My Number 1 Mecanim Usability Wanted Feature!

Having used Mecanim for quite a bit now, I've finally nailed what it is that would make my life a million times easier.

That ability would be to drag-remap links. This should work en-masse.

Lets say I have a blend tree and I also have a sub-state machine that we eventually decided would be a better way to implement whatever it was we were doing with the original blend tree.

The blend tree already has 20 links coming out of it. If we want to remap what used to sit in the spot of the blend tree, we have to first go to the relevant state inside the sub-state machine that these links have to sprout from, and map them to their destination. Next, we have to click an absolute BUTTLOAD of dropdowns to re-setup all the parameters and conditions required to travel down the links. Then, we have to adjust the blends for each link (as appropriate). Finally, we have to destroy all the links sprouting from our existing blend tree. This doesn't even touch on the links that need to go IN.

What would be insanely easier usability wise would be literally to grab all of these links from the root, uproot them, remap them to our new starting node in the substate machine, drag-drop style. Now we have all of these links, with the same parameters to get out of the state, with the only potential setup needed is adjusting the blend timings.

How many man-hours would this save me? Manyyyyyyyyyy.

There is no more point to this post other than my hope some developer picks it up and goes: oh hey! that'dd be nice workflow.

Cheers

 

Might want to suggest this on: http://feedback.unity3d.com

 

ahhh was wondering where to post feedback was. Thanks!

 

Mecanim needs a mountain of usability features. It is powerful but it is completely nuts that it doesn't have proper code access and the only way to use it is through a really basic GUI.

 

Yeah, while the underlying Mecanim tech is rather good - particularly the anim retargeting - the scripting interface is very lacking, and it's worrying that the old animation system is starting to be deprecated when Mecanim isn't really ready yet.

My most-wanted features for Mecanim would include:

- A fix for the transition previewing bug in the editor (playback looping at 1.0secs after adjusting anything)

- Ability to force Mecanim *instantly* into a state in script (skipping the transition) - for example, when spawning an enemy into one of N starting states.

- Ability to reset an Animator component (essentially the same as the above) for object pooling

- Ability to *set* an animation state time value. For example, to de-sync the walk cycles of multiple characters moving at the same speed and spawned at the same time.

- Support for 'trigger parameters' - bools which self-clear when a state change occurs. Having to clear a bool exactly one frame later is a pain.

- Editing the animator state machine programatically. For example, swapping a 'walk' anim for an 'injured walk' anim without duplicating walk-related states.

- Ability to add curves to animations which you only have as .anim file (e.g. Asset Store purchases)

And probably a whole lot more. Something to make it easier to maintain multiple animators that have been derived from a base animator, and just had a few anims swapped/parameters tweaked?

 

How about the ability to scale the animations, so they work with your scaled actors? Without it, your actors skate like crazy.

 

Hi, I know this is an old thread, but is there a way to do this yet, or any reasonable workaround? Is there a hidden keyboard command to copy-paste blend trees or something?