Character System

Hopefully I'm not being overbearing with my requests, but is there any room on that list for a block/parry animation with the sword and a "stagger" animation for when the character gets hit? Both are very broadly applicable and would come in handy to many users in addition to myself, I think.

 

I bought this and have not had too much time to play with it but from what I have seen it is going to be a HUGE help to our project! I will have to re-wright all the scrips to get it in (our issue not the package issue because every thing in our game has to be done over the network client/server). One thing this package is missing and from what I have seen EVERY package is missing is sitting. On the floor and/or chair. Seems that it is over looked a lot. Good for LONG waits like the player is AFK have the toon sit down and wait for them...

 

just noticed on store page it says

Zipped 3.5x Character System

but when you look at the package

it has CharSys_v3.3.zip in _CharacterSystem\Character_System\Zipped_CharSys_3.5x

so is the zip file the wrong one?

also in latest demo i still cant get the character out of the water, it just wont go up small slope keeps swimming in place. jumping, climb, etc dont work in water or at least in that pool.

 

What would be the best cause of action when using this Character System in an "adventure" type game, where the character walks over to where I click? Basically I have a setup with the old locomotion solution, but it is rather heavy for mobile and I would like to use Character System instead, with as much IK of foot placement taking place. What does "IK feet alignment" mean, in more detail?

 

MentalFish:

UniRPG has character controller that works like you describe. It uses either Unity Navigation or The PathFinding Project to work.

 

Hi all,

@Lork,
Ok, these makes sense too ;-) Parry, block noted! I have added to get hit anims with the last update besides 2 death anims.

@tectuma,
Awesome! Glad to hear it was useful for your project ;-) sitting on flour and on chair is noted too!

@im,
Good catch! Seems i labeled it wrong. It's definitely the latest legacy version. -- The right one just labeled wrong.

@MentalFish,
IK feet alignment placed the feet correctly on uneven ground like bumps, stairs etc.
You can make click to move pretty easy with this pack. Just take a look at the AngryBots movement implementation. and add it to the Character System.
It is made to build upon ,tweak and integrate your features ;-)

Cheers!

 

RobinS,

I've been watching, reading and trying the demo for the Character System for the past week, deciding whether to go ahead and make the purchase. I'm close, but I think the Mecanim version is a bit rough around the edges for the price. (I missed out on the recent special price, which would have made it a no-brainer.) As of this writing, several people have commented on the touchy key response and the uninterruptible animations in the Mecanim version. I hope you continue to refine it, and maybe Unity 4.3 will also fix or enable fixes for some of this. The animations are all good but I'm not making a combat/climbing game, so the value for me is less about the Assassin's Creed actions and more about the smooth responsive camera/character control walking around and interacting with the environment.

Besides the "push a heavy object" ideas listed above, another key motion I'd like to add to your list is to precisely align the character to an interactive object like a door. If your character encounters a huge lever, chain, button, doorknob or other object in the world, and you make an animation to manipulate that object, precise alignment or tricky IK are the only ways to get it to look right. This sounds like a simple click-to-walk, but one common mistake is to turn the char 180º twice when the required precise target location is just a couple inches BEHIND the character. Gotta sidestep or backstep when that would be more natural. In addition, it has to be easy for the environment to hint to the character that it "wants" to align to that location, almost like the vertex snap feature in the Unity scene editor.

 

Hi Robin,

So far, I think the Mecanim version has be fitting into what I want to accomplish fairly well. I just wish we had some documentation so that we wouldn't have to ask as many questions.

Anyway, I'd like to have my character be able to jump over larger distances. I've been looking through the code but none of my tweaks have changed the way the Jump works. I'm guessing that's because it's Mecanim that controls the in-air velocity for jumping. I looked through the Animator but could find the parameter that would affect what I want to happen (indeed, in-air velocity might just be based on walk velocity -- which I would want to change).

Do you know how I could increase the in-air velocity / jump distance? Jump height is already where it needs to be.

