Motion Controller

@Tryz I'm running up against a problem where my character controller gets stuck frequently when grabbing ledges. This often happens if there is a large rounded ledge or if the game object under him is deleted. Do you have any suggestions for how to fix this? Is there a state I can change, or method I can call to force him back to idle state?

Thank you,

Dixon

 

Hey @dl_studios ,

As-is, the climb definitely prefers "crisp" edges. So, the closer to 90-degrees, the better. Typically, the collision volume is divorced from the actual model. So, even if the model has some roundness (ie large chipped stone blocks), the collision volume would be simpler. This helps provide lower geometry for faster collision detection and in the MC's case, crisper edges for climbing. If possible, that may be something you want to look into.

I'm not really sure about "game object under him is deleted". If the character is just standing there and the floor (and collision volume) is totally removed, I would expect the character to just fall. I just did a quick test and that's exactly what happened for me.

In order to force a character into a specific motion (like idle), you could use the MotionController's QueueMotion() function. This allows you to force a motion to activate even if it normally wouldn't. It also jumps ahead of all other motions.

I hope this helps,
Tim

 

Hey, I've been away for a while. What's up with the Actor Controller?

 

Mostly done, but I bit the bullet and I'm making sure MC2 and BC are all working together. I've got several trips planned this month. So, I won't get much done on it until I get back.

I think I posted a while back "end of summer". That's probably still right.

I am happy to report that it's 0 GC allocations and performance is great.

 

Quick note to the community... I'm going to be traveling out of the country soon. I'll do my best to keep up with the thread, but it may take me an extra day or two to respond. I just didn't want anyone to think I ran away.

 

Hi Tim are you back yet?
- not able to jump in unity 5.1
input manager is imported and space is defined, but still no jump. in the controler everything looks fine too.

After such a long time I thought I would take a look back at this and I am still disapointed that noone is making actions for this like pistol, cover and so on.
I now use a different controler and I just bought your bone control, I ike it but it would be nice if you could put a few playmaker actions on it.
other than that keep it up and have fun.

Chris.

 

It looks to me like the problem is somewhere on your end. Not sure where.

After reading your post I loaded MC into an empty project on a freshly downloaded U5.1 and replaced the Input Manager asset file. I can jump forward and backward and to each side, and I can jump / climb.

(As for adding motions to the MC for everyone to use, I suspect a lot of people use store bought animations, which obviously can't be shared.)

 

@hopeful , you rock.

I will be away for a couple of weeks, but popping in. You did exactly what I would have done. Glad to hear the default is working. @eagleeyez when I do get back, I will help as much as I can.

As for motions, I think hopeful is right. Even some of the new motions I created I can't share because I bought the animations

Signing off from London...

 

Sorry if this has been answered already, but does motion controller works with UMA?

 

Yup. Doing it. UMA characters are really just rigged meshes. The controller, character animator and animations you use with them are up to you. You can either assign a different controller and animator component in UMA when creating your characters, or export the characters as rigged meshes, that can then be imported and used like any other character model. Once you set it up, Mecanim retargets the animations, so you can use pretty much any humanoid character, as long as you tweak the settings in MC accordingly to take any size differences into account.

 

Any particular tricks to get a runtime generated UMA animating under MC?

 

Same question here. My UMA character is generated at runtime.

 

The only real trick if you're generating them at runtime is that the controller/animator needs to be changed on the base UMA model, the prefab that used to live in the "Races" folder (I'm not sure it's still there in UMA 2, since I haven't tried it yet - it's still on my to-do list). Just drop it into your project, set it up to work with MC, and then save it back as a prefab. You might want to back the original up first, in case... well just in case. Since this is what UMA uses to create runtime characters, any characters you generate with the updated prefab should be ready to use with MC.

The only issue you may run into generating characters at runtime is DNA changes to things like height, and length of arms, etc. MC motions, like climbing for instance, sometimes need to be tweaked to match the size of the character, so when it grabs the top of a wall for instance the hands actually appear to be touching the top edge. I'm not sure how to solve this, other than restricting your characters to more or less the same general proportions, or writing a script that parses their DNA, and somehow modifies the motion parameters for you on the fly. If you go that route, you're on your own though, unless Tim has some helpful tips.

