Add bones to the spine of an existing character rig?
Can a bone be inserted into a character rig? Not added to the end like a hand added to the arm but inserted in the middle like a new joint or two along the spine. I have a character with too few bones in the spine to properly animate its back arch and would like to add a joint. Can this be done in Umotion or would I have to go to a modeling software and re-rig, re-paint weights and re-animate all past animations on the character?
Hi Giantbean,
thank you very much for your support request.
Can this be done in Umotion or would I have to go to a modeling software and re-rig, re-paint weights and re-animate all past animations on the character?
UMotion does not support skinning (i.e. vertex weight painting). In order to insert a bone you need to use your modeling application of choice (like Blender, Maya, etc.).
If done correctly, you don't have to redo thew whole vertex weight painting. Only the vertex weights of the spine bones would need to be adjusted. Also the existing animations shouldn't be affected too much (the spine would be affected a bit due to the new bone being stiff/not animated in all existing animations and due to the other spine joints being at a different position than before).
Please let me know in case you have any follow-up questions.
Best regards,
Peter
Point towards target
Hi. I am making a staff shooting animation. Is it possible to point the staff towards a dynamic target, while doing the shoot animation ? Basically if I point to shoot down, the staff points down, if I point up it shoots up and so on. I am using a non humanoid avatar for the bone rig.
Hi,
thank you very much for your support request.
For something like this you need a runtime IK solution (like Final IK or Unity's animation rigging). An animation file alone can't do this (this applies for all animation files, no matter if created in UMotion or any external 3D modeling application).
Please let me know in case you have any follow-up questions.
Best regards,
Peter
How to make circular motions ?
This head movement is imported from a motion capture asset.
How can I use Umotion to make perfect circular motions ?
Hi Bjørn,
thanks for reaching out.
There is no tool to make a perfect circular motion. So the only real option is to do it by hand (switching rotation mode to euler and adjusting the curves directly might help). Please note that a "perfect" circular motion might look very robotic, it's often better to have small imperfections as it makes the animation look more natural.
Please let me know in case you have any follow-up questions.
Best regards,
Peter
Pinning IK to transform
Is it possible to pin IK to a transform? Say a rifle run animation where the gun is parented under right hand and i would like to have left hand IK to follow gun grip position?
Hi,
thank you very much for your support request.
Yes this is possible. Please check this answer I gave to a similar question: https://support.soxware.com/en/communities/1/topics/100-two-handed-animations-for-gun
Let me know in case you have any follow-up questions.
Best regards,
Peter
Game object occasionally will not be loaded correctly
Occasionally (but fairly often) after dropping a humanoid game object in the Pose Editor the object will not get fully loaded. The object will take currently loaded clip pose in Pose Editor mode and will go back to a reference position in Config mode but no bones are shown and playing the animation in the Clip Editor won't have any effect.
Other than restarting Unity, what works is to change the layout so that Pose Editor and Clip Editor are closed and then switch back to the layout with both panes open. Generally, once the panes have been "restarted " the model is imported correctly.
Hi,
thank you very much for your support request.
This is a commonly asked question. Please check out the answer I gave here: https://support.soxware.com/en/communities/1/topics/451-animating-with-other-non-humanoid-objects-when-animating-humanoid-characters
Please let me know in case you have any follow-up questions.
Best regards,
Peter
I can't get the bones to show - animating generic objects that have no humanoid bone in their parent hierarch is not supported
I can't make the bones visible in my project. I am not attaching another object (like in other forums). This is my first time using UMotion Pro, so I might be missing something simple but I have spent hours looking for the solution.
Thanks
I just opened unity to have another look and the bones are all there! I didn't change anything, must have been a bug that fixed itself once I closed and opened the project again.
Thanks
Problems with thumb pose
Have some problems with the thumb movement. I can not make the movement natural. It feels like it miss some adjustment for the thumb in the adjuster you have made. I miss some rotating and the possibly to align it with the other fingers . Maybe a option to set it together with the slider that adjust the 4 other fingers that adjust the angel between them.
Hi,
thank you very much for your support request.
Looks like the humanoid avatar isn't setup correctly for your finger (as it bends in weird directions). Make sure that the character's thumb has this pose in the humanoid avatar editor:
Btw. in UMotion you can also use the regular rotation tool to adjust your finger bones (you don't have to exclusively use the sliders).
Let me know in case you have any follow-up questions.
Best regards,
Peter
Exported animation has way more keyframes
Hi,
I've just imported this animation called ArmStretching:
It looks good in uMotion, has about the same keyframes:
But upon exporting theres a heap more keyframes added and the file size has quadrupled:
Any tips on what i'm doing wrong? (On Mac)
Hi,
thank you very much for your support request.
You're probably using the humanoid animation format which requires re-sampling of the animation on import and export. Only the "generic" animation format can be edited directly. Úsually, the re-sampling has no negative impact (it slightly increases the amount of memory used but if you export to *.FBX instead of *.anim, unity can optimize the data to get back to about the same size as the original animation).
For more information about import/export, you might want to check out the "import/export" chapter in the manual. You might also want to check out the FAQ in the manual, it answers some commonly asked questions related to import/export.
If you have any further questions, feel free to ask.
Best regards,
Peter
Adding IK to spine changes hand IK
Hello, I want to make the first spine bone static (or less affected by the hips rotation) during movement animations
(Only weapons use the bodys upper half, and the rotating hip makes running with them look weird at times)
So what I am trying to do is add a 1 bone IK constraint to that first spine bone to have it not rotate along with the hip, but I still want to keep the position.
Is this the correct way to do this? How would I get ik to only use rotation of the ik target? Do you have a different idea maybe
Hi,
thank you very much for your support request.
I would just manually correct the spine rotation so that it's approximately static. If it is completely static, it might look very unnatural. You can use regular FK or if desired an additive animation layer where you just put the counter rotation on top of the actual bones key frames.
For more information regarding animation layers, you might want to check out the following video tutorial:
Please let me know in case you have any follow-up questions.
Best regards,
Peter
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