Skele: Character Animation Tools, Cutscenes and Animations authoring tools

Well, I've not tried that complex rig setup, I might do some investigations, and gather some examples from Blender about that.

 

I already do that, pole target are a staple of animation and allow to avoid many headache while increasing expressiveness (edit: it allow for stable pointing of the knee and elbow when animating the whole arm, constant adjustment of rotation is only clunky), if possible it would be cool if you can investigate it, Umotion just appeared and allow that at least.

I'm currently pushing skele (and unity lol) to its limit, to see if it can replace animation from external software, aside from pole target and "driver constraint" it's almost complete, most of the issue I have are with unity itself (faulty selection, dopesheet interface).

I'm trying to make a complete character set up (minus facial animation, for the moment), currently having trouble with shoulder, trying to find the best way to constrain them.

In blender they are call Driver constraints, but they are semi programmable, I don't think we need such complexity, being able to move multiple targets (like hand spread and pronation, or facial animation) is great, interpolating between two compatible set of pose is also great and would cover 80% of the use case (it's mostly use with character for facial or hand animation, to control at the emotion or phoneme level).


EDIT:
Duplicating a set up like rigify would be a good test case if you are interested in character set up. I think there is free training rig/model in blender (sintel? I need to check, I'll report when I do) for people to practice animation, duplicating them in skele with similar parameter would be another great way to make something that stand.

 

I think there's still no human model in skele TMPxyz
I give you one
makeHuman default, decinated with game engine rig
works pretty good

 

noticed it needed more triangles on the dress

 

Hi, dibdab,

Thank you for your great art works!

Do you have a personal artist page that I can link to on online manual? like openGameArt.org / patreon / etc?

I was thinking about including the model in skele pack directly, but after looking at MH's license I think I better not try redistributing it in a paid proprietary software.

Best regards,

 

Good point, i will consider improving the rig towards blender standards.

Meanwhile it's still an issue to work with the Unity AnimationView & Timeline here. I was expecting Timeline to be a superset of AnimationView, but turns out it's kinda different from what i thought. It would be great if it could support making a multiple character clips right within Timeline. But, whatever we will try sorting it out.

 

Hi, Developers,

A notification about support mails:

As there's expected to be some network connectivity problem here in this whole month, if you need support, please post the issue here or use forum private mail, instead of posting to the gmail address.

Sorry for the inconvenience, we've been trying to solving this problem recently, I'll put a notice here when the gmail address is back to service,

Best regards,

 

I have almost done a full complete rig (not face and hand) by placing all the constraint according to real human's. I can attest unity is so far the biggest problem, selection don't plain work, and I'm on sparse rig, when selecting a gizmo, it select anything (not related to the rig) behind it but the gizmo, unless the gizmo is explicitly seen with the sky as a direct background ... That hinder the process and make anything complex almost impossible. It's not skele fault but being able to have a mode that mask all selection but the establish gizmo for a given rig (or selected set of rig) would be a huge plus.

I still have some test to do, I did some fumble and need to start over with the new knowledge to see if there is other thing beyond selection and articulation pole target. If that work I hope a facial rig is possible, that would be the cherry on the cake!

 

Just a simple question, is there a way to combine skeleton animation with the constrain system? SO far the constraint gizmo, I use to pose, lock animation in the skeleton system. I have now a full set up of constraint but I can't do anything then in the skeleton editor

 

Just purchased. Downloaded and imported into my project. I'm getting the script error:
Assets/Skele/Common/Utility.cs(1897,33): error CS0433: The imported type `FullSerializer.fsSerializer' is defined multiple times

I do think it's a conflict with BayatGames SaveGame system. However I'm not sure what to change without breaking one or the other... classic problem of having to deal with something I didn't code myself.

Shouldn't these serializers be considered local in the scope of their respective methods and not really throwing the errors? Curious why it's not throwing an error about the SaveGameJasonSerializer class as well but it is highlighting it in VS1015.

Or what FullSerializer.dll to I get rid of?

Well, I guess it's working after deleting the one that imported with Skele, but not sure if good or bad. I haven't been working with many imported assets and I've never dealt with multiple .dlls being in a project before.

