[RELEASED] Animation Preview

Overview

Animation Preview for Unity allows you to get an idea about how a character looks like in your scene in different poses. You get an overview of all the animations available for a character or you could just mix a specific character with animations of another asset.

Animation Preview
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The Idea

Top quality assets like the ones from Malbers Animations have a 100+ animations. A demo scene can’t possibly cover them all. So in order to get an overview of what’s available this asset was developed. But it turned out to become more over time.

Once the preview was in I wanted to see how characters look in different environments. For example I created a desert racing scene in which I wanted to have a giant worm rise when the hover bike was driving by. Repeating hitting play, see how it looks, adjust transform (position, rotation scale), start the whole process again was getting time consuming. I rather spend the time on working on a tool to reduce time and effort to get to my desired results. So it suggested itself to extend Animation Preview. It allows you to adjust a model’s transform in the scene and play a clip of your preference to get an idea how it looks. Directly inside the Unity Editor without having to enter play mode.

And at some point I purchased the most awesome Kubold animations. I wanted to see how it is to have e. g. a humanoid dragon combined with fighting animations. In a desert scene. Without much time consuming effort on my own, just a quick and easy preview setup. This is what you can do with Animation Preview.

Examples

 

Initial release discount ends today. Thank you very much who supported me so far, I honestly didn't expect that number of sales, it's very motivating

 

I toyed around with frame stepping.

After I showed it there were some more requests like automatic selection of the animator instead of having to drag it around manually. And implicitly came the requirement for an editor window. It's really nice to work with, here's an example:

The problem I'm facing now is that having a gameobject editable in the inspector vs an editor window isn't working quite nicely with Unity, ie I can't just make the code modular and inject parts of it. The editor window version is way better than the one that's tied to a monobehaviour. However, I can't just change it by force, it'll break existing projects when you upgrade.

So I thought I'd release a Pro version and allow free upgrades for the initial sale period for everyone who purchased Animation Preview so far. I think that's fair for everyone. I have more features planned and the Pro version is the one to go.

If there are some objections to this way, please let me know. But as you can see from the Synty Pirate Island video this is much more fluent. Apologies for the confusion, but I'm bound to working around Unity's own limits.

 

Here are free vouchers

ASV-AMU3-FNVW-4H4L-3CY3-9XQX
(replace the last letter with R)

ASV-H7EK-JDL6-GXTV-GKLR-KH9X
(replace the last letter with R)

Please post / like if you used them so that others know that they are gone. Thank you!

 

Grabbed ASV-H7EK-JDL6-GXTV-GKLR-KH9, thank you! I had been using the great git version occasionally and forgot to grab it in time, so this is awesome.

 

lol tried to grab the first but has been used up by someone too shy to say thanks

 

Thanks for the reply, I'll send you one for that in DM, I got one left. Unfortunately Unity limits those.

 

Then that definitely deserves a big THANK YOU

 

Announcement:

Animation Preview Pro is still pending approval by the Asset Store and the way the Asset Store queue looks it should be live next week. I increased the price, but set the upgrade to be free for the period of the initial release sale.

Please, everyone who supported me with purchasing Animation Preview grab Animation Preview Pro during those 2 weeks period for free. I'd like to THANK YOU VERY MUCH for your support this way!

I have no other means to give it to you for free after that period. And the Asset Store doesn't give us any means to reach our customers. So that's why I created this early announcement. I'll post here once the asset is live. If you subscribe to this thread temporarily, you'll at least get notified this way.

As to why there was the necessity of a Pro version, please read a few posts above.

 

@Rowlan I bought your marvelous asset and like it very much. I have a little question. Would it be hard to implement a search feature within the controller animation? Basically I would like to drag all my project animations in the same controller at the beginning of a project search the keyword needed to show only what I would like to preview. I have another asset that scan automatically all animations but I still have to click on them to import them, then click play to play the animation. Perhaps it is no so easy to do but that would really improve my workflow. Just a wish feature of course!

 

Hi, thank you very much! It's something I wanted to implement after the release. Basically a text filter that reduces the list of animations shown. I toyed around with the Synty Assets and added all of the Kubold animations I had. So that was very overwhelming to stage a scene, but the scrolling through hundreds of animations can become extensive. It's simpler to enter eg "crouch" and have it. Basically it quite differes from the original intention to simply show all previews of an asset, now it's staging scenes. But that's the nature of software, especially with all that excellent feedback I got

 

Both my YAPP and my Animation Preview were featured by Code Monkey in

TOP 10 NEW Systems and Tools JULY 2022! | Unity Asset Store

This is very exciting

 

Congratulations for being featured in the best new tools by Code Monkey. Code Monkey is a very clever developer. He builds great assets and he has the knowledge to discover other great assets and talented developers.

 

Thanks for the quick reply Rowlan. I am glad to know you already thought about it. I am looking forward for this amazing update feature!

 

@Rowlan

Just because you mentionned you like feedbacks... It would be great if the play control section could be locked to avoid scrolling up and down between each clip when having a long list of clips.

Is the Pro version on the store yet? I just don't want to miss the 2 weeks free upgrade window. Thanks!

 

Thank you! The Pro has the clips already in a scrollview. I'll update the standard as well to have it.

Unfortunately not, the Store takes longer than usual for approvals.

 

That Great! Looking forward to the Pro Upgrade.

 

Animation Preview Pro is live now:

https://assetstore.unity.com/packages/tools/animation/animation-preview-pro-227335

Everyone who has supported me with purchasing Animation Preview please grab it for free during the initial sales period.

@netpost Search is in as well

 

Got it today you open to suggestions thanks for the asset very easy to use and di give 5 star rating

 

Thank you! I saw, please update to 1.3.0. It contains the search function. I had to split the update, otherwise I'd have been pushed back in the asset store queue.

