DEV Community: Ready Player Me

How To Create 3D Characters And Add Them To Your Mobile App or Game

Daniel Marcinkowski — Wed, 12 Jan 2022 12:16:45 +0000

Get started with the Ready Player Me avatars for Android and iOS mobile apps and games based on Unity, Unreal Engine 4, or React Native.

If you ever worked on a mobile project that involved anything related to 3D, you know that there's much more to it than just dropping a few things into the Unity editor, Xcode or Android Studio and calling it a day. That's especially true if you work on a game with 3D graphics full of assets.

It's almost impossible to create hundreds of 3D objects by hand if you have limited resources. You're more likely to go to a place like the Unity Asset Store, which is great for finding assets like 3D models of different objects, environments, and characters to get your project going. But when you do that, you can run into another set of issues. For example – how to offer avatar customization to your players if you have got only 12 different options in the package from the assets store?

Free 3D Character Creator For Your Mobile Game

Ready Player Me may be the answer to your 3D avatar needs. It's a cross-game avatar creator that works with Unity, React Native, Web, and Unreal Engine 4. It supports mobile, desktop, VR/AR, and even smart fridges (at least in theory). It's used by 1000+ companies, including VRChat, Warner Bros., SideQuest, and others.

Ready Player Me lets anyone can create a 3D avatar with a selfie and customize it to their liking. There are hundreds of customization options to choose from, like different hairstyles, outfits, hats, and so on.

If you're creating just a few characters for your game, Ready Player Me avatars are free to use for non-commercial projects (as long as you credit us). If you want to use the avatars for commercial projects, you can apply to become a partner, which will give you access to your own avatar creator with a partner subdomain. And – wait for it – that's free too.

Ready Player Me Partners also benefit from the platform's monetization options. Revenue from sales of premium customization assets is split between our partners based on players' engagement.

How To Make And Integrate Personal 3D Avatars For Your Mobile Game

With Ready Player Me, your users make their own characters using our avatar creator. You can integrate it directly into your product so that there's no need to leave to a different app or website to create an avatar. You can implement Ready Player Me into mobile apps and games in a few different ways:

Natively on iOS using Swift
Natively on Android using Kotlin
Using React Native
Using our Unity Avatar SDK + Unity WebView
Using the Web integration

How To Add 3D Avatars To Your iOS, Android or React Native Application

Integrating Ready Player Me avatars into apps and games on both iOS and Android is similar. This method also applies to any apps based on React Native.

All you need to do is spawn an embedded web browser, which navigates to your partner subdomain. Your users will be able to create their avatar using the Ready Player Me platform. Once they are done with customization, the 3D model will be automatically imported to your application.

You can find more details and examples in our docs:

How To Add 3D Avatars To Your Unity Mobile App Or Game

Ready Player Me avatars also work great in Unity-based applications. Our Unity Avatar SDK lets you integrate the Ready Player Me avatar creator directly into your game so that your players don't have to switch to another app or a web browser.

To get started with Ready Player Me avatars in your Unity project, head over to our docs. There, you can download the latest version of our Avatar SDK and learn how to set it up for your needs.

If you're looking at using the Unity WebView to integrate the Ready Player Me character creator directly into your app or game, you can watch our tutorials for Android and iOS.

How To Animate 3D Avatars For Your Mobile App Or Game

Once you have integrated the avatars, you might want to bring more into them by adding some animations. Ready Player Me avatars come pre-rigged and are compatible with Adobe Mixamo, so adding animations is no problem. You can also take advantage of 52 Apple ARKit-compatible facial blendshapes that work great for facial tracking and animations.

Become a Ready Player Me Partner and Integrate 3D Avatars Into Your Mobile App or Game

That's all you have to know to get started with integrating Ready Player Me avatars into your mobile app or game. If you have more questions, head over to our developer docs, join our Discord server, or reach out to our developer support team.

If you want to use Ready Player Me avatars for your commercial project, follow the Partner application process here.

