Can't add child of constraint as a parent
Hi,
I've been following this video: (20) (Pro 3) Child-Of Constraint - UMotion Official Tutorials - YouTube
The video doesn't cover everything for the basic setup, I had to browse the threads here and made it far enough but got stuck at the point where I tried to add the child of constraint as a parent.
What can I do in this situation?
Hi riverg,
thank you very much for your support request.
First of, a quick intro to the child of constraint because you mentioned having a hard time getting the grasp of it:
Imagine you have a magazine in a gun. The hierarchy of your model would look something like this:
Right Hand
| | - Gun
| | - Magazine
Left Hand
So by default, the magazine is a child of the gun. But during reloading, you might want the magazine to temporarily become a child of the left hand.
In that case you would add a child-of constraint to the magazine (in config mode). During your reload animation, when the left hand grabs the magazine, you would change the "parent" property of the magazine to "left hand". From that moment on, the magazine follows the left hands movement as it virtually alters the hierarchy to this:
Right Hand
| | - Gun
Left Hand
| - Magazine
---------------
Now to your Problem: Staying in the example above, you would get this error message if you would for example have the child-of constraint assigned to the right hand and then you would select the "magazine" as parent for the right hand. That would create this hierarchy and this is not allowed/supported:
Magazine
| - Right Hand
| | - Gun
| - Left Hand
That would give you this error message you mentioned.
If you share some details about what you are trying to do, I can give you more tailored instruction
I hope this sheds some light. Let me know in case you have any follow-up questions.
Best regards,
Peter
Copy two root motion into one
I have two root motion anim.
first is 'start walking' and second is 'walking loop'
if I just copy the walking loop into the end of the start, than the loop frames not starting from the last position of the walking start. How to fix that?
Hi Lacasrac,
thank you very much for your support request.
The first step would be to paste/insert the second animation after first one (you've already done that correctly). Then you would open the curves view of the hips position curve (that's what drives the root motion for humanoid characters). In the curves, you should see a "jump" at the frame where the second animation starts. Move all the keys of the second animation part up/down until you have a contigous curve.
Please let me know in case you have any follow-up questions.
Best regards,
Peter
Would a Godot version of this plugin be possible?
Hello - I know this is easily a gigantic ask, but I need to suggest it.
Lately the Godot engine is getting a bit more traction - and would it be possible to make a Umotion Pro plugin for Godot?
While the engine is free and has that philosophy to it - I would love to buy a paid Umotion Pro plugin for Godot.
Umotion is easily the best animation plugin when it comes to Unity - and it rivals many standalone animation tools - so it would be more than amazing to have such a powerful tool directly in Godot.
I understand it's a big ask - and I cannot tell how financially feasible this would be for you - but you'd have 1 guaranteed customer for it, is all I am saying.
Someone already tried making some animation plugin and put it on Itch.io - so you could technically have a store to sell it from for Godot users.
Just putting the idea out there. I understand if this is too big a task to ask of you, but I had to suggest it.
Thank you for your time - your Umotion Pro is absolutely amazing.
Better, more precise controls of the viewport
Hello,
So in Blender, I feel I have more precise control over rotation of the viewport camera, for example to see the part of the model in close-up better. But in Unity, when I select the controller for an arm, for example, and rotate the view, it kind of moves slowly and on a wide arc instead of an axis around the selected part.
Do you have maybe some suggestions, tips or ideas on how to better control the view camera to be able to position the parts of the model with more precision?
Also, is it possible to use orthogonal view instead of perspective, since it allows for more precise view of the model?
Thank you.
Hi,
thank you very much for your support request.
In order to orbit the camera around something that's selected in Unity you can do the following: Selected the bone/object by pressing the "F" key. Then hold [ALT] and the left mouse button to orbit around the selection. Use the scroll wheel to zoom the camera in and out or hold [ALT] and the right mouse button.
Further information can be found here: https://www.soxware.com/umotion-manual/Introduction.html (Headline: "Scene View Navigation").
Please let me know in case you have any follow-up question.
Best regards,
Peter
Choppy animation in NES style?
Hello!
I would like to try creating that kind of choppy, low-number of frames animation in the style of NES and such. Do you have some suggestions on how to do it? I mean, how to place keyframes, maybe, and stuff, cause I'm just starting with animation and not very well-versed in it.
Thank you!
Export cropped animation
A nice QOL feature would be an option to only export part of an animation, the same way the "Crop to Playback" works but non-destructive. This would be particularly helpful for looping animations designed with momentum in mind.
Hi,
thank you very much for sharing your idea. I agree that this would be a useful feature. I've added your idea to the internal collection of ideas/suggestions to be considered for future UMotion versions. At this point of time, I can't promise if and when such a feature would be implemented, though.
Best regards,
Peter
Animation Event type support
Hi, I noticed that UMotion animation events doesn't support AnimationEvent type, do you have plans to add it? Would be great that it'd support 2 parameters as well.
Regards,
Matias
Hi,
thank you very much for the feature request. I'm considering adding this in the future but for now, please try to work around the limitation (you could for example add the animation event to the exported *.anim in Unity's Animation window once you finished your work in UMotion).
Best regards,
Peter
Can we enable / disable layer mask based on current frame?
I'm wondering if for example I can enable my additive layer mask on frame 50 and disable it on frame 60? I need to specifically pose the fingers in that timeframe to grab another character.
Best Regards.
Hi skinwalker,
thanks for your support request. Unfortunately, key framing the layer controls (weight, enabled/disabled etc.) is currently not supported. I have it on my user wish list but I can't promise right now if and when such a feature would be impelmented.
Please let me know in case you have any follow-up question.
Best regards,
Peter
How to add a root position offset to humanoid anmation
Hi,
I bought a pack from the asset store with a few fighting animations but the problem is both characters are at 0,0,0. The one who is getting kicked must have some offset for example on the Z axis 1.5. I don't want to do this through code but rather have it built into the animation as it should be. Can I do this with uMotion?
Thanks!
Hi,
thank you very much for your support request.
You can do this in UMotion by offsetting the hips (in an additive layer), but you can also do it via the animation's inspector. There is an offset field there as well.
Please let me know in case you have any follow-up questions.
Best regards,
Peter
My idle animation differs from what I saw in Clip Editor when using in Animation Controller
Clip Editor
Runtime
In the screenshots you can see I have a different outcome when using the Clip Editor and finally using the saved animation in the Animation Controller of my actor. The legs are slighty shifted inwards and I can not locate the source of the problem.
Can someone point out what I might've missed out?
Hi,
thank you very much for your support request.
Theses subtle differences are introduced by the nature of the humanoid animation system. The humanoid animation system is a system designed to allow sharing animations between different characters (something that a regular animation system can't do). This is achieved by "normalizing" an input animation in a more generalized format which is then applied to the humanoid actor. This process is called "animation re-targeting" and this conversion is a "lossy" process, meaning that it introduces small inaccuracies. So it trades the flexibility that you could for example use the same animation you crafted for your "brick guardian" on "robot kyle" or any other character configured as humanoid, with the loss of accuracy.
I recommend reading this blog post to learn more how humanoid works: https://blog.unity.com/engine-platform/mecanim-humanoids
In my personal opinion, the differences in your screenshots are so minimal, that I had to put them next to each other to even see it. So you could probably just live with it and players won't ever notice. If you really want 100% accuracy (and don't need to share the animation between characters), simply re-configure your character from humanoid to generic. Generic plays the animation as it is, without any conversion steps.
Please let me know in case you have any follow-up questions.
Best regards,
Peter
Customer support service by UserEcho
