How to link chracter to clip editor without pose editor and add animations
I've been looking through the manual but I cannot find how to link my character to the clip editor to make an animation. I cannot make animations when the pose editor is open because I can't find how to save the positions and it keeps making me reset the position. Am I missing the documentation for this? The only thing the clip editor portion of the manual says is that you can use it without the pose editor but can't use the pose editor without the clip editor. How am I supposed to put my character in the clip editor and how do I make the animations? Also, there is nothing in the video tutorials to tell you how to do either of the things I'm asking for help with. If I'm somehow overlooking this portion of the manual, please tell me which page it's on.
Hi,
thank you very much for your support request.
" I cannot make animations when the pose editor is open because I can't find how to save the positions and it keeps making me reset the position."
Set "Auto Key" to "Generate" in the Pose Editor. This tells UMotion to automatically save keys whenever you make changes to the position/rotation/... of your character. To manually create keys click on "Key Selected" or use the "Key Dialog".
Please check out the "Video Tutorials" section in the manual to see all video tutorials (they cover stuff like that). Use the quick start video as a starting point:
(2:19 is the position where keys are created the first time).
To add (import) animations to the clip editor, you need to have a character assigned to the Pose Editor. Manipulating animations without the Pose Editor is possible (e.g. by manipulating the animation curves) but usually you edit the animations together with the Pose Editor.
Please let me know in case you have any follow-up questions.
Best regards,
Peter
export animation without mesh
How to export animation from Umotion without including the mesh in the exported file?
Hi Abdullah,
thank you very much for your support request.
When exporting to *.anim, only the animation data is included (as the *.anim file format can't hold meshes by definition).
When exporting to *.FBX you can decide if you want to export the animation as a new *.FBX file (that would not include the mesh) or if you want to export into an existing *.FBX (that would keep any mesh that is already in the *.FBX).
Please let me know in case you have any follow-up questions.
Best regards,
Peter
Make hands follow object
Hi, I was wondering if it is possible to let the hands follow another object. Let's say I have a character handling a box. I want to animate the movement of the box with both IK chains of the arms following the box. I feel like this is kind of the opposite of the tutorial video "child of" where a small box is being set as the child of a hand so it follows the hand when the hand is animated.
How would I go about making the IK handles of the hands also be children of a separate object?
Hi,
thank you very much for your support request.
"How would I go about making the IK handles of the hands also be children of a separate object?"
You need to disable the "IK Pinning" mode of your IK handle so that it is using a regular child-of constraint. (IK Pinning is just a special mode of the "Child-Of" constraint). Please watch this related video tutorial:
Using the child-of constraint you can now make the box and the left hand IK handle a child of the e.g. right hand (or the right hand IK handle). That way both will keep their offset relative to the right hand.
Please let me know in case you have any follow-up questions.
Best regards,
Peter
Focus camera misbehaving with nested objects.
If animated GameObject is under a parent object it doesnt correctly focus on bones when using "Focus Camera" but rather than the parent object or trying to fit both the parent and child objects, which im not sure. This will cause camera to clip on the animated object.
Setup where this could happen is having player model prefab nested under larger prefab (say a vehicle or something like that).
Just enabling / disabling and changing near clip plane to really anything seemed to magically fixed it...
Changing the skin
Hi. I'm just wondering if there is a way to change the skin for any clip imported to Umotion so that it is accurate to the character the animation will be getting used with?
I have some mixamo animations I need to clean up, but the standard unity puppet guy doesn't seem to be accurately showing the animations. All of the animations look fine when applied to him, but some of them look off when used with my UMA characters, so I'd like to switch the skin used in the animation preview so that I can properly correct animations based on the characters I am animating for.
Is this possible? Thanks in advance.
Hi,
thank you very much for your support request.
Usually the Animation re-targeting should create quite good results. If this is not the case, either one of the avatars might not be setup correctly, or humanoid IK should either be turned on/off. You can preview the effect of humanoid IK when you preview your animation in the Inspector (when the *.anim is selected) and you toggle the IK switch.
Usually you create a UMotion project for the character that you are trying to edit the animation for. That way you can preview the animation on that character.
UMA charactes require some special treatment though, because it generates the humanoid avatar during runtime. Runtime avatars don't provide all the information UMotion needs to work with such a character.
So in case of UMA I recommend the following workflow:
- Install Unity's FBX Exporter package via the Unity Package Manager.
- Start your game, then pause it.
- Select your UMA character, right click on it and use the "Export to FBX..." context menu to create an FBX version of your UMA character.
- Make sure that the FBX is configured correctly as humanoid (check the humanoid avatar configuration, check if it is in T-Stance in the avatar config etc.).
