite anyone from having to bounce back and forth between the editor and a paint program as the interface will create the users specific choices into an atlas on the fly both in editor and at runtime. But as soon as that is done, videos will be next in line.
Some additional concerns and warnings…
these are NOT normal mapped characters, currently they are hand painted.
They are not cinematic quality, these are game assets intended as high performance game assets. If I do create normals for the entire set it will be part of a High Def pack that will be a separate purchase. That’s why I am calling this a system instead of a library…there are 7 components slated for development. Each is separate as not everyone needs every one of them. each component is $50. The library is the core, it is the heart of the system, all other components will require the library as a main component.
The texture source is 4096x2048, with the left half of the texture being used the the main body and the right half being used for heads, hair, eyes, extra upper body details, extra lower body details, weapons and shields I do not recommend using textures that big in an atlased system. In the “all characters scene” up top, I limited the max size in advanced texture settings to 2048, that seemed to work great. 30 characters in a scene without LOD’s yet was a good indicator that I was hitting the perfornance required for a good brawl.
These do not mip map well at all, I get bleed from all over the texture when mip mapping is on. Not to mention that mip mapping in general on characters looks like muddy crap in my opinion.
Some of the female hairstyles have noticable seams when viewed up close. This was very sloppy of me, but I am trying to maximize texel density as well as line up for vertical based hair sheen shaders(aniso). The solution is obvious and that is to have darker roots at the top of the hair “strip” and then assure that all the hairstyles utilize it that way. Again these are not desinged to be High Def cinematic models, these are game assets and are purely intended as being that and only that.
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Posted an alternate link(PayLoadz) to buy this library while we wait for the Unity folk to approve…(see top of page)
Hey Sidekicks - nice detail in your reply.
Check into layer masking for the extra bones. It’s well worth the research time to setup a workflow you can manage to get the extra bones that will control additional pieces/bones that the base humanoid rig can’t support, namely for your characters, the long cloth and hair.
As far as programmers having problems with the masked bones in addition to the base humanoid rig, I haven’t ever heard that before, and I’ve worked on several mecanim driven projects over the past couple years.
Keep up the good work. I like the art style you create.
Very nice pack, and i like the idea of having extras like high def pack as separate purchase. Sure get this one at some point.
For starter; it’s Mecanim not Mechanim, so therefore you can’t shorten it to mech 
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theAnimator2B, yeah, I’m probably going to have support for both types of base files…ones with the extra bones and one without…doubles the amount of data but there’s no solid way around it…
chelnok, thx and thx for point that one out…made me laugh, and I needed that
Just released, see up top for the Asset Store link
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Someone asked if it’s Unity 5 compatable…
I’m a very good store browser and somehow I missed this!
I like the models, esp. the comic book-like costuming, though I do wonder if maybe the textures are too low in resolution.
Thanks for your interest! There are 3 characters that need some more texture lovin’, the long sleeved male civilian and the two sci fi officers.
I realized after I wrote it that the “low res textures” comment might seem negative, and I’m glad you didn’t take it that way. What I’m thinking is that a few things might be going on here, like 1) it’s handmade art, so it is going to have more of an illustrated, low res look, 2) the sample pictures and videos may not be showing the characters at their highest resolution, and 3) well, if a customer can buy these and get the same image quality with a smaller texture size, that’s not necessarily a bad thing. Having the opportunity to shrink from a larger size to a smaller one is good.
As for the male characters being generic, I can agree with that, but in my opinion you shouldn’t design for that. Right now you can’t pick one of them out of a crowd. My preference would be to add more hair styles (like a variety of long hair types, afro, spiky hair, bald, comb over, etc.), scars, beards, racial types, dramatic expressions and so forth, so they can be individualized more and made more instantly recognizable to players. The females are somewhat more individualized, and that’s great, because it lends toward their use as recognizable characters in a story, and that’s an important consideration.
(I’m not saying you need to change things, I’m just speaking conceptually.)
Anyway, I do like what you’ve done with the pack, and I have it on my shopping list. 
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I agree with hopeful and will second his suggestion about hair. I think adding authentic hair styles to the guys might help individualize them a little better. Check some final fantasy concepts for some progressive leaning hair concepts.
Also it seems the female characters just have more spice and flavor to there outfits. Consider increasing the uniqueness of some of the male costumes to make them less plain and more appealing.
Anyway - this is quality work. The animations look good as well.
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