[Released] Motion Matching for Unity - Advanced Character Animation

I'll remove the size limitation for this window in the next update.

Your understanding is mostly correct. However, it's possible to do everything without using Blend Spaces at all and it's probably best to start with that at first as blend spaces are a little more advanced. BlendSpaces just allow for more animation coverage because you can have blends of animation instead of only playing individual clips and fading between them.

If you have things like banking animations you would put them together with your forward loops in a blend space so you can get all the "in between" animations as well. You need to set it to Scatter though.

It would take me a while to explain BlendSpaces from first principles as blend spaces are an common feature in game engine. You could probably find a better answer if you just search "Blend Space" or "BlendTree" on google. As for its use in MxM, The 'User Manual' explains them pretty well in section 5, much better than I could explain in a forum post. You can fine the manual here (it's also in the package as a pdf).

I've also made a tutorial video on Blend Spaces. This is only part 1 of the blend space tutorials as I'm re-creating all the tutorials since the beta only just ended a few weeks ago. It should get you started though.

Motion Matching is more about animation quality than ease of use. Sure it can make complex movements really easy but there is a requirement of having continuity and coverage in your animation clips. If you don't have enough animations (including lots of transitions) motion matching will struggle to jump the gap. It's really important to have as many transition animations as possible.

The way motion matching works is it calculates the difference between your current pose and potential poses in other animations. If you only have looped clips then the difference is going to be very big. In such a case motion matching would rather keep playing the same animation than switch to a different one. This results in very un-responsive animation. You can always calibrate it to be more responsive. However, there's only so much you can do if you are missing core transitions.

I recommend finding animations with a lot of transitions. A good example is Kubold's "Movement AnimSet Pro" but there are others on the store with good transitions.

Your animations themselves must have root motion for the pre-processing stage. HOWEVER, you do not need to use the root motion at runtime. you can move your character any way you like, whether that be through code, from root motion or some blend of the two.

 

in this stage my game depend on running and escape so that way i buy these animation
however you mean "with a lot of transitions" it in a single clip? in these animation I have small clip with one motion but other clips can make good transition between each other (run is clip, stop from run is another clip, jump from idle is clip and jump from run is another clip) something like that. it is good like you say (with a lot of transition) or is better to be in one clip?

 

The transitions can be in different cut clips without any issue. This is how most people use it as there isn't much quality mocap available with long takes.

However, if they are in larger continuous clips (like for motion capture) it is easier to setup and could have better results.

 

thanks for replay. Im come with new something .

I try with your tutorial, and it is ok with your animation. with other animation it is not come like your. i don't know why, I just replace your animation from tutorail to my animation and the character when start moviing, don't stop, never. I don't why this happend. i try all opsition but don't come like i want or just move and stop.

you can checkout with this (it is second animation i check with it and come with same problem) :
https://assetstore.unity.com/packages/3d/animations/basic-motions-free-pack-154271

 

Motion matching doesn't quite work like that. You can't just replace the animations with new ones and expect it to work no matter what. Additionally, the animations you have linked are not very good for motion matching. They do not have the coverage and continuity required for motion matching to work nicely(i.e. its missing a lot of transitions). All of this is covered in the documentation.

Also, for the preprocessing to work properly, animations need root motion. You don't need to use the root motion. At runtime but you need it for the preprocess phase.

The release tutorials aren't quite finished yet. I am adding new ones every day. Motion matching is too big a topic to cover in just the quick start tutorial. So it's almost impossible for me to cover everything you need to know for every possible situation in just the quick start.

 

Great looking asset. Couple of questions can I use the Unity IK on top of your system, ie head look at a target and arm reaching for a switch? Second would this be a good solution to use for animations to get into and out of vehicles? Would I still need an animation per car type of is there a way to define new seat positions per vehicle, door entry paths etc?

 

Have either of you had a chance to use MxM along side PuppetMaster and Final IK? I am about to attempt it, just wondering if there are any major roadblocks?

 

Final IK works out of the box without any extra effort.

