Weird bug or incorrect approach.
I am doing an idle animation of my character. In UMotion my animation looks great, the feet are planted in one spot and the body/arms/head move like they are suppose to. Once i import it to my character, the body is nothing moving while the feet and the arms are moving around. Not sure what I am doing wrong here.
I also had spots were transitioning between two animations, my character jumps up a few unitys. not sure how to reset the animations location to zero so that I dont get that jump or any extra rotations.
Hi,
thank you very much for your support request.
Foot sliding is a common artifact of Unity's humanoid re-targeting algorithm. You can compensate foot sliding by enabling Foot IK on the Animator (you can preview the effect by toggling the IK button in the exported animation's preview window; see screenshot below). To enable Foot IK at runtime, you have to enable "IK Pass" in your Animator controller state machine and you have to enable IK for the feet via script (see https://docs.unity3d.com/Manual/InverseKinematics.html; you don't need to set the IK goal position like in the manual's example). Also make sure to adjust the root motion settings to your needs (these settings effect how movement of your animation is treated and can be related to your missing body movement).
Further information about why foot sliding happens with humanoid and why Foot IK is solving this issue: https://blogs.unity3d.com/2014/05/26/mecanim-humanoids/
Btw. if you use your animation only on one specific character, consider using "generic" instead of "humanoid". Generic plays your authored animation directly on your character (no such artifacts or black magic involved like with "humanoid"). Generic also has less CPU performance cost.
Please let me know in case you have any follow-up questions.
Best regards,
Peter
move tool copy position
I'll select a joint such as RightFoot : Position, select a frame where the position changes. I select the frame key and press ctrl-c (copy) and move to the next frame and select ctrl-v (paste) This does nothing, or the limb can go to a weird place.
If I select the first frame and use the Move Tool menu for copy position, then select the next frame and use the Move Tool paste position, the bone moves correctly.
Can we please have a short-cut for Move Tool->Copy/Paste position, as I'm having to do this far too often.
Hi Craig,
thank you very much for your support request.
I'll select a joint such as RightFoot : Position, select a frame where the position changes. I select the frame key and press ctrl-c (copy) and move to the next frame and select ctrl-v (paste) This does nothing, or the limb can go to a weird place.
I just ran a few quick tests, but copy and pasting position keys seems to work fine for me. Are you using a Child-Of constraint (or IK pinning) on that bone? Then you have to be careful of what transform space the key you copy is in (e.g. if you copy a key when the bone is currently parented to parent A and then paste the key at a frame where the bone is parented to parent B this will result in nonsense).
Also be careful when copy and pasting keys from one additive animation layer to another layer (or visa versa). Keys on an additive layer are an offset not an absolute position.
Can we please have a short-cut for Move Tool->Copy/Paste position, as I'm having to do this far too often
Yes that indeed sounds very useful. I've added this to my to-do list.
Best regards,
Peter
Problem with Avatar Masks when using Child-Of Constraint.
Hello. I have a problem with Avatar Masks when using Child-Of Constraint.
Basically i have a "itemPos" transform on my haracter prefab, that I animated using UMotion. I need to pass weapons from an hand to another in some animations, and it works correctly using child-of constraint.
Problem is, I need to apply an Avatar Mask to animate only the upper part of the body, so my character can move while for example reloading. This gives me issues since itemPos got masked too, and I have no idea how to include it on the Avatar Mask. Thank you for helping me in advice.
Hi Marco,
thank you very much for your support request.
The transform list in in your avatar mask is created based on the avatar definition of your character. This avatar is created when Unity imports your character. That means that only bones/transforms that are present in your original character are added to the avatar mask. I guess you have created the "itemPos" transform later in Unity, thus it has not been available when Unity imported your character thus is not included in the avatar and thus it is not added to the avatar mask's transform list.
I see two ways you can overcome this:
1) If you are familiar with 3D modeling applications, add the "itemPos" transform to your character's model. Make sure to use the same name and the same local position/rotation (otherwise your existing animation won't work correctly). After re-import, re-create your avatar mask's transform list based on the new avatar.
2) You could also export your character that contains the "itemPos" transform from Unity to *.fbx using Unity's FBX Exporter (get it via Unity's Package Manager, the Asset Store version is outdated). Probably the easier method.
Please let me know in case you have any follow-up questions.
Best regards,
Peter
Set default path for File>Open
Hello,
My idea is to set default directory when you click File>Open. It may seem like a small thing, but for people like me who spend a lot of time in uMotion switching between different projects and having them nested 4-5 folders deep in the Assets folder, it would be a time saver. Example - Assets>_Project>Animations>MyCompany>Custom>UMotion could be a default directory for all my uMotion projects.
Hope you will consider my idea :)
Hi,
thank you very much for sharing your ideas. Ideas for quality of life improvements like this are something I'm always especially interested in.
I'm going to consider your ideas for the upcoming updates.
Best regards,
Peter
How to remove foot motion?
My animation in unity has the foot going up and down, which is not what I want and when I import it into uMotion the foot is frozen on the ground as it should be, the problem is that I can see a bit of "shivering" effect, its slightly moving up and down when you zoom in.