 

I'm definitely going to go the route of restricting characters to general proportions. Thankfully it makes sense for my game while also being the easier option thanks for your help fargle

 

Any updates on the Actor Controller?

 

I've got the Actor Controller (AC) mostly done. Setting up the colliders (you can have more than just an upright capsule) is all that's really left with it. It has 0 GC (beyond what some internal Unity calls do), reacts to objects pushing against it, reacts to forces, uses gravity, and several other cool features.

The bigger work is actually having the MC take advantage of U5-only features and reworking it to work with the AC since the AC now handles the "character controller" elements. It's all going really well and I've got some test scenes that are working nicely. I just want to make sure all of my assets take advantage of U5 and integrate as expected.

Contract work and vacation have slowed me down, but I'm moving.

 

Hi,
I like what I read about the Motion Controller asset and I am interested in using it for a project. Can you guarantee that it works with Unity 5 on iOS and IL2CPP (API Compatibility Level .NET 2.0, NOT the subset) ?

Thanks

 

Hi @fisherman_b

Unfortunately, I can't. I don't have any iOS devices and haven't tested that myself. That said, no one has ever said they've tried it and had an issue. Other than reading up a little on IL2CPP, I haven't done anything with that either.

I'll add that I'm not doing anything "sneaky" with DLLs. I'm using the standard Unity project settings with C# and all the code is included.

Sorry

 

Hi,
thanks for your reply. I am not too concerned about IL2CPP... it is more the ".NET 2.0, not the subset" part I am concerned about. I cannot use the subset because I use several libraries that require the .NET 2.0 setting. I tried several assets that are a bit more complex than the basic input stuff etc, and I found that many of them are using Reflection. On iOS, JIT does not work, so this can lead to compile errors or even runtime exceptions. Sometimes there are possible workarounds, but I am not the perfect C# guru. Trying is the only way to find out - perhaps somebody who uses this asset will try and let us know one day.

Thanks

 

I went ahead and did a quick test by downloading the MC, setting it to ".NET 2.0" (not the subset) and all was good.

However, I am using reflection to serialize the motions internally. I didn't realize this was an issue with iOS (as Android was fine with it). That's good info as I tend to use it in several of my assets.

For everyone else... Has anyone tried the MC with an iOS device?

 

Depending on the code you use, this can be an issue. Because of Apples's restrictions, on iOS a game runs "AOT only", so everything that would need JIT compilation will not work. E.g. if you pass a generic <T> to a method that passes a generic <T> to a method... this cannot work out of the box, but there are possible workarounds like some dummy access. But anything generating dynamic code does not work or needs replacement code for iOS. From my experience with several assets, serialization without having this restriction in mind, is one of the candidates.

I am not sure if this is a feasible way to find out, but if nobody tried this before, I could purchase the asset, compile a test app on Xcode and test on an iPad Air. If it does not work I can send you the stack trace and you refund the asset price. At least a gain for you If it works, I will keep (and hopefully use) the asset as is and you keep my money. A gain for both of us.

The second option for me is to forget about MC and check the other assets, but I liked what I saw in your YouTube videos, that's why I am willing put some effort in it.

Thanks

 

Just sent a private message.

 

Any ETA on the Actor Controller?

 

Last I heard on the Actor Controller is that it is proving to be complex. No firm ETA on it, and don't expect it anytime soon.

But when it finally comes out, the Actor Controller ought to be pretty cool. Definitely looking forward to it!

 

Short answer... still working on the whole thing, but way way slower than I planned. For ETA, I truly don't know at this point.

Long answer... code-wise, the AC is pretty much done. Mostly "inspector stuff" left.

Unfortunately, what's left is making sure MC, BC, AC&R, and all the other assets work with it. Especially since MC v2 uses it instead of Unity's Character Controller.

