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Today, we are launching Ready Player Me Labs, an initiative to give developers and users early access to experimental projects and features our team is working on, and gain valuable feedback from the community. The first Labs release includes an AI-powered, experimental version of our avatar creator. It uses Dall-E to generate unique textures based on user prompts.
We are also previewing one of the most requested features by our community: the ability to customize tops, pants, and shoes individually. This, combined with using AI for generating textures, gives unlimited options for customizing avatar outfits.
The vision for AI to power avatar creator is not just about the clothes on your avatar's back – we'll be continuing to add new experimental features including:
These much-requested features will help to make the avatars even more personal, giving you more ways to express yourself in the metaverse.
Ready Player Me Labs won’t be just a stand-alone version of our avatar creator. It’s also going to be a testing ground for experimental features for the developers using our platform, including improvements to the Avatar API, Unity and Unreal SDKs.
We look forward to continuing to push the boundaries of avatar customization in the future. Our goal is to give users more personalization options without sacrificing interoperability and performance in the 6,000+ apps and games being built by our partners. Ready Player Labs and the AI-powered avatar creator is an exciting first step and is available to all users now. If you're looking for a way to integrate Ready Player Me avatars into your application, sign up for free to become a developer.
","comment_id":"63d83cee79ec58003d8dc664","feature_image":"https://blog.readyplayer.me/content/images/2023/01/rpm-labs-copy.png","featured":false,"visibility":"public","created_at":"2023-01-30T23:55:58.000+02:00","updated_at":"2023-02-02T20:22:26.000+02:00","published_at":"2023-02-02T16:00:20.000+02:00","custom_excerpt":"Ready Player Me Labs are a testing ground for new features of our avatar platform. We are starting with Dall-E powered outfit customization. ","codeinjection_head":null,"codeinjection_foot":null,"custom_template":null,"canonical_url":null,"url":"https://blog.readyplayer.me/labs-dall-e-custom-avatar-creator/","excerpt":"Ready Player Me Labs are a testing ground for new features of our avatar platform. We are starting with Dall-E powered outfit customization. ","reading_time":2,"access":true,"comments":false,"og_image":null,"og_title":null,"og_description":null,"twitter_image":null,"twitter_title":null,"twitter_description":null,"meta_title":null,"meta_description":null,"email_subject":null,"frontmatter":null,"feature_image_alt":null,"feature_image_caption":null},{"id":"638610ca9bf39b003d43339a","uuid":"3693f8b5-4217-4276-9c83-2074e7257fab","title":"How to get started with the Avatar API in Unity","slug":"get-started-avatar-api-unity","html":"Last month, we released the Avatar API – our avatar interoperability layer that improves avatar performance and integration flexibility. We have already seen Ready Player Me partners use it to make their games run smoother or to generate 2D user profile pictures.
The Avatar API makes changing Avatar Config simple, regardless if you're building a web experience or a game in Unity. We partnered with Dinesh Punni from Immersie Insiders to go over the API's features and using it with Unity.
All you need to get started with the Avatar API with an avatar ID that ends with the GLB file extension. You can get an avatar URL to your existing avatar from the My Avatars section of the Ready Player Me Hub or by creating it on the demo subdomain. It should look like this: https://api.readyplayer.me/v1/avatars/6185a4acfb622cf1cdc49348.glb
Avatar API allows you to change the Avatar Config by adding parameters to the URL. For example, to change the mesh's level of detail, you have to add ?meshLod=2 at the end of the link: https://api.readyplayer.me/v1/avatars/6185a4acfb622cf1cdc49348.glb?meshLod=2.
Currently, you can use the following parameters, with more to come in future releases:
meshLod – control the triangle count of the returned avatartextureSizeLimit – set the upper limit for texture resolution in pixels of any texture in the avatartextureAtlas – generate a texture atlas of the desired resolutionmorphTargets – comma-separated list of individual morph targets or morph target standard groups to include on the avatarpose – define the pose for a full-body avataruseDracoMeshComparassion – reduce the file size by compressing output avatars with Draco mesh compressionuseHands – toggle hands for half-body VR avatarsYou can see a list of all available values in our developer docs.