 

Hi all,

@halley,
Thanks for your interest and suggestions.
I will do my best to make you guys and girls satisfied with my work. I'm constantly working on updates for the system and will maintain it to keep it working with future Unity versions.
For your example, i would use an empty transform on ground level , in front of the lever. Once the player pushes a button in range and direction of that lever, he will translate and rotate towards the transform and performs the animation, synced with the lever's animation. ;-)

@cyangamer1,
I'm glad to hear that! I'm currently working on a PDF documentation file. It should be included with the next update ;-)

Yes, you're right. It's controlled by root motion. But that won't stop you from applying extra force or velocity to the rigid body. I did this for the jump functionality (line 502). You could add the characters forward direction to that Vector3 and multiply it by a variable you can tweak via the Inspector.
Like this : rb.velocity = hero.up * jumpHeight + hero.forward * jumpRange;

Cheers!

 

Hi,
Using Unity 4 pro.

Other than the models included, which models on the asset store work well with this?

thanks.

 

Hi,

It should work with all skinned humanoid characters, here is a demo i did today while working on the documentation PDF :
http://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/..._Guide_Demo/CharSys_Robot_PDF_Guide_Demo.html

Retargeting the whole thing to the Unity Robot character took about 2 minutes ;-)

Cheers!

 

Tx for the fast reply.
Will it work with models from the store that were made for unity 3.5.7, or do they need to be mechanim optimized?
Is the Ninja model downloadable somewhere, didn't see it in the package i bought.
tx.

 

No problem,

All regular skinned models with a decent humanoid skeleton should work just fine. You would have to set them up for mecanim : http://docs.unity3d.com/Documentation/Manual/MecanimAnimationSystem.html
The Ninja comes with the Character System and the Veteran with the Veteran + Mecanim CS package.

Cheers!

 

Hi Robin,
Got my character in and he is doing his thing.
I only need like 15 of the animations from your asset.
What would be the best idea/way to delete the other unused animations within the controller - without breaking the system?
Or
Should I just export the specific fbx animations I want and bring them into a clean scene?

 

Robin,
I owe you an apology concerning this solution to my Capsule Collider issue as it turns out the solution is much simplier all I had to do is remark out lines 221 and 222 in HeroCtrl and make the adjustments under the Capsule collider setting in the inspector . Your Ninja character still works after doing that also. Simple fix afterall !!! Aparently setting the Character Scale size in the inspector works now also without going into the model scale setting also.
Apparently I made some changes and didn't save the edited changes in the Editor before I ran the program and the changes didn't take place.
Ron Wilson

 

Hi Robin, I have a question about the "Balance" state; I noticed that it is triggered whenever a raycast hits objects on layer 9. So I put a generic cube in the scene onto layer 9, but when I try to jump onto the top I sink straight through its box collider. Is there something else I need to setup for "Balancing" to work?

 

Adding a ragdoll to my character caused him to stop falling midair and then immediately fall again a few seconds later, then when he did finally initiate his ragdoll state the camera stopped following him and I couldn't get out of it. Is there any documentation on this or could you perhaps point me in the right direction?

 

I had a similar issue to this before, whenever I entered ragdoll mode my character began moving around the scene uncontrolably. It was because I hadn't setup the physics layers properly, the beginning of the tutorial video shows how to do this.

 

Hi all,

@pixelsteam,
Great! Glad to hear ;-)
I would do a copy of the current working solution and would exclude all unnecessary stuff from controller(s) and scripts step by step.
After that is done, save your scene and select all dependencies of it. drag it in a folder and delete the remaining files.
Hope that helps.

@Ron Wilson,
No worries ;-) I'm glad you found a solution yourself.

@Hamesh81,
Hmm, sounds weird. is the collider flagged as trigger ? It should be a normal collider with climb layer (layer 9). Does it work for you in the default Ninja demo scene?

@mikezenox,
I sent you a pm, Have you pressed Button E in midair ? How is your layer setup? Play should be Layer 8 "Player".

Cheers!

 

Yeah, it's really bizarre. Here is a screen grab from the original version 3.5 that comes with the latest mecanim version.