Regarding the car seat thing. You will still need animations for getting into different seats. Motion Matching doesn't synthesise animation out of nothing, it still uses the source animations as run time synthesis is typically very expensive on the CPU.

Final IK works out of the box. Puppet Master I have not tested yet.

 

I haven't updated this forum page for a while over the Christmas break. However, Motion Matching for Unity continues to progress in leaps and bounds.

I will be providing new updated 'Standalone Demos' to show the improvements which include both animation quality (smoothness) and performance.

First off I'm going to start with the 'Standalone Stress Test' which you can Download now to get an indication of performance. When the character's are in random input mode I was able to achieve about 900 characters at 30fps on my machine. Results may vary.




I'll be updating the game-play Standalone Demo soon which is vastly improved both in animation fluidity and responsiveness and it provides a much better indication of the current state of MxM. I'll post here when that is up.

I may also provide another standalone demo for parkour after that.

Stay tuned. Now that the new year is in full swing I'll be updating this forum page much more and working hard at making MxM a better product for everyone.

If you are interested in the asset and have any questions, please feel free to ask here or join the discord channel.

 

Thanks @CptKen . MxM is an amazing asset and a big part of my game. Looking forward to the new demos!

 

Update v2.1 will be released soon. It contains some pretty major updates to the core systems. The most noticeable is the reworked blending algorithm which makes the animation significantly smoother and more forgiving for cut clip users. It's a bit of a game changer. Here's a video about it:

I've also made additional performance improvements by converting all of MxM's jobs to IParralelForBatch to reduce overhead. I'm seeing between 10-20% improvement on the threaded jobs. No change to main thread perf though.

MxM v2.1 will also contains the first of many planned UX improvements. Some of these are minor and some will be complete overhauls of some of the editors to improve the ease of use / iteration time of the workflow. For v2.1 previews will now have their own scenes to improve editing and visualisation as well as a few minor QoL improvements.





If all goes well I'll have this submitted by tomorrow. If you want it sooner rather than later be sure to join the discord channel and send me your invoice to get verified so you can have access to the direct download.

 

Motion Matching for Unity v2.1 is now available for verified users to download on the Discord channel. If you are not verified and want access, be sure to join the Discord channel and send me a PM with your Invoice No.

It has also been submitted to Unity and will be available when approved.

For a quick rundown on the improvements and things you should know watch the following update video:

 

I'll be watching the youtube videos soon, so hopefully I am not asking questions that are answered in the videos, but:
1. Is this meant for the player or would this work on enemies as well?
2. I've been searching the internet for a solution very similar to this for blending takes in cutscenes. For instance, in God of War, they mention that sometimes they would choose takes based on what blended together the best rather than what was actually the best performance. And, I was thinking something like this that could fill in the gaps between takes in a cutscene would be such an amazing, useful thing. Sorry if this is a bit of a tangent, but do you know of something that could do this?

 

Hi, sorry for the late response, I missed this somehow. To answer your questions:
1) It is possible to use on any character.
2) Unfortunately I couldn't really say. I've never considered this asset for cut scenes. Maybe it's something I can look into in the future.

 

Motion Matching for Unity v2.2 has been submitted to Unity for approval on the Asset Store. It should be available within the next week.

You can also grab it right now on the Discord server if you are a verified user. If you have purchased but are not yet verified, join the Discord channel and send me a PM with your invoice and I will give you verified access.

MxM v2.2 contains a massive number of improvements and bug fixes.To see whats new watch the dev update below:

 

I like that you're making a game with it to find the pain points. Sounds like good strategy.

 

I've started a new practical tutorial series for MxM which can be found in the following playlist. In these tutorials I will be building the new Standalone Demo character including locomotion, strafing and combat.

The intention of these videos is to show step by step how I set up a character using cut clips. How I solve common issues and the features that I use along the way. It's unscripted so the videos are quite long but they show my exact workflow and I don't skip over major steps.

Only 3 videos so far but I intend to take this character character all the way, even using it with third party assets like Final IK and using Bolt to manage complex gameplay logic. If you don't have these assets, that's fine, I will still be able to teach you how to use MxM in a non-isolated game environment.

