Question Seeking Advice on How to Implement Additional Animations like Facial Expressions

Is there a way to use multiple Animation Controllers to control the same character? I am looking for a method to control additional actions such as facial expressions. I noticed that VRChat seems to use multiple Animation Controllers.

 

My guess is actually not through multiple controllers, but adding layers to your controllers. Haven't seen VRChat though so could be wrong.

I also have a character that needs to play animations which I'd love to be able to blend instead of just play clips, so right there i need an Animation Controller (don't have the budget to build a system myself) and on top of that needs to support blend shapes for facial expressions.

My guess was base layer would be for locomotion, and then an additional layer for the face. Haven't had a chance to test that hypothesis and it's limitations yet as artists aren't going to deliver my character and animations/blend shapes until end of the month.

I did find this video interesting:

If you consider "VSFAvatar" kind of stuff as just the scripts driving the parameters... then their approach was to have a layer for each morph target (think angry, sad, happy, or maybe racial features) as individual layers, and then the base layer is playing the "blink" animation so that the morph targets get blended together. I'm curious how unmanageable it would become if you needed to support 20 targets and 20 animations that all need to work with each target.

Hopefully this layering approach is feasible, in a networked game it might be a thing where you need to add Animator Override Controllers for when you're up close and a player can see facial expressions and go with some baked animation clips as LODs.

I'm interested to hear if others have solved this though.