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Meta Avatars SDK (Feedback/Issues)

mouse_bear
Retired Support

Do you have any feedback and/or issues in regards to the Meta Avatars SDK? Use this place to discuss, as we'll have members of the engineering team reviewing this thread!

 

Read the blog on the Meta Avatars SDK here: https://developer.oculus.com/blog/meta-avatars-sdk-now-available/

 

Refer to the Meta Avatars SDK documentation here: https://developer.oculus.com/documentation/unity/meta-avatars-overview/

112 REPLIES 112

ImmersiveMatthew
Adventurer

 

Hello @mouse_bear Someone over on Oculus Start linked me here and I am glad as I do have some feedback but first, let me share that Meta is onto something big with the new Meta Avatars. My user testing with them was very positive.  Users were absolutely delighted to see their own Meta Avatar and it made their immersion deeper.  Way to go team Meta!!!  Sadly it was not smooth sailing to implement and turns out that I cannot use them right now unfortunately. More on both below. 

 

 

End to End Tutorials and Videos:

There is a big win for Meta and Developers in terms of Meta Avatars and the more apps that can adopt, the more it will make the entire platform feel more cohesive (like the Miis did on the Wii).  I know you know this, but what you may not know is how much time developers are wasting right now due to a lack of a more direct explanation on how to implement Meta Avatars. Yes there is documentation but I and others I have spoken with, have spent many hours trying to figure it all out as not all was obvious.  Thank goodness for the developer forums and the Oculus Start Discord. Thankfully I got it all sorted now, but that comes at a cost of wasted time and that impacts both of us.  I spent many hours trying to figure out little things that are just not obvious in the documentation or even just absent. When I look back on what I have learned, I recognize one good tutorial would have cut it down from days to maybe 30 mins. Meta Avatars is that simple. This said, the trend these days is to not only provide the technical documentation like you have, but also videos with the developer(s) just casually walking you through setup, store deployment, avatar setup and testing (not just local avatar as that is far from custom Avatar in an app), common issues, limitations (like the lighting one below), troubleshooting tips, and best practices etc. These sorts of videos often get you up and running very quickly and allows you to get back to creating not trying to figure out why your avatar is blue.  I am sorry to be negative here, but it really needs to be said that Meta should really consider stepping it up here as it is a win win for both Meta and devs who are working hard to bring content to the platform. Delays due to documentation gaps affect both of us. I highly recommend asking someone around the office who knows little to nothing about the Meta Avatars and have them try and implement it in Unity and elsewhere as it will provide many insights as to the gaps in the documentation and as well as input for your videos. If the Meta team would like to reach out to me for more feedback, I welcome it. 

 

 

 

Realtime Spot and Point of Light Support:

I managed to get the Meta Avatars working end to end with a users custom avatar, but due to the additive/async scene load nature of my title, I cannot use light probes and thus I cannot light the Meta Avatar with anything other than a real time Directional light which just looks so flat and out of sync with the rest of the realtime lights.  With this said, I am requesting real time shaders, preferably URP Lit or Simple Lit, be added to the Meta Avatar shaders for those of us who prefer real time lights and/or cannot use light probes. I know Meta does not recommend many realtime lights due to the hardware of the Quest, but with clever optimization, you really can have them...and a lot of them.  There are over 100 realtime lights in my ride so far and as you can see if you try it yourself, they make things look very real as compared to light probes. Just look at the seat you are in and how the light and shadows interact especially in that loading area going under all the spotlights. It really adds to the immersion of my title and I am sure others.

 

 

Thanks for reading my feedback and I look forward to improvements over the coming months. Ideally, realtime spot and point lights will be working with the Meta Avatars before I have completed my ride over the next year.  LOVE to hear back from you on the priority of this request.

 

 

My title https://www.oculus.com/experiences/quest/4212005182188732/

 

Edited to remove some of my frustration that was coming through. 🙂

 

Heaney-555
Heroic Explorer

The documentation states that cross-platform support (eg. same avatar showing on Quest and Rift) requires App Grouping in the Developer Dashboard.

 

However, App Grouping does not work for App Lab apps. App Lab apps cannot be grouped with Rift apps, thereby making cross-platform impossible.

 

Is there a workaround for this?

EdDaWord
Honored Guest

Per this other thread, it seems like the sample scenes are not running for some people: https://forums.oculusvr.com/t5/Unity-VR-Development/Meta-Avatars-SDK-mostly-broken/td-p/936708

I am also having trouble getting the Sample Scenes to run on the Quest 2. Is there a possibility of adding progressively complex scenes so that one can test why the built APKs might not be running on the device properly? Personally, I am stuck pretty early on. I've been able to other apps to run on the Quest however configuring the sample scenes has been troublesome.

Thanks for providing good documentation regardless.

I got it working end to end after a week of trying to figure all the little things not clear in the documentation and am happy to help you out.  Where are you stuck? What did you get working so far if anything?  

Hello Metaverse-Adventures, thank you for offering help as it is much needed in my case!

My first problem is that I can't get my own Oculus Account's avatar to show up in the example scenes. On my console I can see an error saying "Failed Entitlement Check - Missing entitlement for {my app id}". Falling back to Local Avatar.

EDIT: Apparently YOU can get it to work in Edit but you need to use a Rift OR Quest via link cable and not just in the editor with nothing attached.

 

It is not clear in the documentation but unfortunately you cannot get custom avatars to show up in the Editor only in the build on the Quest.  Feel free to ask more if you do not see them on your Quest.  

 

 

kukuhbr
Honored Guest

Hi, I am having problem using Meta Avatar with Geckoview web view plugin.
Sample avatar with webview is OK.
CDNAvatar without webview is OK.

CDNAvatar toghether with webview crashed my app. (whichever one gets loaded first, once both are active in the scene, the app crash)

I am using the only available Oculus Quest-compatible webview on Unity asset store from Vuplex (https://assetstore.unity.com/packages/tools/gui/3d-webview-for-android-with-gecko-engine-web-browser...)
Apparently it's related to locked up threads as the crash report give SIGSEGV error on random places.

I've contacted Vuplex developer, set up a bug repro scene, and they have given me great support. They are checking whether the problem is related with Geckoview. We haven't been able to pinpoint the problem though. 

I think there are also possibility that the crash is related to Meta Avatar sdk. During development, my team has found out that either disabling lipsync or downgrading shader from Horizon -> UnityStandard/MobileDiffuse can temporarily fix the crash. But the next day the crash unexplainably occurs again.

Is it possible if I get someone from the engineering team kindly take a peek in my bug repro scene and ask for their insight?

Actually you can get it to work with nothing attached by doing the following:

1. In the Menu bar: Oculus > Platform > Edit Settings

2. Under Unity Editor settings and Use Standalone Platform you can enter your Oculus credentials. Using those credentials it will then correctly load the avatar for that Oculus account.

Oh **bleep**, I also work with Vuplex so I may get the same problem down the line. Let me know if you find a solution for this.