 

Is there no ability to mirror a bone to another? Tried using blender and this at the same time to solve the lack of copying data from mirrored bones, but having trouble getting the .dae to function in blender without the keys being way off and the bones all point up and loose their parenting data. I'm having a really hard time getting this product to actually be of any real use out of the box. I kind of like it's IK method better than Blender's but I'm finding it hard to work between the two programs.

 

Im' not having trouble with dae export into blender (I'm on 1.9.8 p1) but I'm just using for converting rigs.

if only want to mirror Left/Right side most simple (and quite effective) is to tick the mirror in animation panel.


TMPxyz, I think MH license is CC0, so no restriction what you do with the models.

 

I’m trying to use the animation mirror tool to mirror the left and right sides of my character, but the clips it spits out are not mirrored and seem identical to the original. I’m, also not seeing any of the red X messages showing the changes in the animation mirror window. I’m not getting any console errors. I’m using a standard y-bot from Mixamo set to a generic rig(which the code seems to support). Mirroring using Unity's humanoid rig option is not going to work for me, as I will need to further edit the mirrored animations to appear different from the originals. I’m using Unity 2017.1.1f1. Any help you can give would be appreciated.

 

Hi, developers,

The original gmail address is back to service now,

The mails stacked in the mailbox are replied already.

Sorry for the inconvenience,

Best regards,

 

Hi, CRYWOLF86,

Thanks for your feedback

The old animation mirror tool is scheduled to be removed, if you need to mirror your clips, here's a simpler solution:



1) If you have Humanoid clip and need mirrored Humanoid clip:
Just tick the "Mirror" option for the clip in Animator graph.
Adjust the cycle offset if the timing is a little off ( like the gif above )


2) If you have humanoid clip and need mirrored generic clips:
Make a mirror-ed version of clip on Humanoid model, and use MuscleClipConverter to convert it to the Generic-clip.
MuscleClipConverter : http://www.tmpxyz.com/Skele/docs/84-utility/80-utilities?showall=&start=2

3) If you have generic clip and need mirrored humanoid clip:
Export the generic clip with DAE Exporter, set the DAE archive as Humanoid and get the humanoid clip and mirror it in animator graph;
DAE Exporter: http://www.tmpxyz.com/Skele/docs/81-exporter/77-dae-exporter-manual

4) If you have generic clip and need mirrored generic clip:
After finishing 3), use MuscleClipConverter to convert the mirror-ed clip to Generic clip;


(I'll update this method to the manual and video tutorial if no issues are found recently)

If the humanoid clip's timing is off a bit, Adjust the "cycle offset" setting in Animator graph

Tell me if you need more clarifications,

Best regards,

 

Hi, Pinkuboxu,

Thanks for your feedback

#965 is the recommended generic clip mirror-ing method right now. hope it can help.

The bone parenting (hierarchy) data is intact, or the animation won't work
What makes the bones look to be detached from each other, is that Blender has a different bone axis setting from Unity3d (and from 3dmax iirc).
Blender bones is right-handed y-forward, and Unity is left-handed z-forward.

[This is a image of blender importing FBX file, the bones would look detached too, as the blender uses a different bone axis setting]

Just as a use-case survey, could you describe your expected workflow? Maybe I could adjust the tools to better fit your need.

It should be fine to delete it if you've a newer version, I believe the fullserializer should be able to maintain the API backward compatibility.
Also Skele only uses the fullserializer in small amount ( pose manager ), so it's a tiny chance you get issues by this.

Best regards,

 

It doesn't help. I would need an option to mirror key frames and even specific bones. Otherwise, I have to do that in Blender, so I end up just staying in blender for the majority of animating walk cycles and such.

So DAE export doesn't work in Blender or am I using the wrong settings? It almost works but the rotations are off. Also, not sure what steps to take to take the animation from the imported DAE skeleton and put it to the current Armature of my model in Blender. I assumed to just copy the animation/action data over. The effect is improper rotations even if the DAE imported skeleton animates fine in Blender and even has the same bone names as the original, save for the Constraints and Widgets I don't export in the first place.