Your Augmented Reality Apps Need 3D Avatars, Here's Why

Daniel Marcinkowski — Wed, 12 Jan 2022 12:13:55 +0000

Best AR Apps With Ready Player Me 3D Avatars

Augmented reality is everywhere. Sure, we are not walking around with AR glasses on our faces, but that's going to change within the next few years. Microsoft's HoloLens and the Magic Leap have been out for business customers for a while now. Snap recently released a brand new pair of their Spectacles that are AR-capable. Apple is rumored to release their mixed reality headset in the next few years, with a pair of everyday AR glasses following later.

Fancy hardware is not a requirement to get started with AR, though. You can use your phone with thousands of AR apps and web-based experiences today. Many online stores, including Apple and Lamborghini, let you preview their items in augmented reality. Who wouldn't like to see if a Huracán fits in their living room?

Google Maps Live View (Source: Google)

There are other, arguably more useful applications for AR on mobile. Both Google and Apple now offer augmented reality walking directions. Both apps recognize landmarks and building in the camera's viewfinder to improve the location precision, which is especially important in cities full of skyscrapers. The automotive industry starts implementing similar features in its new models, like Volkswagen's electric ID series.

Most of the augmented reality applications mentioned above can be experienced by only one person. But a growing number of experiences sync across multiple devices in real-time. The best example is Pokémon GO, which lets you become a real-life Pokémon trainer and have duels with other players. A childhood dream come true.

Avatars are who we are in virtual worlds. That's why having a way to accurately represent other players is so important in multiplayer experiences, especially ones that let you connect with people from around the globe. Pokémon GO does that to a certain degree – you can create your avatar and change its outfit, add accessories like bags and glasses, and change its pose. But that's about it. You can't make the character look like you. But why is that important?

Making AR Apps More Engaging With Personal 3D Avatars

Augmented reality allows for new kinds of digital experiences. For example, TwinWorld is an app for the Microsoft HoloLens 2 that lets you collaborate with your colleagues or friends. You can be thousands of miles apart and yet feel as if you were in the same room. To make the experience more immersive, TwinWorld are using Ready Player Me avatars. You can make your own avatar with a selfie on a phone, laptop, or even on the HoloLens, provided that you have a picture of yourself without a glass shield covering half of your face. You will get a character that looks just like you, and your colleagues won't have trouble recognizing you during a virtual meeting.

3D avatars and AR are also a great combination for creating more personal experiences for fans. For example, Vodafone UK integrated Ready Player Me avatars into their British & Irish Lions rugby team app. It lets fans of the team create their own Digital Lion based on a selfie and pose in AR with the team's players.

British & Irish Lions rugby team app (Source: Vodafone)

Warner Bros. created a similar experience for the fans of the new Dune movie. You can create your own avatar with Dune-inspired outfits, place your character anywhere in the world, and take a photo for social media. The experience works based on WebAR technologies provided by 8th Wall and Aircards.

Dune avatars (Source: Warner Bros.)

Build Your Own Augmented Reality App With Ready Player Me 3D Avatars

Do you want to create your own augmented reality experience? There are plenty of resources to get you going. Tools like Snapchat's Lens Studio or Facebook's Spark AR Studio allow you to create AR filters for Snapchat or Instagram Stories if you're just getting started. With some tips from our community, you can even import your own Ready Player Me avatar! Check out guides for the Lens Studio and Spark AR Studio.

Want to make a Snapchat Lens with your own @readyplayerme avatar? Here's a quick tutorial and project file.

1) Make an avatar
2) Relink the model to the new FBX
3) Swap 2 textures

Make avatar:https://t.co/Lceaotzh5D

Lens Studio Project:https://t.co/rSIH74dS0j pic.twitter.com/FZhSeHcwKY
— Brielle Garcia.xvid.avi.rar (Taylor’s Version) (@tacolamp) July 29, 2021

If you're looking to build a more advanced application, there are plenty of useful resources for all major technologies. For mobile apps, the best places to get started are docs for Google ARCore and Apple ARKit. Both platforms work with popular gaming engines like Unity and Unreal Engine.