I have the two (AC and MCv2) working in my environment with better animations (ones I paid for). However... because all these things work together, I feel like I have to make sure everything is done before I can release just one new part. The good news is everything will connect seamlessly...the bad news is that I have to make sure everything connects seamlessly.

With all that said, my time allocated to working on v2 has fallen. I've taken contract work to help feed the family. So, my hours have dropped on any new stuff quite a bit.

Of course I'm still supporting all my current assets with the same level of response and care. Releasing new stuff is what's taking a back seat.

 

Sounds fair enough. I have a project I was waiting on the AC for. I will shelf it for a bit and work on another. I'm pretty excited to play with it though. Your stuff is always top notch. Thanks for the update!

 

I have presents!!

It's taken a little longer than planned, but I wanted to share the Actor Controller (alpha version) with those of you that have purchased the Motion Controller.

Here's a new video of the Actor Controller in action:

The idea was to replace the Unity Character Controller with one that supports platforming, slopes, smooth stepping, walking on walls, custom colliders, etc. As I've mentioned, Motion Controller v2 will use this as the foundation.

Motion Controller v2 is a ways away from being released, but I wanted to share the Actor Controller now. You can't actually use it with the Motion Controller v1 (since that still relies on the Unity Character Controller), but you could use it for other characters or just as a learning tool... heck... it's free.

In it, you'll find some other goodies... a free-fly camera, an simple follow camera, object pooling manager, etc.

warning: I don't have any documentation for it yet. That said, there's a spiffy little demo for those of you that like to learn-by-doing, it's pretty simple and I think you'll see what's going on pretty quickly.

Here's an example of the editor... nothing too crazy:


Lastly, I figured I'd show you a quick video of what I've been doing with MC v2. It's still a LONG ways away, but it's cleaning up nicely and splitting MC 1 out to the AC + MC v2 is working out really well.

Well, if you're feeling adventurous, email tim@ootii.com your Unity invoice number for the Motion Controller and I'll send you the current Actor Controller for free.

(In the next couple of days, I'll get to some actual documentation too.)

 

Exciting!

BTW, you modeled that character after yourself, didn't you?

 

hahaha. If you're referring to the Unity character in black spandex... yes.

Although I might have a tad bit more hair...

 

The new stuff looks awesome!

 

Hi Tim

V2 is looking really nice from your video.

I have a couple of suggestions if you don't mind?

1 Would it be possible to enable it to use the Standard Assets / Mobile controller that ships with Unity somehow? Even a demo scene or some basic integration would be helpful here out of the box.

2 Will it be possible to use it with Final IK (which I just picked up from the Asset Store, as this looks really cool as well) i.e. so to have a figure that runs/walks, but be able to look at / point to with IK?

cheers

Nalin

 

Hey @puzzlekings

I'm totally cool with suggestions.

1. I'll see if I can do that. For basic movement, it shouldn't be an issue. However, there are some motions where I use the AC to hold ground distance, previous movement direction, current platform, etc. It may be there's just limited motions with the standard assets, but I think that's a fair request.

2. You can actually use Final IK or my IK solution (Bone Controller) now. I do plan on doing some deeper integration with the BC in v2, but you can use Final IK no problem. Right now, each motion has an UpdateIK() function that get's called based on Unity's OnAnimatorIK() callback. In that UpdateIK(), you can enable/disable the IK solution or call out to it as needed.

Good stuff!

 

Animator Needed!

In the current Motion Controller, I used Unity's raw animations or created my own. I think they look pretty good, but for v2 I want better. I've bought a couple of AAA quality animation sets off the Unity Asset store and they look awesome (that's what you see in the latest videos), but I can't redistribute other people's stuff and reaching out to collaborate with one of the artists didn't work.

So, I've decided I'm just going to hire a professional animator to create the animations I want. I'll use these new animations in my game and make them part of the MC v2 update. Before I reach out on the Unity Job boards, I figured I'd start here...

Any professional animators interested in helping (it's a paid job). If so, please email tim@ootii.com.

