Unreal Engine Afterparty [Development Thread]
- Thread starter Dilly_
- Start date
- Jul 14, 2017
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It was surely worth it! The level of customization and the quality of the assets is AAA game level already
- Oct 2, 2020
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Some updates since my last post:
-Changes made during character creator are now properly saved
-Multiple save slots
-Inventory system reworked
-Character stats screen (in progress)
-Improved clothing equip logic
And other boring stuff not worth mentioning!
-Changes made during character creator are now properly saved
-Multiple save slots
-Inventory system reworked
-Character stats screen (in progress)
-Improved clothing equip logic
And other boring stuff not worth mentioning!
- Aug 2, 2017
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Is this still UE 4 or did you move on to UE5? Because it looks really good!
- Oct 2, 2020
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Yes, it's UE5
There were some pretty glaring issues with a test release version I did and gave out to some folks for early feedback. One issue was that the physics were pretty buggy and had a tendency to go crazy. Part of the issue there was that the physics asset in UE is prone to issues, especially when it comes to jiggly body physics. So in order to fix it, I created a new version of the Daz rig that has the all the jiggle bones built-in, and instead of using the physics asset to simulate breast physics and such, I am now using a plugin called Kawaii Physics, which is *much* more stable, provides better results, and can even have its values adjusted at runtime. Unfortunately this did require making changes to the skeleton, and I am still in the process of updating everything to use the new skeleton. But I also used it as an opportunity to optimize character materials and reduce draw calls.
tl;dr No specific date yet, as it's hard to predict what will pop up that needs fixing. But once all the assets are updated to use the new skeleton, I'd like to release it ASAP.
- Nov 14, 2020
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Wow, your work is really impressive! I would love it if you wrote up a guide or made like a video tutorial or something about your entire process of bringing a character from Daz to Unreal with all of the optimizations you're doing, such as the skeletons, gens, and hair. Hell, I'd even pay for a detailed guide like that.
- Sep 26, 2022
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- Oct 2, 2020
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I've considered uploading a video series detailing the workflow, it's something that has been requested by numerous people. The simple act of bringing Daz characters into Blender and then into UE is relatively straightforward but it gets longer when covering the topics you mentioned. Most of my free time now though is spent on the game, that would probably be something I do after the game is released. But, if you have specific questions about the workflow you need answered, feel free to reach out on Discord Dilly#6326
- Sep 26, 2022
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Would myself be interested if you ever did an video tutorial around Daz3d to blender and FBX back out. Are you using blender for animations? Blend shapes for the sexy parts? Bit of both?
- Oct 2, 2020
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I obtain animations from a variety of sources. Daz animations can simply be applied in Daz, and then sent over to UE. It does require retargeting, since my character in UE has a different skeletal structure than the base Genesis figure. But once the IK rigs are created, the animation will retarget identically to the animation in Daz.
For locomotion, I retarget from the Windwalker Echo project. I tried ALSv4 for locomotion but it had too many issues.
I also retarget from Mixamo animations occasionally, though I've been using these less often recently.
And lastly, it's possible to rip and retarget animations from games such as HoneySelect, provided it has tools to extract the .fbx files. Obviously, using these in a game would be copyright infringement, so you should instead use them as a *reference* for creating your own animations, which can be done easily in Blender.
- Oct 2, 2020
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Thought I'd bless this thread with some interesting results from an optimization test I did recently. Unreal users will know that reducing the number of material slots reduces draw calls, thus improving performance. But what is the best way to do this for Daz characters? This is where UDIM comes in. UDIM essentially takes multiple textures (for example, face, head, torso, arms, legs) and combines them into a single texture which can be applied to the character mesh. This is used in Daz as well. UDIM textures have naming conventions that correspond to the tile they should be applied to (example: Face is 1001, Head is 1002, Torso is 1003, etc). We can use UDIM to severely reduce the number of material slots needed for Daz characters, while still getting the same level of detail.
I started with 2 basic Genesis 8.1 figures straight from Daz. They are identical, save for the fact that one has 10 material slots, and the other has 2:
In order to test the performance of both characters, I created an empty level and spawned 100 actors, once for the UDIM character, and once for the non-UDIM character.
On the right side you can see the statistics for each test. After comparing the two, I found that using UDIM characters results in:
-52% increase in FPS
-52% reduction in ms per frame
-75% reduction in draw calls
This is clearly a very significant improvement with UDIM. Note that in this test I did not use or account for LODs, as my goal was purely to test the differences between the materials.