Once you build the foundations of your AR app or game, adding 3D avatars from Ready Player Me will take you no time. The characters come with a Mixamo-compatible rig, so you can export animation from the Mixamo website and import them to either Unity or Unreal. You can even use Animate 3D from DeepMotion to create a motion animation based on a video clip. Ready Player Me avatars also support ARKit facial blendshapes to create AR apps with face tracking.

One more handy tool for anyone building a more advanced AR application is echoAR. It's a cloud platform that helps you manage and deliver 3D content to apps, regardless of the app and platform. It comes with support for Ready Player Me avatars, which makes the integration even simpler.

Ready Player Me avatars powered by echoAR

Get started with Ready Player Me 3D Avatars

Over 1,000 companies are integrating Ready Player Me avatars into their apps and games, including dozens of AR developers. If you want to join them, feel free to become a partner. You can also check our docs, where you can find avatar SDKs for Unity and Unreal Engine 4.

Best Animation And Motion Capture Software That Works With Ready Player Me Full-Body 3D Avatar Creator

Daniel Marcinkowski — Wed, 12 Jan 2022 12:08:54 +0000

Ready Player Me lets you create full-body 3D avatars with a selfie. You can also integrate them with your app or game. Learn how to animate the characters using animation software from Adobe Mixamo and AI motion capture from DeepMotion.

Long gone are days when the only way to add animations to 3D characters in games was to either do it manually or use expensive and inaccessible hardware. Thanks to the magic of AI, we can capture motion from video clips using web-based animation software.

With Ready Player Me avatars and supported animation software, you can add custom animated characters to your app or game in no time. In this article, we will cover how to use Adobe Mixamo to add animated 3D avatars to your Unity or Unreal Engine 4 projects. We will also take a look at DeepMotion's Animate 3D, which lets you capture motion from videos.

Adobe Mixamo – animate 3D characters for Unity, Unreal Engine 4 and others

If you're using our Unity or Unreal Avatar SDKs, animating Ready Player Me 3D characters using Mixamo will take you no time. Our full-body avatars include a Mixamo-compatible rig, which lets you use motion-captured animations.

Creating animations in Mixamo is similar for both Unity and Unreal Avatar SDKs:

Step 1: Go to Mixamo's website and sign up or log in

Step 2: For Unity: upload either FemaleAnimationTarget or MaleAnimationTarget from Assets/ Plugins/ Wolf3D ReadyPlayerMe SDK/ Resources/ AnimationTargets to Mixamo. You can find this folder by clicking on the Reveal Animation Targets Folder button on the editor window.

For Unreal: Upload RPM_Animation_Target.fbx from [PROJECT_NAME]/ Plugins/ ReadyPlayerMe/ Resources/ RPM_Animation_Reference.zip to Mixamo. Important – RPM Animation Reference FBX is in a ZIP file. Otherwise, it would be imported into Unreal and converted into a .uasset file. That would make it impossible to upload to Mixamo.com.

Step 3: After Mixamo completes processing the animation target, pick an animation that you want to use. Then click Download.

Step 4: When the download settings dialogue shows up, select format as FBX for Unity or FBX binary for Unreal Engine 4 and skin as Without Skin. Finally, click Download.

To import the animation in Unity, move the downloaded animation into your Unity project by drag it into a female or male Animator Controller.

If you're using Unreal Engine 4, importing Mixamo animation will take a few more steps:

Step 1: Import the animation FBX file into your Unreal Engine Project and in the FBX Import Options window, click on the Skeleton property.

Step 2: Set the skeleton to the preconfigured RPM_Mixamo_Skeleton.

Step 3: Hit Import to load the animation into the project. Once imported, you can add it to an animation blueprint of your own or to our example blueprint – BP_RPM_Animation.

DeepMotion Animate 3D – turn 2D videos into 3D animations using AI animation software

Animate 3D from DeepMotion is an AI-based animation software that lets you upload a 2D video and create a 3D animation based on the clip. For example, you can record your best dance moves and use them as an animation for Ready Player Me avatars in your app or game. Thanks to DeepMotion's proprietary Perceptive Motion Brain technology, you don't even need motion capturing hardware.

