Daz to unity?
windli3356
Posts: 230
The recent Daz to UE4 plugin worked great! I really enjoyed it, a real milestone in 3D content creation, that makes me wonder if Daz to unity plug in has been worked on as well?
I love both Daz and UE4, but as a solo dev, Unreal is just too vast too complicated to complete a funcitonal game, unity is a much more realistic option to make games for many none C++ gurus. My life would complete if Daz to Unity is happening.
I believe that will push a lot interactive license sales on Daz as well, as it's much easier to complete a game in unity than UE4 for many indie guys like myself
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You should use what works for you; however, have you looked into Blueprints in Unreal? https://docs.unrealengine.com/en-US/Engine/Blueprints/index.html
There's a whole visual scripting language in there.
Yeah as part of a small team I am beging to think UE4 is not worth the effort.
When we return to work on Tuesday I am going to make a push to remove the engine from our workflow and go to unity
Yes, I'm aware of the blueprints, but once you add a numbers of blueprints, the performance starts tanks on some stupid stuffs, this is far from ideal for the sake of optmization. In UE4, you really need to be a C++ guru to get far.
I believe UE4 can do a lot more and faster if you have a team who can master it, not to putting down unity, it's a great tool, but for the resource & man power I have at moment(just me by myself a family man who's doing it for side gigs) unity is just a more realistic option for me. It's just C++ and its memory management too much for me compare to C#.
But always use what works for you & your team and best of luck :D
Tags for unreal and unity were the last change in DIM, few time after Unreal bridge arrived to the store, probably unity bridge is coming.
well to be fair i'm also working alone using unreal too and while i'm on a pause i could do stuffs fine without using C++, you can build a full game only using the BP without C++ but ofcourse you can end with some issues without using c++ but still doable if you know how to work with BPs you can make some optimizations.
I also think that Unity is easier to use, than UE4, but we still do not have Daz bridge to Unity, yet.
In the meantime I accumulate interactive licences for the assets, I have already purchased from Daz store.
That is my dream, as well.
After spending so much money on Daz assets, I really would like to use them more in Unity.
Well the reason the bridge works so well with UE4 is because the engine does not hard code limitations as to imported assets.
Typical response to the question
You cannot have more than 65,534 vertices in a mesh. If you want more vertices, just make more meshes. There is no real limitation; it's more optimal this way anyway instead of having huge chunks with millions of vertices (primarily because of culling)
Then there are texture limitations as well.
Considering a pair of studio grade pants can exceed Unity hard coded limitations there is no up side for Daz3D to make a bridge considering they ar all about selling DCC
You can use daz figures in unity, just from export/import, but there is some tedious work to set the materials up correctly in unity, and setting the correct checkboxes on daz export can make a huge difference in success. The UMA figure/assets on the unity side can be somewhat helpful with setting up daz figures as characters, and there is some youtube video tutorials out there if you search on daz uma.
But eventually I broke down and moved over to using the Reallusion tools as an intermediary step between Daz and Unity. Time is money, and its a big time saver just on the import/export stuff. And they add some pretty cool stuff of their own, especially on the animating side. The entry price is a bit steep but its a perpetual license, and if you look for a sale or combo offer (rendo had one for a while) you can get in the door and add more of the tools over time during promos. CC3 for getting the figures/clothes/hair/accessories over, 3dxchange can help w models/props/environments/buildings/etc, and for all you want to make sure you have the 'pipeline' edition, and skingen4n1 is a must imo. I'd paste the links to the user manual for steps for export daz, import cc3, export unity, etc but I'm not sure if the forum censors will allow it.
The latest CC3 changes with Skingen are pretty awesome btw, and now you can also bring over all the L.I.E. assets and textures from daz and use them there too (and even more flexibly than in native daz, put that tattoo anywhere you want, change it, tweak it, etc).
Though like a lot of this stuff there is a learning curve to figure the whole pipeline processes out, and imo that gets hampered a lot by the many tutorial vids out there that get out of date as far as steps/processes. So it can be easy to follow a tutorial and get frustrated because its telling you steps that aren't necessarily correct anymore.
So my workflow has me going from Daz to CC3 to Unity. And of course also some trips to iClone for animating, mocap, face cap, lipsync, etc. And it is a pretty straightforward process for me now to prototype a character/clothes/etc in daz. Export it over to CC3 for futher enhancement (skingen etc). And then from there over to unity using the CC3 unity import tools which auto sets up all those tedious materials. And I am able to do all that with working in the HDRP unity environment. And you can bring whatever morphs etc along for the ride of course and code against those in unity.
