Skele: Character Animation Tools, Cutscenes and Animations authoring tools

Oh, I missed the FinallK question

I don't have FinalIK, but I think it should be okay.
As the cutscene itself is an animation ( though a little special ), and I remember to see FinalIK works well with animation on youtube video.
So, I *GUESS* they should get along well

 

Thanks for the more in-depth explanation of how the cut-scenes work. Really awesome stuff.

As for run time manipulation of the character. I would like to be able to pose the character in game, is this also possible.

 

Hmm... I've not added such feature for now, I haven't played much games with such needs before except SPORE .
Could you elaborate more on your need?

1. So in runtime, do you want to pose your character by your code or by your player?
2. If by your player, Is static pose enough? Do you need generate animation from the poses?
3. How would you like the player to manipulate the bone? Sliders or Handles? FK or IK?

 

1. Would like to generate animations from the poses.
2. Handles would be best, both FK and IK. But IK would be preferable as its easier for user to manipulate in game.
3. Having the ability to pose, manipulate and create animations in-game would open skele to many more applications and would make it very flexible and powerful. You would be creating something quite unique that no other assets are currently able to do.

 

Hey there, Oliver here,

I'd love it if you managed to figure out how to highlight the bones being acted upon when selecting the animation dope sheet.

Being able to see which dot, for lack of a better term, is controlling which bone would make Skele's current work flow even more spot on.

Example:
When you're looking at a pose happening at frame 60 and you select all "dots" in the sheet at 60, it would highlight all bones being affected.

If you selected just one, it would also just show the single affected bone, etc.

That'd probably be my number one feature request! That'd entail listening to some pretty darn specific UI events though!

Just an idea,
All the best!

P.S. Also having some drop down option that shows you all the keyboard short cuts would be a nice touch!

Also,

Starting into the code to provide rotational information:

Here is the beginnings, give me an hour!

Playing around with visualization and got some rotation working:

 

Thanks rocki, I get your needs now.

Interesting idea, so players could edit his own special moves just in-game... For sure it opens many possibilities, especially in MMO market.

Hmm... so this means making an runtime animation editor suite ( timeline, fk/ik gui, dopesheet, curve editor, etc. )
Put the workload aside, I'm not sure if common game players could make good looking animation even with Pro suite like max/maya/blender. ( I'm not a Pro animator, and it sometimes takes me much time to make some actions just look good )
Is there some animation suites aiming common users so we could take it as a reference? MikuMikuDance sounds like one though(never used it before, but have seen a few good videos created with it).

But look from the bright side, we could always use some tricks and trade-off for common players,
For the normal users, they could use some basic tools like preset walk-cycle, run-cycle, attack, dodge, and enable them to do some minor editing; Also for some Pro users, they could use the full suite of tools to create some pro-level animations.

Hmm... interesting points you made here.
Not an easy path, But I will check it out.

 

Hey there TMPxyz,

I am actually referring to Unity's built in dope sheet:



If when you select one of those little diamonds it would show the associated bone.. would be incredible!

 

Good one, Oliver!

Hmm, I used to draw a position handle for each joint there, but it ends with quite a mess, then I switch it into the current cube.
But The disc looks good, I think I should adapt to this one in the next update.

And you made a good point on the integration with dope sheet, I will see to it.

Thanks for your feedback, I appreciated it.

 

Yeah, that makes a good mark, and I will try drawing the bones with other colors for the bones selected in dope sheets.

 

No problem! If you don't mind, I will keep messing with your well organized code! See if I can come up with any good ideas..

Also, what is kind of cool, is that you can show the angle between each bone radially, like so:

View attachment 100915

Basically create visuals for the constraints at all times, pretty nifty!

Handles.DrawWireArc(... is the best method to do that I think!

All the best,
Oliver

 

Go ahead , with you guys brilliant ideas, we will make Skele better and better for all developers

 

Automatic bone scaling based on distance between them!

View attachment 100920

 

Some smart Trickery and Trade-offs would be a good way to do it. I think it's probably too much to a full pro level animation. Like you said, it's better to take presets and allow for minor editing using IK, something easy and simple for the user to do. Most users are not professional animators and would not know what to do. The trick is to be able to use the preset animations and combine it with the approach of FinalIk where these preset animations can be easily modified by the user.

 

I bought Skele recently, and I'm really enjoying using it! Great product!

Would you consider saving boneSize and lineWidth to EditorPrefs so the values are still there the next time I load Unity?

