Animation Documentation

I'm messing around with the DOTS sample and I'm finding it pretty difficult to get a grasp of what's really going on with animation without any documentation to speak of. At least with the net code I have something to refer to.

Is there any ETA on when any basic manuals are going to be written for the animation package?

Also, I think choosing to name the package as simply "Animation" is a pretty poor choice since it doesn't convey that it's for DOTS only and I expect this would confuse a lot of people once it's visible in the package manager by default.

 

I am in the same spot as you, desperate for Animations in Pure ECS but so far I've seen just 2D animations in Hybrid ECS and the sample is too hard for me to understand yet. Maybe just learn basic animations and then learn the new ones from the sample or wait for the final iteration of the Animation Package

 

Animation samples and documentation can be found here;
https://github.com/Unity-Technologies/Unity.Animation.Samples

The animation package isn't listed in the package manager yet, but it can be manually added to it via "Add package from git URL ".
The url is;
com.unity.animation

 

I'm also facing same issue. Sample is really hard to understand. I'm messing with DOTS Sample and FPS Sample for many days. But I couldn't figure out how animations are working.
I'm also developing Third Person Shooter game with DOTS I couldn't understand how to run proper rigged animation.

I also watched this https://github.com/Unity-Technologies/Unity.Animation.Samples new animation package. But I couldn't understand how to implement it in DOTS or documentation is not clear for intermediate developers.

 

I've been playing around with the

unity.animation

package for a while ( https://github.com/Unity-Technologies/Unity.Animation.Samples/issues/1#issuecomment-576544306 ) and got it to work with URP (officially only HDRP is supported right now). Drop

0.3.0-preview.7

made things a little more performant and the guys/gals are working hard for official URP compatibility for GDC in about a month.

To get started I recommend checking out this example:
https://github.com/Unity-Technologi...s/Assets/Scenes/Examples/MyFirstAnimationClip
Drop in a model of your own and compare it to the prefab/rig/etc... that's used by that example. Follow the scene dependencies, check out the shader graph, inspect the prefab (it has some components,

RigComponent

(iirc) in it).

Disclaimer, it's not yet a drop in replacement to the old animations! There is some ground work to do rn, i.e. use a specific shader, add a component to your prefab, add all bones from the rig to the model. It's doable if you really need it, but I'd rather wait until the integration is simplified. I'm very confident that they'll come up with more "convenience classes" that make this a breeze. So far I'm treating it a performance proof of concept for my game until it's more "final"

FYI: Performance wise I can get 400 models (≈1M tris total, unlit, no shadows) to animate on Android. 40 FPS on a Pixel XL (3.5year old flagship phone) and >90 FPS on a Pixel 4 XL (current flagship phone):

 

I downloaded a character and an animation from mixamo, follow example scene's instructions carefully. But my character is not running animation. BoneRendererComponent shows character's bones are in animation's starting state (but animation is not playing) and actually character is in T Pose. As you can see in following image.

There is no error in console log, although there are some warnings.

I didn't found SceneIDMap game object in scene and also in character.

 

Hm, there should be 2 components on your prefab where you reference all bone transforms. Looks like you might have done that for only one of them?

 

Are you using a shader graph that has the Linear Blend Skinning node in it (or an equivalent handmade shader that uses the _SkinMatrices buffer)?

 

I'm using a very simple Shader Graph modeled after the HDRP one from the github project.



(Sidenote: Is "PBR Master" the default "lit" shader master node in URP? (I'm pretty new to shaders and was wondering what the most efficient master node would be or if the compiler strips away all the unused stuff automatically ?)

 

I already added both RigComponent and BoneRenderComponenet on character prefab and passes all bones' transforms to it.

And on skin of character I also already added SkinnedMesh.

But animation is not running. Instead in play mode bones are in animation's starting pose and character is in T-Pose (As you can see in the reference image which I posted in previous reply.)

 

Is the

Beta_Joints_MAT

using the shader graph I posted above?

 

No, I'm not using any shader graph. It is unity's default HDRP converted shader

HDRP/Lit

 

That's your issue, you material uses a specific shader that takes "bones" into account via the LinearBlendSkinning node

 

Thank you very much. Now animation is running fine.

I have few more questions about new animation pack.

1. Animation on character runs when character is generic (In FBX settings), Animation is not running when character is Humanoid. Is animation only run when character is generic or I'm missing something more?
2. When we can able to use unity's old animator component in dots? Or Unity is planing to change it?

 

In case someone else finds it useful, I slapped together a shader for builtin skin rendering. Minimally tested I was just using the MyFirstAnimationClip scene from the animation examples project.

https://gist.github.com/gamemachine/2fe6e1f919f6fa6cf5b20eb942ddc0da

 

Thanks, this was useful to get a tecture mapped character. Actually instead of a PBR master I used a LitMaster, as they also do in DOTSSample where you can see a texture Mapped Terraformer using Animation Package, but with a much more complex shadergraph.
I take the Bone Index and Texture2D as inputs, Runs fine on my characters with their textures.
If someone wants more complex effects, reference DOTSsample shadergraph and get ready for an amusing experience.
For samples like these it would be useful a KISS /Keep It Simple Stupid) approach. ECS and DOTS are quite a change, and the complexity of DOTSsample is overwhelming for most people without a masochistic hacking attitude like some of us here.

 

No Idea what I am doing wrong here, I cannot get my mesh to match the bone renderer and the bone renderer is not running the animation. I followed what I thought was everything I should do to get it running but below is a screen shot of the result. For a little more Context before explaining the image; The Goblin is a model from the Unity Asset Store and works in a non-ECS environment.

Image Details:
Game View (Top left) is a snapshot of the left animation running. The Graph view (Bottom left) is the shader graph that all skinned meshes are using. The Hierarchy window just has four objects selected that are being displayed in the four Inspector windows beside it. The Rig Component's bones and bone renderer bones are identical to show where they should be. The model has three skinned mesh renderers; one for the goblin itself, and two for the props on him. Each of these are displayed in the remaining three inspector windows.



Anyone have any ideas where I went wrong?

 

Hi nicolasgramlich,
Any chance you could tell us how this performance compares to the same scenario using your "standard" animation mechanism, I assume either UnityEngine.Animator or UnityEngine.Animation?
Thanks

 

In my early prototypes I gave up very quickly trying to use built in animations. You'll never get there. There are some asset packs that allow for gpu skinning

And for comparison: 882 individually animated units at 120 FPS in the editor on my laptop (thermal throttling to 2GHz...thanks Apple) with all the jobs/burst debug bells and whistles enabled:

Adding more units scales absolutely phenomenally <3

 

I am facing an issue with the dots animation package. I have followed the unity animation sample and imported the character in my own project. The editor is showing the animation fine, but when I make a build (Windows x86_64) and run the game, no animation is shown and it just displays the character in T-pose. Has anybody experienced this? Any idea what might be different in the build version?

 

need to use subscenes with animation if you arent already. animation conversion doesnt work in builds yet.

 

Aah, that was the part I was missing. Thank you very much.