Skele: Character Animation Tools, Cutscenes and Animations authoring tools

Is it possible to add support for uSequencer?
I would rather use the uSequencer timeline instead of the built in Unity animation window...

 

In MuscleClipConverterEditor.cs and AnimMirrorEditorWindow.cs you are using the precompiler directive UNITY_5_0. However, it's only targeting Unity 5.0 and will not apply to later versions such as the upcoming Unity 5.1. It's better to test against UNITY_5 because it applies to all releases within the Unity 5 cycle.

Unfortunately this information isn't currently documented on the Platform Dependent Compilation page, but it can be found in the Unity 5.0 Release Notes: "Added defines for UNITY_EDITOR_64/32, UNITY_5."

Here's an excerpt from a csproj file:

Code (CSharp):

1.  <DefineConstants>DEBUG;TRACE;UNITY_5_1_0;UNITY_5_1;UNITY_5;

 

I had a motion file of aiming but fingers wasn't accurate so I edit fingers with Skele and everything looks good in editor windows but I mentioned changes doesn't applied to original motion file in project folder! why? so then where changes saved?
I'm worry about losing data...

 

Hi, ksam2,

Sorry for the late reply, forum notification seems not work recently. =)

First, you need to export the Animation as FBX and import it into Unity:
www.youtube.com/watch?v=cdYXi-kfEqo

Second, set the rig type to Legacy or Generic in the unity importer;


Third, duplicate and modify the animation from FBX files with Skele;

Tell me if you found anything not clear,

Best regards, Be creative,

 

Hi, PicturesInDark,

Thanks for your feedback,

Judging from the pic you post, you've turn on the "Debug mode" of the inspector,


Be sure to toggle back to normal mode,
(Click the menu icon beside the lock icon and select "Normal")

Tell me if it doesn't work out, =)

Best regards, Be creative.

 

Hi, ksam2,

The animation file is saved as Unity animation file (.anim) in the project folder. You created the anim file when you edited it in the first time.
http://skele.userecho.com/topic/490450-qa-have-just-made-a-clip-how-to-save-it/

The original FBX/DAE file is untouched, if you want to export animation file out of Unity, use the DAE exporter to generate the DAE archive containing both mesh & animation.

Tell me if you find anything not clear,

Best regards, Be creative,

 

Hi, BYD,

Thanks for the feedback,

Unity has a new incoming "Director" system to do cutscene editing for Unity5, I will check out if it will be possible to move to the new system when it's published.

Check the keynote if you haven't,

Best regards, Be creative,

 

Hi, movra,

Thank you very much for that, =)
I'll add the new precomp directive in the latest update.

Best regards, Be creative,

 

Thanks but I just wonder why we can't set that as humanoid? (Sorry if it's a noob question I'm just
curious)

 

I find out it is almost impossible to edit none humanoid animations in unity animation windows! there is no layer system and we should edit frames one by one! is there any advise how we can edit complex animation through unity animation windows?

Humanoid animations can be edited easily in animation windows but about generic and legacy we should edit frames one by one and it's impossible.
I wonder why we can't save Humanoid animations with SKELE?

 

Hi, ksam2,

Thanks for your feedback, =)

Technically speaking, you could modify & save the humanoid clip with UnityAnimationWindow(abbr. UAW),


But UAW cannot auto convert&record the movement of bones to the humanoid clip (You could only tweak the value like above). So if you need to work with Humanoid clip anyway, the suggested workflow is to make the animation on a Legacy/Generic model and use DAE exporter to generate DAE archive to get Humanoid clip.

See this video on how to convert clip to and fro Generic <=> Humanoid.

Also a suggested workflow if to stick with humanoid rig models:
http://skele.userecho.com/topic/585450-qa-best-workflow-to-work-with-humanoid-models/

Generic animation utilizes Animator same as Humanoid animation, it has layers too.
Or, maybe by "layers" do you mean something like animating Blender layer?

In unity you could achieve same effect by animating the active prop of GameObject though.

Well, there're cases that you might need to add more frames to help the interpolation. But in most time you could use only several frames and utilize the interpolation like in the GIF above. Could you shed more light on what makes you have to add so many frames?


Best regards, Be creative,

 

Hi, Developers,

Skele v1.8.1 is online now, this is a minor update.

