Unity Daz Where to get started with Unity and character models? Daz3D models in Unity?

[Revel!]

Hello! I have a few questions for veteran developers with experience in Unity and 3d-modeling.

I'm interested in making a 3D MMO, basically a better version of 3dxChat. I know that 3dxChat uses a lot of assets purchased from the Unity store. I'm also fairly positive that it uses some assets that are from Daz3D, such as hairstyles and maybe clothing. I'm not sure about the character models, though. I've researched everything I could find, but still have no idea if the actual character models from 3dxChat are custom-made or if they're a purchased asset, or if they're from Daz3D.

I have seen, however, a number of Daz3D assets being sold on the Unity store (directly from Tafi, which owns Daz3D). Now, I've only ever heard that it's a bad idea to use Daz3D stuff in an actual 3D video game, but then why would it be officially sold on the Unity store? Would these "Unity versions" of the Daz3D character models be perfectly fine to use in a Unity game? What about clothing or hair styles purchased from the Daz store, would they convert easily into Unity?

If Daz3D is absolutely not the right thing to use for Unity, then what would you suggest?

Basically, I'm just trying to get a decent-looking base character model that can have sliders/morphs for body parts in a Unity game, and then to be able to make a bunch of poses/animations and clothing assets for it. Pretty much just wanting to make my own version of 3dxChat and add a lot more content. How would I go about doing that?

 

[Laikhent]

The reason ppl think Daz models are not good for Unity is because of the high number of vertices of the assets. There are some assets you need to decimate (I think the assets you buy on the unity store already come with a decimator). Just be careful because, at least for me, the decimator inside DAZ made some clothing morphs bug, so I had to write my own algorithm in Unity to make the clothing follow the skin morphs. You also need to join the materials into a single one to reduce the number of draw calls. But if you use assets that do not have a ridiculous number of vertices and you dont have many characters at the screen at once, maybe you won't have to decimate. You can see how many vertices the assets have in DAZ by window>pane>scene info.

You can bring characters from Daz to Unity with morphs relatively easily. There's also a tool from Daz called "Daz to Unity bridge" if you want the process automated.

 

[Madmanator99]

Also, as long as you keep the same skeleton, you can change the model vertices as needed (as long as you know how to do it).

So you could technically get started with daz models if you like the skeleton, and want/like to make poses and animations for that skeleton. One thing to keep in mind is that 3d dev computers are beasts, and there is an entire department for what players call "downgrading" but it's called optimisation or polygone budget. If you are a single dev, you can do that in two steps (go beast mode, then optimise) but keep the second part in mind, like, don't go too crazy on the first part (you can, but it just means more work later trying to optimize).

As for decimation, Laikhent is right, it can mess both the clothing and its morphs because they are vertices dependant, (just like it would mess your model morphs as well) and if you change that (vertices) on the models, then the cloths can/will freak out. It is possible to fix it thou; the clothing items can be refited to the decimated model in Daz before export to unity for example. The model morphs can also be fixed with exports/imports after beeing decimated. It is all part of the optimisation process. So your game can be developed and ran at 15 fps, then work on the optimisation.

Here is the Decimator tool for daz3d:

You must be registered to see the links

It used to be available on the forums, but if not, let me know and I'll attach it below.

One more thing, a bit more advanced but you can also use LoDs (I don't know unity very well but it has it I'm sure), and you can have the full quality daz model/clothing, then a decimated model/clothing, then an even more decimated model/clothing, and each are drawn on the screen depending on the distance from the camera. That way you can have hundreds of characters at different distances without loss of frames (you can have more than 3 LoDs, it means more work, but better optimisation) . The common thing is that they all use the same skeleton for poses and animation (ties back to the start of my post).

 

[Revel!]

One more thing, a bit more advanced but you can also use LoDs (I don't know unity very well but it has it I'm sure), and you can have the full quality daz model/clothing, then a decimated model/clothing, then an even more decimated model/clothing, and each are drawn on the screen depending on the distance from the camera. That way you can have hundreds of characters at different distances without loss of frames (you can have more than 3 LoDs, it means more work, but better optimisation) . The common thing is that they all use the same skeleton for poses and animation (ties back to the start of my post).

I think this is the route I'm going to try first. I know I've seen the same exact thing going on in 3dxChat itself (characters far away are clearly less detailed) and I think it's fairly common for most MMOs that have 30+ characters on screen at once.

I did a lot more research yesterday, and it seems that the "Daz isn't good for Unity" thing is a very old opinion. I've read that the Genesis 8 figures are much better optimized, that current computers can handle the higher poly count, and that there's a fairly streamlined pipeline for getting Daz to Unity. Apparently I can even get the various morphs to transfer over too, and use them all in UMA for Unity as part of a character creation customizer. So I think I'm definitely going to attempt using Daz models in my game! Just gotta watch out for clothing/hair that have way too many polygons.

