UMotion - Animation Editor

UMotion can only read an animation when Unity pre-processed/imported it. So technically there is currently no way to directly read the FBX file by UMotion. But the previously mentioned workflow should be really close to what you're looking for:

Please note that with some editor scripting and by using the UMotion API you should be able to make this process even faster.

Best regards,
Peter

 

Hey, the newly released 2021.2.0f1 Unity shows asset postprocessors now on model import settings and I'm pretty sure Umotion is adding one.

Can you make it show something more legible than this? It had me scratching my head for a while...

 

Thanks for pointing that out. I wasn't aware of this new feature. I'm going to change that in the next UMotion patch release.

 

HI @SoxwareInteractive, I'm interested in this asset. May I know if it will be included in the coming black friday sale?

 

Hi @duminju1990,
thank you very much for your interest in UMotion Pro. Yes, UMotion Pro and also my other product the Animation Converter are going to be included in the upcoming black friday sale.

Please let me know in case you have any questions.

Best regards,
Peter

 

select all (ctrl+A), key modified (M)

 

How do I display vertex weights?
The youtube tutorial refers to Vertex Weights being an option in display options, but I don't see anything. It's also missing from the manual. https://www.soxware.com/umotion-manual/ConfigDisplay.html

 

Unfortunately vertex weight display was removed in V1.15. From the release notes:

Vertex weight visualization was "read-only", changing vertex weights has never been possible in UMotion.

May I ask you in which video tutorial you've stumbled across this feature?

 

Ah, that's a shame. Hopefully it can return in the future when Unity settles down a bit. I understood it was visualisation only, but it would be very useful.
This is the tutorial, at 7:00.

 

Hello I bought Your system Its really cool, but I have 2 questions:
1. How to export only humanoid bones when exporting animation to fbx. I want to export only what is necessary for animation, no additional empty game objects of my object. I know System is basing on what is in Character that I edit. But basically, if that is humanoid It And I have dozens of animations (mainly we use only skeleton if fbx with animation ) I dont like the thing that system dont have option like: "Export Only motion for humanoid" or something like that.

2.How to get rid of the need of renaming all objects if they are called the same? Cant it be done automatic way on export like changing it to some 1,2,3 etc if there is problem with fbx

3.I exported my animation to actual fbx, but it seems like it is connected to old one animation in the same fbx, when I choose that animation both animation are chosen at once, some problem with meta files or something? Overall my workflow is to keep in the same fbx animation of old anim (I rename it to OLD or something like that) and new animation, everything would be good if not the thing I described that when selecting one anim unity select both of them so replacing it is impossible.

 

Let's discuss this on the official support forum (please comment there to keep this thread here organized, no account needed, thanks): https://support.soxware.com/en/communities/1/topics/1054-export-only-humanoid-bones#comment-1871

 

ATTENTION: Known issue in Unity 2021.2 related to the tool assistant window in the scene view

Update: Fixed in Unity 2021.2.3f1 and above.

Unfortunately there is a Unity bug in Unity 2021.2 that is affecting UMotion you should be aware of:

• This bug prevents the tool assistant window from being displayed while animating in UMotion.
• If you have a character assigned to the UMotion pose editor, then select a different object in the scene that is not the character you are currently animating, an exception is thrown.

Muscle Groups - tool assistant window

This bug has already been reported to Unity during the Unity 2021.2 beta but unfortunately is not fixed yet.

Workaround:

• Disable the tool assistant window in the display section:
  
  
• OR downgrade to Unity 2021.1.

I'm sorry for the inconvenience. I'm in contact with Unity to get this bug fixed as soon as possible. Thanks for your understanding.

 

Sure Thanks I replied There

 

not the first time im unable to use newest stable unity version becacuse of one of the assets I use.

actually i already confirmed myself that this window wont display in newer unity, but will in older.

i googled this thread wondering if we are going to get a fix

as for now, im downgrading my main project, hoping it will not break things

 

before you do that, just zip the entire project folder as it is in one big zip file. if you get any issue with the downgrade, you move out in a different location the messed up project folder, and unzip the old version in its place. You can try the downgrade again but this time with more knowledge of what could go wrong and maybe plan for it.