I have a rig that has the more complected setups that I generally do by hand depending on character. I try to keep all humanoid types conform to Unity's needs but also have the non-deforming types. Normal ones like IK constraints with poles and such. I have drivers attached to empties/bones that turn off things like FK/IK, eye focus, and manipulate shape keys but they don't export. The Auto IK in blender isn't very useful so I've found Skele's to work nicely for certain IK manipulation and tweaks after getting it mostly right in Blender. For certain animations, like animations where I need to line up characters for precise interaction in the game world, I require multiple animations to work together, Skele isn't so good for that as it is per character. Though, I'd understand it's probably a limitation of Unity, at least out of the box, that you can't play animations simultaneously in the editor view. I would like to get animations from unity into blender as well, prototyping in Unity with Skele and then porting into Blender to add more features.

On another note, I've been experiencing a bug where Skele's manipulators stop moving. I have to restart Unity so they work again. This maybe a bug in Unity as I've had to restart or reset my layout often over the past few years to get editing in the Scene view to work again for a few things, like the cloth constraint editor. This has happened since early Unity5 for me though. Not sure why.

Other than that I can't ask you to make Skele work seamlessly with Blender. But that would be ideal. Someway to have Blender and Unity work together better. I'd use another program but I've been using Blender since 1998 (not that I'm really great with it even then) and probably can't afford the time to learn something else right now.

 

Hi, neoshaman,

All the constraints can run both in design-time & runtime, so you could Animate their properties with AnimationView.
You don't have to bake it into animation clip. Baking into clip could make the motion be used on models without the constraints.
If you can directly use the constrainted model, then you could directly animate the constraints instead.

e.g.: You could Animate a IK target with AnimationView, and a lot of the properties of constraints can be animated too.

Best regards,

 

Hi thanks for your answers, I have spend enough time with Skele and now and have set out to do what I wanted and reach the limitation.

My conclusion is that, though skele is a solid asset and good for adjusting and simple animation, it's not stable enough for more like I was pushing it to be. Here some problem I have found no solution and aren't unity's fault (damn the selection!):

1 - Ik isn't stable enough for complex animation, it frequently blew up on small adjustement with no easy possibility of recovery (like the model is completely curl up despite putting constraint everywhere).
2 - relative to 1, scrubbing back and forth the animation will have articulation slowly drift and jitters, for example the thigh will move and carefully placed hands won't be in contact anymore.
3 - relative to 2, IK articulation jitter and mess animation and make the lack of elbow target painful,
4 - Target empty used for selection drift after heavy use and mess the transform they are controlling, they no longer align after a while.
5 - target empty blew the IK even faster when they are placed too far, and they blew again when I tried to put them back at reasonable distance, and they lost all sort of orientation with the transform they control even faster.

Suggestion I would like to see:
- A customizable control panel to control the various empties and constraint,
- a way to snap back ore even clamp the selection empty to their target
- more stable IK
- having a selection system that mask all selection empties from the scene, like in skeleton mode, to manipulate only skele element safely
- just expand the pinned IK of the skeleton mode, it's just better overall and way more intuitive

Of course those are just suggestions and not real request, I'll be moving on to something else now I have thoroughly tested the possibility to use skele for everything.

 

Hi, neoshaman,

Thanks a lot for all your extensive detailed feedback

I've taken note all of your feedback and suggestions, In the v2.0 update I'll try revising the animation toolset and workflow according to all the feedbacks I've collected so far.

(Currently I've a indie-game project at hand, also as a field-test for my toolsets, v2.0 will be made based on all the experiences and feedbacks)

Thanks again for all the feedback,

Best regards,

 

I understand that it is possible to make full cutscenes with quick time events in skele.
But what do i do about lip sync for the cut scenes?
Can I integrate lipsync pro? some other way?
BTW i use blender

 

Hi, TMPxyz.

Could you tell me what did unity do when Generic Animation Clip converted to Humanoid Muscle Clip ?
I am very confuse with it . Please help me .

 

This asset has a great reputation

If I buy it, can I download an earlier version that's compatible with Unity 5.2.2? i dont mind if it doesnt have all the bells and whistles.

