Animation Designer - Editor tool for adjusting and upgrading Animation Clips!

⚡ Innovative Animation Tweaking Tool For Unity Engine ⚡

Upgrade Animation Clips with additional procedural motion and bake it!
Tweak Animation Clip pose and save it in new AnimationClip file.
Set additional motion to some bones and save new AnimationClip for use as animation variant.


Asset Store Link: https://assetstore.unity.com/packages/tools/animation/animation-designer-210513

Release Video:

☄️ NO TOYING WITH KEYFRAMES OR TIMELINE!
Meet new workflow for tweaking animation!
All you need to do is using few sliders and curve window.

You don't need to be an Animation Artist to work with this tool.
If you're an Animation Artist, this tool will give you new possibilities!

? Maybe you bough package of some cool character but included animations quality is too low? Boost them easily with Animation Designer!

? You own lots of animation clips but you need one with arms rotated slightly different way?
Do it instantly with Animation Designer!

? Legs/Foot animation of your characters seems to be wrong?
Fix it in few clicks with Animation Designer!


⚙️ Keep original animation intact!
Save modified animation as separated AnimationClip file.
Store designer animation settings for multiple animation clips, in single preset file, so you can go back for tweaking animations design, in any time!

No additional Data/Components!
Plugin is not generating any new component or data on character models you animate with Animation Designer. Keep your workspace clean and think about this plugin as core software element of the Unity Editor.

Package offers advanced IK analyze algorithms which can help you add some heavyness to walk / run animations.

You can use Animation Designer not only with characters but with any type of animated object.


⭐ Carefully designed window for maximum focus!
Window of Animation Designer is designed carefully to not overwhelm user with too many GUI elements on the screen.
You can switch to focus mode hiding even more windows, to fully focus just on the needed sliders and values.


⌛ Time Saver for Animators!
Prepare base animation without full polishing, let do it the procedural motion algorithm. Add some flappyness to small limbs and bake it.
Adjust Unity Humanoid animation retargeting errors inside editor.


If you have some questions or troubles with the package, feel free to ask below, or on the discord server.

 

This does look quite interesting!
Doing small changes to existing animations always felt like struggle in Unity..

May I ask which of the features would technically be applicable to 2D bones as well?
Mean those are simply hierarchical objects too, or does your software actually require access to the bones controller etc.?

 

I made some space for implementing this, but I not tested it yet.
It may be possible to implement even now, but can't tell yet. I will check it the next weeks.

 

Do you plan to make a tutorial video showing how to use it for something like, "start with an animation of a humanoid walking, and modify it to show the humanoid walking while carrying a box(*)?" The release video alludes to that as a use case for the tool, but I didn't see anything in the written docs or two existing videos that really shows how you'd use Animation Designer to do something like that.

(*) Assumption: the humanoid and box being carried are two completely independent 3D assets made by someone else and purchased through the Asset Store. The humanoid is rigged and has a 'walk' animation, but lacks a "walk (or run, or idle) while carrying a box" animation, the box is just a static 3D model of something like a cardboard box, or maybe a giftwrapped present. Ideally, after watching the video, I'd have at least half a clue how to take the next step myself and animate the walking/running/idling humanoid casually tossing the box to one side (imagine an Amazon delivery guy running past a house while carrying a package, and just kind of tossing it in the general direction of the front door without really caring where it lands as long as he doesn't personally trip over it).

 

Yes there will be tutorial for it, describing usage for arms IK and carrying box will be probably the example here.
But quick tips for making it: Set constant position for the first hand arm ik, set some blends to make animation not look so stiff (you can put the box object in the hierarchy in hand bone), then align second arm ik to first ik point + contant offset to align hand to right position (to keep it on the box) and it's ready.

 

@FimpossibleCreations Hello, Your asset looks great I have a question. We have liek many many of mocap animations, many of them have problem with foot sliding, and "walking on toes" Do your tool have some options to keep foot in place, or make character walk on full foot not on toes, It would be like a deal breaker, as most of mocap animation always needs long long process of fixing these 2 things, never mind if using pro mocap studio or home record.

