My Feedback on new Animation Rigging Package

hello everyone,

i just wanted to post some thoughts on the new animation package.. overall am happy with it.. but there are things that causes some hassle , which are :

1) Source targets and hints Objects: current scripts lacks methods to set an IK goal/position through scripts.. this makes our scripted solutions need to reference the source transforms to update their location in runtime which cause additional hassles>>
A) character prefabs.. the source target and hint must have them all as child gameobjects.. otherwise the prefab system can't serialize them.. so i must i must add them in prefabs as childs.. which this also leads to another hassle >>
B) updating source hassle... sources will have local positions that don't correspond to world location, i have to make my scripts manually and constantly update them every frame.. this means the scripts will have to do extra job on something already been decided in one frame in which the location in the world should be!

a perfect example is a walking cycle for a large robot, if a robot walks slowly i can easily set the position / rotation of the desired location, and let the ik scripts handle the rest using the input data i given.. no need to update the location.. only when i need to move the feet for example into new location.. currently i have manually edit it otherwise it will drag it self due to it's parent movement. i thought maybe by unparenting it in runtime..but ik went all wrong.. it's too much hassle already


2) Multiple Generated Animation outputs????: I noticed in the Visual Graph, the current ik scripts generate multiple animation outputs.. is there any reason for this or is it a bug??
it looks kind of cluttered in the playable system with multiple animation outputs.. each character might have 3 or 4 easily ((if i would add my own output animation for my playable manager.. ))
i wonder if possibly stacking all these animation script nodes to one animation output?

here is it why it's weird.. my current playable mixer solution adds one animation output.. (2 from ik scripts, 1 from my script) but the animation went all jittery on me!!
so i figured that maybe i need to make the mixer flows through the ik scripts.. so i dug up though connected nodes just to find the first one.. then connecting my mixer to the first node.. then i got rid of jittery animations! great!

but have you seen the oddness in the current implementation?? (if it is not a bug).. the ik scripts is allowed to generate multiple OutputAnimations and they have no issues working together.. but it is an issue when i add my own animation output.. it should be one way or another.. either allowing any script adding new outputs to work in harmony without jittery, or constraining ik scripts to stack under one animation output..


thanks for your support!

 

This probably needs to be in the documentation. And spelled out clearly.

This workflow should be shown in the documentation explicitly as well -- I know it _seems_ obvious, but it really isn't.

 

thanks for help, i figured something similar to this while posting the thread, but that's why i posted this thread..
to improve and make working with this new tool more intuitive!

i figured that i would have to resort into some extra management on these new transforms (creation/referencing/deletion/etc) .. but rebuilding and such i never thought of.. this adds even more reason why i think having goals to be set by simple position or rotation can be better in some cases. there will be no need to rebuild anything.

i tried calling my manager class which creates a playableGraph..
then after it i called rigBuilder.Build() also tried rigBuilder.enabled=true

this doesn't work directly from script.. the ik scripts seems not running.
i still have to disable/re-enable rigbuilder in scene during playmode in order for it to work.. but then it works fine! it seems i need to enable it later after animator plays or something?

anyway am glad you guys resolving this.

 

I'm getting a
"could not resolve 'Rig/Arm' because it is not a child Transform in the Animator hierarchy"
but it is!
Any idea?

 

Thanks Simon, I'll try that.
Also I'm cross positing this one here: for reference
https://forum.unity.com/threads/animation-c-jobs-in-2018-2a5.525012/page-4#post-5025458

 

@simonbz I'm hitting the same issue, first try with the AnimationRigging package.
I can't regenerate the avatar as it's greyed out:

Any ideas?

Edit: turns out removing the avatar makes that option not greyed out and then Animation Rigging "works" but of course I lose my actual animation. Not very useful. What am I doing wrong?

Note: I'm on 2019.3.0b3 with Animation Rigging 0.2.3

 

After trying this for a while I decided to take a look at the Ninja project. Turns out, that guy is cheating - he's using a Generic rig, not a Humanoid one! Switching over to a humanoid rig breaks the whole Animation Rigging system, in that example project and in my project. What's going on? Isn't this supposed to be working on Humanoids?

Quick forum search reveals:
a) people having the same issue with no reply for a month now
https://forum.unity.com/threads/ninja-example-bug-with-humanoid-rig.743510/
b) an answer from Unity that it "should work" on Humanoids
https://forum.unity.com/threads/usi...anoid-animations-on-animation-rigging.740249/
c) open bugs around this
https://forum.unity.com/threads/usi...o-offset-the-3d-model-im-working-with.740903/

 

Oh, sorry if it did get over as that, but I wasn't complaining, really just trying to figure out whether I'm supposed to be able to use it to layer on top of Humanoids already or not (answer could be "no, that will take a couple months" or "yes, if it doesn't work report a bug"). This was just a follow-up to my question right above

Maybe you can still answer the question above?

 

Not sure we're talking about the same thing; as I posted I am in fact trying to use the Humanoid avatar (that's what my animations are for) but hitting the same issue as a previous poster of
"could not resolve 'Rig/Arm' because it is not a child Transform in the Animator hierarchy"

I haven't got this to work at all on a Humanoid even when very carefully following the sample structure.

 

I can't! These always come back as "Won't fix" as it's a preview package. That being said, I'll send you a file today via DM.

