Hi Zac,

thank you very much for your support request.

UMotion supports animation layers (similar to the animation layers of an animator component, but baked into the animation once exported). If you import two animations, you can e.g. copy the hips rotation of one animation and paste it into an override animation layer of the second animation (thus overriding the hips). You can also use the additive animation layer to add a fixed rotation offset to the hips.

In this video tutorial I'm using animation layers in practical use-cases: 

You can also check out the manual (click on the black info button in the animation layers window) for further information.

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

Best regards,
Peter

Hi,
thank you very much for your support request.

If you create this animation only for a single character (and don't want to share the animation with other characters), I recommend using a "generic" rig setup instead of "humanoid". Animations of type generic have higher quality but can't be shared with other characters (except if they have precisely the same skeleton). More information about humanoid: https://blogs.unity3d.com/2014/05/26/mecanim-humanoids/

If you want to use humanoid, be aware that there might be some small offsets/differences when the animation is played in game due to the lossy nature of the animation re-targeting of the humanoid animation system (probably not noticeable for the player due to camera distance).

1. Anyway, before you start with UMotion, make the gun a child of the right hand.
2. Create a new UMotion project and drag the character to the Pose Editor.
3. Switch into Config Mode and run the IK Setup wizard.
4. Stay in Config Mode and select the IK handle of the left hand.
5. Open the "Constraints" tab and disable "IK Pinning Mode" in the "Child-Of Constraint".
6. Switch back into Pose Mode.
7. Bring the left hand into the pose where it correctly grabs the weapon.
8. When you have the left hand's IK handle selected, you can now set the axe as parent (see "Channels"). Key everything.
9. Set "none" as parent when you want to switch into one handed mode.

I recommend watching the Child-Of video tutorial before using it. There are some common pitfalls you should be aware of.

Please let me know if you have any further questions.

Best regards,
Peter

Ok so I believe I've isolated the asset in question. Following the steps you provided, I got to the point where clicks stopped registering and started stripping the assets out and testing to see if the issue persist. I finally got to an asset called "Ultimate Billboard" a cheap billboard solution. After deleting it ( Link here https://assetstore.unity.com/packages/vfx/shaders/ultimate-billboard-multipurpose-billboard-fog-sprite-shader-111709 ) the latest version 1.0

My version of Unity is 2019.1.11f1

Anyway after deleting it Umotion worked normally. Weird because I hadn't used the billboards yet, I had just planned to and had the asset sitting there up until this point having made a few animations. Anyway, glad that's settled, thanks for the support!

Thanks for sending me the files. It works perfectly fine here, when the character is correctly configured as humanoid:

Try to import your character again into Unity, select the man.fbx and set Animation type to "Humanoid" then click on apply. This ensures that your character is configured correctly. Then drag&drop man.fbx into your scene and apply it to the UMotion Pose Editor.

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

Best regards,
Peter

Hi Vilaskis,
I just noticed that there is indeed a bit of shaking happening on my PC (much less though). This is because your character is already very far away from the center. What you see is the precision limit of floating point values. Move your character to the center and your shaking should go away. HDRP might amplify this effect.

Best regards,
Peter

Hi,
thanks for your support request.

According to this error there is a second bone somewhere in the hierarchy of your GameObject named "Hips". Please expand the whole hierarchy in order to check that (hold ALT then click on the arrow to collapse/expand all).

If you can still not find a bone named "Hips", could you please send me a Unity project that contains just your model so that I can take a closer look at this issue. You can send that project via the email support form. Thanks.

Best regards,
Peter

Hi Rmorph,

thank you very much for your support request.

"So firstly - Im following the umotion startup video tutorial but when I add an ariana model my game object to a new umotion project it crashes umotion. and locks the game object, requiring a re-start of the scene. This happens pretty much every time."

I'm sorry that this is happening. I've just replied to your bug report that you've sent to me via email. In order to keep things organized, let's continue discussing this topic via the email thread :-)

"Secondly I'm beginning to wonder if what I'm asking for will really work with Umotion. How do I acxtually get her to detect where the bike is and then move to the proper animation so that she will mount it."

If the player should be able to walk around with the character, then press a button so that the character mounts on the hoverbike then that's something you have to do via scripting. With UMotion, you can create all the required animations for that but the actual functionality would have to be created via scripting.

If you just want to create an opening cut-scene (where the character walks to the hoverbike, jumps on it and starts flying away) you can use UMotion together with Unity Timeline.

Anyway, I would say start simple with the character already mounted on the hoverbike. Here's how you can do this:

Make your character a child of the hoverbike (in the Unity Hierarchy window). That way your character is going to move with the hoverbike. If you want to animate parts of your hoverbike (e.g. the steering) together with your character, you should drag & drop the root transform of your hoverbike into UMotion's Pose Editor. If you just want to animate your character, then just drag the root transform of your character into UMotion's Pose Editor.

I recommend using "generic" mode for your character.

Best regards,
Peter

Hi Larry,
thank you very much for your support requests.

Blend shapes have to be defined in a 3D modeling application (you need to deform vertices). In UMotion you can then animate the blend shape weights (i.e. the amount a blend shape contributes to the current look of your character). That way you can do for example facial animations.

When your character includes blend-shapes and it is assigned to UMotion for the first time, UMotion will automatically prompt you with a dialog asking if you want to add animation curves for the blend shapes to your UMotion project. By using the "Custom Property Constraint" you can always add curves for blend shapes manually (please refer to the manual at "Pose Editor / Constraint System / Custom Property").

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

Best regards,
Peter

When you are using humanoid, small differences are expected. This is just in the "lossy" nature of how the humanoid re-targeting engine works. The humanoid animation system is designed to share the same animation between multiple characters and make it look approximately the same. It will never look exactly like the source animation. I highly recommend checking out this Unity blog post about how humanoid works under the hood: https://blogs.unity3d.com/2014/05/26/mecanim-humanoids/

When you create an animation in UMotion, it is always previewed precisely as it is. But as soon as you export it to humanoid, the animation is converted into the normalized muscle space which adds imperfections too it (at the benefit of being able to share the animation with other characters configured as humanoid).

If you aim for perfect precise results, you need to configure your characters as "generic" (but you are not able to use the same animation on multiple characters anymore except if they use precisely the same skeleton). You can convert your existing UMotion projects to generic by creating a new project (of type generic), assign the generic version of your character to the Pose Editor and then import the animations directly from the humanoid umotion project.

Let me know if you have any further questions.

Best regards,
Peter