Humanoid animation does not look the same after export (serious difference).
Mesh.rar
When I export an "Idle" zombie animation where my zombie never moves their legs in the clip editor he suddenly starts floating in the air, as if he is connected, like a puppet, to someone's hand. This does not mean he is flying - he is touching the ground with his feet, but he moves the feet to the left or right when standing, instead of them being glued to the ground like they should be. I've read all your posts about differences in animation, I've tried ALL properties and all tweaks - nothing works. I even copied the entirety of the animation from FK to IK, deleted all keys for IK foot positions and rotations but one and ensured they are pinned - nothing helps, the zombie still floats. Generic animation is out of the question.
I've attached the project file and the zombie mesh file to this post so that you can check for yourself.
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
Reskinned model is incompatible with existing UMotion project
I've just lost 2 hours of work.
I've been editing my animation and did not export it when I saw that one of my vertices is skinned to the root. I reskinned the model, exported it and saved in my UMOTION project. Now I can't set it for my project:
Due to the fact that I can't set it for my project I cant export my animation. I tried creating a new project and dragging the old project into the new one through the "Import animation window" - it says the projects are incompatible.
All bones have the very same names. Both humanoid skeletons are configured exactly the same.
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
Hotkey to Toggle Bones On/Off
Bone often get in the way of seeing how things are looking , having to go to display -> bones is a tiny bit time consuming when you do it after every little change, is there a hotkey for this toggle option?
If not I'd like to suggest it.
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
Character foetal position.
This isn't actually a UMotion bug, but I'm hoping that someone in the forum might have seen this before.
The character takes a foetal position when an Animation Controller is added, even if there's no animation in it.
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
ANIMATE TWO OR MORE MODELS AT THE SAME TIME
I would like to ask you to create a way to animate two or more characters at once.
We are a family owned and operated business.
I need to make one character hold the hand of another and help him climb on something and for this to work well when playing a scene I would have to animate both characters at the same time to simulate interaction with each other.
Test the Akeytsu program and import two characters there and animate them at the same time so that they understand what I'm asking for. If you make this possibility, UMOTION will certainly be irreplaceable.
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:
- 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.
- 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
Don't disable "Display" box in Pose Editor while playing animation
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.
Just a minor annoyance that I had to stop the animation, change bone rendering style and then play it again.
Bonus request: Add a bone opacity slider to the options, so I can make them semi-transparent.
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
Copy Animation (Pose) between clips
I saw another post with the same header but it was resolved without answering the literal question of how to copy paste a pose between animation clips so I'm making a new post for it! The wiki doesn't have a search feature and I don't have the patience to comb through every tutorial video to figure it out.
I know you can copy/paste keys but what if the frame you're trying to copy only has some properties keyed? The only solution I've found so far is to key every single property and then copy those and paste them into the new clip. But I don't really want to add unnecessary keys for no real reason. And I can't delete just delete the new keys if I've got some real keys mixed up in there unless I know exactly which keys are the new ones. And I can't undo since that would get rid of my new keys on the new clip I think (I didn't actually try).
I saw something called save reference pose when combing through shortcuts but I can't find any information on it anywhere. I would really appreciate some kind of search function in the wiki!
Hi,
thank you very much for your support request.
There are several possible approaches.
- You could duplicate your animation clip:
- 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). - Select and copy the remaining keys (CTRL + C), then paste them in your new animation (CTRL + V).
- You can then delete the temporary animation clip.
The other method is like you've already mentioned:
- Create the missing keys on the frame you want to copy (by right clicking at the "master track"):
- Select and copy the key frames (CTRL + C).
- Now undo (to remove the keys you artificially created). The trick is to undo before inserting the new keys!
- 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
Wrap keyframes for looping animations
I think it would be easier to make smooth looping animations if the timeline wrapped around.
For example if I have an animation that is 100 frames long (frames 0 to 99) and put one keyframe at 0 and another at 80. Since 80 is the last frame it would behave is if there was an identical frame to 0 at position 100, giving a smooth wrap around.
It would work the same for the start of the timeline, so if I only had keyframes at 15 and 80 (still assuming 100 frames total) it would make a virtual copy of 15 at 115 and a copy of 80 at frame -20 so that it can interpolate all values for all frames in the animation.
This has two IMO significant benefits for looping animations:
1. Not having to maintain a copy of the start frame at frame "animation length + 1".
2. It would be much easier to time-offset a single animated property. Unless I'm mistaken right now if you move an animation track you have to figure out the transform values at "animation length + 1" and copy those to a new keyframe at time=0.
It would of course only be enabled for looping animations
Hi,
thank you very much for sharing your idea. I really appreciate that.
I like your idea and have put it on my ideas for the future list. Please note that I can't promise anything as of right now, but be assured that your idea is heard.
Best regards,
Peter
Shortcut key not responding in Scene View.
Should the B shortcut key work when the scene view has focus?
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