1.8.1 (Submitted on 2015/06/09)
FIX: DAE exporter, make the exported animation clip sample-rate the same as original clip.
CHANGE: make compatibility changes for incoming Unity5.1; ( refer to #502 )

Thanks to @movra and @HereVR for their valuable suggestion and help.

Best regards, Be creative,

 

Hey TMPxyz,

Just left you a review, I love this plugin! you've already saved me tons of time! I have a request for the next version, just a minor thing. When you are working on a humanoid animation and doing lots of tweaks - using the DAE exporter always defaults the path to the root assets directory, would it be possible to store the last saved path, some of my characters are a few folders deep and you have to keep clicking through to the right folder to save the dae, you could do another button 'export to previous path', anyway thanks great tool!

 

Hi, punk,

Thanks for your feedback, =)
That's a good point, I will include it in the next update.

Best regards, Be creative,

 

thanks that's great

 

Since Skele can use or create Humanoid rigs animations can the animation clips created in Skele be used in Macanim when blending between animations...like going smoothly from a walking animation into a running animation and visa versa? I read that the reason for humanoid/muscle rig types is to give smoother blends over generic.

 

Hi, TokyoDan2,

Thanks for the feedback, =)

Short answer is Yes.

Long answer:
Skele creates standard unity animation clips, which means you could use generated clips in the same way as any other clips from external archives.

Non-mecanim means Legacy, which uses Animation component;
Mecanim includes both Generic and Humanoid types. They both utilize the Animator component and the state-machine to blend and switch states.

Skele can directly create/modify Legacy & Generic clips,
Humanoid clips need to be converted to L/G format for modification. You could check this video about the tools for conversion.

By the way, I've been thinking that humanoid rig is mainly used for retargeting clip, haven't read about it could give smoother blending yet, could you give me a link on that topic?

Tell me if you find anything not clear enough,

Best regards, Be creative,

 

I think you linked to this somewhere in this thread. That's how I found it:

The last part of the 6th paragraph effective says that blending between animations are smoother:

"Another beautiful thing is how well Muscle Space interpolates. Compare to standard skeleton pose, Muscle Space will always interpolate naturally between animation key frames, during state machine transition or when mixed in a blend tree."

http://blogs.unity3d.com/2014/05/26/mecanim-humanoids/

 

Thanks, just noticed it. =)

 

I am reading over all the info in this thread and watching all the videos for the 2nd time and I'm about to buy Skele. But I have another question. My 3D modeling program is Cheetah3D because I develop in OSX. I normally use FBX when I export, or Cheetah native .jas format which Unity can also import. Is there any time during the modeling/skinning/animating workflow where I could get stuck and would need to edit a DAE format file. The reason I ask is because Cheetah3D can not import DAE.

 

Hi, TokyoDan,

If you work with Cheetah, you could still use FBX most of time.

DAE exporter is mainly for converting clip format to humanoid clip. If you need to export the clip and edit in Cheetah, you could make DAE into FBX archive with Autodesk FBX converter.

There is a mac version on the page too (haven't tried myself, have no mac around)

Better have a check if it works on your Mac first, =)

Best regards, Be creative,

 

I downloaded that Autodesk FBX converter and some sample rigged DAE files from various websites. So I don't know if these samples are created correctly or not. Anyway I was able to get one that converted from DAE to FBX and could be loaded into Cheetah without losing any info. And the bones were correctly bound to the mesh. But the orientation of the converted FBX came out face down instead of facing forward which is a problem because I can't get it facing forward with the skeleton at the same time. When I try to normalize the -90 Y rotation (to face forward) to 0 the mesh goes back to facing down.

I just wonder if I can do everything with standard/generic - humanoid conversions without ever having to edit or adjust anything while in DAE format.

 

That MIGHT be because the sample dae files specify wrong up-axis? or it's a Cheetah thing?
I have exported a mesh+clip in DAE from Unity with up-axis specified as Y+, then converted to FBX, it works well on my blender here.
Could you have a check with the attached fbx on your Cheetah?

By the way, Blender seems not as tolerant with dae as Max does. Blender prefers FBX more.

Basically, if you only want to convert to Humanoid clip, just generate the DAE archive and let Unity does the importing and it's done. You only bring up Cheetah when you need to fix something up.

Best regards, Be creative,

 

The FBX works perfectly in Cheetah3D. And I converted the DAE to FBX with Autodesk FBX converter and that FBX works perfectly in Cheetah3D too. Thanks.