 

have to mention, there's two errors when importing the new package

Assets/Skele/Scripts/Utility.cs(398,18): error CS0117: `System.IO.File' does not contain a definition for `WriteAllText'
Assets/Skele/Scripts/Utility.cs(409,18): error CS0117: `System.IO.File' does not contain a definition for `WriteAllBytes'

 

Got it. I will check it out recently.
Done, see it in next update.

 

Oops, looks I made a wrong condition compile there.
Sorry I don't have PC at hands for now, you could switch your build setting from web to PC for a moment, I will give you a code fix direction tomorrow morning.

 

Beautifully done.

 

ah, okay. so thats the problem (i switched to pro trial recently and didn't switch platform - to android, thats what I'm developing for).

edit: errors gone

 

Yeah, That maybe would get things on track,
But ik alone might be not enough for editing animations, fk might fit some cases better.
The point is to reduce the difficulty. Could be quite tricky.

 

"could you make a root-height 'keyframer' for skele (or is it already possible)? I was running into .anims being positioned lower than my unanimated character (might be me doing something wrong). "

has this been changed? I cant seem to select/move the root bone.

I like the pose manager, easy to use. then those poses should be loaded and 'snapshot' to the animation timeline?

the pose saving should have a 'select all bones' button I guess

 

Hi, dibdab,

I've just checked the code here, it needs change in multiple places to handle all the platforms, so I think I should not bother you all to change it yourselves.

I will fix it in the update in next week. For now you could avoid it temporarily by *not* do the editing in Web platform.

Sorry for the inconvenience.

 

No, the two methods in the video haven't changed.

If you cannot see the root bone, it might be HIDDEN.
As Unity seems to not include a bone into SkinnedMeshRenderer(SMR)'s bone array if it doesn't affect any vertex, root bone usually fit this condition.
You could click the `B' button on UI to show the hidden bones.

If you still encounters troubles on this one, could you send your mesh (no tex) in fbx to me, I could make a video with the model for you.

 

Hi, there,

Here comes the third demo,

This one mainly shows the function of "QTE" which is common in action games.
Also you may note the usage of LoadLevel.



You can try this at website:
http://tmpxyz.wix.com/alpha#!cutscene-demo-3/c24ke
Or use the Dropbox address:
https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/1126224/Skele/CC3/CC3.html

 

This demo is about 22MB, so please be patient when load.

 

Hi, there!

The v1.0 package has just been submitted,
If Unity guys give green light, it should get into the assetstore around May 28th.

Be sure to check the new features web demos in the first post of this thread!

The main change list is below:

1.0 (Submitted on 2014/05/25)
NEW: Cutscene Editing Tools. No need to make a lot of animation files for cutscene, just edit them in the cutscene.
NEW: Use WireDisc to replace Cube as the marker of joints. (Thanks to CrazeDevelopment)
NEW: Draw markers in SceneView for active curves in AnimationWindow's dope sheet. (Thanks to CrazeDevelopment)
NEW: Save boneSize lineWidth in EditorPref. (Thanks to TonyLi)
FIX: File.WriteAllText/bytes should not be included in Web platform. (Thanks to dibdab)
FIX: MouseButtonUp events sometimes might unexpectedly select other bones.

 

I'd like to second the request for runtime character manipulation. I would like to be able to pose my character into various different poses and then save them all out to a fbx. same with loading a fbx onto my character.

imagine a character with 20 different poses than can be further tweaked by the player at runtime.

thanks!

 

Hi, justifun,

Well, if you mean only edit a static pose, not a full animation. Then it might be an easier task, also affordable task for common players.

Thanks for your idea, maybe we could start with this one.

 

That will be Awesome to get this one working in Run Time.

 

That would be AWESOME!!!!!

Storing a pose, naming it and being able to restore it would be incredible!

 

@Rocki @Justifun

Okay, I'll check it out recently
It might require re-writing many code. I must be cautions not to break existing editor functions.

 

Okay, v1.0 is finally online in store.

Now you can not only make/edit brilliant animations, but also exciting cut-scenes / short-movie / killing moves / prefab actions /etc.
Well, you could do many things with it, bring in some imaginations.

P.S.: If you ever make an excellent cut-scene ( in web-demo or video format ), I'm more than happy to see you add a link here.

Be Creative.

