- UMotion - Animation Editor
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Questions
vehicle + humanoid
Hello,
I have a humanoid on a quad bike. I downloaded the humanoid from mixamo with some default animations. I m wondering if I can import the quadbike and animate the humanoid on top of the quadbike? The quadbike is attached to a rigidbody and wheel colliders and will be moving using the physics engine.
Answer
Hi,
thank you very much for your support request.
Yes this should work, but I would recommend changing your character from "humanoid" to "generic". Humanoid is great when you want to share animations between multiple characters but is less precise (e.g. fingers can have slightly different poses in the exported animation, hands might not be exactly at the handle,...). Humanoid is also a bit more CPU intensive. Generic plays the authored animation directly (without converting it into the lossy humanoid animation format). Here is a detailed blog post about what humanoid is: https://blogs.unity3d.com/2014/05/26/mecanim-humanoids/
To animate your character, make it a child of the quad bike. Create a new UMotion project and then drag and drop your character (not the whole quad bike) into the Pose Editor of UMotion. If you want to keep the hands on the steering handles (that are controlled via physics/script), you need a runtime IK solution on top of the regular animations. Please note that UMotion is not a runtime IK solution (IK is only executed at authoring time in UMotion).
Please let me know in case you have any follow-up questions.
Best regards,
Peter
Hi,
I just need a clarification. Will I be able to modify existing animations that are not atop of the quadbike or will I need to start from scratch for all of them?
When using UMotion Pro, you are able to import existing animations and add your modifications to it. This works no matter where/how your character is placed (so this also works fine if your character is a children of the quadbike).
Let me know if there is anything else I can help you with.
Best regards,
Peter
Hi,
I am completely new to animation but I seem to understand a bit after watching your videos. I have a very simple question. I want these animations https://assetstore.unity.com/packages/3d/animations/bike-fights-animations-133313. on a quad bike like this one https://assetstore.unity.com/packages/3d/vehicles/land/atv-quad-bikes-pack-compatible-with-wheel-system-83867. I still can't figure out if I will be able to modify them to fit the quad bike with resonable effort and timespan. I need your input if umotion can help me in this regard. I do realize I have to get runtime IK for physics after animation is complete.
I need your input if umotion can help me in this regard.
Yes this is possible with UMotion:
- Place your character as a child of the quadbike.
- Create a new UMotion project.
- Drag & drop your character's top-most game object (not the quad bike Game Object) to UMotion's Pose Editor.
- Import the animation you want to manipulate.
- Adjust the animation to your needs (you can convert the animation to IK and/or use additive animation layers to apply modifications to the whole animation).
Please check out the following video tutorial, it shows you useful techniques to edit/adjust existing animations:
I do realize I have to get runtime IK for physics after animation is complete.
Correct, for the arms to match the runtime-manipulated steering, you're going to need a runtime IK solution.
Best regards,
Peter
Do I eyeball the placement of the feet and hands on the quadbike when I animate?
The animation clips are not importing with the custom generic character. I think the animations are just dysfunctional or only work with the provided character.
Do I eyeball the placement of the feet and hands on the quadbike when I animate?
The hands will be overwritten by your runtime IK anyway, so it's enough if they are close to the handles. For the feet, just use UMotion's IK system to place them where you want them to be.
I think the animations are just dysfunctional or only work with the provided character.
Generic animations only work on the generic character they have been created for. If you want to use an animation on a different character, you have to use Unity's animation re-targeting system named "humanoid": https://blogs.unity3d.com/2014/05/26/mecanim-humanoids/
Best regards,
Peter
Customer support service by UserEcho
Hi,
thank you very much for your support request.
Yes this should work, but I would recommend changing your character from "humanoid" to "generic". Humanoid is great when you want to share animations between multiple characters but is less precise (e.g. fingers can have slightly different poses in the exported animation, hands might not be exactly at the handle,...). Humanoid is also a bit more CPU intensive. Generic plays the authored animation directly (without converting it into the lossy humanoid animation format). Here is a detailed blog post about what humanoid is: https://blogs.unity3d.com/2014/05/26/mecanim-humanoids/
To animate your character, make it a child of the quad bike. Create a new UMotion project and then drag and drop your character (not the whole quad bike) into the Pose Editor of UMotion. If you want to keep the hands on the steering handles (that are controlled via physics/script), you need a runtime IK solution on top of the regular animations. Please note that UMotion is not a runtime IK solution (IK is only executed at authoring time in UMotion).
Please let me know in case you have any follow-up questions.
Best regards,
Peter