My appeal on the Unreal forums got results, the fight was huge, but and, it seems, it worked, at least to give (Epic) the beginning of the year 2022. They created what they call ‘MetaHuman’.
Here’s one of the hardest things to craft in games - and I look at games as a ‘media’ and not merely a ‘waste of time’ or ‘slots’ - characters. Far from getting rid of modelers (I’m one, I work crafting characters in Zbrush and Maya) but it’s time for the game industry to take bigger leaps and increase the game market that, with each passing day, becomes more and more monopolized by rare companies, rare workers (it is one of the most layoffs in the world, ruining the lives and families of people across the globe).
My call is clear and objective, for Unity developers to facilitate the creation and implementation of tools that make ‘making games’ and something ‘not only fun’ but effective. It is time to take ‘bigger steps’ and with a view to the massification of this means of communication (games/virtual reality).
Well, indeed, it’s not a topic that everyone likes, but a necessary one.
Metahuman, as far as I’m aware does not currently offer ability to load custom clothes.
Also when you’re using a “Character kit” you’ll risk all your characters looking “samey”. The closest example to it is the fairly recognized “Daz Look”.
Frankly, you’re free to take the first steps yourself. In VR Alone ther are few widely open niches that nobody took. Also, “massification of the means of communication” is not necessarily a good thing. We have Facebook, for example.
Yeah feel free to go ahead. I would probably never touch it as it’s going to be way too far away from properly prepared content for a game.
Put it like this: I reject pretty much everything on asset store as being not good enough or actually costing me more time than it saves. Anything that’s community led is pretty much an instant nope from me.
This is just because this stuff is pulled in so many different directions by people of all kinds of skill levels, experience, needs and so on as to be effectively worthless in a real scenario.
To find out what’s worth it in a real scenario requires a) money b) a live game - Unity has a but not b, so even Unity’s own efforts fall short for years sometimes, before they’re finally robust and practical enough to use, since feedback takes years if you’re not doing it inhouse.
If it’s not an actual game but a dirty internal project, then it doesn’t count, and never will since it doesn’t have skin in the game at all = almost no budget, and no meaningful results.
If the community is going to do this, then I think it would be useful for hobbyists.
If you look at Unity as an editor and how it progressed in the last… lets say ~5 years, do you really want Unity Technologies to make the content creation tools that you use to make your games? Really? From the bottom of your heart? Is this reallythe thing holding Unity back as an engine?
I don’t think MetaHuman is that relevant for most forum goers here. That fidelity also has to be matched in your environments and your custom animations at which point you’re likely dealing with photogrammetry and motion capture all of which are expensive and time consuming endeavors.
Could be nice for some archviz virtual assistants where a certain character creator look doesn’t really matter or for large studios that have the resources to feed the system their own unique assets and data. Not really relevant for the regular indie imo.
Metahuman is far from perfect to be subject of drool.
Free Quixel Megascans, Hair Strands, Lumens, and Nanite however…
Emphasize on Lumens. I was just blown away with how much creative freedom I can have when everything works as it physically should without limitations. Emissive materials being able to light up environment and cast shadows in real-time. Bounce light and global illumination lighting up indoor scene as it should.
Nanite saving countless hours and trouble of retopo and LOD creation workflow for static mesh.
Meanwhile URP is limited to having 8 lights in view. (It was just recently raised to 16)
But also, reality check, there are basic things in Unity that are broken, its workflow is a mess split 5 ways, half the things are abandoned in favor of DOTS and DOTS is nowhere near ready. Like if Unity released its own Metahuman like system right now I think it would be the biggest joke ever.
What’s the saying, walk before you run? Something like that.
Give it 10 years. If I haven’t fulfilled my dream of buying out Unity and shutting them down by then, maybe they’ll have a base set of features mature and stable enough that you all will be able to able to ask about Metahuman like features for your grandkids to enjoy one day.
There is a difference between someone who loses a huge developer base and someone who wins: those who lose are always skeptical of change - they prefer, out of fear, not to change, not to innovate. Nor do I expect - apart from the traditional disrespect of this moderation - something like ‘arguments to the contrary’. For now we will stay, me and my team, we are 8, with Unreal exactly and also for that reason.
Hi how are you? I’m just a volunteer moderator, and not Unity staff. So please don’t think that this is Unity’s view point. Also, why are you replying to my reply that is for someone else? Good day.
I disagree. Creating a character by itself is not a difficult process. Creating a character and then setting up a proper character customization system that runs within the game is the real difficulty. MetaHuman only solves the former not the latter and it only achieves quality on the level of a non-hero character.
If it were a complete character system that could run within Unreal I’d be far more impressed. Instead it’s just one of several existing character generator solutions like Daz 3D or Real Illusion 3 which are not only in a much more complete state but much more powerful too. If MetaHuman were paid it wouldn’t be receiving the attention it is.
The most expensive part of characters like this is the fact you need a few hundred thousand dollars at minimum to support those photorealistic characters. Logically, anything like this will need a matching world like, this, voice acting, the entire works, that far exceeds the cost that such a feature like this saves. So much so, that this feature is only of worth to people making arch vis, needing stand ins, or crowds for films and things like that. But even then you can find plenty of libraries for it and it’s never an expensive part of the process.
Hiring someone to even work with these systems and prepare them for a game (if you care about quality), is the same expense as hiring a talented generalist making bespoke characters to order.
It’s a great thing to have, IMHO - serious now - but it isn’t saving anything nor being revolutionary. It’s going to be a narrow band of use cases where it gets actually used and succeeds in creating profit.
Making a character for me is absurdly easy and simple, I do one every 2 hours in Zbrush, Maya/Wrap/Substance (only the character - no hair, no cloth). I’ve been working with 3d MAX since version 2.5, most here weren’t even born. I’m an old guy, for the last 30 years, I worked on TV in computer graphics, I graduated from two Universities, one of them, Bachelor of Piano (music is also something simple and easy for me).
I’m not interested in what’s in the ‘store’ (I wonder when a moderator puts it as a ‘principle’ when it comes to, theme, it’s the engine tool and not ‘what I’m going to buy’. I don’t understand this mercenary logic and I don’t even want to understand- there.
My idea was to continue my 3d point and click, with the help of engine tools and not purchased… I also think of those who don’t use the dollar as a parameter… well, I won’t even enter this debate either.
I know something, who doesn’t innovate, loses. Unity is an excellent engine, games like ‘Geshing’, ‘Disco Elisyum’ and so many others seem to have a unique stability if made by Unity, I just challenged the community to question, to pressure developers to make more tools to automate the work of small businesses, makes them competitive. But, from what I saw, the ‘absolute absence of will, of desire’ rules here… I like games, do you?
Well, this will be my last post here, after that, nothing more to say - if you were any member of the community, you would understand, but coming from a moderator… no.