 

Update: Please note that in Unity 2021.2.3f1 this bug is fixed. If you're using Untiy 2021.2, please update your Unity versions. Thanks Unity for providing a fix so quickly.

 

How to avoid interpolated frames when import animation from outside?




This is the original animation

 

Moved to the official support forum: https://support.soxware.com/en/comm...en-import-animation-from-outside#comment-1902

Please post in the thread linked above in case you have any questions (no account required to post).

 

UMotion V1.28 was just released on the Asset Store

Update now: UMotion Pro V1.28 | UMotion Community V1.28

This update is focused on extending the UMotion API and opens the door for extending UMotion's features even further with custom scripts.

Enhanced UMotion API
The UMotion API was extended with new properties/methods that allow you to:

• Add custom menu items to the clip editor
  
  
  Code (CSharp):

  1. // Place this script into a folder named "Editor"
  2. using UnityEngine;
  3. using UnityEditor;
  4. using UMotionEditor.API;
  5.  
  6. [InitializeOnLoad]
  7. public class UMotionExtensions
  8. {
  9.     static UMotionExtensions()
  10.     {
  11.         ClipEditor.AddMenuItem(ClipEditor.MenuCategory.Edit, "My Menu Item", MyMenuItemPressed);
  12.     }
  13.  
  14.     private static void MyMenuItemPressed()
  15.     {
  16.         Debug.Log("My menu item was pressed!");
  17.     }
  18. }
  19.  
  
  
• Add custom buttons to the pose editor
  
  
  Code (CSharp):

  1. // Place this script into a folder named "Editor"
  2. using UnityEngine;
  3. using UnityEditor;
  4. using UMotionEditor.API;
  5.  
  6. [InitializeOnLoad]
  7. public class UMotionExtensions
  8. {
  9.     static UMotionExtensions()
  10.     {
  11.         PoseEditor.AddButton(PoseEditor.FoldoutCategory.Tools, "My Button", "This is shown as tooltip.", MyButtonPressed);
  12.     }
  13.  
  14.     private static void MyButtonPressed()
  15.     {
  16.         Debug.Log("Button was pressed!");
  17.     }
  18. }
  
  
• Modify the pose of the character from script and to create key frames for the modifications
  
  
• Read and modify the clip editor's frame cursor

Following this link you can find the complete documentation of the UMotion API: https://www.soxware.com/umotion-manual/UMotionAPI.html

Complete Release Notes
This post highlights only a few of the new improvements. Please refer to the release notes for a complete list of changes.

Spoiler: Release Notes V1.28

UMotion V1.28
New or Changed Features

• Added new methods/properties to the UMotion API. It is now possible to add custom menu items to the Clip Editor, add custom buttons to the Pose Editor, to modify the bones/transforms local position, rotation and scale, create key frames and more.

Bug Fixes

• Fixed an index out of range exception when the root animated game object is assigned to the "Target" field in the IK setup wizard's "Custom IK" section.

Manual Changes

• Added descriptions of the new properties/methods in the "UMotion API" chapter.

Let me know if you like the new update. If you discover any problems, please issue a bug report at the official Support Forum.

 

I just updated Umotion to 1.28 and now I can't open the animation files made with 1.26.
Any help?
I'm using U2020.3.26

 

Answered here: https://support.soxware.com/en/comm...load-old-animation-files-128-126#comment-2017

 

I imported a Mixamo rig with the walking animation.
What is the workflow for getting that animation into the clip editor?
I am also trying to get it into the Unity animation editor because I am thinking that all these are some how dependant on each other.
Am I wrong in this thinking? Thank you for this great product.