All that said, I'm still always learning myself and trying to master and improve this whole process into an effective and manageable workflow. And of course all the pieces parts are always changing and evolving. When you are a single studio, of course things will be challenging but then thats why they are worth doing perhaps.
I think also its important to note that on message board forums, sometimes people speak about tools, like unity, which maybe they are not really users of them selves or current on the actual state of affairs, versus some impression they may have formed years in the past. And so then portray perhaps unwarranted bias.
I'm an indi studio, I do corporate and commercial work using unity, and it is a great platform that continues to improve. It also has, imo, a better licensing and cost arrangement than unreal. I also like the marketplace there. And I may even use unreal also one day for some projects sometime if the need arises. But there are plenty of people making great earning with unity today, and its an incredibly powerful environment that you can do anything you want inside it. Haters always gonna hate...
hmm about the "license prince" i do feel which the "current unreal way sounds much better than unity,
unity have "diferent" types of license costs, while unreal have only one, which is you only have to pay after your first 1 million" and you have to pay only 10% and you have to pay "only after that value and only if you after reach 1 million you have earned more than 9999,99 or earned at last 10k after the first million on each quarter, for exemple if you reached 1 million milestone you still have to "pay nothing" then if after that in your first quarter you earned only 9999,99 you still pay nothing you only have to pay if you earn the 10k and will be 10% of that 10k not the 1 million and 10k, which means you have to pay only 1k and that payment can be "reduced if you sell your game in epic store then you have only to pay the "epic store" feet which is 8%, ofcourse it would means which you have to pay from the get go but it would happens in any other "store" like steam or GOG", but if you manage to sell without a publisher then you only have to pay when you earn 1 million and 10k at last and will be only 10% on each quarter you earn more than 10k and aways will be based on the current earn, if you manage to make a "small game" with a small gain like you do in unity you can manage to "be free" forever like in unity, as long you keep your earn from each quarter(3 months) under 10k.
So 10% for anything if over 10k a quarter is a good deal? a quarter is about 13 weeks, that is $769 a week, 40k gross per year. It is a great deal if you are not earning a living using it. If I was only making 800 dollars a week I would not be bothering with writing code anymore, even 30 years ago an entry level developer could earn that. And unity is certainly not limited to making a 'small game', good grief, it is not even limited to making games for that matter.
If you are making under 100k per year in unity revenue, it is already free for you. The monthly/annual unity fee for plus professional and enterprise is a bargain compared to 10%. And even with Plus, you are getting analytics, source control service, cloud storage, collaboration, at pro/enterprise, source code access, support tickets, etc.
But I am not saying there is anything wrong with Unreal, I think it is fabulous too. In my opinion one should choose whichever tool they perfer on a technical as well as business basis, for whatever suits them best and for the type of end product they are creating, the developer skills they have to work with, etc. They are each great platforms with varying strengths for different kinds of work. Neither is going to go away.
Unity can produce a lot of types of development content, for instance I often do a lot of enterprise big data visualization using unity. And I'm not sure unreal would be conducive to that sort of work at all.
when i say "small games" i say games which you know you not gonna earn enough to pass the "cute line to have to pay.
the 100k line cut is only if you are not for all, it's only for really small indie devs, because it's a personnal license, if you "already have a name in market" then you must sign in they others "plans" which are more expensive and in the same way which is not "hard to pass the 10k for each 3 months also based on the "size of your project" is not also hard to pass 100k per year, the "good side in unreal" is which on his plans" don't matter if you are big or small indie all will have the same "price", my point is which both have good and bad sides and in the end the only "real current free game engine which i remember and know so far is GODOT, which is free opensource, but both unreal and unity at one point you have to pay if you are aiming to sucess otherwise in both case you have to make "games" based on the cut line to have to "pay nothing".
https://store.unity.com/#plans-business
Another down side which i see peoples complain a little from unity is which, somehow it's remember daz in a way where you get "some basic tools" then a lot of "advanced stuffs" you have to pay off later in the store.
I'm nothing saying which unit is horrible or not use it, but based on my personnal experiences and what i saw from friend i would prefer to stick with unreal for now, maybe in a future i would try unity but currently i do feel unreal being much better for me than unity.
