Answered

Key muscle groups directly

Anonymous 4 years ago updated by Peter - Soxware Developer 4 years ago 1

The muscle groups are a great feature, and it would be even better if the could be keyed directly.

Since multiple muscles affect the same bones, the way I'm picturing this working is that keying a muscle group would create 'virtual keys' in the timeline of the affected bones. These keys would not be editable, and their values would be continually calculated by combining the effects of all the muscles driving them.


For example, a bend of the torso accompanied by a back-and-forth twist would comprise:

  • two keyframes for the bend (on the 'torso bend' muscle curve)
  • four keyframes for the twist (on the 'torso twist' muscle curve)
  • six virtual keyframes on the affected bones, the values of each reflecting the cumulative effect of the keyed bones

At any point the user could 'bake' any individual virtual key to create directly editable normal keys (a one-way process).

The advantage to the user is that different muscles in the same group could be keyed and edited at different points on the timeline, making it possible to (as in the example above) superimpose a back-and-forth twist on a bend, and then go back and separately tweak the bending or twisting element of the motion without having to adjust the keyframes of the other.

I fully expect to be told this is actually possible already, but I really, really did look quite hard this time first before asking XD

Answer

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

You are right, this is currently not possible. I've added this to my ideas for the future list, but due to the great amount of changes this would require, I only gave it a medium priority and currently can't promise if and when this feature is going to be implemented.

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

Best regards,
Peter

Answered

Mirror Generic Animation

bilalmohamed18 4 years ago updated 8 months ago 7

I have a Generic animation file with an animation where the 'left leg' is the leading leg. I would like to mirror it and make the 'right leg' the leading leg. I tried the 'Copy to Other Side' option for each keyframe (which is a very tedious process) however, the results are not perfect as I am noticing some extra rotations.


Will be great if you could let me know how the mirroring can be achieved using UMotion Pro.

Answer

Hi,
thank you very much for your support request.

Unfortunately, UMotion currently does not have a functionality to mirror a whole generic animation. Mirror to other side is currently the only available functionality. I have a generic mirror on my to-do list but due to the complexity of this feature I currently can not estimate when such a feature is going to be available.

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

Best regards,
Peter

Answered

Can't create smooth motion involving multiple axes

Anonymous 4 years ago updated by Peter - Soxware Developer 4 years ago 4

I can only assume I'm missing something, because it seems impossible to create smooth motion in which several axes of a bone or muscle group are keyed independently.

The clip I'm trying to create is a 'struggle' animation for a character being wrapped up in a web. Muscle groups should make this easy - and with Unity's own animation editor it is: I can key (for example) chest forward/backward and chest twist movements on different keyframes, creating a reasonably convincing 'writhe' effect. But with UMotion that seems impossible. If I key the chest open/close on frames 20 and 40, and upper body twist on frame 30 and 50, I would expect the twist and the curl to proceed together, just out of phase. Instead, the character acts like a robot, curling forward fully and only then starting to twist, then uncurling and then untwisting. I don't understand the curve view at all: it only shows one curve when several axes are involved and the keys can't be edited other than dragged along the timeline.

I can't believe this is how it's supposed to be; where am I going wrong?

Answer

Hi,
thank you very much for your support request.

The default rotation mode is "Progressive Quaternion". Switching to "euler mode" gives you all 3 curves. Please check out this video tutorial, it explains everything in detail:

If you have any questions, let me know.

Best regards,
Peter

Answered

Use Unity Tool handles

mel 4 years ago updated by Peter - Soxware Developer 4 years ago 1

Hi,

I realized way too late that you can change local/global in the pose tab of uMotion.

Could you just connect it to unity's menu?

Image 612

Answer

Hi Mel,

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

Yes that makes sense. Not sure why I haven't done this initially (maybe there have been technical difficulties). I've put it on my to-do list.

Best regards,
Peter

Answered

Anchoring the bones

Anonymous 4 years ago updated 4 years ago 2

Hello!

Is anyway to anchor bone in edit mode animation?

I have existing animations, but I would like to change them so that the character carries something. I don't want to change that for every frame.

Something like (0:12 to 0:13).

Youtube video


Greetings,

David

Answer

Hi David,

thank you very much for reaching out.

Yes this is possible and is called "IK Pinning". Please first watch the child-of constraint video tutorial (it is the underlying system that enabled the IK pinning functionality), then watch the IK Pinning video tutorial:

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

Best regards,
Peter

Answered

Do armature transforms no longer get modified in editor?

Anonymous 4 years ago updated by Peter - Soxware Developer 4 years ago 4

I used to use a tool that would use the UMotionCallback to update the transform of props onto the hand bone transform so that I could preview held props while editing an animation. It seems that the armature transforms are no longer modified by the clip editor. Did something change with Unity/Umotion versions?

Answer

Hi,

thank you very much for your support request.

