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Daz Characters in VR/AR

livepassioneverydaylivepassioneveryday Posts: 35
in Unity Discussion

I've been using Daz characters in VR/AR for months now, and would like to see if anyone else has experience making projects like those in Unity. 

This is a list of the things I've learned in my journey.

  1. Quest 2 doesn't support HDRP, so the Daz to Unity Bridge isn't practical for a lot of VR projects. Even if you are only developing for PCVR, HD Daz models really slow down the framerate, unless you have a monster PC setup.
  2. Once you figure out how to fix hair, eyes, and eyelashes, it doesn't take long. You also figure out which eyes and hair don't work well in Unity and can avoid them.
  3. Exporting with Geometry Editor Mode fixes some problems. If you have body parts that aren't part of the default Genesis model, you need to toggle the Geometry Editor on when you export the FBX.
  4. Do body morphs in Unity. I've found that it's best to export the model without morphing the body in Daz. I do however, have Morph Export Rules lists for different situations, and then morph the characters body once in Unity. It just seems to work better that way. 
  5. <iframe width="560" height="315" src=" title="YouTube video player" frameborder="0" allow="accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture" allowfullscreen></iframe>
    Learning to animate in Blender is amazing. For the first few months, I was doing my animations in Daz, then exporting those over to Unity. I spent a day learning the basics of Blender animations, and now it's about 20 times faster to make a simple animation. I don't use Daz models in blender either. I export a simple Mixamo character into Blender, export an animation into Unity, then use that animation on the Daz character. I do have to make a few adjustments, but it's so much easier this way. 
  6. There are a lot of decently priced Assets that make developing VR relatively easy. I've actually only written about 50 lines of code total, and have been able to create some pretty cool VR/AR experiences. A lot of Unity assets also have Daz 3D integration (Salsa Lip Sync, Realistic Eye Movement). 

That's all I've got for now. I'd love to hear about some other people's experiences with Daz characters in VR/AR. https://youtu.be/wEcu1ioju_U

Comments

  • danielbui78danielbui78 Posts: 333

    Thanks for the post!  I agree with you that using Blender for animation can be much easier than Daz.  I respectfully disagree with a couple points though:

    1. Daz To Unity is very capable of rendering in URP with very decent quality.

    2. Although you are correct that some Daz Hair and clothing assets are too resource intensive for VR, most Genesis 8 Daz Original characters are actually highly optimized and you can fit many of them on screen at one time, even on a mobile VR device:

     

    Here are my favorite VR related tools from the Unity Asset Store:

     

    There are many resources to learn and use Unity at learn.unity.com.  Here are my favorite ones:

     

     

  • nokoteb99nokoteb99 Posts: 931
    edited September 2022

    You can decimate the Hair in DAZ for VR. I'm doing VR now too. But Decimation turns the best hairs into an ugly mess. especially the high quality hairs that are like 500,000 polygons. You can also try Mesh Simplifying in Unity(the hair) with Unity tools that's what i do but it's a hassle and sometimes the tools can't do it cause the thousands of polygons and the tool makes the program crash. I'm just doing it games with 1 or 2 character in a scene cause i have no solution on how to use many characters since all the recent dForce hairs or any hairs are in the 200,000 to 500,000 polygons.

    I had ideas for like Brawler full city games with plenty of daz characters but i knew that wouldn't work so my tip is just make the main few characters like 5 max be daz characters and all of the others be low res Unity asset store characters that come in some package( like Citizens Pro) and use a Mesh simplifier on those and make them like really low polygons like 3000 or something and they look ok. and it works. I making a Boxying game, and replaced the DAZ boxer guy hair with the leas polygon hair i could find...hard cause most hairs i have are modern and they are huge size polygons

    Post edited by nokoteb99 on
  • livepassioneverydaylivepassioneveryday Posts: 35

    nokoteb99 said:

    You can decimate the Hair in DAZ for VR. I'm doing VR now too. But Decimation turns the best hairs into an ugly mess. especially the high quality hairs that are like 500,000 polygons. You can also try Mesh Simplifying in Unity(the hair) with Unity tools that's what i do but it's a hassle and sometimes the tools can't do it cause the thousands of polygons and the tool makes the program crash. I'm just doing it games with 1 or 2 character in a scene cause i have no solution on how to use many characters since all the recent dForce hairs or any hairs are in the 200,000 to 500,000 polygons.

    I had ideas for like Brawler full city games with plenty of daz characters but i knew that wouldn't work so my tip is just make the main few characters like 5 max be daz characters and all of the others be low res Unity asset store characters that come in some package( like Citizens Pro) and use a Mesh simplifier on those and make them like really low polygons like 3000 or something and they look ok. and it works. I making a Boxying game, and replaced the DAZ boxer guy hair with the leas polygon hair i could find...hard cause most hairs i have are modern and they are huge size polygons

    One thing I've done a couple of times, is just found some hair made for Unity, and attaching it to the head of the Daz character. When I do this, I choose shorter hairstyles, so that it isn't as prominant in the scene. It's definitely not the best solution, but it will work if you aren't as worried about how the hair looks, and it definitely looks better than a decimated Daz hair. 

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