Using Ready Player Me avatars with DeepMotion's Animate 3D software is simple:

Sign up for one of the Animate 3D plans (there's a free version too!)
Create a Ready Player Me character in the 3D Models section of the Animate 3D portal. When you're ready, click Done.
On the next screen, click "Create Animation" and upload a motion video in MP4, MOV, or AVI format. Be sure to follow DeepMotion guidelines for the best results.
Set up your animation output options. You can export it to FBX, GLB, MP4, or BVH formats.

When you're done, you can use the animation with tools like Adobe Mixamo.

Become a Ready Player Me Partner

Are you making a commercial project with Ready Player Me avatars? Fill the form and become a Ready Player Me Partner to get a free license.

Finding the right balance between realistic and abstract 3D avatars

Daniel Marcinkowski — Wed, 12 Jan 2022 11:33:45 +0000

What we learned about 3D avatars in 7 years of making them

Christoph Niemann is an illustrator whose work was featured on over thirty covers of the New Yorker magazine. In the first episode of Netflix's docuseries "Abstract,” Niemann introduced a concept called abstract-o-meter. It suggests that every idea has a just-right way to represent it. It can’t be too abstract nor too realistic. For example, no one would know that you meant to talk about love if you used a red pixel to represent it. The same thing applies to a realistic drawing of heart, which looks more disgusting rather than lovely. Hence when we talk about love, we use the heart-shaped symbol that everyone is familiar with.

The same concept applies to 3D avatars that we use to represent our identities in virtual worlds and to show our emotions to others.

Abstract-o-meter, Christoph Niemann

Abstract 3D avatars are too simple

It's hard to show our expressions in games with a simple and abstract visual style. In Minecraft, the avatar's face measures 8x8 pixels. It’s barely enough room to fit eyes and a mouth – not enough to represent a wide range of emotions. In fact, Minecraft doesn't offer any expressions besides blinking with compatible character skins.

Minecraft Star Wars Sequel Skin Pack (Mojang Studios)

Showing your identity in a world made of big pixels isn't a simple task either. You can give someone a general idea of how you look and what colors you like to wear. But it would be hard to distinguish, for example, a black denim jacket from an elegant blazer.

Hyper-realistic 3D avatars are too realistic

On the other side of the spectrum, we have hyper-realistic avatars. In Rogue One, Disney created a digital version of Wilhuff Tarkin based on the actor who played him a few decades before – Peter Cushing. This was possible thanks to advanced motion tracking technology and an actor (Guy Henry) who learned how to behave and talk like Cushing.

The same technique is used in modern AAA games, like Cyberpunk 2077. The challenging part is to make the representation perfect. Otherwise, we experience an effect called the uncanny valley. If the humanoid character or object doesn't perfectly resemble a human, we tend to have negative emotions. In other words – we are creeped out.

Rogue One: A Star Wars Story (Lucasfilm)

In the movie and gaming industries, studios have access to and can afford advanced tracking solutions. But they also spend thousands of hours on post-processing to make the characters look like real humans. For consumers, there’s no way to use a hyper-realistic avatar based on the user’s appearance. Modern games often have advanced character creators, but customization options are limited just to pre-set values and assets.

These avatars are also not able to represent the player’s expressions. And there is no affordable face tracking devices available on the mass market that could produce results comparable to the recent Star Wars movies. Not to mention the challenge of rendering super-detailed 3D characters, especially in games like Call of Duty: Warzone with a hundred players on one server.

The just-right solution for 3D avatars

The just-right solution for avatars is a simple one. Going back to the uncanny valley concept – it's called a valley because we dislike only humanoids that look almost like humans. But we tend to like slightly abstract representations of humans, like cartoon and game characters. These avatars are more detailed than the Minecraft ones, making it easier to show one's identity and emotions. On the other hand, they are not too detailed, making it simpler to show basic emotions without creeping someone out. They are also less challenging to render for average hardware, even in large-scale games like Fortnite.