![](\"https://blog.readyplayer.me/content/images/2022/11/6181a67bfb622cf1cd4fe82f.png\")
By changing the file extension from GLB to PNG, you can export a 2D render of the avatar using the Render API. There are a couple of parameters that let you change the render background and avatar's expression:
scene – the name of the portrait type to render (full-body, half-body, transparent, etc.)blendShapes – map of 3D meshes to their blend shapes (changing avatar's expression)See the list of all available values for 2D avatars.
Avatar API also allows you to see the following metadata of an avatar:
bodyType (full-body or half-body)outfitGender (masculine or feminine)outfitVersion (depends on the outfit)skinTone (provided as a hex value – you can use it for setting the skin tone of custom hands for VR avatars)createdAtupdatedAtIf you're using the Ready Player Me Unity SDK, you can access Avatar API's features directly through the Unity editor. You can also take advantage of the Scriptable Objects and dynamically change the Avatar Config based on the gameplay. It can be used for things like distance-based rendering of avatars with a variable mesh LOD. You can use one of the default Avatar Configs or create a custom one that fits your needs.
You have everything that's needed to get started with the Avatar API. Head to the developer docs for more detailed instructions and to learn more about integrating Ready Player Me avatars into your app or game. You can also read more about Avatar API from the Immersive Insiders team.
We spent seven years building a perfect 3D avatar system, so you don't have to. Ready Player Me avatars work on the web, mobile, and every platform that support Unity or Unreal Engine.
Join the growing list of over 5,000 Ready Player Me partners who integrate our avatars into their apps and games, including Animaze, Immersed, Spatial, and Hiber.
Ready Player Me is free to use for users and developers. Become a Ready Player Me partner to use our avatars in your commercial app or game.
","comment_id":"638610ca9bf39b003d43339a","feature_image":"https://blog.readyplayer.me/content/images/2022/11/avatar-api.jpg","featured":false,"visibility":"public","created_at":"2022-11-29T16:01:46.000+02:00","updated_at":"2022-12-06T21:32:27.000+02:00","published_at":"2022-11-30T16:00:08.000+02:00","custom_excerpt":"Use the Ready Player Me Avatar API to smoothly integrate a personal avatar creator into your app or game","codeinjection_head":null,"codeinjection_foot":null,"custom_template":null,"canonical_url":null,"url":"https://blog.readyplayer.me/get-started-avatar-api-unity/","excerpt":"Use the Ready Player Me Avatar API to smoothly integrate a personal avatar creator into your app or game","reading_time":3,"access":true,"comments":false,"og_image":null,"og_title":null,"og_description":null,"twitter_image":null,"twitter_title":null,"twitter_description":null,"meta_title":null,"meta_description":null,"email_subject":null,"frontmatter":null,"feature_image_alt":null,"feature_image_caption":null},{"id":"63443437634f1a003d0df813","uuid":"e1d0acc4-dcd5-4b89-95a0-b4f88879fb52","title":"The Interoperability Layer for the Metaverse – Announcing Avatar API","slug":"avatar-api","html":"It’s often said that there are no standards in the gaming industry - different engines work with different asset formats, rendering pipelines, and ways to define how 3D content should get rendered and interacted with.
An interoperable avatar for the metaverse needs to be technically compatible, look visually pleasing, and very importantly, consistent across all the games and applications it’s used in.
Games often implement custom character systems with unique constraints, different styles, and custom asset build pipelines. Studios create their custom animation libraries and proprietary character skeletons. Developers have specific and very strict requirements on the performance of the avatars while users expect the avatars to represent themselves or the heroes they want to embody. Hence a default avatar system for the metaverse needs to win the hearts of game developers, designers, and end-users.