 

to get it to work with umotion you need to set the imported mixamo fbx as humanoid/character. once this is set up correctly you can import the animations characters etc

regarding the unity animation editor, is basically a more general way of animating. this asset extends what that editor does by providing FK and IK workflow. Actually it works pretty good once you learn it. Don't forget to use the animation layers in this asset. It makes quite a difference in how easy you can change animations

 

As a follow on after changing the import to human the Mixamo animation is not producing keys in the Umotion or Unity animation timeline. I have the imported Mixamo in the Umotion pose editor but no keys from the animation show up in the clip editor. I have a controller selected in Unity animation properties but no keys show up in the Unity animator timeline. I am working both the Umotion and the Unity aspects hoping to get bone keys in the either timeline. I am thinking I have to do both? With no keys in the Unity side the character plunges to the default Unity hanging float pose.
If I get the Mixamo animation in the Umotion side will the keys appear in the Unity animation side?
I have imported before and used Umotion just for static poses.
This is my first crack at trying to get a Mixamo animation into Umotion.
I am building a library of animations. My thinking is in using humanoid then I can rotate single animations through many Mixamo humanoids.
What folder or area do imported animations go?
It looks like the Mixamo imports are generic. I can not find any tuts on this workflow.
I dropped the imported character directly into the scene and hit play. It did not animate even though the import object breakdown in the prefabs folder shows the animation is there and the inspector player shows the character walking. So I need those keys.
TIA.

 

I think you need to both watch some of the introduction tutorials and read the asset documentation. What you are describing is a result of not following the steps required to use this asset.

Is hard to "stumble upon" the correct route. I myself like to try figuring out something by using it but in this case you will avoid a lot of headache just by investing some time in reading the basics about this asset. Is faster

Also maybe is best to understand how animation works in unity without this asset.

To play an animation you need an animation controller and then a way to trigger that animation. Lot of basic stuff to learn but there are a lot of resources on internet that can help.

This is an advanced asset that was created because unity lacks some functionality you need, but you find out that you need them after you learn the unity editor. So best to leave it aside I think for now

 

I have an animation setup in both Unity and Umotion. This isnt my first time and I have entered my own keys in Umotion and Unity before. With this model the Unity time line and Umotion clip editor have no keys. The rig shows up in both Umotion and Unity. Unity and Umotion show bones in a rig that is posable. Its seems to be the animation part.

 

Hi,
thank you very much for reaching out. I've moved your support request to the official support forum in order to keep your request in a dedicated thread which makes it easier and more organized for me to handle all the independent support requests that I get. Please post there (no account required) in case you have any follow-up questions: https://support.soxware.com/en/communities/1/topics/1124-cant-import-mixamo-animation#comment-2078

Best regards,
Peter

 

Hello.

I would like open a animation in Maya, but when I open the fbx, it only contain a groups (thath represent the hierarchy's bones) with the transforms in world space. Is there a form of export a fbx with bones (no groups) or with the groups's transform in local?

Thanks

 

Thanks for reaching out. Do not export your animation as a separate *.FBX file, but instead use the "Update Existing File" mode (see export settings) to export your animation into your character's *.FBX file. That way, only the animation data is written into the file by UMotion and all the bones/rig setup of your character's FBX file is kept as it is.

If you have any follow-up questions, please create a dedicated forum thread in the official support forum (no account required!) which makes it easier and more organized for me to handle all the independent support requests that I get. It's also easier for others to search for existing answers to their questions.

Best regards,
Peter

 

Perfect, this worked for me.
Thanks

 

It is possible to make animation like this with Umotion?

 

Yes, this is possible. Use "constant" tangent/interpolation mode for your animation curves to get this "stepped" look that doesn't interpolate between key frames. If you have any follow-up questions, please open a dedicated support thread on the official support forum (no account required to post). This helps me keeping all the individual support requests that I receive better organized. Thanks.

 

Hello,

This asset allow Animation Rigging ?

 

With UMotion you create animations (*.anim or *.fbx) like you would in Maya or Blender. You can use the resulting animations in your game and combine it with Unity's animation rigging to modify the character's pose in real time to whatever pose your gameplay situation requires.