Fortnite (Epic Games)

The current state of consumer technology allows us to use these simpler avatars to have social interactions in the virtual worlds. For example, there are software-based solutions for emulating mouth movement, like Oculus Lipsync. We can also get a good representation of body movement with the controllers that come with virtual reality headsets available today. This is essential for getting non-verbal communication in virtual worlds right.

Finding the right balance for 3D avatars

But there's one more reason why less realistic avatars are just right, and we learned it through our company’s long history of making avatars. When we started Wolf3D seven years ago, we built full-body scanners for creating hyper-realistic human models desired by movie and gaming studios. When Facebook acquired Oculus in 2014, we realized that 3D avatars will play an important role in the future. We shifted our focus and decided to make it easy for anyone to create their own 3D avatar.

Our first step in that direction was easy-to-use, egg-shaped face scanners. We shipped them to many places worldwide, including museums in Estonia and Finland, E3 game shows in Las Vegas, and Paramount Studios in Hollywood.

The next step was to make scanning even more accessible. We decided to use the data from tens of thousands of high-resolution scans to build a software-based solution. With just fifteen photos and a phone app, anyone could create a realistic 3D model of their face.

Wolf3D’s egg-shaped Luna scanner

At this stage, we learned that people didn't want an avatar that looks exactly like them – they wanted something more. It's like with Instagram profiles — no one posts photos of their dirty dishes (please, prove me wrong). Instead, we choose to create an idealistic version of our lives featuring pictures from trips to Bali, plates full of sushi, and selfies from Coachella.

Where are we now and what's the future of 3D avatars

Learning this, we set Wolf3D on its current tracks and made a simpler avatar creator based on a single selfie. It allows anyone with a camera and access to the Internet to create an idealized, 3D version of themselves. All with the just-right balance – not too abstract, not too realistic. Cristian Anton, Co-founder and CEO of MeetinVR, said in an interview with Wolf3D's CEO that "what we have here [...] is like the perfect balance, at least for what is possible with the current technology."

Ready Player Me avatars

Ready Player Me avatars are our current just-right solution for avatars. They are available in 600+ apps and games, allowing people to have social interactions in virtual worlds while keeping a consistent digital identity. Think of it like this: in the morning, you can hop into a meeting via MeetinVR; in the afternoon, you join a meetup on Mozilla Hubs; in the evening, you hang out with your friends in VRChat or stream your Beat Saber session via LIV. All using the same avatar.

If future technology allows for it, we might see the shift towards more realistic avatars. But right now, we are in a perfect spot for representing our identities and showing emotions without creeping anyone out.

Are you a developer?

If you're a developer, you can implement our avatar platform for free. Fill this form and become a Ready Player Me Partner to integrate our avatars into your app or game.

If you want to learn more, join our Discord server.

How To Create 3D Characters For Your Unreal Engine 4 Game With Our Avatar SDK

Daniel Marcinkowski — Mon, 26 Apr 2021 09:15:47 +0000

Make a game with 3D avatars using the free Ready Player Me Unreal Engine 4 Avatar SDK

Ready Player Me is a cross-game avatar platform that lets you add a 3D avatar creator to your game. Up until now, we supported only Unity-based applications. That changes with our new Unreal Engine 4 Avatar SDK.

Ready Player Me avatars are compatible with over 700 apps and games, including VRChat, LIV, and Mozilla Hubs. There are also countless indie developers who use our avatar SDK for their projects.

Implementing Ready Player Me avatars is simple. It took one to two days for most of our partners to integrate our Unity-based avatar creator into their products. It's no different with our UE4 character SDK.

In this guide, you will learn how to import and set up the Ready Player Me Unreal Engine 4 Avatar SDK and import our avatars from the web at runtime.

Using Ready Player Me avatars for commercial projects

Ready Player Me avatars are free to use. All avatars created directly on our website are under the Creative Commons 4.0 license, which means that they can be used for non-commercial projects as long as Ready Player Me is credited.

If you’re looking to integrate Ready Player Me avatars into your commercial app or game, you can continue using our avatars for your project for free as a registered Partner. To become a Ready Player Me Partner, follow the steps here.