Open to suggestions, definitely. Implementation depends on the suggestion though and the time it takes. One request is eg to play particles & vfx at a given time frame. Just to see how it looks like. It's not that easy to do though to keep it all consistent. I still want to do it, but still can't make any promises whether this will work or not.

 

Particles were the suggestion that would be so cool and make it perfect for still art that is what I use your asset for

 

I created a dedicated thread for Animation Preview Pro for further discussion in order to avoid confusion.

 

Amazing! I really like the search feature. Thank you for listening!

 

Reminder: Last day to upgrade for free to Animation Preview Pro.

 

Animation Preview Pro made it into the Top Paid Assets on the Unity Asset Store:



https://assetstore.unity.com/top-assets/top-paid

And that while 2 Unity sales are running. This is super exciting feedback, thank you very much everyone!

Given the popularity I'll extend the free upgrade from Animation Preview to Animation Preview Pro for a few days.

Everyone who hasn't upgraded yet, please do so. I can't keep the free upgrade up long, otherwise those who purchase Animation Preview Pro would be at a disadvantage, which I'd like to avoid. So far you still get Animation Preview Pro for the price of Animation Preview.

 

With all the excitement I think it's important to give away vouchers:

ASV-9XGY-YAH7-CN3E-PYTE-AVKX
(replace the last letter with C)

ASV-TV4C-RKKH-R9RN-QV93-RE7X
(replace the last letter with E)

Enjoy!

 

Thank you

 

Any progress on the particle pause

 

See this post: https://forum.unity.com/threads/released-animation-preview-pro.1315272/#post-8325582

 

Thanks, the man bit sorry for being the noob here but I have no idea what or where to put that script and what to do with it can you maybe send screenshot or something

 

It turned out that this is not something that's easily done in the editor without running in play mode, unfortunately. Besides once I'd get one particle system running, then another will have to be added per request. And VFX and what not. Then the timestamps would have to be set differently per particle system. Then of course backwards and forwards playback will be requested. And then this would result in complaints and negative feedback. I may get back to this in the future, but for now I drop this.

I suspect it can be done somehow if your editor environment is adapted, I can't tell for sure. But you'd need a dedicated asset / person that implements this and it's outside the scope of Animation Preview.

 

This asset is excellent and has saved me more work hours than I can count.

I am however having an issue with it. It seems if all animation names are the same, the previewer will only show whatever the first or differently named one is. I also cannot edit the animation controller to update the names to fix this, it seems I have to clear out all animations and drag and drop them again. It seems like there is some sort of conflict issue with the clip names.

For instance, I have about 40 animations exported from Unreal named 'Unreal Take' and I renamed 3 of those to different names. The 3 different names play just fine, but all the ones labeled 'Unreal Take' only plays the same animation which I believe is the first.

 

Thank you

Can you send me such a clip in dm? I'll have to look at it again. This came up before and I rather suggest to name the animations properly. You can't make out much from everything called the same, you'd need it named properly anyway in the end. But I'll see what I can do.

 

@Ghosthowl I have a solution now. In case you want to try, let me know in dm. I'd still need an example from you for testing.

 

@Rowlan I have sent you a DM with an example. Thanks for the quick response!

 

Awesome asset, really love using in my project.
Just upgraded to 2022.3 LTS and getting errors when playing clip. Have you tested on this version of Unity?

Destroy may not be called from edit mode! Use DestroyImmediate instead.
Destroying an object in edit mode destroys it permanently.
UnityEngine.Objectestroy (UnityEngine.Object)
MalbersAnimations.Utilities.EffectManager:Stop_Effects (System.Collections.Generic.List`1<MalbersAnimations.Utilities.Effect>) (at Assets/Malbers Animations/Common/Scripts/Effects/EffectManager.cs:98)
MalbersAnimations.Utilities.EffectManager:Effect_Stop (int) (at Assets/Malbers Animations/Common/Scripts/Effects/EffectManager.cs:79)
MalbersAnimations.Utilities.EffectManager:StopEffect (int) (at Assets/Malbers Animations/Common/Scripts/Effects/EffectManager.cs:66)
MalbersAnimations.Utilities.EffectBehaviour:Execute (MalbersAnimations.Utilities.EffectItem) (at Assets/Malbers Animations/Common/Scripts/Animal Controller/Behaviours/EffectBehaviour.cs:120)
MalbersAnimations.Utilities.EffectBehaviour:OnStateUpdate (UnityEngine.Animator,UnityEngine.AnimatorStateInfo,int) (at Assets/Malbers Animations/Common/Scripts/Animal Controller/Behaviours/EffectBehaviour.cs:78)
Rowlan.AnimationPreviewPro.ClipManageroPreview () (at Assets/Rowlan/AnimationPreviewPro/Editor/Managers/ClipManager.cs:352)
UnityEditor.EditorApplication:Internal_CallUpdateFunctions ()

 

Thank you

That's not from Animation Preview. The problem here is that it seems you're using the original animations with code logic, but that can only work in play mode.

Please create a new Animator Controller and drag the animations in there and use that one on the animal instead. Preferrably deleting the existing animator and adding a new animator because otherwise root motion would be considered (unless you want that). It would result in the model actually changin position.

If you need more help freel free to hit me up on discord.

 

Animation Preview is in Unity's New Year sale available at -50%.



It's the holidays and everyone should have fun

So I set the upgrade price from Animation Preview to Animation Preview Pro to 10$ for the period of the sale. So if you want to get Animation Preview Pro cheaper, purchase Animation Preview at -50% and then upgrade to pro for 10$. It's circumstantial, but i wanted to have you guys get Pro cheaper as well for the sale, so "this is the way". Enjoy