UMotion uses it's own IK setup (which is a 2 button setup) during edit time for using IK to author animations.

So a typical workflow would be: Create an animation using UMotion (and it's built in IK), then in game, use animation rigging to adjust the character pose at runtime. Hope this makes sense to you.

Best regards,
Peter

 

So... UMotion doesn't haven't many .cs scripts, yet it uses 2 assembly definitions, one for Runtime, and one for Editor. If you try to delete the assembly definitions, UMotion stops working. Assembly definitions, despite their advertising from Unity, are not free compile time reduction. They're actually a trade-off. Yes, you get to skip compilation of unreferenced assemblies, but each assembly definition file added to the project adds a fixed overhead to script recompilation time. If you acknowledge that overhead, assembly definitions only make sense to use when the time spent compiling code their code is greater than the time it takes to reload its assembly. The amount of time it takes to reload assembly definitions is not insignificant, and it really starts to add up in larger projects. You can start to see script compilation times exceed 15 seconds just from a few dozen assembly definitions. It's especially bad now that every asset on the asset store throws in assembly definitions regardless of how much code they have. Unity's own packages have this same problem too.

Anyway, would it be possible to remove the asmdefs? Or at least make it so you can remove them if you want to, without UMotion breaking?

Yours truly,
A programmer troubled by long compile times

 

I get your point. Unfortunately, the UMotion *.dlls are referencing the source files via their assembly definition files. That referencing is pre-compiled into the *.dlls so can't be changed based on the client project's situation. I'm sorry.

Best regards,
Peter

 

Hey! I wanted to ask for help. I am making a very simple animation for my penguin - in the uMotion editor everything works as expected:


However after exporting the anim and placing it in the animator, the animation just doesn't play at all:

The penguin is from the Unity Asset pack (https://assetstore.unity.com/packages/3d/characters/animals/low-poly-animated-animals-93089) and comes with some animations of his own, which works just fine. However those animations work, but the animation window is reporting the bones as missing:


Here is the import setting of the penguin in case it is important:


And lastly here is the bone structure as I see it in the hiearchy:


I know it is hard to help without much details and that there are a lots of things which may be wrong, but I am just completely lost.
I would HIGHLY appreciate even a suggestion about what to check / where to look / how to troublehshoot it in general .... I have no idea... I just need to be able to create some simple custom animations for the penguin and that is why I bought the uMotion Pro, which is otherwise great!

Thanks a lot for any advice

 

Thanks for reaching out. I've moved your topic into a dedicated support forum thread so that we can discuss this in full detail. You can find my answer here: https://support.soxware.com/en/communities/1/topics/1144-exported-animation-doesnt-play#comment-2144
Please post in the thread linked above (no account needed) in case you have any follow-up questions.

 

hello,

I just started use your package and i want to know:



On Unity we only share/upload:
Assets
Packages
ProjectSettings

But your asset also create other folders like UMotionData. What is it ? Do we need it ? Do we must upload it on github for share to others ?

Thanks.

 

Hi, please refer to this answer I gave to a similar question: https://support.soxware.com/en/comm...-gitignore-cache-etc-for-umotion#comment-1736

UMotion Data holds cache data and the backup files created by the auto backup feature. In case you have any further questions, please open a dedicated thread on the official support forum (no account required for posting there): https://support.soxware.com
The official support forum allows me to have one thread per support request which makes things much less messy as it is in this single thread here on the Unity forum.

 

Ok thanks

 

Hi, u motion doesnt seen my window section. Do you know why?

 

Hi there I've got a question if it's okay? I tried using the forum search, and couldn't find any questions about child-of, apologies if there are some that I couldn't see on my trawling.

I've bought the Umotion Pro Asset, and have finally got an excuse to put it through its paces (it looks incredible!), and I am particularly interested in the child-of contraints. I've watched the guides and read the documentation, then had a quick go at using it and it seems to do exactly what we need, but I've got two complications for our use case that I'm unsure are possible in Umotion?