Requirements

For the Ready Player Me Unreal Engine 4 SDK to work properly, you'll need:

Unreal Engine 4.25 or 4.26. Our plugin is compatible only with these versions due to a third-party plugin glTFRuntime. It is required for loading glTF files. The plugin is included in the ZIP file.
A valid avatar URL created from Ready Player Me to import an avatar into a Unity scene.

Dependencies

Dependencies are included in the ZIP file. If you are using an older or newer version of these dependencies, please backup your project before making changes.

glTFRuntime

For further information on the glTFRuntime plugin, you can find their documentation here.

Acknowledgments

A big thank you to Roberto De Ioris, for creating the glTFRuntime plugin and providing support to all users. We encourage anybody using this plugin to consider purchasing glTFRuntime from the Unreal Marketplace and help support its development.

Getting started with the Ready Player Me Unreal Engine 4 SDK

To get started, download the latest version of the Ready Player Me Unreal Engine 4 plugin. There are two ways to install it:

1. Project Install

You can add the plugin to a particular project. This means that you will need to add the plugin to all projects individually. To add the plugin to an Unreal project, navigate to [PROJECT_NAME]/Plugins folder. If there is no Plugins folder, you need to create it. Unzip the Ready Player Me Unreal plugin archive inside of the Plugins folder. You should see two new folders: ReadyPlayerMe, and glTFRuntime.

2. Engine Install

Alternatively, you can add the Ready Player Me plugin to a particular engine version installed on your computer. That will make it available to any Unreal project you open using that engine version. To do this, navigate to Program Files/Epic Games/[ENGINE_NUMBER]/Engine/Plugins. Once there, unzip the Ready Player Me plugin archive. You should see two new folders: ReadyPlayerMe, and glTFRuntime.

Important – the Unreal Engine SDK was created using Unreal Engine 4.25. If you are doing an engine install for Unreal Engine 4.26, the plugin modules will need to be recompiled to work. To do this, you will need to do a Project Install first and, when you open the project, it will give you the option to rebuild these plugins. Once that's done you can then move them into the Program Files/Epic Games/[ENGINE_NUMBER]/Engine/Plugins folder to make it available for all projects using that engine version.

Enable Plugins

After installing the plugin, you can open your Unreal project. You'll need to restart Unreal if you had an opened project while installing the plugin.

To enable the plugins, navigate to Edit > Plugins in the top toolbar. You should see the ReadyPlayerMe and glTFRuntime plugins. Tick the Enabled option for each of them. The plugins are now ready to use.

Show Plugin Content In Editor

If you don't see the ReadyPlayerMe plugin content in the Content Browser, click the View Options button in the bottom corner and then click Show Plugin Content as shown in the picture below:

How to use the Demo Map

To get you started with Ready Player Me, our plugin comes with a pre-made map called ReadyPlayerMeDemo. It features a basic scene with an actor called BP_ReadyPlayerMeActor.

To load your avatar into this map, you have to paste a URL to a Ready Player Me avatar from our web platform. To do this, click BP_ReadyPlayerMeActor and look for the property named Url.

When done, hit Play. After a few seconds, your avatar should appear in the scene. If it's a full-body avatar, then it will be playing an animation.

Congratulations, you have loaded a Ready Player Me avatar into the Unreal engine!

Inside the Ready Player Me Unreal Engine 4 SDK blueprints

Now let's dive into how the Ready Player Me SDK works and how you can implement it into your games and other applications. To get started, open the BP_ReadyPlayerMeActor blueprint. Let's look at the first three nodes connected to the BeginPlay node.

As the name suggests, this runs as soon as you hit Play. We need to get a pre-configured runtime config using RPM Get Full Body Runtime Config. This is a custom helper function to save you from having to create the config yourself. However, we will also cover how to do that later on in this guide. This config handles some of the loaded .gltf scene scale and 3D transform properties.

Once we have the config, we can pass it to the most important node of all glTF Load Asset From Url. This node is part of the third-party Unreal editor plugin glTFRuntime. As you can see, it is passed the public Url property as a parameter and the LoaderConfig parameter that we specifically need for ReadyPlayerMe avatars to load correctly for animation purposes.