 

That's great to know, =)

I see on the feature list that Cheetah is able to export in DAE format (cannot import though)
So if you need, you could make several models and animation with Cheetah, export with DAE, convert to FBX, then import back to Cheetah to check if all data is intact.

 

You have any plans to support importing BVH animations?

 

Hi, Teo,

Thanks for the feedback, =)

Ah... No, not recently,

By the way, the big CMU mocap library is already converted to Unity format by cMonkeys, and put up in the AssetStore (for free), maybe that could be of some use to your need?

https://www.assetstore.unity3d.com/en/#!/content/19991
https://www.assetstore.unity3d.com/en/#!/content/20282
https://www.assetstore.unity3d.com/en/#!/content/20285

Best regards, Be creative,

 

Thinking about getting this.. I was just wondering if there was any examples of animations such as walk cycles/ run cycles made with this plugin? I don't know how far you can push this software animation wise.

 

Hi, dnoparker,

Thanks for the feedback, =)

All the animations (walk/punch/parry/etc) in this demo game are made with Skele by me,
https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/1126224/Skele/PlayDemo0/PlayDemo0.html
[Webplayer, need a non-Chrome browser]

If you don't want to play the webplayer, there's a walking animation in this video too.

Best regards, Be creative,

 

Thank you!

I went a head with the purchase. I think I might use this system for first person hands and animals.

 

On the right hand I somehow made it's default pose grip the sword. Whereas on the other hand it snaps to the first frame in the idle animation. Do you happen to know how I did this for the right hand? I would love to be able to have the left hand default grip the lantern.

http://gfycat.com/JovialWideLangur

I hope that makes sense.

 

Hi, dnoparker,

Wow, You've a scene with style =)

You saw a "snap", because:
The left-hand is open in edit-mode, but the animation makes it clenched in game-mode.
You don't need to worry that, because It will NOT be seen in the real game. It will only be seen in editor when you're using the game-view before the mode-switching.

Check the video below, (no handy lamp model around, so I use a cube+hingeJoint instead )
http://i.imgur.com/3ou8ybh.gifv

However if you want, you could fix it by making the left-hand clenched in edit-mode, then you won't see it snap from open to clenching even if you use the "game-view"

You can see in my example, I especially left the hand fingers to be straight in edit-mode. and when the game starts, you can see no fingers snapping from straight to curling. But if I open the game-view window in edit-mode, then switch to game-mode, you will see the snapping ( you won't see it in real game though ).

Tell me if you find it not clear enough,

=====================================

I think I might misunderstood the gif you post, there's no mode-switching right? You wanted to make the left-hand to hold the lamp from the very start?
That would be easy, just make your default state animation ( assume you're using Animator ) to be "left hand holding lamp, right hand holding sword".

Best regards, Be creative,

 

@TMPxyz
I have an urgent issue with skele, please take a look:

http://skele.userecho.com/topic/783748-cant-create-rootmotion-targetexception/

 

Hi, BYD,

I'm just going to check it on U5.1, hold on for a moment.

Eh... Just a wild guess, did you have the AnimationWindow open when click the "make root motion" button?
================================

Hmm, I confirmed that it works on U4 but not work on U5.
Let me see if I could make a quick fix on U5.

 

Thanks, yeah I tried it multiple times with and without the window open with the same error.

 

Hi, BYD,

I've come up with a quick fix for RootMotion. As you're in a hurry now, I'll just tell you how to fix it so you don't have to wait for me to update.

Here we go:

You should see this line in SMREditor.cs around line 4255:

Code (CSharp):

1. object uawstate = RCall.GetProp("UnityEditor.AnimationWindow", "state", uaw);

Replace it with:

Code (CSharp):

1. object animEditor = RCall.GetField("UnityEditor.AnimationWindow", "m_AnimEditor", uaw);
2. object uawstate = RCall.GetField("UnityEditor.AnimEditor", "m_State", animEditor);

This will only work on Unity5, I'll patch it for both U4 & U5 in an update

 

Thanks you're a lifesaver
Now it works as expected - for your information the CurveProp Editor still doesnt work but I think I don't need it at the moment anyway.
Thanks again for your GREAT support!

 

Yeah, They both used same routine which is broken on Unity5.
They will be fixed together in next update.

 

Hi, Developers,

Skele v1.8.1 f1 is submitted and should be online soon.
It fixed a broken routine on Unity5, which is used by MakeRootMotion and AnimCurvePropEditor.