The layer is set to layer 9 (called "Climb") and this lets the player walk straight through the object yet it's colliders are not set to trigger. Really strange. Also when testing, the character's balance state is triggered on an object whose layer is not set to layer 9. I thought that the balance state is only triggered when the character is in contact with layer 9 objects. See for yourself:



The balance beam joining the two towers triggers the balance state yet it's set to the "Default" layer 0. I'm really confused at this point.

 

Thanks, I have an it doesn't do much, as for my layers they aren't actually set up like yours, I'm assuming layer 8 needs to be player and layer 9 climb? Would there be a way around this? If not I will try it with the correct layers and get back to you.

edit:
I must be missing something, I made my layers match then made my character on the player layer and the rag doll-enabled player still doesn't work properly. I have to manually begin the ragdoll and when I do the camera stops following the player (the original collider moves on without the ragdoll), and I get an error:

 

Thanks. It turns out that this adjustment is negated by the next command which resets the rigidbody velocity in order to prevent sliding, and messing with that well... makes the player slide. Decided to go with lesser of two evils and leave the jumping set up as it is for now. I'll revisit this when I come up with another way to implement the jumping I want.

I'm now implementing the climbing feature and I'm having a strange issue. Everythings works as it's supposed to except that the player is always several units above where the edge is when he's climbing. Adjusting the Height Offset To Edge to a more reasonable value has made the player move horizontally forward (through the edges and the wall!) continuously.

I'm thinking this may stem from the fact that I had to reconnect everything in Mecanim and reconfigure the import settings for each animation clip (this all gets disconnected/erased unless you build your game on top of the Character System project). This is just a wild guess though.

Any advice?

 

Hi all,

@Hamesh81,
The climbLayer does not collide with the player, you can place it on top of your geometry, which already has colliders applied.
Balance gets triggered when you hit a climbObect on ground level, such as climbObject's on edges of objects. This gives the glance when reached edge effect ;-)
Just place a climbObject on the ground and walk over it.

@mikezenox,
Ok, im pretty sure that this has to do with the root bone reference. Does it work when you rename the string called "root" with the name of your rootbone ? Edit : at line 235, HeroCtrl
I already made an Update and submitted it (still under review, but should be live soon).
So this would be a instant solution until the update is live ;-)

@cyangamer1,
It effects the velocity when grounded. You could use my example to move the character in midair that way.

You can adjust the climb height and distance offset. I made two variables for that you access via inspector : climbOffsetToWall, heightOffsetToEdge

You can use it anyway you want/need. If you need just climbing and swimming for example. Just take the parts : knowledge, scripts, assets and integrate it into your game. If you creating a new game and want every feature, just build upon the system.
Every time an update for the CS is released, i would suggest to check the release note and/or even try features in a new project without the risk to override your work. Take the new animation or this new feature and use it for your game.
Well that's at least how i would go for it ;-)

Cheers!

 

Aaaah ok, now I get it! I was really confused by this but now I know how it works. Thanks a lot

 

Thanks, I will check this out when I get off work. Thought it may be due to me assigning the wrong bone as the root bone, which I'm unsure how to find

 

first the good

nice documentation

now the bad, the controller is as bad as ever, probably worse, new issues...

with latest release

character get stuck upside down in the demo when you go along side one any of the barriers and jump back and forth repeatedly

sort of looks like he's diving into pool




also i found out why character controller is unresponsive for a number of things...

throughout HeroCtrl there is code that looks like this

yield return new WaitForSeconds (2); // Cool down
yield return new WaitForSeconds (coolDown); // Cool down

so guess what even if the animation took 1/10 of a second to complete you will be waiting for sometime, in the 1st example i cite 2 seconds, before you can again do the thing that the co-routine controlled...

better would have been to change the state when the animation completed or call some callback event handler or even set some flag... that way you dont roadblock things when they dont need to be roadblocked.

since the above code is like used all over the place it will need little redoing, but after hey who knows it may work ... so no gain without some pain...