Important – while glTF Load Asset From Url loads the asset, it does not spawn it in the scene. It loads the data from the URL and stores it in a format we can then use.

Lastly, it has a Completed callback function which we will use to actually load the avatar model assets into the scene.

The OnAssetLoaded function below is connected to the Completed callback function parameter mentioned above. This is run once the avatar has finished loading from the web and returns a custom type of asset called a glTFRuntimeAsset which contains all the data loaded from the ReadyPlayerMe .gltf file.

Once the asset has been loaded, we can check whether the loaded asset is a full-body or half-body avatar. If it's a half-body avatar, it loads in with the helper function RPM Setup Half Body Skeleton node. If it's a full-body avatar, it loads the model with the RPM Setup Fullbody Skeleton node. Both of these nodes handle the loading of all the meshes, materials, and skeleton and adding it to the Target actor, which defaults to self if nothing is assigned.

Important – the RPM Setup Full Body Skeleton node has a Skeleton parameter. This must be set to RPM_MixamoSkeleton as this is used for retargeting from our reference skeleton we have included in the plugin. Without this, the animations won't work correctly.

After loading the full-body skeleton, we can set the avatar up for animation with the RPM Set Full Body Animation Blueprint. This is another helper function, and it takes in the public property AnimBlueprintInstance, which can be set in the inspector of the actor.

If you want to see exactly what our RPM helper functions do, you can find the C++ class files in [PROJECT_NAME/Plugins/ReadyPlayerMe/Source/ReadyPlayerMe/Private.

Further Learning

If you would like to understand the avatar loading function logic further in blueprint format, there is also a BP_ManualExampleActor you can reference. In this event graph, you will see how the logic behind our ReadyPlayerMeFunctionLibrary helper functions can be applied manually via the Blueprint system.

How to load Mixamo animations for the Ready Player Me avatars

Full-body Ready Player Me avatars are compatible with Adobe's Mixamo animations. Here's what you have to do to use the animations with our avatars:

Step 1: Go to Mixamo's website and sign up or log in
Step 2: Upload RPM_Animation_Target.fbx from [PROJECT_NAME]/Plugins/ReadyPlayerMe/Resources/RPM_Animation_Reference.zip to Mixamo.

Important – RPM Animation Reference FBX is in a ZIP file. Otherwise, it would be imported into Unreal and converted into a .uasset file. That would make it impossible to upload to Mixamo.com.

Step 3: After Mixamo completes processing the animation target, pick an animation that you want to use. Then click Download.

Step 4: When the download settings dialogue shows up, select format as FBX binary and skin as Without Skin. Finally, click "Download."

Step 5: Import the animation FBX file into your Unreal Engine Project and in the FBX Import Options window, click on the Skeleton property.

Step 6: Set the skeleton to the preconfigured RPM_Mixamo_Skeleton.

Step 7: Hit Import to load the animation into the project.

Once imported, you can add it to an animation blueprint of your own or to our example blueprint – BP_RPM_Animation.

That's all you have to know to get started with Ready Player Me Unreal Engine 4 SDK. For more, including our Unity SDK, check our developer documentation. Feel free to join our Discord server and chat with our team on the #developer-discussion channel.

If you would like to use Ready Player Me for a commercial product, reach out to our team.

How To Create 3D Characters For Your Unity Game With Our Avatar SDK

Daniel Marcinkowski — Mon, 19 Apr 2021 10:03:39 +0000

Make a game with 3D avatars using the free Ready Player Me Unity Avatar SDK

Ready Player Me is more than a 3D character creator – it's a cross-game avatar platform that lets you add personal avatars to any app and game. All it takes for the user to create their avatar is to take a selfie and customize it to their liking. Ready Player Me is already compatible with VRChat, LIV, Mozilla Hubs, 700 more official partners, and many smaller developers using our Unity Avatar SDK.