Related to the callback mechanism, nothing changed (to my knowledge). I also did a quick test and for me everything is working as expected:

using UnityEngine;
using System.Collections;

public class TestScript : MonoBehaviour
{
    public Transform TestBone = null;

    // Use this for initialization
    public void MyCallback ()
    {
        TestBone.Rotate(0, 90, 0);
    }
}

Assign this script to your character. Then assign any bone to the "TestBone" field. Make sure that UMotion calls the "MyCallback". Your script should get called and adds another 90 degree rotation to the bone.

PS: Oh you probably mean that the visualization of the bones is not updated according to the changes done via the custom script? That's currently by purpose, as the scripts are called after UMotion updated everything and indicates that the changes are coming from a script, not from UMotion.

Best regards,
Peter

Under review

animator transition bug?

shuhsasha 4 years ago updated 4 years ago 7

I have three animations created in UMotion. Get weapon, Idle weapon and Walk weapon. Also i have other animations but for now it doesnt metter. Bug apears in transitions. For example between these animations. Idle and Walk in blend tree. On screen you can see where transition is, and how looklike person before transition. Then, in transition, hands (IK standart UMotion setup) rotating around to same rotation. (in next screens) They just make 360 rotation for no clear reason for me.

Image 610

Image 611

Answered

Just picked up Umotion - Newbie Question on Pasting Start and Stop states to create clip- Melee Draw Sword

Anonymous 4 years ago updated 4 years ago 1

Just picked up the asset - Looks really good!  Questions:  (IK Setup-Humanoid-Auto Key=> Generate) -For first testing I took 2 Animations, One a Melee Pose Idle and the Other a Locomotion Idle.  

I created a new "Clip" and have both these animations imported.   I just want to start with the Locomotion idle pose state and end state be the Melee Pose State (Drawing a Sword Later).   When I select the Melee Pose Animation, Select the entire body, Change to my Clip and move to 2:00 and hit CNTRL-V to Paste it does nothing?   From what I understand  Umotion after this end state paste (and Beginning state paste) will create the clip with the humaniod moving from idle state to the melee ready to draw sword state?   I guess I am stuck on why I can't paste the beginning and end states?   Sorry, New to working in animations like this.   Excited though :) 

Answer
Anonymous 4 years ago

Cancel This!   Got it working so far.  :)  Thanks! 

Answered

Isolate Selection

felix 4 years ago updated by Peter - Soxware Developer 4 years ago 1

Hi!


Would it be possible to have the selected bones be isolated in the properties menu? What i mean is, in dopesheet or curves, to have only the bones that have been selected in the scene view be visible. So if I'd select the two hip bones, all other properties would be hidden (until anything else is selected). Having this as a toggleable feature would be amazing!


I think it would make it a lot easier to work, for example when two properties you want to sync/time with each other are very far away from each other on the list (making you have to scroll up and down all the time to see them)


Thanks for the excellent tool, it makes animation so muc faster for me as it is :)

Answer

Hi Felix,

thank you very much for sharing your idea.

I think this would indeed be a useful feature. I've took a note in my ideas for the future list, but can't promise anything right now.

Thanks for your nice words, I'm glad you like working with UMotion. Don't hesitate to contact me in case you have any other ideas or have any questions.

Best regards,

Peter

Answered

Pose to Pose > Feet going through floor midway through. Best technique?

Anonymous 4 years ago updated 4 years ago 4

Hello, 

I'm trying to simply transition a character between two simple poses. 

Image 604


Image 605


When I scrub between the two states, the character's feet go through the floor.  

Image 606

What's the best technique to fix this sort of thing?  Simple keyframing like I've done using this additive layer? 

Image 607

Or is there a much better technique?  I've tried messing around with IK, but that always seems like the wrong route to go down if you're trying to edit the position of  body part that is already being animated in the raw file.  

I think UMotion is terrific btw, one of the best tools I've seen for Unity!   I just it had a lot more tutorials dealing with simple stuff like this (is it simple???) for the more amateurish amongst us :) 

Answer

Hi,
thank you very much for your support request and thanks for the nice words. Really appreciated.

I would say this is a typical IK use case, as with IK you can directly specify the trajectory of the foot/ankle (via the position of the IK handle). Setting up IK is rather straight forward using the IK setup wizard (when using humanoid, the IK setup wizard's default settings usually don't need to be changed).


You have the possibility to either only use IK at a specific part of your animation (with the "FK/IK Blend" channel you can fade between FK/IK, and using the "Set IK to FK" button you can sync the IK handle with the current FK rig), or you can convert the whole existing animation to IK using "Edit --> FK to IK Conversion" (please note that this conversion might have small imperfections that you may need to correct by hand again).

All the details about IK are shown in this video tutorial:

Please let me know in case you need any further assistance.

Best regards,
Peter