If you've got any other ideas, I'm open to those too.


(Side note: This is one of the reasons I've been so bad about creating new motions. It takes me a week to create a simple animation and a couple hours for the motion itself. I'm a much better programmer than animator )

 

Just curious, but any idea what animations you might be looking for?

And what about using animations that are free on the Unity store? There's quite a few. I can see where you might not include those animations in your kit, but it seems like you could use them for motions.

 

For animations, I'm starting off with basics (idles, walks, runs, ladder climb, etc). The thing is that it gets a little more complex as you have transitions... "idle to walk left 90-degrees" and such. Those transitions are really what gives it the AAA quality.

I have used some free ones, but I've found that lots of transitions are missing or the quality is rougher than I want for v2 (and my game). That said, maybe I've missed something. Please list ones you like and I'll check them out.

Another option that I thought of is simply having motions without animations. For example, I'm using a real great set of animations I bought for $65 off the Asset Store. I can use it for my game, but I can't redistribute it. So, I could put out motions that work if you bought that animation set, but that feels a bit limiting. It also doesn't allow me to tweak the animations (which I tend to do).

 

I have no particular skills in this area yet, but I'll see if I can help in some way.

Here's my take on the situation ...

While I'd love to have smooth transitions, I think it's a lower priority for most devs (as this is something they can work out on their own, as needed), and it's probably a higher priority that a bunch of utility motions be drawn up, especially ones that really use the features of the new character controller. If this can be done using free animations from the store as placeholders, I think that could be sufficient for users to test the motions. Then if they want to push it to AAA status, they can add the transitions and sorts of animations that reflect the style of their game.

After the motions are drawn up using free store animations and made available to customers, you would have the option to go back over it and replace the free animations with proper ones.

This asset (3rd Person Controller + Fly Mode) has some free animations for flight, which IMO would be a nice motion to add to the suite. If you look into it, PM me about any issues with it. Perhaps we can use it as a starting point. And, uh ... see how it flies.

 

I personally like the placeholder idea, as I have the great animation pack from @Kubold and would be fine to plug those into the existing slugs...

As a side note, say I have a motorcycle or car or horse, and I want my character to ride these, can I use your mount points asset for this?

 

Quick question here, Tim. I'm replacing the stock Motion Controller animations with my own, and I can't figure out how to get it to stop using the transforms within the animation. Below are your animations on the top, and mine on the bottom (I realize there are a lot of other problems here, this is just a first pass.).

How do I make the character leap straight up and not use the transforms in the animation? Adjusting the Root Transform settings in the animation import dialog don't really seem to do anything.

 

Hey @hopeful ,

What you're saying makes sense.

Getting free animations is still a challenge. With the flight motions you point out, I can't really take his animations and put them in my asset. Even though he's giving them away in his asset, I wouldn't feel comfortable redistributing them.

But, in the spirit of what you're saying, I will start carving out some coding time for "community" motions. If MC owners provide me with royalty free AAA quality animations (that I can legally distribute) and that add value to others, I will build motions for them and then share them in updates. Let's try that.

I've just learned that my time is better spent programming than animating.

So, anyone have a good set of animations I can start with? Maybe ladder climbing? That's probably the one I have the most requests for.

 

Those are actually the one's I'm (currently) using for my game as well and what you see in my recent videos. I reached out to Kubold, but he wasn't interested in working together.

For the most part, I think the placeholder idea can work. However, there are some complex cases where it doesn't.

For example, I slice his "Jump_walk_ru_ALL" into 8 different sections in order to get a physics based jump. Those 8 sections rely on his "MovementAnimsetPro.fbx". Since I can't redistribute his FBX, I'm not sure how I get the 8 changes distributed.

That's what led me down the 'hire an animator' road. This way, I'm in total control of what can be distributed.