i guess now we find out why it dont work well, try this

Mixamo Animator Event Script
https://www.assetstore.unity3d.com/#/content/10045

and here is paid solution

Event System for Mecanim
https://www.assetstore.unity3d.com/#/content/5969

that is if you want to use events instead of fixed wait

another thing would be to set some flag in the controller if that is allowed. let me see or in the code check the lenfth of the animation and where it is offset and that way you can know. so you could do that in coroutine and yield if still playing no need to suspend using wait fixed amount. its polling trick.

here they may have opened up the api a bit, who knows, not 100% sure, sadly the clases dont say legacy/mecanim so who knows...
http://docs.unity3d.com/Documentation/ScriptReference/Animator.html
http://docs.unity3d.com/Documentation/ScriptReference/AnimatorStateInfo.html
http://docs.unity3d.com/Documentation/ScriptReference/AnimatorTransitionInfo.html
http://docs.unity3d.com/Documentation/ScriptReference/AnimationClip.html
http://docs.unity3d.com/Documentation/ScriptReference/AnimationCurve.html
http://docs.unity3d.com/Documentation/ScriptReference/AnimationEvent.html
http://docs.unity3d.com/Documentation/ScriptReference/AnimationInfo.html
http://docs.unity3d.com/Documentation/ScriptReference/AnimationState.html

here is some interesting stuff on it
http://forum.unity3d.com/threads/159916-playing-nicely-with-mecanim-and-my-own-state-controller

here is nice but dated blog on it
http://www.scottpetrovic.com/blog/2013/03/unity3d-and-mecanim-the-good-the-bad-and-the-strange/

here more but dated
http://answers.unity3d.com/questions/378420/trigger-event-on-specific-frame-of-an-animation.html

 

Good job Robin, looking forward to see your more updates

 

Hey Robin, just purchased your package yesterday and it's really what I needed to get a jump start into a working prototype of my game. I got it working with my own custom character with ease (only been using Unity for a few weeks now) and it seems easy to add plenty more animations. However, I'm still new to programming so I was wondering a few things about your controller script that would really help me get moving along with my prototype and onto the a.i.

(1.) What line of code hides the weapon(s) when their not selected? I would like weapons that are not being used still displayed to the player on the character. I have the sword on the back, the rifle at a slinged 'ready carry' on the chest, and pistol on the thigh.

(2.) Is there a way to enter a line of code to directly select a particular weapon with a pressed key instead of having to cycle through every time?

(3.) I was looking through the code to find a message sent when the character fires the rifle and pistol. I'm trying to attache fire animations and bullet prefabs (a different kind for each weapon) but I am stuck trying to find what would trigger these in your script.

Even if you don't have time to answer these questions I appreciate what you have done here and the price is dirt cheap for the amount of effort put into the package.

 

Hi all,

@Hamesh81, @mikezenox,
Your welcome ;-)

@im,
Im glad you find the documentation useful ;-)
Thanks for your feedback, all noted! I will do my best to solve any upcoming issues.

@napster,
Thank you ! ;-) I will do my best to keep this baby alive and up to date. ;D

@Hoffmeyer,
Awesome! ;-) Always glad to hear that!

1) It's the NextWeapon IEnumerator. In MonoDevelop -> highlight the method/IEnumerator name then right click -> find references -> will give you a list of, well references and dependencies if you want.

2) Yes you can trigger a weapon state, for example : you want to switch to your sword with button 1. You can put line 900 -915 into a if button-down condition and place it into Update() of FixedUpdate().

3) You can use doAtk1Down for this. line 1908. If (weaponState == WeaponState.Pistol doAtk1Down) inside the combat method will do the trick.

Thanks! i really appreciate it!

Cheers!