 

Hi all,

Just dropping in to let everyone know that MxM v2.2.2 is now available on the discord channel and the asset store. This is a BIG Update, not because I've added massive new features, but because MxM now comes with a basic locomotion set of mocap designed specifically for motion matching.

I will update this set with additional movements like sprinting and strafing in the near future and I plan to make even more Mocap designed for Motion Matching available on the asset store going forward into the future.

Here's the WIP new Standalone Demo using those animations:

 

A few minor bugs slipped past the net for MxM v2.2.2 and the 'Animation Modules' were missing the footstep tags used in the video shown in the previous post.

A Hotfix has been deployed and can be downloaded from the Discord channel for verified users. I've also submitted the hotfix to Unity so it shouldn't take long until it is there as well.

 

I have a few questions about this system:

1. Does your animation system support non-bipedal characters like Quadrupeds? For example I have a wolf and other animal characters I would like to use with this system.
2. I'd like the animation to be driven by the velocity and momentum of the character, and not just by the input. In the examples I've seen it looks like everything is controlled via input. For Example, if the character is sprinting, I don't want them to just be able to stop on the dime, but rather slowly decelerate then stop.

I can provide examples and more clarification if needed. BTW, this animation system looks absolutely amazing!

 

Hi, Thanks for your questions.

1. The system supports generic rigs and the concept of motion matching and is not limited to humanoids in this way. MxM supports matching up to 8 joints which is more than enough for a quadruped. For perspective, I only match 3 joints on a humanoid so if you need 4 for the legs and another for the neck maybe that should be enough for a quadruped.

The only thing you really need to consider is whether you have enough quality animations for quadrupeds. Motion Matching will only ever use the animations you provide it (it doesn't create new animations) so if there are missing transitions it's going to be a difficult to get flowing animation. Check out this guide for details on 'animation requirements' for motion matching:

https://docs.google.com/document/d/116VnMJEkSyHuVOESaIhdd4KAvUJ6OWFDWhrKZnbrPDc/edit?usp=sharing

This is pretty much universal for motion matching and not really specific to MxM.

2. The animation is driven via a trajectory prediction model or 'trajectory generator'. The system comes with a trajectory prediction model based on a spring simulation and user input. However, the the trajectory interface allows for users to create their own trajectory models. I've done a physics based trajectory generator in the past but I don't personally like them.

Keep in mind you may not even need a phsyics based trajectory model to get the desired effect. Motion Matching by nature prefers to flow smoothly between animations instead of making large jumps. For more realism you can calibrate for high pose importance rather than trajectory. This will result in more 'weighty' animation like you are referring to.

Anyway, hope this helps. Most important of all, make sure you have the animation requirements or it won't work well for you

 

You probably already know, but 'Motion Matching for Unity' is currently 50% off for the spring sale.

I have recently captured sprinting animations and these are going to be included in the package in an update coming soon.

 

how is it goin?

 

As a MxM user I can tell you it’s going great. A top notch system with regular updates. And Ken is always happy to assist users on his Discord site. Highly recommended.

 

I'm currently using Invector Third Person Controller,is there any plans for an integration in the future?

 

No current plans for this sorry. I don't currently have the time / resources to support many integrations

 

MxM v2.2.4 is now available on the Discord channel and on the Unity Asset Store.

**New strafing animations added! Hold down right click in the demo scene to activate strafe mode.

**Price Drop... because Kinematica. I'll be doing a comparison at some point if you're wondering why MxM might be a better option. As it stands here are just some features that MxM has that Kinematica seems to be missing:

• Favour tagging and pose favouring concepts
• Fine control over quality vs. responsiveness
• Support for humanoid rigs (Kinematica only supports generic rigs)
• Blend Spaces
• Built in utility features (e.g. angular error warping)
• Faster pre-process times (Kinematica takes minutes to pre-process while MxM takes seconds)
• Multi-threading - MxM uses all threads, Kinematica uses a single thread which is waited on. It's essentially single threaded at this point in time.
  
• Built in layer system

Kinematica does not use Machine Learning despite what Unity has told us in the past. It is regular motion matching. This has been confirmed by a Untiy rep on these very forums.

