I ve noticed, that more and more content designers are working on various character systems. I will try to explain, why it is bad idea to do such thing alone and why it makes much more sense to use/enrich UMA framework.
What do you need to have working character system?
You need good base model with good rig. Also setup for bone based morphing is quite tricky.
Character system is about TONS of models. You need models for equipment, clothing, armours, races, faces, eyes, hairs…list is endless. And everything male + female. We are speaking about hundreds of models and textures with good rigging.
You need TONS of animation. Complete character controller can have several hundreds of animations.
You need lots of scripts around. For morphing, equipping, mesh mergning, atlasing, various performance optimizations (helper bone removal…).
This is literally work for several years (!!!) and you need both serious artistic + developing skills. And if you do just some part (lets say male model + two equipment pieces), it will be totally unusable in majority of games, because to use it, you need rest - 1)+2)+3)+4). Very few people will buy something with limited usage with no guarantee, that artist will continue work for other three years to finish the job.
Why are people buying assets? Because they dont have skills or time to do it by themselves. In case of charater system it is all or nothing.
Why use UMA instead?
Solved.
There are already hundreds of equipment models, so even if you create just one model, it can be instantly sold. You will instantly have customers from existing UMA users.
There is already something and growing each day. UMA skeleton is quite universal, so no problem to retarget animations on it.
Solved
Also if anybody creates some new functionality, you/everybody can instantly use it.
In case you dont like artistic style of UMA, no problem, you can make your own textures, even body mesh, just use UMA skeleton. By having own body mesh, you will loose compatibility with existing equipment, so you have to create your own, but your customer will still benefit from 3)+4), which is HUGE time saver for him.
So please, dont try to reinvent wheel a if you decide to create character system, use UMA framework. Help to further expand it. It will save you lots of time and it gives you absolutely no limitation, only advantages.
It depends on the tools available for the other systems. In some cases, it may be trivial for someone who creates a clothing pack for UMA to also make it available in another system. You make it sound like they would have to start from scratch for other systems. It is possible, even probable that for an artist, creating clothing packs for other systems would not reduce at all the amount they could produce for UMA.
That said, UMA is free and pretty widely accepted, I think it most artists will make their packs for UMA first, and then decide if it is worth it to port it.
Just throwing my hat in for UMA content development starting near the beginning of 2016.
Other tasks have priority at this point but definitely want to contribute to the system.
While I like what UMA is doing, there is no way I think that I’d ever throw in something so generic into my game. Atleast from first glance those characters would be really easy to notice as UMA characters.
I think that is part of what the OP is pushing for. One of the issues with UMA right now is that there is only a handful of people producing custom content. Unless you are handcrafting your humans, no matter what tool you use, Fuse, MakeHuman or whatever, they are all going to use the same style and look the same.
How about if people want to reinvent the wheel then let them. You personal preference is fine as you have it stated in this thread. So grant others what you allow and grant yourself, the freedom to choose how their assets are acquired or made.
Nothing personal to you but this kind of thinking is pretty stupid especially when it causes you to post on a forum telling others what to do and what to avoid when acquiring content for their games.
The benefit of this type of thinking doesn’t seem to be worth the energy you used to think it.
As I wrote, you can make your own mega unique body/face mesh, there is no limit. You just need to use UMA skeleton to be compatible with UMA code and existing animations. Try to understand UMA as framework, NOT one particular body mesh.
This is what I call advice from somebody, who spent last three years with character controllers and customizable characters. Sure, anybody can do whatever he wants, but sometimes makes sense to listen to people, who already did this. All indies have problems with budget (time and money). This is way how to save lots of both. This is way how to provide bigger added value to all customers.
That’s you though. What about those who spent 6 months on character controllers etc and are now managing fine?
It does make sense to listen to people but the person you are listening to has to make sense in the first place otherwise you are just a fool following a fool.
Your advice doesn’t make sense because it is based on your failure which you then apply to everyone.
Unlike you, I brought good arguments, I hope people will read it and think over it. Many content creators dont know full picture, according my experience they even dont know, how to make models to be usable for game. They are making nice models, but not much usable without serious rework (as customer you will usually find this only after buying). So this is form of hint how to do work better without reinventing the wheel.