 

hey @robins

if i get a chance i'll see if i can come up with something

i guess you'll be doing the same

since you know more in this area than i do i would appreciate if you looked into doing some kind of pseudo events like discussed in those articles/posts that i linked to

try it for like holster weapon if you can get that humming and we can verify it is working smoothly without unnecessary delay then you can update the package to use the new idea.

also you will have leg up on other packages since mecanim doesnt do events and they most likely dont either

also it would be nice to put some positive constructive pressure on unity to finally add events to mecanim...

i dont know if 4.3 window is closed, but it should not have taken this long to begin with to do it correctly. i mean it really limits mecanim, step back not to have events.


also dont forget that now jump is busted as you get stuck upside down...

 

Thanks for the help! I got the weapons displaying just as I hoped to. I'm still have trouble though writing the code to select weapons directly. I have this in the void FixedUpdate section:

doweaponState = WeaponState.Sword = Input.GetKeyDown (KeyCode.Alpha1);

I'm guessing that is set up properly and stuck with what to write on lines 900-915. I know I need a button-down code to initiate the command but that's it. Here's what I'm guessing it should look like:

else if Input.GetKeyDown (KeyCode.Alpha1)(weaponState == WeaponState.Sword);
{
yield return StartCoroutine(DrawHolster(0.3f,weapons.sword_Holster.renderer, weapons.sword_Hand.renderer));
a.SetBool("Sword", false);
yield break;

and I should delete the other "if"s above it?

Thanks for the help and I'm definitely a customer of future expansions and other packages.

 

@Robin S

Hello Robin the latest update is great!

I am going to move all my script modifications over to the latest version. These are the ones for my crosshair, shooting, and wings. If I shared that script to you with no strings attached could you put it in the asset so all the Indie Developers learning like me can have it and do what they want with it?

Thanks

Robert
AKA
Venged

 

Hi,

@im,

I don't believe in pressure. It would be much more effective to give some good real live example to the Unity Devs to convince them to implement certain features. And i bet that some form of events will come or is already planned, see legacy anim. system.

@Hoffmeyer,
You're welcome! I sent you a pm with a source code snippet ;-)

@Venged,
Thanks ! ;-)
If there isn't any source code or payed assets included and it's not violating with the asset store EULA. Then yes, sure.

Cheers!

 

lol,

no carrots and sticks / no incentives and disincentives ?

you want some good real live example

you need not look no further than the character system

as to why macanim events are needed

just send them a free copy of the asset and ask them to repeatedly hit the q key

i would think that if unity wants developers to move away from legacy animations to their mecanim animation they would work to make it as functional or better than legacy animation. right now it looks to me like in the area of re-targeting and controllers it leads, but in the area of getting it to play/feel like legacy which is what counts to end users its behind while they dont have things like events. mecanim always feels a little strange, even in their demos and i suspect that what is missing is events.

 

Good morning Robin,

Some more questions:
1) how do i remove the "lean-in" effect when a character is not moving but still leans toward the mouse-x when it is moving?
2) how would i add a&d rotation (i.e. rotate around y-axis at pivot counter/clockwise, independant of the mouse).
3) lastly there is a small extra rotation added to the root when the mouse-x moves completely around the character/screen space that causes massive issues when the destination computer is not as fast as my own. basically it makes the player rotate over and over for every x times that it occurs on my own system, so i would like to eliminate it altogether. if that is confusing, i can make a video and PM you an example.

thanks!

 

Loving the mecanim system so far, character was outfitted in seconds and customizing variables is always fun, I searched the forums, but even though the answer must be here I can't find it: I know this is a silly question but I can't find a slope limit variable in the inspector or in HeroCtrl, and am wondering what I'm missing. The capsule collider raycast should be accounting for this, no? Or was it not included to avoid the performance hit on flat levels?

 

Hi,

1) Do you mean with the legacy Character System ? With the Mecanim System it is done via blend tree animations without procedural animations.
2) Like i did it for the legacy System, see Late Update method in HeroAnim Source code.
3) Look out for hero.RotateAround in legacy or hero.Rotate in the Mecanim version. Dependent on the sate you are at.
I think i understand what you mean ;-)

Glad to hear that ! ;-)
It don't support slope limits at the moment, but thats pretty simple to do. I will put it on my update list.
If you can't wait and want to do it yourself in the meantime. Check the angle between hero.up and groundHit.normal. 0 will be plain ground. Then just make the actual movement dependent on the angle.