One reason that UDIM has not been widely adopted in games though is because it increases VRAM requirements, thus giving it more use in cinematics/unbiased rendering. I wanted to find out exactly how much more VRAM using UDIM would require, so I captured both frames and opened them in RenderDoc:
In total, UDIM materials used about 260mb more VRAM than the non-UDIM materials, or an increase of about 6%. However, when considering the massive reduction in draw calls and net performance gain that UDIM provides, I think it is a price worth paying. Hence, I am now using UDIM on the player character and NPCs.
I started with 2 basic Genesis 8.1 figures straight from Daz. They are identical, save for the fact that one has 10 material slots, and the other has 2:
In order to test the performance of both characters, I created an empty level and spawned 100 actors, once for the UDIM character, and once for the non-UDIM character.
On the right side you can see the statistics for each test. After comparing the two, I found that using UDIM characters results in:
-52% increase in FPS
-52% reduction in ms per frame
-75% reduction in draw calls
This is clearly a very significant improvement with UDIM. Note that in this test I did not use or account for LODs, as my goal was purely to test the differences between the materials.
One reason that UDIM has not been widely adopted in games though is because it increases VRAM requirements, thus giving it more use in cinematics/unbiased rendering. I wanted to find out exactly how much more VRAM using UDIM would require, so I captured both frames and opened them in RenderDoc:
In total, UDIM materials used about 260mb more VRAM than the non-UDIM materials, or an increase of about 6%. However, when considering the massive reduction in draw calls and net performance gain that UDIM provides, I think it is a price worth paying. Hence, I am now using UDIM on the player character and NPCs.
- Oct 2, 2020
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My new character rig has multiple breast/glute/stomach bones, allowing for even more realistic jiggling. Furthermore, the amount of jiggle can be adjusted on the fly. But what I'm most proud of is the FPS improvement due to material optimizations- It now runs at a staggering 100+ fps (without hair), a major improvement over previous versions.
- Oct 2, 2020
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Yes, I have been tirelessly grinding to get the character creator finished up. I have a whole host of other features which I am actively working on as well (many of which I have posted here), but I'm thinking that I will release everything one step at a time once they are in a completed state. The character creator was important to me, so I spent a lot of time on it. I'm working on a save system now with shareable save files.
Yesterday I revamped some of the color customization options to be much more fluid and added a bunch of QoL stuff to the character creator. Camera presets, clothing visibility toggles, a hotkey to toggle the UI and made sure everything is working nicely with everything else.
Oh, and I also built a custom branch of UE 5.1 with Dual Quaternion skinning enabled. That just means character skinning works better, especially with Daz characters. This will result in much better animations and especially sex animations. Here's a look at that:
Sex animations usually have a lot of leg, arm, and shoulder bending going on so this custom engine build should go a long way for improving those.
Probably what will end up happening is I will release the game with the polished character creator only, and perhaps a basic environment for walking around in. Obviously this will disappoint some people due to a lack of any sort of story content on release, but if I don't release anything until all systems are polished and working that would extend the release for months. I'd rather push it out so people can get to customizing their own sexy characters. And of course many other systems are in a fleshed out state, such as the dialogue, object interaction and the inventory system. These will be added once I am able to polish them to the degree I have polished the creator and decide they are suitable for release.
- Oct 2, 2020
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The next generation of penis customization in games is here.
I present to you cutting-edge penis customization technology. "Penises as you've never seen them before"
I present to you cutting-edge penis customization technology. "Penises as you've never seen them before"
DQ are long overdue far I remember, ppl complain about it for ages.
There were 'kinda' solutions but quite a pain in the ass. I'm no UE wizard tho.
Really looks fantastic. Overall it looks so fucking neat.
For the love of god, write that solid story those achievement(s) deserve.
There were 'kinda' solutions but quite a pain in the ass. I'm no UE wizard tho.
Really looks fantastic. Overall it looks so fucking neat.
For the love of god, write that solid story those achievement(s) deserve.
- Oct 2, 2020
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There's some pretty interesting stuff happening currently with regard to DQ skinning, or rather, a replacement for it. Since Unreal by default only supports linear blend skinning, it's possible to create joint-corrective morphs for Daz characters specifically optimized for LBS, which is exactly what this guy is doing:
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These LBS-optimized JCMs look even better than regular JCMs with DQ skinning. So it would make having to build a custom engine version with DQ skinning obsolete. Unfortunately it's not released yet and there is no set release date.
And thanks for the kind words about my project
the story will be carefully crafted of course. There's ideas floating around, but I'm still very much in the "game systems" phase, I want all my systems working nicely so that a proper story can be constructed with them in mind.