I have tried to inspect the curves and this is what I found for leftFoot.
Im not sure if the problem comes from the Z axis thats in blue, because the other two look relatively flat. Do you have any ideas how I can 100% get rid of any motion thats on the foot and just keep it there locked and not moving?
Hi,
thank you very much for your support request.
The foot position is a result of all the rotation curves of the foot's parent bones (and the position curve of the hips/root). Either delete all the key frames (except the first one) of all those curves or use IK Pinning to pin the foot to the ground.
Please let me know in case you have any follow-up questions.
Best regards,
Peter
I need to move the IK handle via code
I need to move the IK handle via code to sync up final iK. I tried, GameObject.Find("Umotion_IK_Handle");
but runtime clears the "game object to animate". How can I control the IK at runtime via code?
Hi,
thank you very much for your support request.
The results of the IK algorithm are baked into the exported animation (like when you would be using IK in Blender, Maya,... and then export to Unity). You can of course use Final IK (or any other runtime IK solution) on top of the created animation. You can also use Final IK inside UMotion and then decide weather you want to bake the IK into the animation or execute the IK during runtime. You can use an empty GameObject (created outside of UMotion) as IK handle. For further information, check out the manual chapter "Pose Editor/Options" at headline "Extending UMotion".
Please let me know in case you have any follow-up questions.
Best regards,
Peter
How i can use ik rotation?
Hello, i have pro version and i have a question. How i can use ik rotation? There is no rotation ik pole on my Channels panel. Im trying to animate hands with gun with UMotion, and when i rotate hand by IK, i cant rotate other bones and as a result i have overlap\stretch faces. How should i figure out this?
Hi,
thank you very much for your support request.
To control the orientation of the elbow (i.e. the pole rotation) you have two options depending on how you configured your IK constraint:
- If you have created an IK pole target (the IK Setup Wizard does that by default), move the pole target (the blue wired sphere) to rotate the elbow to where you want it to be.
- If you have not created an IK pole target, use the "IK Pole Rotation" channel to rotate the ellbow.
The rotation of the hand can either be controlled via the rotation of the IK target (the wired cube) or via the FK rotation of the hand bones. This again depends on how you've setup the IK constraint.
For further information, please check out the manual at "Pose Editor/Constraint System/Inverse Kinematics" or take a look at the in-depth video tutorial related to IK:
Please let me know in case you have any follow-up questions.
Best regards,
Peter
tail bones weight
I am rigging a character that has (5) tail bones that I would like to use IK. The rigging is not a problem, But the IK interpolation is linear, resulting in the tail always being straight. I need to have an weighted influence on the tail bones, so that I can achieve curves, is this only achieved via IK pivot?
Hi,
thank you very much for your support request.
From my experience it's usually sufficient to use the following FK method for animating tails which result in very good results:
- Hold Shift while selecting the first (top most) bone of the tail. This automatically selects all child bones too.
- Then use the rotation tool to apply a rotation in the direction you want the tail to move. Notice how the rotation is smoothly distributed between all bones of your tail:
The IK feature in UMotion isn't really optimized for smooth tail movement. If you have a good tail IK solver (or know how to write your own) you can use UMotion's Callback System to integrate it into UMotion. UMotion can even bake the results into the exported animation (to save some CPU performance as you don't need to execute the tail IK during runtime). For further information see UMotion manual at chapter "Pose Editor / Options" headline "Extending UMotion".
Please let me know in case you have any follow-up questions.
Best regards,
Peter
Negative Values for Blendshapes
I am using some custom blendshapes with UMotion that require negative values keyed for the inverse effect applied to my character. Unity 2019 not supports inverse values entered into the blendshape value channel, but UMotion does not allow negative values and defaults to a limit of 0. Is there any work around to allow negative values keyed on blendshape channels in my UMotion created clips?
Hi,
thank you very much for your support request.
Yes that is possible. UMotion just configures the "Custom Property Constraints" for the blend shapes by default with limits ranging from 0-100 (as this is the most common use-case). In order to set different limits, switch into Config Mode and select the bone/transform that has the blend shapes assigned. Then open the Constraints tab and change the limits to e.g. -100 ... 100:
Please let me know in case you have any follow-up questions.
Best regards,
Peter
Could you please make a tutorial on how UMotion can be used with other assets such as Final IK or PuppetMaster
Could you please make a tutorial on how UMotion can be used with other assets such as Final IK or PuppetMaster.
The manual does not describe this process sufficiently.
Are there any kind of resources about it?
Hi,
thank you very much for your support request.
PuppetMaster is a run-time functionality for blending between animations and physics (ragdoll). You can create the animations with UMotion just like you would create any other animation. There isn't anything specific to show when creating the animation with the goal to use it combined with PuppetMaster.
What exactly are you planning to do with FinalIK? In UMotion, you could again create the regular animation and then in your game use Final IK on top of it (that would again just be plane animating in UMotion). Or you can use the FinalIK components inside UMotion (to replace UMotion's built in IK). That would require the use of the UMotion callback system (see manual at chapter "Pose Editor / Options" headline "Extending UMotion").
Please let me know in case you have any follow-up questions.
Best regards,
Peter
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