Cheers!

 

hi
when i change col.height = 3.0f to col.height = 3.1f or uper
charater system dont work !!!!
how can i fix this problem ?

tanx

 

Hi,

If your character is in falling state then you could try to raise the groundedDistance variable a bit.
If this doesn't work then i need more info to help you solving the problem.
You could also take a look at the Documentation PDF.

Cheers!

 

Just wanted to throw in a suggestion for future update. Currently I personally think that the usability of the system would benefit greatly if you moved the jumping functionality away from root motion control and made it RigidBody physics based with vars in the hero script that users could set to determine base jump height / distance and then have that work in tandem with the players current movement speed (even if this is preset such as walkJumpHeight, baseJumpHeight, sprintJumpHeight vars, though if you could somehow tie it into the actual movement speed from the root motion so that it was dynamic based off of the movement animation / movement speed / player set jump height that would def be preferable. Just a suggestion but I personally think that jumping feels very awkward when it is not tied to physics and or the actual movement speed of the player at the time of the jump and I have yet to see anything where the jump was done fully with mecanims root motion that was even remotely usable in an actual gameplay sense.

 

yessss Fixed.
how can i download PDF Documentation ?

 

Hi,

Thanks for your feedback! You can give the jump an additional boost with raising jump height in heroCtrl. It is a hybrid, part root motion / velocity.
I will think about your suggestions and see what i can improve ;-)

Glad to hear! ;-) It's in the Documentation folder ( latest version ).

Cheers!

 

Just curious, I have the Veteran version of the system, and I noticed that it looks like from pictures that unlike the veteran that the ninja has colliders and rigidbodies on particular points of the skeleton. Wondering if this is a throwback to the non-mecanim system or if there is a good reason to set these up?

Also curious, it seems when I fall for more than the length of the animation clip the editor throws a nullreference exception and boots me out of play mode. It's at UnityEngine.Transform.get_position

Thanks!

 

big changes in unity 4.3 that should affect the CS system:

 

You can create a rag doll for a character pretty easily with the Ragdoll wizard under the GameObject panel.
If your Character doesn't use a rag doll, you can uncheck useRagdoll on the HeroCtrl inspector.
Hope that helps ;-)

It works great in 4.3 ! Now you guys can use events if you like ;-)


Cheers!

 

I tried the ragdoll creator, but it seems that the problem is that my character arbitrarily folds up (his leg or knee collapses while standing, that kind of thing) when I have the terrain set to default layer or just floats over it for a second and then null references me out if I have the terrain set to the terrain layer... I feel like the problem might be that I haven't assigned the root bone, but I don't have the option in heroctrl and the console isn't throwing any error over it...

 

Where does the null reference exception came from? The folding or collapsing seems to be a retargeting / animation setup problem.
Have you followed the setup steps from the documentation for your character ?

Cheers!

 

The problem is at transform.get_position, the folding problem is 'cause I was screwing with my rig in another program (oops) but reverting to the clean version seems to have fixed the folding, but not the null reference. If I set the terrain to default I don't get the null reference, but I get a weird twitching of the character from collapsed to standing in between movements for a couple of frames...

 

Robin
I have not for the life of me been able to find the documents folder anywhere, in Asset Store area under my stuff it shows I have Version 5.1 of the Character System down loaded and I am running Indie Version of Unity version 4.2.2f1. I have tried to download to a clean Unity project from both My Stuff area and also from the Asset store page, I have also done a Re-download and Import from the Asset store page ! Some sort of pop up happens at times but it goes by so fast I can't see or tell if it is flagging some kind of an error........Is there another way to get just the PDF Documentation file so I can print it out?
Ron Wilson

 

Hm.. That seems to be a skinning setup, animation or bone mapping problem. Where does the null reference came from ? (Double click on error in console view).

Here it is ;-)

Inside the _Documentation folder.
Sent you a pm.

Cheers!