P-172: Unity: Space Environment: Part 23
by PhoenixGames on Oct.23, 2016, under Art and Designs, P-0, Software and Games, Spiritus Astrum
I have been looking into the various tools and asset packs that are available on the Unity store. There are several (in addition to the Space Exploration Engine) that look very promising.
The first that I discovered is the “Morph Character System” by Morph 3D. This system seems to provide a powerful way to not only generate custom characters, but also to modify them in real time. A Virtual World, like the one that I am creating, would be expected to have an advanced character creator. However, creating a dynamic character generation system is a daunting prospect, and it was something that I was concerned about with this project.
The Morph 3D system seems to do what I need it to do, however. It is also extensible, with other character packs available for it, such as Male and Female Sci Fi themed content, fantasy themed content, etc. I just need to know how to add custom art and animations to the system, I assume this must be possible.
Related to this product, is the “SALSA with RandomEyes” asset. This is compatible with characters created from Morph Character System, and it adds lip synching abilites to character speech, as well as complex eye movement and facial expressions, and even eye tracking. This is an incredibly powerful piece of software, and I had no idea that this actually existed for such a modest price.
This allows for the simple creation of far more realistic characters and greater immersion, especially in Virtual Reality type games.
SALSA has support for the RT-Voice Text to Speech system, which should allow me to completely remove text from the game entirely. For a virtual world, this is essentially vital, since even with the high-end VR headsets such as the Rift and the Vive, it is still not really possible to display text clearly. It works ok for large print text, signs, titles, etc, but expecting the user to read through complex dialog options using on screen text in VR is not feasible at this stage.
