Feedback on UMotion Community

Thank you very much for your valuable feedback.

Update: Added changes made in UMotion V1.20p01 (arriving soon on the asset store).

"I also got a couple of crashes, when selecting sliders in that floating tool box, it crashes UMotion with some Unhandled Exceptions, related to IMGUI I think."

Whenever you get an exception, please file a bug report via the UMotion dialog that asks you to do so.

"Saving - Editing animation does not have a save feature, edited animation is changed automatically? This means that trying some tweaks and then discarding a change becomes cumbersome, if any clip must be duplicated before opening it."

Currently the UMotion project changes are saved when you hit save in Unity. Adding another save button would result in a "saving system within a saving system" (as Unity already has a save button). In detail this would get rather complicated for the user to use, thus is usually not done (the native Animation Window e.g. also saves when saved in Unity).

"Wish: Opening project doesn't remember scene character that was used last time. Maybe add option to try to use last used scene object, it isn't found then discard it and make user pick a new character."
assets (i.e. the umotion project file) can't reference scene object thus this is technically not possible. Things like search scene object by name won't satisfy every edge case.

"Centering - now it seems Unity standard F to focus gets disabled when UMotion is activated. This is frustrating, I usually use this to jump to different parts of skeleton / scene."

Click on the "Focus Camera" button in the Pose Editor or hit "C" (default shortcut). You can assign a different shortcut if you want.

"Camera follow - I couldn't find an option to track position of picked object. Sometimes it would be useful to be able to make view follow root / hips. Even better if with option to disable some axis (to prevent vertical movement of character affecting camera follow)."

Added to my ideas for the future list.

"Selection/keying sets"

Added to my ideas for the future list.

"Rotation Tool window - Locking joint free angles is essential. But seems like this is only for all objects, not per object?"

This is changing the rotation tool handle, not really locking a specific axis. Locking an axis is currently not supported.

"Bug? Pressing M to key, changes tool box to show Muscle Groups window? I didn't retry replicating this, maybe it was caused by activating sync selection, but I happened every time"

This is a bug that happens when Auto Key is enabled and was introduced in the latest update. I'm working on a fix. Fixed in UMotion V1.20p01.

"Bug? Maximize view (shift space) and the restoring the view closes the currently open animation... this is not so fun, as sometimes I don't have that much screen space, and maximize view is useful to get overview of keyframe layout."

I'm going to look into this but am not sure if this is just Unity that internally destroys the window and then creates it again.

Fixed in UMotion V1.20p01.

"Wish: Reset time line zoom. There is zoom in and out, but usually it is convenient to have reset zoom, so one can judge the overall keyframe distances."

Added to my ideas for the future list.

"Keyframes - Move to previous or next key with keyboard shortcuts."

You can assign shortcuts to every button in UMotion. Assign the preferred shortcut to the next/prev key frame button in the Clip Editor.

"Play animation - When play is stopped, animation current frame marker should return back to start frame where play was pressed. I know there is start and end markers but this would be more convenient when tweaking certain part of animation. It would be easy to tweak some keys then verify animation is working, then continue where I was working."

Yes that makes sense, I'm going to make this the default behavior.

Fixed in UMotion V1.20p01.

"Green scrub bar - is it / would it be possible to move current frame marker by just pressing some key + mouse dragging over dopesheet? Similar to middle mouse dopesheet drag? No I must concentrate to try to hit that tiny line in top bar for something I need all the time."

Added to my ideas for the future list.

"Selection/Synchronize with Clip editor - Seems to select 3d skeleton matching tracks in Animated Properties. But rotating bone and releasing mouse also deselects selected bone on screen, and from Animated Properties. This does not make any sense."

Same bug as above. Happens when Auto Key is enabled. Working on a fix. Fixed in UMotion V1.20p01.

"Animated properties
Wish: Move up and down in animated properties with keys. Not sure if it is possible now."

Added to my ideas for the future list.

"Wish: bone box display mode. Would make it easier to animate without mesh, with boxes it is easy to judge facing direction of head, torso and legs. Would be great for fingers too."

Added to my ideas for the future list.

"Wish: sticks bone mode seems to be only unlit. Could it be using shaded shapes too?"

You could use default solid rendering mode with small bone size for that. The general bone size can be changed in the "Options" tab of the Pose Editor.

"Wish: bone diamonds don't actually scale the "standard way". When making bones thinner, the height of root "pyramid" should also get shorter. Also, it would be nice to have some sort of minimum scale, now acceptable "thin" bones for limbs makes fingers to be way too thin to be usable."

The bones are currently just scaled along the x and y axis if you make them thinner. The root "pyramid" thus stays in place. Changing this behaviour would mean that I have to manipulate the pyramid on a vertex basis. I think this is probably not worth the effort.

You can change the thickness of individual bones in the Config Mode (Size property).

Best regards,
Peter