Hi,
thank you very much for your support request.

IK is supported on layers, but it's not supported to key the "FK/IK Blend" property in an additive layer. An additive layer is adding an offset to the underlaying animation (mathematically it performs an add operation: "FK/IK Blend (base layer)" + "FK/IK Blend (layer1)"). For "FK/IK Blend" this doesn't really make sense as it could yield to values that are out of range 1+1 = 2 which is not a valid value for FK/IK Blend.

So key the FK/IK Blend value on the base layer. You can also modify the IK of the hands on the base layer as your base layer does not have any IK keys anyway as the imported animation was using FK.
Alternatively you could use an override animation layer for your arms as you want there motion to be completley overwritten anyways. In an override layer, it's also possible to change the "FK/IK Blend" property.

The additive layer would be useful for e.g. adding some rotational offset to the spine so that the character is leaning over the sink. This would still keep the base idle movement of the spine just offsets it by e.g 10° (i.e. base layer spine angle + 10° of the additive layer).

I hope this shed's some light into what an additive layer actually is.

Best regards,
Peter

Hi,
thank you very much for your support request.

I just want to stop the bird's feet from moving away from where they are on frame 4-5 for example.

You mean you want that the feet stay exactly at place? You need to pin the to the ground using IK.

Also the getting started tutorial is like - "I recommend setting up IK". Well why?

IK makes it easier for you to animate, as you can just drag the "end effector" (e.g. for the arms, you can just drag the hand to the spot you want them to be and the IK is calculating the required angles for the upper/lower arms automatically for you). When using FK instead, you would have to manually rotate the upper/lower arms until the hand is at the spot you want it to be.

Same goes for your bird's feet. If you want them to stay at the exact same spot, with FK you would have to manually adjust the rotation of the upper/lower leg bones for each frame so that the feet stay on spot. IK plus IK pinning would do that automatically for you.

What do we do when mapping in IK isnt correctly assigned?

Since your model is a generic model (and not a humanoid one), UMotion has no way to know that e.g. a leg bone is a leg as in a generic model it really could be anything. So you have to manually setup your IK chain. I recommend checking out the detailed IK video tutorial: https://www.soxware.com/umotion-manual/ProLesson2.html

Here is a video tutorial that explains what IK Pinning does and why you would use it for your feet: https://www.soxware.com/umotion-manual/ProLesson5.html

Basically IK Pinning locks the (in your case) feet at a certain world space position.

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

Best regards,
Peter

Hi Calvin,
thank you very much for sharing your idea.

I'm adding this idea to my collection of ideas that I'm looking through each time I'm starting with a new UMotion update in order to decide which features to ship next.

Best regards,
Peter

Hi,
thank you very much for your support request.

Grouping animation properties in the clip editor is not possible. Instead I would recommend selecting the bone in the scene view which also automatically selects the animated property in the clip editor. This is the fastest way to select things.

To code a custom button for selecting something, please check out this: https://www.soxware.com/umotion-manual/UMotionAPI.html

The following methods might be especially useful for you:

static void PoseEditor.GetAllTransforms(List<Transform> transformsList)
static void PoseEditor.GetSelectedTransforms(List<Transform> transformsList)
static void PoseEditor.SetTransformIsSelected(Transform transform, bool selected)

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 for purchasing Umotion.

I would recommend generating a general rig in Blender and then animating it in UMotion. The FK/IK setup is created automatically by UMotion. The FK/IK functionality of Blender does not export to Unity so if you do not plan to animate in Blender, you can save yourself that work.

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

Best regards,
Peter

Hi,
thank you very much for your support request. This is not a bug. Please confirm the dialog.

Best regards,
Peter

Hi BenieTheDragon,
thank you very much for your support request and thanks for the kind words.

You can flip the animation directly in Unity (if the animation is of type humanoid). Simply select the *.anim file and then in the inspector make a tick mark at the "Mirror" checkbox. You can then import the mirrored animation into UMotion for further editing if you want/need.

Inside UMotion, you can only mirror bones that have a bone on the other side (e.g. left/right arm) but you can't mirror single bones like spine etc. Here is a video tutorial about how this works: https://www.soxware.com/umotion-manual/Lesson9.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. Instead of having two key frames that are far apart (rotation wise), add an additional key frame in the middle (with the correct rotation it should have at that point). The animation always takes the shorts rotation path between two key frames.

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

PS: In case you are using Euler rotation interpolation mode, also make sure to check out the curves view. It clearly illustrates how and why it performs which rotation.

Best regards,
Peter

Hi,
thank you very much for your support request.

An animation file can only animate objects that are children of the animation/animator component. In other words, it's like you said. An animation alone can't get this job done, you need to use a combination of an animation and scripting. Make an animation that performs the throwing animation. Then at the right frame, trigger an animation event (so that your script knows that it needs to throw the weapon). Then in the script, spawn a new weapon GameObject at the position of the weapon of the animation. Hide the weapon of the animation (by setting MeshRenderer.enable = false;) and apply a force to the newly created weapon.

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

Best regards,
Peter

Hi,
thank you very much for your support request.

You're not allowed to edit something on the hierarchy of a GameObject that is currently assigned to the UMotion Pose editor. Simply click on "Clear" in the pose editor to release the GameObject. 

Also make sure that your UMotion version is the latest version you can get from the asset store. Older UMotion versions might not be compatible with newer Unity versions.

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

Best regards,
Peter