Answered

Tutorials

Anonymous 3 years ago updated by Peter - Soxware Developer 3 years ago 3

Hello, just wanted to ask, can i make my custom animation using this product such as like movement, jump, climbing snd stuff?

Answer

Hi,

thank you very much for your support request.

Yes you can make custom animations with UMotion. Some beginners prefer to start by altering existing animations though as that's usually easier/faster to get good looking results.

Here you find all available video tutorials: https://www.soxware.com/umotion-manual/VideoTutorials.html

I recommend starting with the quick start video tutorial. The video tutorials are split into different playlists. Some just cover the UI and all the UMotion features, and some demonstrate UMotion in practical examples (= the "UMotion In-Practice" playlist).


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


Best regards,
Peter

Not a bug

Bug that graph does not move up and down in curves

Two Comet 3 years ago updated by Peter - Soxware Developer 3 years ago 1

Image 1114

Select the entire graph on the right.
Drag left and right. However, it does not move up and down.
It doesn't move even if you click one by one.
Rotating directly in the scene moves only one frame.
If this isn't a bug, can it be improved to make it moveable?

Answer

Hi,
thank you very much for reaching out.

The behavior you've described is by design. The selected bone's rotation mode is configured as quaternion, that means the graph seen represents one of the 4 components of a quaternion. Quaternions are hard to imagine (they describe a rotation using 4 dimensions) and it's thus not possible to edit the quaternion values directly (i.e. move the curve vertically).

If you want this type of editing, you need to use the Euler rotation mode instead.

More information about the different rotation modes:

The related page in the manual:

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

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

Best regards,
Peter

Answered

IK Hand rotation not rotating the forearm

mR d 3 years ago updated by Peter - Soxware Developer 3 years ago 1

I have a humanoid character and when I have the IK set up, it moves the chain correctly. The issue, however, is when I rotate the character's hand, his forearm does not rotate at all. 

In contrast, when I'm using Unity's IK Rigging and setting up a multi-bone constraint, it works perfectly fine.

Just like in real life, when you rotate your wrist, it should rotate the forearm, no? 

I don't think I'm doing anything wrong because in UMOTION video tutorial, the same behavior issue is seen. (see video at 8:43 mark:)

Youtube video
Answered

anim errors in Animator comp

Anonymous 3 years ago updated by Peter - Soxware Developer 3 years ago 1

Hello, 

Animator component shows animation errors "Binding warning: some generic clips animate transforms that are already bound by a Humanoid avatar. These transforms can only be changed by Humanoid clips : Transform 'root'  "

Created animation and exported as Fbx binary 2011, Rig type Humanoid, Animator is using Humanoid Avatar, the animation was created by my self, i dont get it what generic clips animate transform, it was clean Rigged Mesh, and one simple animation created with uMotion

annd what is the best option to create accuracy animations but with Humanoid type ? Generic would be the best option ? but w/o IK handles ?

Answer

Hi,
thank you very much for your support request.

Binding warning: some generic clips animate transforms that are already bound by a Humanoid avatar. These transforms can only be changed by Humanoid clips : Transform 'root'

This error means that you are trying to play a generic animation on a humanoid character. The reason might be that even though you've configured the FBX that contains the animation as humanoid, it's animations are imported as generic due to errors in the humanoid avatar setup. You would see these errors in the "Rig" tab of your FBX file.


annd what is the best option to create accuracy animations but with Humanoid type ? Generic would be the best option ?

Exactly, if you want high accuracy use generic. IK is also available for generic UMotion projects. Use the IK Setup Wizard and select the correct bones for the "Human IK" slots.

Only the muscle tool assistant (the window shown in the scene view) isn't available in generic projects. If you really want this window, you could workaround by duplicating your character. Configure the duplicated version of your character has "generic". Use the humanoid version for animating in UMotion, then export your animation into the FBX file of your duplicated character that you previously configure as "generic".

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

Best regards,
Peter

Answered

Custom FBX export pipeline

Anonymous 3 years ago updated by jasonyak 3 years ago 9

Hi @SoxwareInteractive

Firstly thanks for making such a great and essential tool, we've found nothing else like it on the store.

We've been getting a bit deeper into integrating it into our workflow pipeline and hitting some issues which I was hoping to ask you about to see what workarounds there might be or what we can do differently.

When exporting animations to an FBX we need to be using the option to export to an existing FBX to gain the benefits of an embedded humanoid avatar, however it's undesirable for us that the animation clips are added to the FBX for various reasons and have found no direct way to remove them once they've been added, the only way we have found is by reverting the FBX. The current way we deal with this problem is that we listen for the OnPostprocessAnimation event, once clips hit an FBX we use an editor coroutine to delay a frame and then we export the clip/s into individual .anim files and then revert changes to the FBX, noting that we use a coroutine because we have very limited use any AssetDatabase create or delete methods while post processing events are firing, Unity throws errors if we use these API's during the post processing events. I have tried many other ways during the post processing event to try and intercept the clips from being added or delete them, but nothing seems to work for us, even the integrated Unity way of removing animations via the inspector is as you may know only hiding the sub assets, it's not really deleting the clips.

The main reasons we don't want the FBX increasing in size is because it will end up with hundreds of animation clips, many of which will become outdated animations we no longer need to use. Loading this FBX at runtime will be a drain on memory and it removes our ability to manage which clips are compiled into our apps.