Now that you have a FBX version of your UMA character, you can use that to create a new UMotion project, import your humanoid animation there and work with it as desired.
Please let me know in case you have any follow-up questions.
Best regards,
Peter
Can you optimise curves by using vectors?
Hi again!
Is i possible to optimise the curves by using vectors instead (automatically)? When importing animations each step of the curve is automatically keyed, but it would be a lot easier to work with if it was possible to automatically make it into a vector curve - similar to 3D software. Is this possible?
Hi Marie,
thank you very much for your support request.
UMotion uses hermite curves (just like Unity does) for interpolation between keys. If there are keys on each frame then this is either because the source animation had keys on each frame or because UMotion had to re-sample the curve on import (this is the case when importing a humanoid animation as the animation has to be re-targeted first).
When modifying these animations you can either use an additive animation layer to add modifications on top of the existing keys (with no need to touch the existing keys) or you can delete a bunch of existing keys and insert your own (or work with the curve/tangents in between).
Please let me know in case you have any follow-up questions.
Best regards,
Peter
matching rig
How can I match "umotion" with modeling that is already rigging?
Is there a related tutorial?
Hi,
thank you very much for your support request.
Please note that a UMotion Project is "one per character". It looks like you have initially created your UMotion project for a character configured as "humanoid" and now you are trying to assign a different (or the same character but configured differently as "generic") to the project.
If this is a different character (than the one originally used with this UMotion project), create a new UMotion project.
If this is the same character but you decided to change the configuration to "generic", either configure your character as "humanoid" again or create a new UMotion project of type "generic". If you want you can then import all animation clips from your "humanoid" project by using the "Import Clips" window and select the "humanoid" UMotion project (this only works if it is really the same character that was used in both projects!).
Please let me know in case you have any follow-up questions.
Best regards,
Peter
Copy Animation (Pose) between clips
Hi!
I'm currently working on a project making idles, based on mocap data. Even though the pose is generally the same, it's always a bit offset. Is there any way to use a mix of overlay and additive in the layers? I want the pose from clip 1 to be the same as clip 2, and this would work fine if I could paste the first keyframes from clip 1 into a layer in clip two, and have the animations play from the retargeted animation.
When using additive, the character is going wild, as it's adding the old + new keyframes. When using overlay, the pose is correct, but nothing is playing. I'm trying to find the easiest way to copy main poses between clips, as it's quite a few that needs to be done.
Thank you in advance!
Hi Marie,
thank you very much for your support request.
There is currently no automated way of getting the difference of pose A and pose B into an additive layer (so they end up being the same).
You mentioned that this is about idle animations, so I think the following manual process should work just fine:
Remove all keys of the first few frames of one animation and then copy & paste all keys from the first frame of the other. If there was only a subtle difference, the interpolation is going to create a nice smooth transition. If you have some general offset on the root motion (the hips), you can use an additive animation layer to match the pose you inserted on the first frame with the poses of the rest of your animation. You can also offset the rotation of some of the bones using the additive layer if there is a bigger difference.
Please let me know if you have any follow-up questions.
Best regards,
Peter
Generic to Humanoid
I have an animation clip that is generic, but the rig that it contains is Humanoid. I want to convert that to Humanoid. The animation is not within an fbx it is just an animation clip. so there are no import settings to change. I tried the rig by it self as humanoid and it works.
So the Rig is FBX and i can change that. But the Animation is .Anim and I cannot do anything about that.
Hi,
thank you very much for your support request.
The following should work: Create a new UMotion Project of type humanoid and assign your humanoid character to the Pose Editor. Then import your generic *.anim file in that project. When you then export your animation it should be a humanoid *.anim.
Important: This only works if the generic *.anim file was created for that character. If this is not the case, you need to do the same as above but with the character the *.anim file was created for.
For further information regarding conversion between humanoid/generic, please refer to the "Import / Export" chapter in the UMotion manual.
Please let me know if you have any follow-up questions.
Best regards,
Peter
Root motion isn't working when I export as fbx only .anim
I'm not having any luck getting the root motion to come across when I export as FBX. The animation is just happening in place not moving the character around.
It works fine as .anim but I need FBXs.
please help :)
Hi Caitlin,
thank you very much for your support request.
Do you want to use your *.FBX animation as "generic" or as "humanoid"?
You need to tell Unity via the *.FBX import settings (shown in the Inspector when you have the *.FBX selected) how it should extract and generate root motion.
For generic, it's important that you define the "Root node" in the "Rig" tab and in the "Animation" tab under "Motion". For humanoid and generic, there are also the following settings shown under the "Animation" tab where it's important that "Bake Into Pose" is NOT ticked.
Also make sure that your character's Animator component has "Apply Root Motion" ticked.
Best regards,
Peter
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