UMotion - Animation Editor

Hi,SoxwareInteractive.
I want to know When you will release v1.02.
I am looking forward it.

 

Hi @Piahouka,

glad you are looking forward to V1.02. I'm currently updating the IK constraint video tutorial and am creating a short video tutorial regarding the new mirror feature. The V1.02 release delayed a little bit because I wanted to add a user's feature request that was also related to IK.

The good news is, that the IK solver can now ignore bones within an IK chain thanks to "Chain Masking". What this means is that when you have for example a twist/roll bone in an animated characters forearm, you can mask this bone so that the IK constraint is only bending the shoulder and the elbow (and not bending the joint of the twist bone).



I will try to send V1.02 to the Asset Store for review this weekend.

 

UMotion V1.02p01 released

Happy to announce that UMotion V1.02p01 was released on the Asset Store. I've created a video to highlight some of the coolest new features:

Feature Highlights:

• Pose Mirroring
• IK Setup Wizard
• IK Chain Masking
• And much more... (see Release Notes below)

Spoiler: Release Notes V1.02

UMotion V1.02
New or Changed Features

• Implemented Pose Mirroring features that allow to easily copy poses from one side to the other (e.g. left hand to right hand). Please read the Tools - Chapter before using.
• Added an IK Setup Wizard to the Config Mode. It greatly simplifies creating complete IK rigs.
• Bones in an IK chain with visibility set to "Locked" are now not affected by the IK solver anymore.
• The "Chain Mask" property was added to the IK solver setup and the IK Setup Wizard (Custom Ik). It makes it possible to define which bones in an IK chain should be affected by the IK solver. This is especially useful for excluding "Twist" bones from the IK chain.
• Added a warning message to the Config Mode - Properties tab that informs the user why the visibility of generic bones that are inside the humanoid skeleton can't be changed.
• Holding ALT while clicking on a property in the "Animated Properties List" now selects that property in the Scene View.
• The import clips file browser dialog opens the folder of the last imported animation by default now. Thus making it faster to import multiple clips from the same folder.
• It is now possible to drag & drop files from Unity's Project window to the UMotion Import window. This makes it possible to add multiple files with only one action.
• Added the "Export Current Clip" menu entry to the Clip Editor's menu bar.

Bug Fixes

• Fixed that humanoid hand/foot IK curves are not exported (former known issue 05).
• Fixed culling errors that sometimes occured in the list views. These errors caused listed items to be partially invisible.
• Fixed usage of obsolete API event "playModeStateChange".
• Fixed that an invalid parent/child hierarchy is calculated when joints/transforms had nearly equal names.
• Fixed that an exception is thrown when undoing applying a GameObject to the Pose Editor for the first time.
• Fixed that the IK constraint doesn't solve correctly when the target bone chain is arranged in a perfect straight line in the reference pose.
• Fixed that parent link "Dashed" is not displayed when only the IK rig layer is visible.

Manual Changes

• Updated the "Animated Properties List" chapter based on the added feature.
• Updated the "Pose Mode / Tools" and the "Config Mode / Rig Hierarchy" chapters based on the added pose mirroring feature.
• Updated the "Import / Export" chapter based on the latest implementation changes.
• Updated the "Clip Editor / Menu Bar / File" chapter based on the latest implementation changes.
• Added the "IK Setup Wizard" chapter.
• Added "Lesson 9 - Pose Mirroring" to the general video tutorials.
• Updated the "(Pro) Lesson 2 - Inverse Kinematics" video tutorial.

Update now:
UMotion Community V1.02p01
UMotion Professional V1.02p01

Please let me know if you like the new features and stay tuned for more.

 

Hi! I just bought UMotion and watching the tutorial videos.
I got a question, can I add animation curves into the animation clips like adding them in an imported animation?
Cuz I don't see it's possible with unity's animation window(only events but no curves).
It's important to use the curves for events like foot step and sound effects when using a blend tree for the events of each animation will be flatten and played multiple times if multiple directions of the animations are blended together.

 

Hi @Harekelas
thank for your purchase and for reaching out. This is planned but not yet possible in UMotion. From the current point of view I will start working on this feature next week. If you want, you can send me an email with your invoice ID and I will send you a beta version as soon as I got this feature ready.

You can email me here.
You can follow the development of this feature on the official Road Map (it's called "Animating Component Properties" but it will also include custom curves like you requested).

 

Cool! It's great to know that you've already planned this feature!
I'm currently not working on animation aspects, will ask for the beta version if it is still not available in the store when I move to the animation part.
Just to confirm, will the curve work the same as unity's curve that can let me set a parameter with the same name of the curve in animator and receive the value from the curve?

 

Yes that is the goal. If there are no technical problems (and I don't see any at the moment) that's how I'm going to implement it. Additionally I want to support adding curves for any properties of components (e.g. to animate blend shape curves, collider size, etc.).

 

Superb!

 

Today Unity started the Mega Sale. Upgrade to UMotion Professional and save 25%.



PS: Have you recently checked out the UMotion Road Map? There is a big update incoming. More details soon...

 

UMotion V1.03 - Public Beta

Hey guys,
I'm happy to announce the first public beta test of a UMotion update. Due to the fact that UMotion V1.03 is the biggest update since the initial release of UMotion I have decided to do a public beta this time before shipping this update via the Asset Store. But first, let's take a look at the new trailer that will replace the 2 current ones on the Asset Store so that you get an idea of what's new:

For a complete list of all the new features, take a look below. If you want to get your hands on UMotion V1.03 and you're having some spare time in the next few days (or on the weekend) I would be happy if you sign up for the public beta.