 

Is there a tutorial on how to "lock" joints when animating?

I want to animated fingers and don't want the hand to move while I move the fingers.

 

That's the default behavior, what are you doing?

 

Hi, arie1994,

Thanks for your feedback.

I don't have lipsync pro asset here, so I cannot answer for sure.

The file format usually doesn't really matter for Skele package, but be warned that the bone axis of .blender file is different from .fbx files,
Which means that if you make an animation clip with .blender file first, then if you want to convert the blender file to fbx, then you will also need to export the clip with DAE exporter to ensure the bone axis in clip is changed too.

Best regards,

 

Hi, monkeymonkey,

Thanks for your feedback,

http://blogs.unity3d.com/2014/05/26/mecanim-humanoids/
^-- This blog should be able to give you a good overview of Unity humanoid muscle clip

Best regards,

 

Hi, protopop,

Thanks for your interest,

I didn't maintain git tags at that time so it's very hard now to find the corresponding revisions for Unity before 5.3. I still have a very old pack targeting 4.6 though.

Sorry, I think it's not available now. I would remember to make tags for 5.3

Best regards,

 

Hi, sbmhome,

Thanks for your feedback

Like neoshaman pointed out, that should be the default behaviour.

Are you using FK or IK? FK should affect only one joint, if you're using IK, you could also lengthen or shorten the IK link with the button in the GUI. ( the Buttons besides the "Link Length : 2" in the pic below )



You could also check the online manual:
http://www.tmpxyz.com/Skele/docs/79-skeletonanim/74-skeleton-animation-tutorial?showall=&limitstart=

Best regards,

 

Ok, I got it now. I didn’t know that the length could be increased.

I was trying to pin joints, but was having trouble with it...thanks.

 

Thank you. It's OK now because i had to upgrade for the iPhone X fix, so i am (finally) on Unity 5.6.2p1 so Skele should be all good.

I totally understand about digging for old files It's hard enough maintaining a current version as is.

EDIT: Just picked it up. Ive been eyeing this for a few years. Im excited to play around with it. Thank you.

 

Hello question, are you able to use this tool to do any Mo Cap clean up??? I own Maya, Motion Builder, and do all my clean up there, but looking for a tool to do smaller tweaks inside Unity.

Thanks...

 

I want to use the Morph Manipulator to morph a Character that is a Skinned Mesh. After watching your video, you saved the morphs as animations. I would rather just save the morphs (deforms) and access them in code...is this possible?

 

Hi there.
I have Skele in my project but it cause unity crash when I import some assets. When I remove skele it works good again. I've tried to figure out which asset isn't compatible with Skele but it is more complicate that this! for example on a new project it works with suimono water but in my project I can't have suimono and skele together! or mesh baker and skele together.

 

Hi, I'm using Skele with mocap humanoid animations, I've converted the animations to generic perfectly fine and got everything working with the Skele GUI as expected. My only issue is when using the IK feature to modify the animations when set to record I seem to get the errors below when moving the IK handles. I tried creating an empty clip to record IK and everything worked ok also so it's related to the clip with existing keyframes I'm using. I'm assuming this is some sort of overwrite error as keyframes exist in the timeline where I would like to record the IK handle location. Do you know why this is occurring and how I can modify the animation clip with IK without errors?

Thanks

Code (CSharp):