1.8.1 f1(Submitted on 2015/06/25)
FIX: A broken routine on Unity5, it affects MakeRootMotion and AnimCurvePropEditor;

Best regards, Be creative,

 

hi,the DAE exporter not working in unity 5,the errors indicate a lot of obsolete line of codes

 

this the error

NullReferenceException: Object reference not set to an instance of an object
MH.DaeExporter._Export_Lib_VisualScene (grendgine_collada.Grendgine_Collada col_scene) (at Assets/Skele/CharacterAnimationTools/Editor/DaeExporter/DaeExporter.cs:536)
MH.DaeExporter.Export (UnityEngine.AnimationClip clip, System.String outPath) (at Assets/Skele/CharacterAnimationTools/Editor/DaeExporter/DaeExporter.cs:117)
DaeExporterEditor._OnGUI_SMR () (at Assets/Skele/CharacterAnimationTools/Editor/DaeExporter/DaeExporterEditor.cs:122)
DaeExporterEditor.OnGUI () (at Assets/Skele/CharacterAnimationTools/Editor/DaeExporter/DaeExporterEditor.cs:37)
System.Reflection.MonoMethod.Invoke (System.Object obj, BindingFlags invokeAttr, System.Reflection.Binder binder, System.Object[] parameters, System.Globalization.CultureInfo culture) (at /Users/builduser/buildslave/mono-runtime-and-classlibs/build/mcs/class/corlib/System.Reflection/MonoMethod.cs:222)

 

Hi, giordano123,

Thanks for your feedback,

I've checked DAE exporter on Unity5.1f3, it works fine here.

But I've found that it throws error if no animation clip is specified in exporter, it might be the error you encountered?

I've assembled a fix update for this error. If you find out that's not the case, please give me more details on the unity version and the model you tried to export.

Best regrads,

 

exactly, i don't have animation tied to the model when i attempted to export it

 

That will soon be fixed, I've some trouble uploading the package now, will try tonight.

For now, you could put some random clip in that slot to get the mesh exported. It doesn't have to be an animation for that model.

 

Hi, Developers,

This update fixed a bug introduced when fixed another bug. oops.

1.8.1 f2 (Submitted on 2015/06/26)
FIX: DAE exporter throws error if no clip specified;
NEW: Save the directory where the DAE archive is exported in EditorPrefs;

Best regards, Be creative,

 

hey thanks for the update

i have a question i want to convert a mechanim animation to legacy but the problem is the animation is not good when the IK is off , if i baked the mechanim anim to legacy it loses the IK,is it possible to bake the animation along with the IK?

 

Hi, giordano123,

Hmm, I've never tried that yet, could you elaborate the use-case you're trying to use IK with?
Be noted that, the Unity native IK is Humanoid-rig only, it will not works on Generic/Legacy rig.

Best regards, Be creative,

 

This is exactly what I was looking for, too. Similarly to JesseAlexander I have some characters made out of voxel components but I don't want to rig them in Blender. Part of the reason is I want to be able to change/destroy "parts" of the model while the rest keeps working.

Just to clarify, let's say I used the method you explain here in your video, and I have some undead characters made out of boxy parts. Could I "blow off" the arm or the head and still have the rest of the model animate like normal? Like maybe making the head or arm nodes invisible?

Also, you say that it's not the "intended use." What problems or errors might I run across if I were to use this method?

 

Hi, peanutgallery,

Yeah, you could "blow off" parts.
You could just detach a bone and throw it away, or deactivate the GameObject, it won't affect the playing animation.
see the example video:
http://i.imgur.com/OcQA9I4.gifv

The cubeman is in the "Playground" scene, you could animate it and try yourself.

Tell me if you find it unclear =)

Best regards, Be creative,

 

Hi, Developers,

Just submitted the v1.8.2 update, the main improvement is increasing the performance on Unity5. Thanks to Sebastian Koenig.

1.8.2 (Submitted on 2015/07/04)
PERF: On Unity5, greatly increase performance when recording changes;
CHANGE: Make the handle to follow the joint when scrub the thumb of Animation window;
CHANGE: On Unity5, adapt the new property of EditorWindow.titleContent;


It appears that on Unity5.1f3, the UAW(Unity Animation Window) will drag the performance down significantly when number of animated curves go up.
It happens no matter you have Skele in project or not.

[You can see that SetEditorCurve costs 226ms, under DeepProfile though]


This update could boost performance when use Skele to record animation.


Best regards, Be creative,