Implementing Ready Player Me 3D avatars is simple. Usually, it takes just one to two days for most of our partners to integrate our avatar creator into their products.
In this guide, we are going to focus on our Unity Avatar SDK. We will guide you through our avatars' import process, both inside the editor and at runtime.

Using Ready Player Me avatars for commercial projects

Requirements

For the Ready Player Me Unity package to work properly, you'll need:

Unity 2018LTS and newer versions of the Unity3D game engine
A valid avatar URL created from Ready Player Me to import an avatar into a Unity scene

For iOS builds, the Microphone Usage Description field in Player Settings must be filled with an appropriate message. The VoiceHandler component requires microphone permission. If this area is not filled, the build will fail. To build without microphone permission, remove this script.

Dependencies

Dependencies are already included in the Ready Player Me .unitypackage file. If you are using an older or a newer version of these dependencies, please backup your project before making changes.

GLTFUtility - 0.6
Newtonsoft JSON - 12.0.1.22727

Getting started with the Ready Player Me Unity Avatar SDK

If you worked with Unity before, then the Unity package's import process should be easy for you. Here's how it goes:

Download the latest version of the Ready Player Me Unity package from our releases page
Open the Unity project you want to use
Import the package from the top Unity Editor toolbar via Assets > Import Package > Custom Package
Select the Ready Player Me Unity package from file explorer and import it. A window will pop up, hit "OK" to start importing the package into your project.

You can also import a Unity package by dragging and dropping it into the Project tab in the Unity window.

How to use the Ready Player Me Unity Avatar SDK

To launch the Ready Player Me Unity Avatar SDK editor window within Unity, select ReadyPlayerMe in the Avatar Loader menu.

To create and save your avatar in editor time, paste your avatar URL from the Ready Player Me website and click on the "Load Avatar" button.

To load an avatar during playtime, create an instance of AvatarLoader and call LoadAvatar the method from the instance with the URL of the avatar to load.

private void LoadAvatar()
{
    AvatarLoader avatarLoader = new AvatarLoader();
    avatarLoader.LoadAvatar(avatarUrl, AvatarLoadedCallback);
}

private void AvatarLoadedCallback(GameObject avatar)
{
    Debug.Log("Avatar Loaded!");
}

This operation will download and load the avatar model to the scene. You can get access to the avatar game object in the scene via a callback method.

API documentation for Ready Player Me Unity Avatars

Here are classes that you can call within Ready Player Me Avatar SDK. As we said before, it's fairly simple!

AvatarLoader – the main class used for loading and downloading avatar models and configures the output
public void LoadAvatar(string url, Action<GameObject> callback = null) – initiates avatar download and import operations
public int Timeout – the timeout value for avatar download request
public bool UseModelCaching – used for caching downloaded models by their GUID. If enabled, models will be loaded from users local instead of being downloaded again

Important – making a new avatar will not give you a new GUID. It will update your avatar on the same URL instead. Use caching if you are sure that you will not update your avatar. Otherwise, the old avatar will be loaded.

Loading Mixamo Animations for the Ready Player Me Unity avatars

Full-body Ready Player Me avatars are compatible with Adobe's Mixamo animations. Here's what you have to do to use the animations with our avatars:

Step 1: Go to Mixamo's website and sign up or log in

Step 2: Upload either FemaleAnimationTarget or MaleAnimationTarget from Assets/Plugins/Wolf3D ReadyPlayerMe SDK/Resources/AnimationTargets to Mixamo.

You can find this folder by clicking on the Reveal Animation Targets Folder button on the editor window.

Step 3: After Mixamo completes processing the animation target, pick an animation that you want to use. Then click "Download."

Step 4: When the download settings dialogue shows up, select FBX for Unity format and skin as Without Skin. Finally, click "Download."

Step 5: Move the downloaded animation into your Unity project by drag it into a female or male Animator Controller.

That's all you have to know to get started with Ready Player Me Unity Avatar SDK. For more, including our Unreal SDK, check our developer documentation. Feel free to join our Discord server and chat with our team on the #dev-unity channel.

If you would like to use Ready Player Me for a commercial product, reach out to our team.