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

The list is an OS dependent implementation made by Unity. Thus I don't have access to modify/improve the list's functionality like you requested (it's implemented in the C++ part of Unity). I could implement my own window with custom GUI instead, but that requires quite some effort (and might come in a future update but no ETA yet).

What you can do as a workaround is to split your single project into multiple smaller projects (e.g. á 20 clips per project). That is also improving editing performance a bit (depending on the size of your animation clips). You can do this by duplicating your project file several times and then remove the animations you don't want to have in that "sub project". Group them in a meaningful way (e.g. all walking variations in one project, all shooting animations in another,...).

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

Best regards,
Peter

Hi Dai,

thank you very much for your support request and for your nice words.

1) How would I use Custom Properties to control the blend shapes of a mesh

If you assign a model that has blend shapes to UMotion for the first time, UMotion is going to ask you if you want it to automatically generate the custom properties for the blend shapes for you:

Of course you can also do this manually. Just create a custom property constraint on any bone/transform you like. Then set it to "Component Property" mode, select the GameObject that contains the (skinned) mesh renderer component. Then select the blend shape property:

Constrain the input if desired:

2) Is there a way to lock the rotation of my character's head so that way, no matter how much the spine is rotated, it keep facing the direction it's looking at?

There is no built in "Look-At" constraint, but you can extend UMotion with your own. By using UMotion's callback system, you can let UMotion execute your custom scripts every time UMotion samples a new pose for your character. Please check out the manual at "Pose Editor / Options / Extending UMotion".

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

Best regards,
Peter

Hi,

sorry for overseeing your attached video in the first place. That explains your situation very well.

When you're using the IK setup wizard for setting up IK, it automatically set's it up with respect to IK pinning. That means the IK targets by default move with the rig, if you then select the IK target and enable the "IK Pinned" checkbox in the "Channels" view, the IK target is pinned to world space:

If you setup your IK targets manually and you want them to always be world locked, you shouldn't have chosen "Root" as parent bone (which is counter intuitively the bone used as "hips" in the robot kyle humanoid setup). As of instead you need to choose "Robot Kyle" which really is the root of the character (you need to remove the Child-Of constraint/disable IK Pinning before doing this).

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 can setup the IK constraints manually (the "IK setup wizard" is a shortcut for setting up humanoid IK). How to setup the IK constraint manually is covered in the second part of the IK video tutorial (starting at 2:36). While demonstrated on a humanoid character, the workflow is the same for non-humanoid characters.

Let me know in case you get stuck, I'm happy to assist you.

PS: I highly recommend that you only use 2 bones in your IK chain (the upper arm and the lower arm). This gives you max. artistic control over the IK bone chain.

Best regards,

Peter

Hi,
thank you very much for sharing your idea.

One thing that is already implemented might help you in your current situation: You can disable position/rotation/scale properties individually for each bone in config mode. That way you can greatly reduce the length of the animated property list. Open config mode, select the bones you want to edit. Then in the "Properties" tab use the "Properties" field to deselect properties that should be disabled. For example for traditional bones that are only meant to rotate, you can disable the scale and position properties getting list down by two thirds.

Filtering the animated properties list is a commonly requested feature and is something I plan to implement in a future version but currently have no ETA. Group selection might be very useful in your specific situation, but might probably be not as valuable for the brought audience so I've took a note on my ideas for the future list but with low priority. Reducing the length of the list with the trick mentioned above should already make it easier for you to group select in the animated properties list. Hope this helps.

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

PS: You can also configure the appearance of the individual bones in config mode, making it easier to select them in the scene view window.

Best regards,

Peter

Hi Jason,

thank you very much for your support request.

I honestly wasn't aware that enum parameters are now supported by Unity's animation events (I think it was not back in the days when I first implemented animation events into UMotion). Thanks for the hint. Yes I think this would make a lot of sense, thus I've added an entry on my to-do list to be implemented in one of the next updates (I can't estimate the ETA yet, though).

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

Best regards,

Peter

Hi,
thank you very much for your support request.

Unfortunately I currently don't have plans to create a dedicated video tutorial for gun reloading. But there are already plenty of resources available that teach you all the basics you need. Here is a collection of already existing resources related to this topic:

Please note that this video tutorial is not using IK as it was meant for UMotion Community users. Using IK instead is fairly easy though (instead of rotating every single bone, you would just move the IK target around). The quick start video tutorial gives you a quick introduction in how to use IK, the dedicated IK video tutorial covers all the details.

Support requests related to this topic:

https://support.soxware.com/communities/1/topics/100-two-handed-animations-for-gun

When doing something like a reload animation, just setup a child-of constraint for the magazine. When the hand grabs the magazine, use the magazine's child-of constraint to make the IK target of the hand the parent of the magazine (then it automatically moves with the hand).

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 are right, "Crop to playback" is currently the only UMotion built-in way to achieve this. But instead of re-importing the animation clip every time, you can just duplicate it several times using this button:

This might make your workflow a little bit faster.

Btw. Unity also has a nice built-in way to split animations. Select your source animation (this only works for *.fbx or similar, not for *.anim though) and in the inspector window open the "Animation" tab. There you can create new animation clips. Via the start/end time you can define which part of the source animation should be taken in your newly created animation clip: https://docs.unity3d.com/560/Documentation/Manual/Splittinganimations.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.

Please check your humanoid avatar configuration (select your character model's source file in Unity's project window, then in the Inspector click on "Rig" and then on "Configure..."). Then click on "Left Hand"/"Right Hand" and check if the correct bones are assigned for the "Distal" finger bones:

After you've made your corrections, I recommend creating a new humanoid UMotion project to have your character correctly setup. You can import your old project in case you want to keep animations you've authored there.

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

Best regards,

Peter