Hi Adam,

thank you very much for your support request.

If you create such a "paired" animation, there are several things to consider:

• The same position/rotation offset the characters had during authoring of the animation should be present at runtime. So your movement code needs to make sure that both your characters have the correct starting position/rotation offset before playing the animation. The simplest form would be to "teleport" the characters to have the correct offset.
• UMotion does not perform any runtime code. So no, the child-of constraint or UMotion's IK system is not available at runtime. UMotion solely creates *.anim files that contain the ready made animation. In order to adapt an animation to runtime situations, a runtime IK solution like animation rigging or Final IK is needed.
• To animate two characters at the same time in UMotion, you have the following options: https://support.soxware.com/en/communities/1/topics/726-animate-two-or-more-models-at-the-same-time

Please let me know in case you have any follow-up questions.

Best regards,
Peter

Hi,

thank you very much for your support request.

I would suggest to make the left hand a child of the gun (or a child of the right hand) using the child-of constraint. Then move and rotate only the right hand and the left hand follows correctly.

1. Go into config mode and select the IK handle of the left hand.
2. Open the constraints tab and scroll down to the child-of constraint. Remove the tick mark from the "IK Pinning Mode" field.
3. Return to pose mode.
4. On the first frame of your animation (or on the first frame where your left hand grabs the gun):
   Select the left hand's IK handle and in the channels view, set either the right hand's IK handle or the gun as parent.
5. Create key frames for your changes (using the "Key Selected" button).

More information: https://www.soxware.com/umotion-manual/ChildOf.html

Unfortunately, there is currently no "rotate around center" functionality in UMotion. This is due to the fact, that usually using the child-of constraint is the superior/more robust approach. It ensures that the (left hand in your case) stays glued to the gun. Using the rotate around center approach is a more manual approach that can get tedious to correct once you accidentally got a little offset in your left hands position somewhere in the middle of the animation.

Please let me know in case you have any follow-up questions.

Best regards,
Peter

Hi,

thank you very much for your support request and I'm glad to hear that you enjoy working with UMotion. That means a lot to me.

Maybe using an additive animation layer for adding the shake would help in your situation?

Layers in the Manual: https://www.soxware.com/umotion-manual/Layers.html

Video tutorial that uses an additive animation layer: https://www.soxware.com/umotion-manual/InPractice2.html

Please let me know in case you have any further questions.

Best regards,
Peter

Hi,

thank you very much for your support request.

In my experience, when you want your animation to be compatible with humanoid, exporting your animations with a mesh results in less problems. Unity automatically creates a working humanoid avatar for you, which is not always working that great for animation files that have no mesh assigned to them. You can export multiple animations into a single FBX file if you don't want to have the same mesh over and over again.

If you really don't want to have a mesh in your FBX file, just select the original FBX file that you've used to import your animation as destination file. The skeleton hierarchy present in that FBX file is kept. UMotion does not add any mesh data.

There is also a mode to export as a fresh FBX file in UMotion (in the settings, simply change the "Write Mode" to "Export As New File"). This also includes no mesh data. Make sure to add a T-Pose as a first frame, otherwise Untiy's humanoid animation system most likely does not create a working humanoid avatar for that animation.

Further reading

Export settings: https://www.soxware.com/umotion-manual/ProjectSettings.html

Export feature: https://www.soxware.com/umotion-manual/ImportExport.html

Please let me know in case you have any follow-up questions.

Bets regards,
Peter

Hi,

thank you very much for your support request.

By default, in UMotion you have to manually create key frames for each change you make to a bone. Of course there is also auto key which (like in Unity by default) creates a key as soon as you modify a bone.

To create a key frame manually, select the modified bones (they are displayed in red) and click on the "Key Selected --> Key All" button in the Pose Editor. Set "Auto Key" to "Generate" in the Pose Editor if you want UMotion to automatically create keys for you every time you modify a bone.

Btw. I highly recommend watching the quick start video tutorial. It's 5 minutes long and covers stuff like this:

https://www.soxware.com/umotion-manual/QuickStart.html

Please let me know in case you have any follow-up questions.