 

Thanks to Bob from Unity,

I learned this new trick to convert the Humanoid Animation (Muscle clip) back to Legacy / Generic clip,
Now we can modify animations for humanoid rig characters.

You can check it out in the Misc.5 video in the first post.

 

v1.1 has just been submitted to assetstore; Should be online around June 4th;

1.1 (Submitted on 2014/06/01)
NEW: Muscle Clip Converter
NEW: New cutscene web-demo in package
FIX: CCEditor error after leaving playmode;

You could now use Muscle Clip Converter to bake the humanoid animation into Legacy/Generic animations, which can be easily edited by Skele.

Also, a new demo scene ("CatchBall") is added into the package, this one has no third-party content, you could take it as example or reference.

 

also there's a new script which can convert retargeted humanoid animations into .anim. you might look into that too.
Animation Baker: https://www.assetstore.unity3d.com/en/#!/content/18217
so now that it looks like every animation can be made .anim, maybe .anim should be the focus.

 

wow, Vladimir is really fast there.
Though I don' have that product, I guess the basic ideas behind are the same. : )

 

Hi there,

v1.1 is online now.

It's v4.5.0 and v4.3.4 compatible.

 

I Like this asset, got it working quite quickly but I would like to however see more documentation and maybe a video going through an example of how you do your mecanim stuff. A video with audio, explaining what you do. And call it skele Animator, you will get more sales with the word animator or animation in the title.

 

Thanks eagleeyez, I think I might give a try with the name suggest in next update.

About the mecanim part,

Because it mostly works like usual FBX anim workflow, I'll just drag the anim into the animator UI,... Well, I think that's not something you're interested.
Or you mean I should just make a full walk-through.

So, could you give more ideas on what you want to see in the video?

 

Made a new Cutscene demo ready to include into package.
This one demostrates killing blows like in Assassin Creeds / Biohazard.

a prefab action ( killing blow ) is instantiated when user approaches target and press LMB, there is a blend-in and blend-out at the start and end of the prefab action.

a simple BGM is included in the next update for this demo, you could use it as you like.
https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/1126224/Skele/CutsceneDemo1/CutsceneDemo1.html

 

You are on fire!!!! Keep up the great work

 

Just curious ... how do you achieve that blurring effect on the forearms?

 

oh, that's Unity Pro's Motion Blur.

If I just lower the speed, it will look silly without any reference object on white background.
I could add some flying pebble or FX or something as reference, but Motion blur is just at hand and easy to use.

 

Made a new Cutscene demo to include in v1.3
This one is mainly about QTE, I stripped out other unrelated stuff, you could take this as reference.

The main idea is simple, the cutscene is split into two parts, one is success procedure, the other is failed procedure, when the player failed a QTE, jump to failed procedure and done.

A simple BGM is included in the demo, you could find it in the v1.3 update.

https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/1126224/Skele/CutsceneDemo2/CutsceneDemo2.html

 

now i have to buy this
Big Time!

 

Hi, TheSonicTeam2014,

Thanks for the support.

Have to mention that animation authoring is neither that hard nor that easy. But hey, nobody thinks making game is an easy stuff, right?
You have to exercise and endeavor to get something, that's how the world is built

Being able to quickly make/modify resource is essential and important for indies and small teams. Even you have a big library of resource, you will always have to make some modifications to make them fit your specific needs, no matter it's code, model, animation, sound, FX or texture. Such things hardly change, unless you have big cash to hire a big team.

 

Hi, there,

I've made another playable demo for v1.3 update,

No need to mention again though, all animations, prefab-action, cutscenes are made with Skele in Unity Editor.

The character movement are implemented with RootMotion made from root bone curves,
The parry actions shows how to use one prefab actions on different pairs of characters.
The non-interactive-cutscene in this demo are quite simple.
Although I wanted to make a QTE prefab-actions for boss like in JoJo ASB, no time for this time, so I canceled it.

WSAD -- move, LMB/RMB -- attack, Q -- change lock target, E -- parry;

https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/1126224/Skele/PlayDemo0/PlayDemo0.html



The v1.3 pack should be online around 6/18

 

I think I need a cheat code ... can't get to the end!

 

lol, try parry.
The higher power enemy has, the higher damage parry will deal to them.

 

Hello, I would like to know how to edit imported animations. They are read only as far as I can tell.

Does it not work with mecanim? I'm trying to edit a humanoid animation with skele. I have the animation window open and its set to record.. but it looks like its not working.