 

[h0rnyc0der]

Hey,

well what a coincidence, as i am trying to do the exact same thing as you, some 3DX competitor because 3DX is a bad piece of shit and the creator earns shitloads of money from it.
It seems im a bit more advanced than you already so let me give you some tips:

1: As stated above, 3DX uses LoDs alot and without them, such a game would never run. You will need to implement LoDs as well but i would do that relatively late because it will just hinder your progress otherwise

2: Gen8 character are fine, download some working genitals for male and female here on f95 and you are pretty much good to go. However, thats only true for the naked characters. Clothing, Hair, Jewerly and optional stuff like wings can have an INSANE amount of polies. Gen8 has like 18k poly count while theres hair and other stuff that has several MILLION.
This info is not outdated, and you will run into serious problems with that because in fact you WILL need a 3d artist who will either retopologize clothing and hairs for you and then rework the morphs for them (which is a ridiculous amount of work!) or create the stuff from scratch and then create morphs that flawlessly fit your body morphs. in either way this will be your biggest problem in terms of 3D stuff.

3: There is indeed the aforementoined "Daz to Unity bridge" but its very, very bad becaus the export process is horribly bugged, it wil always export the skeletal mesh, even if you chose to only export the static mesh. in addition to that, the exporting animations function does not work at all, it will again export the skeletal mesh and put the character in the pose of the animations first frame, without exporting the rest of the animation. Second thing is, the Daz to Unity bridge only works with the unity high definition render pipeline (hdrp) which is a pain to work with (at least for me) and is absolutely the wrong choice if you want to target the masses (horny people with low spec computers). It will also make it almost impossible to ever consider porting the game to Android.

4: I have once decompiled the source from 3DX and i can tell you that they do indeed use DAZ models for their work, however they are heavily modified. Poly count is around 16-17k so not much changed from the original, but they have cut out the head to replace it with individual heads. the clothing they use is heavily optimized, for example a female full body dress has only 400-700 polies, which is insanely low. I have tried to search some 3dx clothing in the DAZ store, renderotica etc but i could not find any, it seems they are all created from scratch. The only thing they have just copied and pasted are some assets for the rooms (and the entire saloon room lol) and the animations.

5: Might sound a bit phony from someone who could be your competition, but i would recommend you to overthink this entire project, just as i did many, many times. Things are not as quick and easy as it seems when you log into 3dx and ask yourself how many work this piece of trash might have needed to be created. Its much more than you think and if you just want to make some money, a offline project will pay off much earlier and easier.
If however you want to continue anyway, feel free to PM me, maybe we can see if we can cooperate somehow.

Edit: Forget about using UMA, its not made for sex games. i have spend countless nights fiddling with UMA for this purpose and honestly, just forget about it.
Also, the DAZ decimator tool is very bad. i even purchased it but it will completely destroy your character at spots where look matters and also on some other places like the ears. also, as said before, it will mess up all your morphs.

 

[Laikhent]

3: There is indeed the aforementoined "Daz to Unity bridge" but its very, very bad becaus the export process is horribly bugged, it wil always export the skeletal mesh, even if you chose to only export the static mesh. in addition to that, the exporting animations function does not work at all, it will again export the skeletal mesh and put the character in the pose of the animations first frame, without exporting the rest of the animation. Second thing is, the Daz to Unity bridge only works with the unity high definition render pipeline (hdrp) which is a pain to work with (at least for me) and is absolutely the wrong choice if you want to target the masses (horny people with low spec computers). It will also make it almost impossible to ever consider porting the game to Android.

Thanks for clarifying this. It didn't go smoothly when I tried to test it and I thought it was only because I wasn't using the hdrp pipeline.
A little off topic but, for an adult game, do you think it's worth to use hdrp pipeline if your game does not have many characters on the screen?

 

[Revel!]

Hey,

well what a coincidence, as i am trying to do the exact same thing as you, some 3DX competitor because 3DX is a bad piece of shit and the creator earns shitloads of money from it.

Hey that's awesome!

1: As stated above, 3DX uses LoDs alot and without them, such a game would never run. You will need to implement LoDs as well but i would do that relatively late because it will just hinder your progress otherwise

Yep, that's what I figured.

2: Gen8 character are fine, download some working genitals for male and female here on f95 and you are pretty much good to go. However, thats only true for the naked characters. Clothing, Hair, Jewerly and optional stuff like wings can have an INSANE amount of polies. Gen8 has like 18k poly count while theres hair and other stuff that has several MILLION.
This info is not outdated, and you will run into serious problems with that because in fact you WILL need a 3d artist who will either retopologize clothing and hairs for you and then rework the morphs for them (which is a ridiculous amount of work!) or create the stuff from scratch and then create morphs that flawlessly fit your body morphs. in either way this will be your biggest problem in terms of 3D stuff.