1. ArgumentException: An element with the same key already exists in the dictionary.
2. System.Collections.Generic.Dictionary`2[System.Int32,System.Int32].Add (Int32 key, Int32 value) (at /Users/builduser/buildslave/mono/build/mcs/class/corlib/System.Collections.Generic/Dictionary.cs:404)
3. UnityEditor.CurveEditor.set_animationCurves (UnityEditor.CurveWrapper[] value) (at C:/buildslave/unity/build/Editor/Mono/Animation/AnimationWindow/CurveEditor.cs:207)
4. UnityEditor.AnimEditor.UpdateCurveEditorData () (at C:/buildslave/unity/build/Editor/Mono/Animation/AnimationWindow/AnimEditor.cs:1147)
5. UnityEditor.AnimEditor.UpdateSelectedKeysToCurveEditor () (at C:/buildslave/unity/build/Editor/Mono/Animation/AnimationWindow/AnimEditor.cs:1077)
6. UnityEditor.AnimEditor.SaveCurveEditorKeySelection () (at C:/buildslave/unity/build/Editor/Mono/Animation/AnimationWindow/AnimEditor.cs:1096)
7. UnityEditor.AnimEditor.BeginKeyModification () (at C:/buildslave/unity/build/Editor/Mono/Animation/AnimationWindow/AnimEditor.cs:1103)
8. UnityEditorInternal.AnimationWindowControl.BeginKeyModification () (at C:/buildslave/unity/build/Editor/Mono/Animation/AnimationWindow/AnimationWindowControl.cs:855)
9. UnityEditorInternal.AnimationWindowControl.ProcessAutoKey (UnityEditor.UndoPropertyModification[] modifications) (at C:/buildslave/unity/build/Editor/Mono/Animation/AnimationWindow/AnimationWindowControl.cs:539)
10. UnityEditorInternal.AnimationWindowControl.PostprocessAnimationRecordingModifications (UnityEditor.UndoPropertyModification[] modifications) (at C:/buildslave/unity/build/Editor/Mono/Animation/AnimationWindow/AnimationWindowControl.cs:530)
11. UnityEditor.Undo.InvokePostprocessModifications (UnityEditor.UndoPropertyModification[] modifications) (at C:/buildslave/unity/build/artifacts/generated/common/editor/UndoBindings.gen.cs:189)

 

Yes its doable. I've just done it this evening. There are hoops to jump through though if using humanoid mocap animations. You have to essentially copy your human rig and make the copy generic. You have to also convert the animation clips to generic using the Muscle Clip converter. At which point you can then assign it to the generic model and use Skele to animate in Unity, overwrite keys etc, use IK. What I liked is the Anim Compressor tool in the Skele menu which did a pretty good job of optimising the generic animation clips also. Once you finish the cleanup you can convert the animation to DAE file using the DAE Exporter and assign it back to the humanoid rig.

 

Hi, @TMPxyz
Awesome tool! This is exactly what I need.
Is there any way to export FBX files? Select a gameObject, and animation clip created manually in unity editor, then export to a FBX file? The only unity plugin I found that can do this is "FBX Importer & Exporter for Unity", but that tool has no tech support, and is very hard to use.
Thanks a lot.

 

Hi,

I'm using 5.6.4f1 and am having issues with Root Motion. I've looked at the videos and gotchas and still the root motion does not seem to transfer over after the export. The animation is in place. Any suggestions?

Regards.

EDIT: I was able to get the root motion to export properly if I remove the root node and move the root motion animation data to the "hips". This is listed as fixed in 1.9.8 p1 which I'm using but it appears it's still broken, at least for the version of Unity I'm using. Can you please verify.

EDIT2: I though that Skele was causing Unity to crash however I don't think that's the case anymore. I'm running on iMac with Experimental Metal Editor option turned on. I think that was causing the crashes. The more windows were open the more likely it seemed that the crash happened, and I happened to have Skele with multiple windows open, so it looked like a coincidence. This is just a heads up for anyone with Metal experimental support enabled, beware.

 

Hi

I'm currently using Unity version 2017.3.1f1 Personal(64bit), installed Skele(ver. 1.9.8 p1) and I cannot use PoseManager. When I push "G" button on animation helper, "Enter Pose Manager" message shows up but there is no other windows coming up like this video(

).

I really appreciate if there is any suggestions.

 

Hi, AKQJ10,

Thanks for your feedback

Nope, we don't export FBX, but we can export DAE.
DAE has a clear specification, our exporter implementation is dll-less version so we can export in runtime and in multi-platforms. You could try export a model in your game if you need it.

Best regards,

 

Hi, JsterGameCraft,

Thanks for your feedback

You've checked the manual on RootMotion?
http://www.tmpxyz.com/Skele/docs/84-utility/80-utilities?showall=&start=6

If that doesn't work still, please send your model + anim to via e-mail.
I would try figuring out what happens here.