Please note there are some minor changes this update which may require a slight change in calibration. This was unfortunately unavoidable as it improves performance and also removes a small framerate dependency bug. In particular, you may want to increase your 'ResultantVelocityWeight' in the calibration by about 2-3 times.

 

Amazing asset! I just want to know how to change the animation speed when using MxM. Is there an API or script to change animation speed runtime?

 

Hi, I think I already answered your question on Discord but I'll answer it here as well for posterity sake. You can modify the playback speed by changing one of the following properties:

Code (CSharp):

1. MxMAnimator.PlaybackSpeed = mySpeed;
2.  
3. //or
4.  
5. MxMAnimator.DesiredPlayabackSpeed = mySpeed;

If you change the later property it will automatically smooth the speed change. The first one will change it instantly.

 

Fast reply. Thanks a lot.

 

Youtube tutorial is very uesful. I want to know how to add jump system in MxM? Match different animation to different state like raising, floating, slow falling, fast falling, touching land.
I found that the MxMTrajectory just predict horizontal motion(X-Y plane). Can MxMTrajectory predict vertical motion and how?

 

@aidenwain The system wouldn’t be able to predict that you’ve decided to jump (unless you code it to do so). So instead you would usually set it up so that when you press your jump input MxM triggers the jump animation.

But MxM can predict vertical motion as well. When climbing for example, you would set it up so that your vertical controller input = up instead of forward.

There are useful examples that come with MxM that demonstrate some of the functionality, and jumping as well as vaulting (which does predict jumps) is included. But all of this will ultimately require some solid coding to get working in your own game. MxM provides you with all the tools you need to do an awesome job but it’s not a character controller, it’s an animation matching system. The rest you need to code yourself.

 

Thanks. OK. It looks like I must write the jump and land logic.

 

Hi, yes that is correct. MxM doesn't handle gameplay logic in any way as it is an animation system.

It does have some built in tools to conform the animation to gameplay (i.e. tags and events) but it still requires the developer to convey that information to the system in a way that it can undertand.

 

Does the MotionMatching system also work with the CharachterSystem UMA ?

 

It does with very little effort. I am using both assets in my project successfully.

 

Hi, as mentioned by GambitMonkey it works with UMA without any problems.

Further to this, MxM doesn't really care too much about the character itself. If the character animates with Unity's built in Animator Controller, there is no reason (that I'm aware of) that it would not work with MxM. (The character that is, there may be additional requirements for animation coverage etc.)

 

Would MxM be able to handle a transition from jump to flying, as well as flying movement that would use different animations than grounded movement?

 

MxM doesn't require that you only use MxM. It uses the playable graph so you can actually switch and blend between MxM, Mecanim and even your own animation systems built with that.

For flying type movement, I would recommend switching. Motion Matching works best when the animation has a lot of motion (like moving legs) so flight is done easier / better with a traditional method.

 

I am an experienced C# indie developer without mocap. Lets pretend I am making a 3D FPS and I want to add rifle and gun animation.

Which assets from the store are compatible?
Does this package only work with mocap files?

 

Hi, I'm thinking about purchasing Motion Matching for Unity and just have a couple questions.

We're working on a VR game where the character controller returns a Direction vector & Speed float based on an arm swing gesture. Would Motion Matching be a good solution for playing animations that match the desired direction and step distance?
For example: run animations for large arm swings (speed values) and walk animations for short arm swings.

 

Hello, I see your comment on forun from Kinematic Character Controller,
did you manage to use the Kinematic Character Controller asset with motion maching? would there be any conflicts? Recommends the Kinematic Character Controller to be used with your asset?
I'm developing a game similar to mario 3d.

 

Hi,

Do you have recommended animations from the asset store?

Also, your discord doesn't seem to have a place for support, is that correct or am I missing something?

 

Apologies for the late response

Any animation set which has seamless poses between clips and a lot of transitions. Starts/Stops/Plants etc. Check out the animation requirements guide for more details.