While it’s very difficult to create an avatar system, it’s far more difficult to create one which works well for thousands of games with their quirks, which lets users customize their avatars with body shapes, detailed customization options, and continues to remain performant for any gameplay scenario and enables users to seamlessly travel with their wearables (which could be NFTs) across different metaverse applications. All the while the aesthetic representation might change from game to game. The big challenge is establishing the right standards developers are willing to adopt and building the technology that lets 3D avatars fit into a wide spectrum of apps, enabling interoperability.
Developers are conscious of shipping high-quality experiences to their players. An avatar system that doesn’t perform well becomes impractical quickly. Also, many games are social experiences, meaning tens if not hundreds of avatars share virtual spaces together, and performance becomes paramount.
Today, we are launching the Ready Player Me Avatar API, our avatar interoperability layer that improves avatar performance and integration flexibility.
With the launch of the Ready Player Me Avatar API, developers get access to seven controls that help them tune the avatars to fit into their applications:
In addition, we are introducing two parameters that help you define the pose and hand configuration of the avatars.
Developers familiar with our existing API can start using the new features immediately by extending the 3D avatar URLs with the new parameters. As an example, adding …glb?meshLod=2 to the avatar URL would provide you with an avatar with a reduced poly count.
With those parameters, the avatars can be reduced up to 8x in disk size and up to 3x in GPU memory usage.
Furthermore, many apps target multiple platforms from desktop, mobile, web, and VR where they expect to configure the same avatar ID differently dependent on end-user’s device. With the Avatar API, it is now possible to use any number of different performance settings whenever requesting the avatars. For example, you can drop texture resolution, use LOD 3 and remove facial animation morphs on mobile while loading LOD 0 with maximum texture resolution on the desktop by simply changing the parameters.
Distance-based LOD systems can also be developed using this API, letting developers display more avatars as more players join their games.
![](\"https://blog.readyplayer.me/content/images/2022/10/ezgif-1-cd00a13ad4.gif\")
In addition, the Avatar API brings several ease-of-use and other improvements to Ready Player Me. Starting today, you can define in which body type (full- or half-body) the avatar editor is loaded in, get easy access to 2D avatar renders through our Render API, and support all PBR channels in texture atlases.
Until today, updates to the avatars exported from Ready Player Me have only occurred in case users used the Ready Player Me editor within the application. Starting today, any changes users make to their avatars get reflected within partner applications, without strict user interaction needed.
The avatar creation becomes dynamic, and avatars are assembled just in time when requested. Update your avatar in Ready Player Me Hub, and the next time you load into your favorite game, an updated avatar will be waiting for you.
There’s a lot more to an avatar system than just its performance, however. Users expect to represent themselves better with body shapes, weight and height options, granular customization choices, the ability to age the avatars, and more. An avatar system for the metaverse needs to translate avatars and their cosmetics seamlessly between styles allowing identities and wearables of users to carry over from one app to another while the aesthetics of the avatars change.
These are tricky problems to solve as they’re intertwined with an extensive, dynamic, ever-expanding cross-application content library that we together with our partners produce.
With the API in place, those problems are easier to tackle, helping us build a more native, in-engine avatar creator that lets avatars be more deeply integrated into the environment of games, provide multiple styles of avatars, improve the diversity through body shapes, including animations, and more.
The continuous developments of this API help make the Ready Player Me avatar creator more flexible and performant for the many types of developers we work with. It’s a necessary backbone for an interoperable avatar system that can respond to vastly different requirements of applications, and different artistic styles, allowing third-party avatars and content to be wearable across the network.
Read more about what’s possible in our docs here. Also, be sure to check what’s new in our Unity and Unreal Engine SDKs.
Excited about new features coming to our platform? We are always looking to help more companies and developers become part of the metaverse.
If you want to integrate our avatars into your app or game, apply to become a partner.