 

Can we expect some performance improvements in the future? Right now the spikes produced in the OnEnable method of the RigBuilder script are unbearable (over 18 ms for the advanced ninja sample). Will there be at least some caching involved to help with this issue?

 

@simonbz sorry for the delay. I tested a bit more and reported a bug: (Case 1193442).

 

Good find. But what about the actual thing I was trying here - the top right two guys - applying a Twist correction after a Two Bone IK? (this was my starting point, everything else is just trying to break it down). As you can see they are not doing that arm motion. The goal is to have a typical setup with 2 bone IK (arm / forearm / hand) where the rotation of the hand is properly applied onto forearm and arm with specific percentages to prevent strong distortions. Same as a human arm. There's no need for inbetween bones as in the Ninja with good skinning.

 

@OlivierDionne Thanks for the clarification. I think you should mention that somewhere, if that's what you implemented as a built-in "Twist Correction" it's very misleading.
"Twist Correction" is usually the name for correcting the twist of bones that are already part of an IK chain to make it look more natural. Having extra bones for that purpose is something that can be additionally done but not necessarily is.

If I understand you right that means there's no real built-in twist correction, such as could be used e.g. on any model downloaded or created with Mixamo (the big Unity partner for animation and characters)?

 

If I hear you correctly, this means "on-the-fly" animation authoring in real time??

 

I wonder, will we be able to still use the DOTS rigging package for GameObject based characters/models? Or will it not be possible without setupping playable graphs, if at all?

 

Is there any ETA after the release of the DOTS animation portion that you are looking at converting the rigging package to DOTS?

 

Just upgraded to Unity version 2019.2.12f1 and in that version the Rig Builder gives me the following error:
Transform 'castle_guard_02(Clone)' must be the top most parent, found 'RoomSetup'.

The gameobject called castle_guard_02(Clone) is where the Animator and the RigBuilder components are and its top most parent is indeed RoomSetup. But why does it matters now where the RigBuilder lives? Why does the Rig Builder HAS to be a root transform? It seems weird to me.

I was using version 2019.2.0f1 before and there wasn't any error.

Cheers,

 

@simonbz Another minor piece of feedback: Can the BoneRenderer class be updated so that drawing bones is disabled when Gizmos are turned off? Seems like there's no way to easily hide them without disabling all of the components, unless I'm just missing it.

 

@simonbz
Are there any plans to fix this in general?? -- This is making extending Animation Rigging unmanageable, and the current workflows for it are ridiculously tedious. I wanted to update the interface, but the bone UI is just not doing it for me.

For example, I wanted to add a right-click >> add/remove constraint to a bone, then select a constraint from a list on a popup menu. I also wanted to add a right-click >> add/remove constraint to selected bones, with values decreasing (i.e. lerped or curved following an animation curve -- so I can define and modify weights automatically down the bone chains by modifying the animation curve itself) depending upon the order the bones were selected. This is proving very difficult with the way bones are implemented.

Can you at least implement a temporary "gizmo form" to the selected bones/chains that we can modify in such a way, and take into account the order they were selected (and do things based on that) by right-clicking on them in the scene view?

 

Sorry, but did you find any solution to this issue? I've been trying to understand their TwistCorrectionJob.cs, and it's just unbelievably confusing, at least to me.

P.S @Unity, can you start commenting your code if it's gonna have 25 different interfaces and structs all combined to do one small animation??

 

@simonbz Hi, I was having some trouble when using the two-bone IK constrain, I am not sure if there is anyway I can adjust the “pole axis” in the current preview release, I tried using the hint, but I believe that’s not the correct solution. Is there anything I can do with the “sideway bending knees” I post here:
https://forum.unity.com/threads/animation-rigging-two-bone-ik-pole-angle-options-support.887626/

 

Anyone was able to set the target/source for Multi Aim or other constraints at runtime?

I tried disabling the RigBuilder before PlayMode, setting all the constraints/Rigs and then reenabling the RigBuilder and it did not work. I also tried calling RigBuilder.Build() at the end. Still no luck!

The answer above is "However, be aware that changing the transform dynamically at runtime after the animation rigging playable graph has been built will not update the goal as you would need to rebuild it for the changes to take effect."

Ok great but can you force the rigging package graph to rebuild? I thought the Build function was for the purpose but does not seems so?

Thanks!

 

I am having exactly the same issue. Have you had any luck solving it?

 

Thanks, following the answer to the link you send solved my problem.
Are there any plans of making the constraints add source objects at runtime?

 

Is there an ETA on this?

 

Hi,
I'm experiencing this issue as well. It's when I'm creating/destroying game objects on the fly within the animator hierarchy. I've tried rebuilding the RigBuilder as well as assigning a new Generic Avatar by code whenever I make these changes. Although it doesnt seem to make the warnings go away. Are there any other areas I should be checking? btw, Im on Unity 2020.2.0b10.3438.
Thanks for any ideas!

 

Cool, thanks @simonbz , I will definitely give this a try. I didn't know about this.

 

@simonbz , just trying this now. It doesn't appear that the function is available in Unity 2020.2.0b10.3438. Would you mind providing a simple code example, so I can confirm?
Thanks again!!

 

Any progress on this? I am currently trying to avoid rig builder's OnEnable() entirely.