 

Hey Johnny,

I just clear out root motion in the UpdateRootMotion function of the motion. So, in the Jump motion, I do this:

Code (CSharp):

1.         public override void UpdateRootMotion(float rDeltaTime, int rUpdateIndex, ref Vector3 rVelocityDelta, ref Quaternion rRotationDelta)
2.         {
3.             // Remove all velocity and rotation since we'll be using our physics to jump
4.             rVelocityDelta = Vector3.zero;
5.             rRotationDelta = Quaternion.identity;
6.         }

That removes any rotation or movement caused by the animation. Then, I use the AddImpulse of the Motion Controller to actually do the jump.

This works best because it causes a jump based on the position of the feet and if the character jumps onto something, it doesn't have to worry about the motion of the animation wanting to go through the new platform.

 

@Tryz, any answer on my added note about mounting objects like cars and horses the the like...

Thanks

 

Sorry about that...

The short answer is yes. But, it feels a bit odd...

With MP, you can set a mount point on the horses back and then a mount point around the human's butt. Remember that the second mount point (the human) is going to become a child of the first one. That means your whole human is going to become a child of the horse. The fact that you have a mount point on his butt is really just a positional thing. It's not like the butt is dragging the human around like a ragdoll. So, the human's root and horse-back riding animation are still very important.

What feels odd to me is that the character actually becomes a child of something else. I tend to think of the character as a major entity who would have no parent. But... if you're managing this, you should be fine.

 

What I meant was not to include the 3rd party flying animations in MC, but to write the motions around the flight animations, and then tell users they can either insert their own fly animations or import the free ones available in the store.

Optionally, if it's not that big of a deal, you could maybe capture a pose and use that in lieu of a more complete animation.

 

Don't know if you've tried these, or if they're even usable without tons of cleanup, but they certainly have a LOT of animations - over 2500 mocaps from the Carnegie Mellon collection, in FBX format - and they're free:

https://www.assetstore.unity3d.com/en/#!/content/19991

I know that may have been an obvious suggestion that you've already looked into, but another asset I've noticed is Props Animations. It's almost like the complement to MC, consisting of over 800 (keyframed?) "mecanim ready" animations... but with no controller included. It has the added bonus that if the animation you want isn't there, the author takes requests to add to the package. It's not free, and I'm not sure about licensing terms or redistribution, but if the quality is acceptable, a partnership might make both products stronger. Might be worth firing off an email to the guy at least, to see if he's interested.

http://proportionalstudios.com/

 

Ahh... That's what I was calling the "replacement" strategy. It could work a lot of the time. However, there are limits since I tend to splice and tweak animations so they blend better (especially if they interact with physics or the environment). But, your point is valid.

 

I used the Carnegie collection a long time ago, but there were a lot of issues (like hand flipping). However, I didn't know this asset existed. Using some of the CM animations directly in MC (with credit) should be ok since they were originally from Carnegie and freely distributed.

I'll also look at reaching out to Props. I saw them a while back, but I think I just moved on since they are for sale.

Thanks for the great info.

 

MC looking good Mr Ootii I have been away for a while using ue4. but I have animations I can give you.

I buy animations then fix them in maya or motionbuilder so then they are mine? lol

keyframing is so yesterday but is needed for that special needed like robots or giants to name a few.

If you have assets of animations just take out key poses from that animation and it is your creation but

i get lazy an mocap happy and tend not to do this lol.

Hey when you had to animate the hard way many years ago you tend to not want to go back.

best wishes can't wait for MC2 and I will email you my invoice for MC for the new character control.

 

Hey Relacon,

I just sent you the AC... well, I think that email was yours.

I'll take as much help with animations as I can get. I just have to be absolutely sure I'm not redistributing someone else's work without their permission. I never want to be accused of stealing...even accidentally.

 

your fast lol cheers.

Yeh I respect that. See if you can use fuse animations for now its free the first 20 animations
it cost me 50 $ a month dont know what adobe will charge later. I do know if you take out poses from mocap and tweak it then its yours. Alot of animators do that to clean up the mocap and have less keys frames in there animation. Maya is great for that but motionbuilder is better. I will email you the mocap files if you like just send me a email to confirm. before I send I will check fbx file for unity compatibility issues.