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A hand rig as a humanoid project

JS Guru 5 years ago • updated by Peter - Soxware Developer 5 years ago • 1

Hi,

I am a complete newbie to Unity and to UMotion, I hope you can point me to the right direction.

I have a hand rig (no arms, legs or body).  I want to use the nice Hands Muscle Groups Assistant window.  Right now I can't create a UMotion humanoid project using this rig, so I can't use the Muscle Groups Assistant.  Is there a way to get the Hands Muscle Groups Assistant window for a generic UMotion project type?

UMotion Version:
Unity Version:

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Answer
Answered
Peter - Soxware Developer 5 years ago

Hi,

thank you very much for your support request.

The problem with this is, that a generic rig is really just a hierarchy of any sort of bones. Unity/UMotion can not differentiate if a generic rig is a "hand" or e.g. an animal. Thus it is not possible to provide any sort of predefined assistant windows for generic rigs.

Anyway, if you change rotation interpolation mode to "euler" for your finger bones, you can use custom property constraints to control the rotation of the bones. The custom property constraints show up as sliders in the "channels" view and thus offer an animation experience that is closer to what you get from the muscle groups assistance.


This video explains the different rotation modes in UMotion and shows you how to switch to euler interpolation:

Btw. if you're just looking for a nice way to curl all 3 finger bones at the same time, you can use the following feature:

  1. Hold shift while selecting the top most ("proximal") finger bone. This automatically selects all child bones too.
  2. Use the rotation tool (in local space) to apply a rotation. The rotation is smoothly distributed between all 3 bones making the fingers curl in a natural way (if you rotate in the right direction of course ^^).

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

Best regards,

Peter

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Answer
Answered
Peter - Soxware Developer 5 years ago

Hi,

thank you very much for your support request.

The problem with this is, that a generic rig is really just a hierarchy of any sort of bones. Unity/UMotion can not differentiate if a generic rig is a "hand" or e.g. an animal. Thus it is not possible to provide any sort of predefined assistant windows for generic rigs.

Anyway, if you change rotation interpolation mode to "euler" for your finger bones, you can use custom property constraints to control the rotation of the bones. The custom property constraints show up as sliders in the "channels" view and thus offer an animation experience that is closer to what you get from the muscle groups assistance.


This video explains the different rotation modes in UMotion and shows you how to switch to euler interpolation:

Btw. if you're just looking for a nice way to curl all 3 finger bones at the same time, you can use the following feature:

  1. Hold shift while selecting the top most ("proximal") finger bone. This automatically selects all child bones too.
  2. Use the rotation tool (in local space) to apply a rotation. The rotation is smoothly distributed between all 3 bones making the fingers curl in a natural way (if you rotate in the right direction of course ^^).

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

Best regards,

Peter

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