Second thing is If we can animate fingers with that I'm talking about some automatic fingers behaviour, or poses, to give them more natural behaviour (like with gravity or some bouncing)

I think If your tool have or will have this features it will be like a deal breaker for anyone creating mocap animations (so a lot of people)

 

Thanks! Yes you should be able to fix such issues with this tool. I wasn't testing tool yet on something like full mocap scene of character walking for a few seconds (but I prepared some code to work with longer walk animations)
You can send me one of the problematic animations and I will send it back with some tweaks for you to review what can be achieved with the tool

2) No, there is no fingers/face animation support, but there are future plans for "Animation Morphing" which should allow you to work with this.

 

any plans to make a "re-target animations to similar skeletal rigs" tool or feature addon? I'll pay for that.

so I can edit asset store models, in blender, re-import, and re-use old animation data?

I'll pay good money for this, by the way I own many of your assets they are good. THank you.

 

Hi I want to Set model foot lock in the ground, just like Foot Ik in animator, Is there any way to do this in the Animation clip

 

You can do it with Animation Designer.
There is tutorial of making movement attack animation to locked in place attack:

 

Hi, I just downloaded Animation designer asset. I am not able to find "UPPER CHEST" humanoid bone in the bone modificators tab. Can you please guide how to modify this one using the asset. Thanks in advance

 

Hello, it's possible the bone you searching for will be available under "Other Bones" (below "Humanoid Bones" in bones search box)
If for some reason it's still not here, you can alternatively drag & drop bone manually by unfolding modification:

 

Hello System is awesome only one thing I miss is to be able to make some fingers keyframes

 

Humanoid posing tools will be provided in some of the future updates, but it will take at least month until this feature is ready since I have some big priorities with my other packages

 

Sounds great! thanks for info

 

I think the animation designer you created is a really cool plugin.
But there is a problem in my project and it is not running.
I'm not sure what the problem is.
--unity 3.2f1 personal



I found this was conflicting with the 'Red Knight' I bought from the Unity Store. After deleting 'Red Knight' the animation designer worked fine.

 

This would be great but whenever I save the new animation, even without having made changes, my humanoid feet slide everywhere during walk/run cycles etc...

 

Hello, sorry you had to wait, I was getting married this week
Take look on the 'Optimize new file' slider under export button.

You can increase animation precision by lowering the slider (check the tips on the right of the slider when you change the value), but it have big influence on the resulting file's size, with lower precision and some foot sliding you get 100kb file but with total precision it can take about 1.5mb

Another tip: lower under 'Additional Export Settings' there is another slider to increase export precision just on the legs related bones called 'Hips and legs precision boost' if you increase it to 100% it can give you much better result for legs and get to about 1mb in comparison to full body precision.

 

In your description, there is a big WARNING/NOTES section. Under "requires some animation knowledge". I have only used the Unity in-editor Animation Window to create and edit imported animations. Would you consider my level of experience enough to use your tool? If there is sufficient documentation and it is organized logically, I am interested.

 

Hello, checking some of the tutorial videos on yt should help you decide if it will be good tool for you

 

hi,
Finaly got this other gem from you! great tool obviously. I am just starting with it and i have a question:
when i save my new animations, only the leg and low spine are animated. The rest of the body is in t pose..
Any idea? What am i missing?
Thx

 

and btw, congrats!!

 

Thanks!
I guess you're working on humanoid rig? It sounds like humanoid bake api error.
Using original model file instead of your character prefab fixes the issue like in 100% cases
There probably were some hierarchy changes in your prefab which made humanoid avatar break connection with bones to export.

