In nuce: Unity has given its Digital Human Package an update. The update was announced on 1 November, i.e. on Tuesday of this week, during the keynote speech by Unity CEO John Riccitiello at the Unity 2022 user event (see video below from minute 02:36).
Unite 2022 Keynote | Unity
In toto: The Digital Human Package is a free online library of assets and animations that can be used to render photorealistic human characters in the Unity game engine. The package was originally released as part of the short film The Heretic in 2020. The Heretic demonstrates a realistic digital human created with the help of the Unity game engine (the video is linked at the end of this news item). Many of the functions that have now been added to the Digital Human Package are those that were used in another demonstration of the Unity engine: the short film Enemies (see video below). The lead image for this news item was taken from the same short film.
Enemies – real-time cinematic teaser | Unity
New features: Listed below are some of the new features of the Digital Human Package that come with the update.
- GPU-accelerated skin deformation
- The ability to automatically apply wrinkle maps based on skin tension
- Customised pass for slight blurring around the eyelids
- Updated shader graphics for eyes and skin
Exploitability: According to Jim Thacker of cgchannel.com, the package is available under the Unity Companion Licence , which includes commercial use.
Clicked next: Unity’s Digital Human Package is available for download on github.com .
Sources: cgchannel.com ( message from Jim Thacker), blog.unity.com ( blog posting from the community team)
The Heretic short film | Unity
