Hi,

thank you very much for your support request.

UMotion supports 3 different rotation modes:

1. Progressive Quaternion (default)
2. Quaternion
3. Euler

Only euler angles can be edited directly in the curve editor (as the others are quaternion based which is a "hard to imagine" 4 dimensional representation of angels, thus not suited for direct editing). UMotion's "Progressive Quaternion" mode is a special representation of quaternions that at least allows you to adjust the interpolation between rotation keys, but not the amplitude. The downside of euler angles is that they suffer from gimbal lock. That's why they are not the default rotation mode in UMotion.

For more information, please check out the dedicated video tutorial regarding this topic:

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

Best regards,

Peter

Hi Rob,

thank you very much for your support request.

The auto backup makes a backup of the project's current state at the interval configured in the preferences. It takes the whole project's data and serializes it into the *.bak file. Unfortunately this data is not human readable so it's not possible to use it manually. If the auto-backup got restored without any error messages, then everything was re-stored correctly.

I'm not sure why your keys are missing, probably because you've deleted them before 12:30 on accident? Have you tried re-storing an earlier backup?

Attention: Auto backups are by default automatically deleted after 36h. You can change this setting in the preferences:

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 looked at the files you provided. When exporting a humanoid animation to fbx, I highly recommend setting write mode to "Update Existing File" (in the export settings) and set your original model as destination file. This exports your animation into the characters fbx file (Shirtless Zombie.fbx) and ensures that when Unity imports it, it uses the correct humanoid avatar to generate the humanoid animation. Here is a screenshots of the export settings I used:

Then select the "Shirtless Zombie.fbx" in Unity's project window. Enable the animation import in the Inspector and set "Root Transform Position (XZ)" to "Original". Then click apply. The animation should now preview correctly in the preview window (and should thus also work in-game).

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 you re-skinned your model, it looks like you also changed the bone hierarchy (that's what the message box in the first screenshot is saying). This of course makes the new version of the character incompatible with your initial character's hierarchy stored in the UMotion project.

So to fix this, try to re-store the original bone hierarchy for your model (go through the transforms shown one by one and compare the names). The transforms stored in the UMotion project are shown in the clip editor window. I also highly recommend the use of a version control system like GIT or SVN, so that you can always re-store previous versions of your assets.

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

Best regards,
Peter

Hi,
thank you very much for your support request.

Yes there is a default shortcut ("B") assigned to the bone visibility toggle switch. You can see which shortcut is assigned to which UI control element by hovering the mouse over it:

You can change shortcut assignments by clicking on Edit --> Preferences in the clip editor:

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 just how Untiy's humanoid animation system behaves when you assign an empty animator controller to an animator component. Unity sets all muscle values to defaults which results in this foetal pose. Just assign a humanoid animation to your controller and it should play that instead.

Please let me know in case you have any other question.

Best regards,

Peter

Hi,

thank you very much for your support request.

In order for two separate animations to interact correctly with each other, you need to ensure that they both start at the correct initial position/rotation in-game (otherwise they are going to be offset to each other) and precisely at the same time. Instead of using 2 separate animations it's usually easier to control both characters with one animation (see method 1 below). If you use two separate animations, Unity timeline is Unity's tool to correctly sequence multiple animations.

There are 2 ways how you can animate character-character interactions with UMotion:

1. Instantiate your two characters in the scene and remove there animator component. Make both a child of an uber empty game object that has an animator component assigned (both characters now have the same parent game object). Create a new UMotion project of type generic and assign the "uber" game object to the pose editor. You can now create animations that control both characters at the same time. This also solves the issue with the offset (mentioned above) that you have with 2 separate animations.
2. Using UMotion's "Sync" feature, you can synchronize UMotion with Unity's animation window or Unity timeline. That way you can animate one character using UMotion and simultaneously preview the animation on one or multiple other characters (the frame cursors are synced). More information can be found in the UMotion manual's chapter "Unity Timeline Integration" and in this video:
   

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

Best regards,
Peter

Hi Johan,

thank you very much for sharing your ideas.

Currently the Display options box in Pose Editor becomes greyed out while the animation is playing, but it feels like they shouldn't have to be.

You are right, it makes more sense to keep the display options enabled while playing an animation. If this is easy to be fixed (from the technical point of view), I'm going to add this to one of the next updates.

Bonus request: Add a bone opacity slider to the options, so I can make them semi-transparent.

You might want to use the wire-frame bone rendering style in that case. I'm adding the idea of semi-transparent bones to my "ideas for the future" list, but I'm considering this with low priority.

Thanks for your idea and don't hesitate to contact me whenever you have such an idea.

Best regards,

Peter

Hi,
thank you very much for your support request.

There are several possible approaches.

1. You could duplicate your animation clip:
   
2. Then crop the animation to 1 frame length. Right click on the time ruler and click on "Set Playback Start", then right click again and click on "Set Playback End".
   
   Then click on Edit --> Crop to Playback (this is also creating the missing keys).
3.  Select and copy the remaining keys (CTRL + C), then paste them in your new animation (CTRL + V).
4. You can then delete the temporary animation clip.

The other method is like you've already mentioned:

1. Create the missing keys on the frame you want to copy (by right clicking at the "master track"):
   
2. Select and copy the key frames (CTRL + C).
3. Now undo (to remove the keys you artificially created). The trick is to undo before inserting the new keys!
4. Insert the copied key into the other animation (CTRL + V).

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

PS: The manual currently has no search function because it's solely html based (no javascript involved). The manual's purpose is to explain the UI. The idea is that you have all those info buttons spread across the whole UMotion UI that link directly into the corresponding manual page. And then there is the (searchable) support forum that holds the "best practices" like the question you had.

Best regards,
Peter