Yeah, I was aware that clothing and hair are still dangerous to use. But that's fine. There's plenty of non-Daz assets that look good on the Unity store. It was the character models I was most concerned about, because I haven't seen any non-Daz character models that look good enough for a sex game.

Have you looked at any of the official Daz character models, clothing, and hair on the Unity store? It's under the

You must be registered to see the links

publisher, which formerly was "Morph3D". Seems they've taken their official Daz products and heavily optimized them for Unity. I just wonder if they're optimized enough, especially the hair.

3: There is indeed the aforementoined "Daz to Unity bridge" but its very, very bad becaus the export process is horribly bugged, it wil always export the skeletal mesh, even if you chose to only export the static mesh. in addition to that, the exporting animations function does not work at all, it will again export the skeletal mesh and put the character in the pose of the animations first frame, without exporting the rest of the animation. Second thing is, the Daz to Unity bridge only works with the unity high definition render pipeline (hdrp) which is a pain to work with (at least for me) and is absolutely the wrong choice if you want to target the masses (horny people with low spec computers). It will also make it almost impossible to ever consider porting the game to Android.

I was either going to use the Tafi models or setup a custom pipeline from Daz to Blender (to clean them up and optimize them) and then to Unity. Weirdly, the official Daz models from Tafi work with any render pipeline including Universal.

4: I have once decompiled the source from 3DX and i can tell you that they do indeed use DAZ models for their work, however they are heavily modified. Poly count is around 16-17k so not much changed from the original, but they have cut out the head to replace it with individual heads. the clothing they use is heavily optimized, for example a female full body dress has only 400-700 polies, which is insanely low. I have tried to search some 3dx clothing in the DAZ store, renderotica etc but i could not find any, it seems they are all created from scratch. The only thing they have just copied and pasted are some assets for the rooms (and the entire saloon room lol) and the animations.

I wonder why they replaced the heads. And yeah, wow, that is insanely low poly count for clothing. I probably won't use any Daz hair or clothing at all (unless that Tafi stuff is optimized enough). As long as I can use the character models and animations, then anything else I can get non-Daz assets from other sources.

5: Might sound a bit phony from someone who could be your competition, but i would recommend you to overthink this entire project, just as i did many, many times. Things are not as quick and easy as it seems when you log into 3dx and ask yourself how many work this piece of trash might have needed to be created. Its much more than you think and if you just want to make some money, a offline project will pay off much earlier and easier.
If however you want to continue anyway, feel free to PM me, maybe we can see if we can cooperate somehow.

I'm definitely aware that the whole "online, mmo" aspect makes it much more difficult, but I'm fine with that. I'm not in a hurry to develop it. I was working on a standard Ren'py visual novel and then, just out of curiosity, looked into using Daz models in Unity and discovered it was pretty feasible nowadays, so I got excited and started learning Unity. I also never realized just how many other assets were available to purchase for Unity games. I've always wanted to be a game developer, but never wanted to make my own art so I just never got into it. So for now, I'm happy just learning Unity and will be making other games as well. And if I can get a 3dx clone going, then great! I'm still going to make the visual novel, and I've got some ideas for some singleplayer Unity games (both sexual and non-sexual).

Edit: Forget about using UMA, its not made for sex games. i have spend countless nights fiddling with UMA for this purpose and honestly, just forget about it.

What exactly is the issue with UMA in regards to a sex game?

 

[Madmanator99]

4: I have once decompiled the source from 3DX and i can tell you that they do indeed use DAZ models for their work, however they are heavily modified. Poly count is around 16-17k so not much changed from the original, but they have cut out the head to replace it with individual heads. the clothing they use is heavily optimized, for example a female full body dress has only 400-700 polies, which is insanely low. I have tried to search some 3dx clothing in the DAZ store, renderotica etc but i could not find any, it seems they are all created from scratch. The only thing they have just copied and pasted are some assets for the rooms (and the entire saloon room lol) and the animations.

I, just me, appreciate your input, really, and I hope you don't mind if I have a few questions as well. You say the poly-count is around 16/17k, and that they cut the head? Well what was the purpose? Or what do you think the purpose was? And what kind of benefit did it add?

Also, the DAZ decimator tool is very bad. i even purchased it but it will completely destroy your character at spots where look matters and also on some other places like the ears. also, as said before, it will mess up all your morphs.

The goal of the Daz Decimator when used with a character model is to "destroy" the character as you say, and make it low poly, and a possibility is to make LoDs. I mean, that is it's job. I'm curious about what do you think the Daz Decimator tool is about? Did it mess with your project in some way?

I really admire you coming and sharing you knowledge, it's priceless man, thank you so much!