Best regards,
Peter

Hi,

thank you very much for your support request.

When doing a first person animation, use the "Game" window to check how your animation is going to look like from the first person perspective. Changing the "Aspect" setting in the game window to your target aspect (e.g. 16:9) helps showing the correct protion of the screen even if the game window isn't maximized (full screen).

With UMotion you can animate camera settings, but only if the camera is a child object of the character you are currently animating in UMotion. Generally speaking, an animation can only reference objects and properties that are children of the "Animator" component that actually plays the animation file.

In order to animate properties like the camera's settings, use a "Custom Property Constraint" in "Component Property" mode.

Please let me know in case you have any follow-up questions.

Best regards,
Peter

Hi,

thank you very much for your support request.

Only the last joints (e.g. the ones marked in the picture below) have actual vertex weights assigned to them:

That's why the last transform (the end joint in Blender) is displayed as regular transform because it has no vertex weights assigned and Unity thus does not treat it as a bone. The end joints only purpose (in Blender) is to define the length of the bone visualization.

So in order to manipulate the last bone, click on the joint (the sphere) marked above.

If you want to have a complete bone displayed, you would need to extrude the joint (marked in green) in UMotion and hide the unnecessary transform that was imported from Blender. The config mode video tutorial shows you how to extrude end bones and how to show/hide transforms: https://www.soxware.com/umotion-manual/Lesson5.html

Please let me know in case you have any follow-up questions.

Best regards,
Peter

Thanks for sending me the project.

The problem seems to be coming from the "RotationHelper" transform. This transform is not present in the penguins avatar definition (this is the file that provides the rig structure information to the Animator component). So the Animator expects all transform paths that are used to bind the animation curves to the actual bones/transforms to ignore the "RotationHelper" as well.

The original animations do ignore the "RotationHelper", but Unity's Animation window does not (that's why it displays all the bones as yellow, as their transform paths are not correct because they do not contain "RotationHelper"). But the preview in the Animation window works (which Animator is responsible for) as Animator ignores "RotationHelper".

There are 2 ways to deal with this:

1. Use the original penguin FBX file (that does not have "RotationHelper") for creating your animations with UMotion (instead of the prefab that got the "RotationHelper" added).
   The resulting animations do not contain "RotationHelper" in their transform paths and are thus played correctly.
2. Remove the "Avatar" from the Animator component's avatar field of the penguin prefab. Now the "RotationHelper" is not ignored anymore. The original animations that came with the penguin are now not compatible anymore (they are missing the "RotationHelper"). But the "Nod" animation you've created previously (that contains the "RotationHelper") would be played correctly.

As the animation you've created is rather simple, I would choose method 1 and would quickly re-do the "Nod" animation.

Please let me know in case you have any follow-up questions.

Best regards,
Peter

Hi,
thank you very much for your support request.

#1 my character automatically appears with this "[UMotion Locked] message

That is normal. UMotion locked means that the character is occupied by UMotion (= assigned to the pose editor). As soon as you click on "Clear" in the pose editor, the character isn't locked by UMotion anymore.

#2 Instead of appearing the bones to manipulate like all video tutorials shows it appears in the character this odd white cubes which If I try to change it's transforms nothing happens

The cubes that you are seeing are bones that do not have any vertex weights assigned (this makes them a regular "Transform"). You might have done something wrong in Blender when creating the rig (assigned no vertex weights to bones or something the like). If the bones show correctly in Blender and the mesh also deforms correctly when rotating the bones in Blender, the problem might be related to how you've exported the character to Unity. Try to place the *.blend file directly in your Unity project, Unity can read *.blend files (hint: requires Blender to be installed).

This problem isn't really related to UMotion, the bones would also not work if you select them in Unity's regular Hierarchy window and rotate them, the mesh would also not follow the bones.

You can try using a character from the asset store that is rigged and skinned correctly (or the robot kyle character that comes with the UMotion examples folder) together with UMotion to see how things would look like when the model is setup correctly.

Please let me know in case you have any follow-up questions.

Best regards,
Peter