Best regards,

 

Hi,

Yes, I've looked at the videos and manual on root motion and verified that the issue was there. I've since changed to not use root motion (design decision driven by other factors) so this bug doesn't really effect me anymore at this time but you might still want to have a look at it, in case someone else runs into it. I don't remember which model I used in particular but it was either the stock Mixamo Y bot male model, or the Little Heroes pack Basic Normal model from the asset store. It's been a few weeks so I can't say 100% but I think both of these models had an issue.

Regards.

 

Hi, Kohei1234,

Thanks for your feedback

What do you mean that no window appear? The pose manager like below doesn't pop up?



Interesting, Could you give more details?

1) Are you using some high resolution screen (like Mac?)
2) Is there any red error messages in your console window during the procedure?

Best regards,

 

My guess is that the "Root Motion Node" not set to "<Root Transform>" in the anim archive, remembered to hear similar feedback before.

I will check it out with LittleHeroesPack later.

Best,

 

Hi,

just a brief question: is this Addon still under development? The last Update (1.9.8p1) is from October 2017 and now the Console is throwing errors just by zooming in and out in the scene view even on Unity 5.6.5 after importing Skele:

NullReferenceException: Object reference not set to an instance of an object
AnimatorData.OnDrawGizmos () (at Assets/Skele/AnimatorSP/Files/AnimatorData.cs:132)
UnityEditor.DockArea:OnGUI()


Will there be some major Update to Skele with Humanoid-Clip editing and up-to-date Unity-API integration?

Cheers!

 

Quick question. Is there a way to scale the bone handles according to the distance from them? I'm having quite a tough time manipulating fingers with the handles being a quarter of the size of the screen.

 

Hi,

I'm using 5.6.5f1 (64bit) on a Mac. I get following in the console:

Singleton.Awake: ConstraintManager
UnityEngine.Debug:Log(Object)
MH.Dbg:Log(String) (at Assets/Skele/Common/Dbg.cs:24)
MH.Dbg:Log(String, String) (at Assets/Skele/Common/Dbg.cs:35)
MH.Singleton`1:Awake() (at Assets/Skele/Common/Singleton.cs:113)

Singleton.Awake: ConstraintManager
UnityEngine.Debug:Log(Object)
MH.Dbg:Log(String) (at Assets/Skele/Common/Dbg.cs:24)
MH.Dbg:Log(String, String) (at Assets/Skele/Common/Dbg.cs:35)
MH.Singleton`1:Awake() (at Assets/Skele/Common/Singleton.cs:113)
MH.Singleton`1:get_Instance() (at Assets/Skele/Common/Singleton.cs:57)
MH.Constraints.ConstraintStack:Start() (at Assets/Skele/Constraints/Scripts/ConstraintStack.cs:90)

Are these messages expected? Do they indicate a problem? If they do not I think it would be a good idea to hide since developer does not need to see it.

Regards.

 

Pretty sure Skele corrupted my project. I'm wondering if any work is still being done on this plugin. If it is abandoned can you please let people know.

 

Hi, da_ace23,

Thanks for your feedback

This project is under maintainence, but if you're asking about new features, it will not come in a short time, to be frank.

I'd been having trouble to keep on schedule with my indie development last month, so the support got kinda lax last 30 days.
And, recently, the schedule problem has changed... from bad to worse

But I'm not dropping support, will try coming back every week, well, I'll fix the obvious incompability error if new Unity version comes out, or if there's any simple improvement I can get done quickly.

As for new things, I'm trying to get used to the Timeline system in unity2017 during my development and to figure out if there is place for integration or workflow improvement. I'll come back to major update after I got my indie development done.

Have you tried importing in a fresh empty project? Is the error still there?

I've just tested on Unity5.6.5 and 2017.2, and no such errors appear.

If such error happens in new project, please tell me, I'll help to pinpoint it.

Best regards,

 

Ah, it's possible to define a scale relation between handle size and distance by manipulating the Handles.matrix, but currently I don't quite have the time to modify it,

I've a suggestion that you could press 'C' after you select the bone, it will center your view to the bone and zoom near it, would be helpful to tweak the hand bones

Best regards,