 

[h0rnyc0der]

A little off topic but, for an adult game, do you think it's worth to use hdrp pipeline if your game does not have many characters on the screen?

Yes, if you dont plan to release the game on any other OS than Windows, absolutely.

Have you looked at any of the official Daz character models, clothing, and hair on the Unity store? It's under the

You must be registered to see the links

publisher, which formerly was "Morph3D". Seems they've taken their official Daz products and heavily optimized them for Unity. I just wonder if they're optimized enough, especially the hair.

tbh, i was not aware of the fact that morph3d is back under another name, but that makes it just more shady imho. They had a very bad reputation and were known for very restrictive and "dangerous" licensing, you should read their licenses carefully before using their stuff in a game you plan to release publicly.
Combining assets from different sources is not as easy as you may think. you will run into alot ofproblems with misalingments, size imcompatibility, different skeletons etc. you will need to make alot of polishing work there. i recommend you to stick with one main source and if you want something your chosen source does not offer, then try your luckwith someone from fiverr orso, who will create it from scratch.


EDIT: I have checked them and they seem a bad choice. Their characters have much higher poly count than DAZ Gen8, so they are probably based on an older DAZ gen model. There is also no working genitals available (i guess thats unity asset store rules), plus they are very expensive.
I would recommend you to go DAZ Gen8/8.1 with working genitals, which you can all download from here, for free.

I wonder why they replaced the heads

Because everyone who played more than 1 porn game can recognize DAZ from 100miles away. almost everyone uses DAZ for any kind of porn game. So replacing the most recognizable part with something custom made is a very good idea.

I'm definitely aware that the whole "online, mmo" aspect makes it much more difficult, but I'm fine with that. I'm not in a hurry to develop it. I was working on a standard Ren'py visual novel and then, just out of curiosity, looked into using Daz models in Unity and discovered it was pretty feasible nowadays, so I got excited and started learning Unity. I also never realized just how many other assets were available to purchase for Unity games. I've always wanted to be a game developer, but never wanted to make my own art so I just never got into it. So for now, I'm happy just learning Unity and will be making other games as well. And if I can get a 3dx clone going, then great! I'm still going to make the visual novel, and I've got some ideas for some singleplayer Unity games (both sexual and non-sexual).

Sounds great, best of luck on your journey, man!

What exactly is the issue with UMA in regards to a sex game?

Learning UMA to a degree so you can change and edit it in a way to fit your needs for a porn game is simply too mush stress. UMA is massive and powerful and its easy to learn but very, very hard to master. you will need to create a whole new UMA race with all its genes and recipes, manually create slots for stuff that UMA does not support natively (acessories, strapons/futa etc).
Its much simpler and faster to just create something on your own from scratch because what you need for something like a 3DX clone is actually very simple, so learning UMA for it is a huge waste of time.

I, just me, appreciate your input, really, and I hope you don't mind if I have a few questions as well. You say the poly-count is around 16/17k, and that they cut the head? Well what was the purpose? Or what do you think the purpose was? And what kind of benefit did it add?

Please see my answer above. In addition to that, cutting off body parts from the main torso is always a good idea. For example if you cut off the feet, hands and head, its becomes relatively simple to create a custom race like a WoW Draenei race with horse feet, or an elf race with a slighly different head shape than humans. It would also allow you to replace the hands and feet with better ones to please certain fetishes etc.

The goal of the Daz Decimator when used with a character model is to "destroy" the character as you say, and make it low poly, and a possibility is to make LoDs. I mean, that is it's job. I'm curious about what do you think the Daz Decimator tool is about? Did it mess with your project in some way?

You are right, for creating LoDs the decimator may be okay in terms of meshes, at least when the camera is so far away that you can not recognize ugly deformations anymore. but it will still mess up your morphs which you need to recreate.
So it would be way better to just export the "high poly with working morphs" stuff into unity and then find a unity asset store plugin that could handle most of the LoD work automatically for you.
I would say the decimator is good for static characters that will not be changed any further, but not for a game where players can change their clothing, change characters breasts sizes etc

 

[gshadow1987]

4: I have once decompiled the source from 3DX and i can tell you that they do indeed use DAZ models for their work, however they are heavily modified. Poly count is around 16-17k so not much changed from the original, but they have cut out the head to replace it with individual heads. the clothing they use is heavily optimized, for example a female full body dress has only 400-700 polies, which is insanely low. I have tried to search some 3dx clothing in the DAZ store, renderotica etc but i could not find any, it seems they are all created from scratch. The only thing they have just copied and pasted are some assets for the rooms (and the entire saloon room lol) and the animations.

sorry to pack out this old convo, but how what and how can i get the assets for the character editor in 3DX? I am currently looking for a list of all materials / clothes like "earrings", "hats" and so on, how they are called. Is there a possibility to get any help on how to get the list and how?