 

Hi FimpossibleCreations,
I've only played around with the Animation Designer a little so far, so I'm not extremely familiar with everything it can do. Anyway, I'm wondering if I can use it for a solution I'm looking for. I have a motion captured "walk-forward" root animation, and I want to create 8-directional animations using this animation as a base. (I mean, strafing animations, where the character is always looking forwards, like always aiming a gun forwards.) With Unity's basic animation settings, I can rotate the entire animation 45 degrees, to make the character walk 'forward-left' - then, with the rotated animation, I want to re-rotate only the torso and everything upwards back 45 degrees, so that the upper part of the body is facing forward. Whatever the process would be, it could be used also for the "walk-left," "walk-backwards-left," animations, etc. If there is a solution for this using the Animation Designer, I think this would make another great tutorial video. I know I'd find a lot of use out of it!

 

Hello.

The 45 degrees movement is possible to create basing on "walk forward" animation.
You can do hips and spine rotation offsets and blend arms ik slightly to correct the arms animation.
Here the gif showcasing how the result can look like:
Good idea for a tutorial, something to do for a January

 

Hi, I have some sit anims where the player is more forward on some and almost of their seat. I love this asset and use it to move 1-2 limbs at a time but can you please tell me if there is a way to shift the entire body back?

 

Hi, you can use additive position modifier (3rd category) on the root bone, or hips bone + set execution order to be "Last-Override" or "Before Everything" to just move character ignoring other features changes.
You can see similar approach in this tutorial:

 

I know this one bakes into Animation Clips, but would you say that its features overlap with your other packages like Spine, Tail and Bone animators?

Those 3 are real-time, but does Animation Designer also offer the same features but then bakes these movements into the Animation Clip? Am I getting it right?

 

No, the Tail and Spine Animator was made differently, not allowing for easy implementation with Animation Designer. However, the upcoming update for Animation Designer will introduce "Custom Coded Modules" which may actually make the other plugins implementation possible, but such implementations are future plans.

 

very interesting and quite full featured tool! i have a couple of questions in terms of the usage:

1. since i'm very likely to use Mixamo animations and the mixamo rig does NOT contain a pelvis bone (or at least no bone labeled 'pelvis') how do you handle moving pelvis but keeping the feet in place? i would assume that if you use the hip bone you would move the whole character. but i'd guess you have dealt with mixamo rigs so any tips appreciated!

2. is the elastic modification to limb movement the same as Bones Stimulator's? i read in the comments that Bones Stimulator uses keyframes to base its movement modification so it seems to be the same in that it is tied to the animation. however, if you wanted to have the limbs move around in real time via a character controller in a more random and organic fashion, would that be better done via the Ragdoll Animator?

any advice and answers appreciated. thanks!

scott

 

There is on problem with mixamo animations, especially when you use humanoid rig.
If you want to support keeping feet on the ground better, expand 'Additional Settings For' under Setup category and enable 'Humanoid IK'.

Bones Stimulator will give you more smooth and better controlled procedural animation jiggle.
Ragdoll Animator can do it too, but it's based on unity physics, so it will follow your character animation, but with a bit of delay, caused by physics heaviness catching up with played animation, but it supports world collision.

 

thanks very much for the information! i think i might try Animation Designer when i have some time.

 

This too is really cool but how can I animate fingers?

 

You can use bone modifiers per finger, or use module for humanoid fists / fingers posing, like in this tutorial 2:16 and 3:19

 

Thank you for the great tool.

Is there any way to export the animation with preserving the keyframes of the child objects movements and blendshapes outside of the Humanoid?

When I export the Animation, they are lost.

 

Hello, thank you!
You can expand top bookmark, click on 'armature report', scroll down and add extra transforms which are not skinned mesh body parts of the mesh but are animated (like animated weapon handle object) + enable position baking on them.

Expand "Additional Export Settings" on the bottom and enable "Copy Curves" - it should enable copying blendshapes vaues and any other extra curves.

 

Can I combine two animation clips with this asset? For example I have a sleep figure and I need add idle animation to it! Or add a second animation and blend with previous one to make a longer animation?

 

You could adjust clip time with Duration Multiplier parameter and use morphing feature and Time Warp curves to blend few clips together, but this plugin is not designed for jobs like that.
If the clips are root motion clips, then morphing features can have problems with blending the clips properly.