Regarding the Discord Server, the support channels are hidden and only accessible to verified users. When you joined the channel you should have gotten a message with instructions on how to become verified. In short you simply have to send your invoice number to the server owner (myself) and I'll give you verified status.

I've had an integration for KCC available with the package for quite a while now and some people do use it. However, depending on how you use it, it can make it a little more difficult to use MxM. At least that's personally my experience.

I think I may have already responded to you about this on the Discord channel but I'll answer here as well for posterity sake. I've had quite a few enquirers about using motion matching for VR. However, I don't think it is a very good match. While the concepts of motion matching could potentially have application to VR, I think a solution that would work for VR would need to be very specifically designed for that purpose.

There is support for cut clips but you won't achieve the same level of fidelity as with mocap. I can't really give you a list of compatible animation sets on the asset store as there are many, however, there is a lot of documentation surrounding animation requirements for MxM which should give you some insight. Here is a link to the documentation and Animation Requirements Guide

The biggest factor with cut clips is coverage. You need to have transitions like starts, stops, plants etc. to make it work nicely. I suggest checking out the animation requirements guide to get a better understanding. As a point of reference I often use Kubolds clips with MxM which tend to work pretty well.

 

hi, it's look very good animation system/technic ,...
I try to understand (LOGIC) of event system/contact points - especially part at multi contacts point. There is MxMAnimator - OnEventContactReached (Int32) - callback .

in Manual file You say,...
- clear event definition contact points
- begin event
- extract point from started event (ModifyDesiredEventContact)
- put new vector3 (position) and float (rotation) from raycast or other type...
- then execute (ModifyDesiredEventContactPosition),... and Rotation.

It's look like OnEventContactReached trigger at 1st contact point. How can be done on 2nd contact point like in your video tutorial (contact point jump over obstacles),... the demo scene from package it's ferly complex... to understand!

The actual question is what are order/steps/logic behind,...OnEventContactReached multi contacts point,...

 

Hi, there is a tutorial about vault? i would like my character to only jump when i click on the jump button and i would like to use the climbing animations but so far i can only make him walk and run.

 

Hi, OnEventContactReached is just a callback that is called when a contact is reached in an animation. It should be called for every contact. If it is not then there is probably a bug and I will check it out and fix it for the next update.

Regarding the ordering of things... it really depends what you are trying to achieve. The order you have mentioned is for when you don't know which animation is going to be picked and you want to adjust the contact points once the animation is to be picked.

I suggest going through all the tutorial videos on events. I also recommend joining the Discord channel (invite link is in the user manual) if you haven't already as there are ~500 users there with varying experience and able to provide insights that even I can't.

Hi, the vaulting is just an example use case of MxM's event / contact system. The vault detector script was simply made as a demonstration and is not intended to be production ready and serves as an example only. The reason is that MxM is intended to be a generic animation asset and not intended to control your gameplay logic. Every game handles vaults differently, therefore, MxM provides the animation tools but it is expected that the user will perform the logic that tells those animation tools what to do.

To help better understand how I achieved the vaulting in the demo scene, I recommend watching all tutorial videos on Events to understand how they work on a fundamental level. It's also recommended to read the events section of the documentation to get a good grasp. Then I recommend looking at the demo scene character prefab and seeing how it is setup. In particular check out the Vault Detector script. Essentially it is just doing a bunch of ray-casts to detect geometry in front of the character and then matching that geometry to a list of pre-determined vault situations.

The vault detector in the demo scene is based on the below video but not taken to the same production ready level:

I also recommend joining the Discord channel (Invite link is in the user manual) if you haven't already as there are ~500 users there with varying experience and able to provide insights that even I can't.

 

Hi，CptKen，I have bought the Motion Matching . Is there any tutorial with mobile phone virtual joystick that can use the Motion Matching? Hope your reply.

 

Is there any support for syncing animations over the network?

 

I would like to know if this asset also includes animation files.

So if I have a character can I use this asset out of the box to make it move around?

Or do I need this asset AND some third party animations sets, walk, jump etc. If I need to provide these animations, if none are included, can you point me out towards a set that you know it works, maybe someone already used or tested? Preferable for female characters.

Thank You