I will not argue with you, you have no constructive arguments, actaully no arguments at all. So now you are bringing it on personal level without knowing anything about me, what I did and what I not. What failure, can you be specific? You cant, because you know nothing. Quite sad story, continue trolling if you want, but I will not react on you anymore.
I’m with Amon on this one. What you are essentially advocating for is that asset store artists completely remove the possibility to use other systems and force everyone to use your chosen system. I don’t think it takes a particularly drawn out argument to point out why that is not a good idea. I have zero interest in UMA at this point. And although I’ll be making my own characters, that isn’t true of everyone. People should be free to choose the system they want, not the system you want. As BoredMormon said, vote with your wallet. If there is demand, there will be supply. Unity is about the democratization of game development, not the dictatorship of game development.
This is the important thing though, isn’t it. The results of your experience with the various methods has brought you failure. You say this yourself in your opening post. With that experience you then make a sweeping generalization by thinking that the solution for everybody is what you suggest.
It’s not an argument. Why do you say that though? What were your thoughts like immediately after you read what I wrote?
The failure, to be specific is in your post. I quoted it for you but you probably were too busy getting annoyed with what I said to notice anything else I wrote.
When you read the quoted text what does it denote when looking also at the content of your other posts but most importantly your opening post?
To me it denotes that you spent 3 years with all these systems and failed.
From the point of view of customer, there are no other systems mature enough to use. Always something important is missing. UMA is most advanced and open source.
If I have resources and time, yes, I can do my own system, or buy some less mature and do finishing myself. Sure, it is option. For my point of view such option does not make much sense. Reasons are written in the first post.
To add some personal experience, several years ago we were evaluating all possibilities and decided to use UMA. Decision was based on arguments written in the first post (with difference, there was very little content for UMA that time). And time proven us, it was good choice. If we used anything else, we wouldnt advance so much, our character solution would be still far from usable. Nowdays situation is even better and UMA is quite mature and complex solution covering everything you need.
Again, message is simple. If you are artist who is planning to release some character content, or even some new character system, think over UMA, by inventing your own solution you can easily bite more than you can chew (unless you know really well what you are doing and you have several years of time to deliver it).
The whole point is that yours isn’t the only point of view that matters. I’ll be writing my own character controller so that I can be sure that it fits the specific needs of my game. Having to fit the needs of my game into any generic controller is, by definition, a limitation. So yes, UMA does have limitations. I get that you don’t know how to make character controllers. I get that you want more UMA assets. But asking for more UMA assets is something much different than saying “Everyone should be forced to use UMA”. UMA isn’t right for everyone. Not everyone has a problem writing character controllers. You do not speak for the millions of people around the world that use Unity. Your experiences are yours. Your point of view is yours. It does not apply to everyone. I don’t understand why that is such a difficult concept for you to grasp.
@Amon_1 - Dude, when you say things like “stupid thinking” and “fools following fools” it sounds very inflammatory. Disagree with him, fine. But just drop the whole ad hominem crap.
Anyway, I do agree with @l0cke that a universal system would be ideal and UMA is certainly leading in their area. However, I don’t agree that people shouldn’t try to re-invent the wheel as I’m not certain that the process of natural selection has been settled yet. I think that a better system can over take UMA.
We have character, animation and morphing controller of our our design, we use various performance optimizations like on the fly texture atlas generation, removing of helper bones after morphing with automatical remaping of vertexes… we have professional motion captures and our own content. But it is based on UMA . There are no real limitations, everything can be solved by custom work as we did. But UMA provided us serious base, and it saved us years of work. Thats my point.
I am still surprised, that lots of people understand UMA as character. Not as framework. Usual argument is “that character is ugly, i will not use it”. This only shows, that these people does not really understand, what they need (will need) and what is UMA good for.
Sure, it can. There can be always something better. But it would require years of work. It took years of work of several people to get UMA where it is now (code, avialable content) and if you want to do better, you have to invest at least same time.