Another note, it's not 10% it's 5% now, it was 10% in the past, now it's only 5%, then if you make 10k in 3 months you have to pay $500 not $1000
Fair enough. There is definitely per seat licensing. Just like adobe, ms office, and many others. I've been a paying unity user for my studio for many years, and very satisfied. And the other firms I partner with also similarly. It's just another tax deductible business expense. And like a tool that any carpenter would keep in the workshop for daily use. Its good to have known expenses, and rather not unknown future liability and perpetual rights granting. As well that sort of contract opens you up to have to have all kinds of auditing, etc because they (Epic) want to get paid. The million cut is just a time bomb delay as earning adds up, while you get hooked on the tools pipeline, to then customer indenturing like sharecropper, here's the free tool, once you start earning, you gonna payup. Internet search on what some people say about Epic and their biz practices. But I don't want to diverge there. I have nothing bad to say but maybe some people do.
Assuredly Unity does benefit the indi studio market with their kind of price structure where they are giving it totally free (with no future hook) for solo's/students/hobbyist, and offering $400 yearly 'plus' sub for indi user with source control, collaboration and storage for teams of 3. But yeah the corp big boys have to pay full price... So if you're hiring out enough developers to require the beefy enterprise license (minimum 20)... which you are talking in ballpark of thats an employee expense of just developers of upwards and probably beyond 2 million per year costs, and the boss at that level is squabble over $2,400 per year per person license? I don't see how that is any different than when I work as a corporate engineer or developer and company buys MSDN subscription license which is priced even much more than that. Or many other enterprise toolsets out there from CAD to systems management, etc, tools cost. And the old phrase 'you get what you pay for' still holds true.
Regarding asset store items, well, really none of that stuff is even needed. But there are some that are nice/useful that can accelerate things for someone in a very cost effective manner. But I would even say many are actually a hindrance, but are more useful as paid learning examples of how someone else did something. I mean you are in unity you are supposed to be a developer who makes this stuff right? And art, well you either make it, buy it, or contract it, etc. Hence we are here on an art asset market site. ; )
They are both pretty cool tools.
Also waiting for this - Unreal looks better to me out-of-the-box and the bridge works (with a few problems), but there are some interesting assets in the Unity store for people new to game engines and those interested in stuff like audio and data visualization.
Unity store has some interesting tools, that I use a lot and trying to learn more about them.
One of my favorites is Horse Animset Pro (riding System).
I have transferred Genesis 8 characters and use with it.
The latest update bring Pegasus like horse, so you could explore environments from the air by flying.
There is some good deal for it on HumbleBundle.
Humm there is a hint that a Untiy bridge is on the way.
https://www.daz3d.com/open-source
Artini, have you tried using Daz Horse 2 with Horse Animset Pro? Have been wondering if that was workable for putting in your own custom horses or what kind of complications related to animation controller.
Thanks for that - I have not noticed it yet.
I have only replaced the character on the rider with different Genesis 8 figures and they works well.
I will try to test different Daz animals with animal controller, next.
The creator of the package has already used all of his own animals with that controller, so it should work.
I hadn't even thought of the other animals yet. Very interested to hear your results! I see now they included the animal controller in the horse anim pro set. That would be really cool to get daz cat/dog/etc four legged creatures working with it. Or some of the dinosaurs would be pretty amazing to drive that way.
I def hope to see more support for Unity.
Animal controller is included for quite a long time ago.
I have asked a question about switching animal mesh on the horse controller on their forum,
but they are very busy with updates and extensions to the set - another update has come yesterday.
You could look at the tutorial about how to set up animal controller from scratch,
but there are a lot of steps involved and I need to watch it over again and try to follow the steps included.
That looks pretty straight forward if one already has some animations to use with the figure. Which a lot of the unity asset store creature/animals come with. I'm going to have to give it a try when I get some time.
I tried out the Daz bridge for Maya (free trial) tonight with a few different test exports of figures, vehicles, props. Very impressed with the results. But one important trick I found is to have a 2nd daz library setup that is a 'thin' library with only having installed bare minimum that you need. Because daz will try to pull in all the morphs. But thin 2nd library is handy to for getting around the obscene figure load time when trying to get things done versus browse my full catalog.
So given the Maya results, I am pretty stoked hoping to see a good Unity bridge soon. But also now experimenting around with going from Maya to Unity, rather than wait around. Learning curve though, I could not get immediate satisfaction results to unity from Maya for materials and textures. I need to dig and hunt but it sounds like I should be able to get it with materials mapped correctly.
Yes, it looks good, but I am overwhelmed by number of the steps required to make it work.
There are another series of video tutorials available, for replacing the meshes in Horse controller,
so one could ride many different creatures.
At last we have it: https://www.daz3d.com/daz-to-unity-bridge
Hurray!
I am very happy
congrats, they could at last had made another "special license sales"( 4 for daz originals and 8 for non daz originals) to celebrate this new pluging like they did for the others