What we ideally wish we could do is a hybrid of your export options where we can choose an FBX containing an avatar to influence the export, but it exports to an individual file rather than being added to the FBX. If that is not possible I was wondering if you have any ideas on how to remove the animation clips UMotion adds or prevent them from being added to the FBX in the first place? we've exhausted ideas trying to solve this and I'm hoping you have a simple solution for us, it would greatly improve our how we use UMotion as part of our tool chain.

Thanks!

Jason

Answered

A warning about reset to bind pose

Roy D. 3 years ago updated by Peter - Soxware Developer 3 years ago 1

Image 1112

I got this message when trying to animate my avatar, after clicking ok, my avatar appear to lay on the ground face downward. I want to animate with original pose, so I clicked apply scene pose. 

After animation is done, I exported animation file but I find the clip is animate like the character face downward. How to fix this?

Answer

Hi Roy D.,

thank you very much for reaching out.


The Unity Animator is always resetting the position/rotation of the hips bone to the bind pose. This is the position/rotation the hips had when the model's bones where created and bound to the mesh of the model. UMotion is doing the same to ensure correct WYSIWYG preview.


You usually get this error message when you have manually edited the position/rotation of the hips of your character in it's prefab.

To solve this directly drag and drop your character's 3D modeling file (*.FBX, *.blend,...) into your scene (not the prefab!). This ensures that the original position/rotation is used. If the character is oriented correctly this way, create a new prefab based on this version and delete your old prefab.


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


Best regards,

Peter

    Answered

    How to add animation curves for parameters

    Trevor 3 years ago updated by Peter - Soxware Developer 3 years ago 1

    Image 1110


    I'm wondering how to add animation curves to created animations for altering parameter values in the animator while the clip is playing.  Mecanim has this at the bottom of the animation clip, but I don't see it on any clips that if have created from Umotion.  I'm having trouble googling answers because I'm just getting information on the curves between animation keys.

    Answer

    Hi,
    thank you very much for your support request.

    Here is the related page in the manual: https://www.soxware.com/umotion-manual/CustomProperty.html#AnimatorParameter

    In short: Add a custom property constraint to a bone/transform. It doesn't matter which bone/transform you choose. You can even create a new transform that you put above your character's head for easier selection. Set the custom property in "Animator Parameter" mode and adjust the settings to your needs (see link above).

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

    Best regards,
    Peter

    Answered

    Additive Difference

    Carpetcrumb 3 years ago updated by Peter - Soxware Developer 3 years ago 5

    Hey there, I am looking for a way to add the difference of two poses to the Additive layer. The thought behind this is, I have an idle animation, and I have a take-damage animation. They are nearly identical, except the arms are improperly positioned on the latter. What would correct this is if I could add an additive layer to the second animation, adjusted until the first frame matches the starting frame of the idle animation. This way the fist and last frames of both animations match each other and the take-damage animation still plays relative of its base layer. Copying the keys from the base layer to an additive layer of course does not work, and overriding the pose of the arms will mean his arms wont move relative of the base layer. Am I missing something? Is there another way to go about this? Thank you.

    Answer

    Hi,

    thank you very much for your support request.

    Your thinking is correct. While there is no automated way to get the difference, you could do it manually:

    1. Copy the keys of the target pose from the first animation (idle) and insert it as frame 0 in your second animation (take damage). If you only want to manipulate the arm pose, copy only the keys of the arms.
    2. Add an additive layer and open it.
    3. Set the frame cursor to frame 0 and create key frames for all arm bones (with no changes).
    4. Set the frame cursor to frame 1 and adjust the pose until it's in-line with frame 0. You might need to jump back and forth between frame 0 and frame 1. I would suggest using "Auto Key" in "Generate" mode to automatically key your changes, so that you don't have to manually create keys every time you go back to frame 0.

    I hope this helps. Let me know in case you have any follow-up questions.


    Best regards,
    Peter

    Answered

    Suggestions for adding user-friendly buttons.

    Two Comet 3 years ago updated by Peter - Soxware Developer 3 years ago 1

    When the Clip Editor window is closed. In the Pose Editor, add a button to open the Clip Editor below the warning text.

    Conversely, even when the Pose Editor window is closed, it would be nice to be able to open it with a button in the Clip Editor window.

    Answer

    Hi,

    thank you very much for sharing your idea. I really appreciate that.

    I do like the idea and have put it on my to-do list to implement this in the future.

    Don't hesitate to let me know in case you have any questions or further ideas.

    Best regards,
    Peter

    Answered

    Char is like floating after edit

    Loudo 3 years ago updated by Peter - Soxware Developer 3 years ago 1

    Hello after edit arms and export  the char is like floating ... any idea why? thx^^

    Floating Video

    Answer

    Hi Loudo,

    thank you very much for your support request.

    This looks like wrong root motion settings. Please check the root motion settings of the exported *.anim file and of the "Animator" component of your character. You need to make the correct settings (that fit to your animation setup) there.


    As I don't know enough about how you use the animation system, it's a bit hard for me to guess what the correct settings would be in your case. Try setting "Root Transform Position (XZ)" to "Original" and enable the "Bake Into Pose" setting.


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

    Best regards,
    Peter