The first is if I could set the childof contraint at runtime so that the same animations can be applied on different humanoid targets at runtime?

In the example video below, the two animators are independent, but then at roughly 4 seconds in there's a move where one wrestler picks up the other and they're both momentarily seemingly playing a 2 person animation, and that's the exact thing we'd love for our project.

The second is if we'd make the receiver of the attack animate using a separate controller or if Umotion would be able to work out what it needs to map to and apply that to our child node?

Thank you so much for your time and best wishes,

Adam

 

Forgot to ask that,as shown in the anim,the "shake head" action was like "horizantol swag" without any deviation from Y axis. For me , I can not implement that because the bone of the neck can only be rotated but cannot be translated.. So how to implement that? Is it about "RIG"?

 

Your Unity project has compile errors in some of your scripts. You need to fix them in order for Unity to correctly load new editor extensions (UMotion in this case). At the bottom of your screenshot, you can see the red text indicating the compile error you have. Open the console window, to see further details.

Moved to the official support forum: https://support.soxware.com/en/communities/1/topics/1151-wwf-smackdown-style-animation

Please post there (no account needed) when having follow-up questions.

Only characters defined as "generic" are capable of translating any bones. Characters that are using Unity's "humanoid" animation system, like in real-life, can only rotate there bones.

 

Hi @SoxwareInteractive

Firstly thanks for making such a great and essential tool, we've found nothing else like it on the store.

We've been getting a bit deeper into integrating it into our workflow pipeline and hitting some issues which I was hoping to ask you about to see what workarounds there might be or what we can do differently.

When exporting animations to an FBX we need to be using the option to export to an existing FBX to gain the benefits of an embedded humanoid avatar, however it's undesirable for us that the animation clips are added to the FBX for various reasons and have found no direct way to remove them once they've been added, the only way we have found is by reverting the FBX. The current way we deal with this problem is that we listen for the OnPostprocessAnimation event, once clips hit an FBX we use an editor coroutine to delay a frame and then we export the clip/s into individual .anim files and then revert changes to the FBX, noting that we use a coroutine because we have very limited use any AssetDatabase create or delete methods while post processing events are firing, Unity throws errors if we use these API's during the post processing events. I have tried many other ways during the post processing event to try and intercept the clips from being added or delete them, but nothing seems to work for us, even the integrated Unity way of removing animations via the inspector is as you may know only hiding the sub assets, it's not really deleting the clips.

The main reasons we don't want the FBX increasing in size is because it will end up with hundreds of animation clips, many of which will become outdated animations we no longer need to use. Loading this FBX at runtime will be a drain on memory and it removes our ability to manage which clips are compiled into our apps.

What we ideally wish we could do is a hybrid of your export options where we can choose an FBX containing an avatar to influence the export, but it exports to an individual file rather than being added to the FBX. If that is not possible I was wondering if you have any ideas on how to remove the animation clips UMotion adds or prevent them from being added to the FBX in the first place? we've exhausted ideas trying to solve this and I'm hoping you have a simple solution for us, it would greatly improve our how we use UMotion as part of our tool chain.

Thanks!

Jason

 

Moved and answered in the official support forum. Please comment there (no account required to post) in case you have any further questions: https://support.soxware.com/en/communities/1/topics/1164-custom-fbx-export-pipeline#comment-2212

 

Thanks, I'll check it out over there, cheers

 

Hello @SoxwareInteractive I thank you for making this great animation tool it does wonders. I have a Request is it possible by any chance you could show how to do turning animations for animals with 4 legs . I have tried but never seem to get to work ,or know if there is a reverse to do left and right exports . I have been using the deer and rabbit from Animal pack deluxe just no luck . The IK I'm not sure how it would work on 4 legged any ,and all If it is possible it would be greatly appreciated . Thank You For Your Time And Have A Great Day !

 

Hi, I've moved your support request to the official support forum. Please comment there (no account needed) in case you have any follow-up questions. Link: https://support.soxware.com/en/communities/1/topics/1173-4-legged-turning-animations