To sign up, all you need to do is send me an email (<-- click on the link). Please include your Invoice ID so that I can verify that you own a copy of UMotion Professional. I will respond with the UMotion Professional V1.03 beta.


Feature Highlights in V1.03

1) Animation Layers

• My favorite new feature! Create a new layer on top of the existing animation clip and add modifications without the need to touch the existing key frames. Makes correcting existing animations a whole lot easier!
  
• Supports "additive" and "override" layers and a blend weight (0% - 100%) for each layer.

2) Convert any FK animation to IK

• Imported animations are always FK animations. With this new feature, you can convert every FK animation as if it was created using the IK rig you've setup for your character. Again greatly simplifies working with existing animations.
  
• Converting FK to IK can be done directly when importing the animation clip or by clicking on "Edit / FK to IK Conversion" in the Clip Editor menu bar.
  
• Works independent of the IK setup and the type of 3D model --> Works with dragons, spiders, human,...

3) Reworked IK Pinning & Child-Of Improvements

• The Child-Of constraint was improved so that whenever you key the "parent" property it will automatically key the position/rotation properties. This had to be done manually in the past and was an error prone process. More information can be found in the "Child-Of" chapter in the UMotion Manual.
  
• The Child-Of constraint was extended with an "IK Pinning" mode. This mode replaces the "parent" property by a "IK Pinning" checkbox . To pin the IK handle all that needs to be done is to click on the "IK Pinning" checkbox (in the channels view) or by pressing the shortcut "I".
  
• The easiest way to setup an IK rig that supports IK Pinning is by using the IK Setup Wizard.

4) Improved Animation Preview

• When looping is enabled in the Playback Navigation bar of the Clip Editor, dragging the cursor past the last key frame will automatically loop the animation.
  
• Root Motion animations can now be previewed correctly within UMotion. Meaning that the position won't reset once the animation loops.

Please let me know if you like the new video and the new features!

I'm looking forward to see you become a beta tester

 

Can I use umotion for multiple character animation?
I want to make fight scenes and I use "Slate" as cutscene editor.

 

Hi,
thanks for your interest in UMotion.

UMotion isn't integrated into "Slate" thus the time cursors of "Slate" and "UMotion" aren't synchronized which might make it hard to synchronize the animation you are currently editing with the other one which is controlled by "Slate". I think what might work (not tested as I don't own Slate) is that you have both animations in Slate. Then you mute the track you want to edit and open it within UMotion. Adjust the track with UMotion (you need to manually sync the Time Cursors of both applications), reexport the animation and then disable muting of the track again. Might not be the fastest workflow though...

Anyway UMotion Community is free so you can try it yourself before buying

 

Lets say I don't use slate- is multiple character animation an option at all?

 

There is one way to do it but it is very limited:
1) Create an empty GameObject and apply an Animator Component to it
2) Attach the characters you want to animate as a child (they need to be of type "Generic").
3) Now animate the empty GameObject using UMotion. You are able to create an animation that controls both characters. To play the animation, it needs to be applied to the Animator Component of the empty GameObject.

This has some limitations:
1) This doesn't work with animation type "Humanoid"
2) The exported animation needs to be played on the empty GameObject and can't be split into 2 animations
3) You aren't able to use existing animations as the "transform paths" of that animations aren't relative to the empty GameObject.

Depending on your use case this method will work just fine. For the future I plan to simplify this task and eliminate the above mentioned limitations but for the current UMotion version I think that's probably the only way to do it.

 

Hi!
I'm trying to use uMotion to modify the movement clips from Kubold (The "Movement Animset Pro")
But my character is the MCS (Morph3D Character System) male character.
Then I found the imported clips are not correctly re-targeted from MAP's skeleton to MCS's.
How do I modify humanoid clips across different skeletons?

 

Hi,
please don't use this forum thread for support questions as it's reserved for announcements and general discussions because I don't want that every user watching this thread is notified for every support question (this can get annoying for them) I have a dedicated support forum (no login required) and email support for that purpose.

Usually you just need to create a humanoid UMotion Project using the MCS male character. Then you import the movement clip from the animation set and everything should work as expected. To further trace down your issue, could you contact me via email support and provide some additional information, please:
1) How does the animation look like after importing?
2) It would be great if you could provide an example project/scene that I can use to reproduce your issue

Thanks and I'm looking forward to your email

 

The only video I can see that actually shows you how to use uMotion to make or modify is of fps hands. Would still love to see something more. I have had this on my wish list for a while now.

 

yes, would be great to see more videos.. I do a ton of animation work for clients, and my own work....I also own Perception Neuron, Mocap suit and software. So would be great to be able to tweak , and finish any cleans ups...

I do a lot of my clean up in Maya, Motion Builder.... but I can see this, being nice to finish off any work.. right in Unity. Sounds like that is what this tool is about as well among other things related to animation. ..correct me if I'm wrong.

Thank you.

 

Hi @Teila,

thank you so much for your patience! I wanted to wait until UMotion V1.03 is approved by the Asset Store but as you already had to wait for quite some time, here it is, the second episode of UMotion "In Practice". It's all about how you can modify and repair existing animations. I even used the animation pack you suggested:

Please let me know if you guys like the new video. Using Animation Layers and FK to IK Conversion opens up an extremely powerful way to edit existing animations (motion captured or from other sources) in UMotion.

Please note that most of the features shown in this video will ship with the V1.03 release which is currently under review. I expect it to go online around Tuesday.

 

You are absolutely correct. Using UMotion to edit motion captured animations has always been a priority for me. With Animation Layers and FK to IK Conversion doing this has become really easy in UMotion V1.03. Please see the video above to learn more or watch the New Trailer.

 

Ya already watched all the ones you have. Thanks.

 

Thank you so much! That is perfect and does not look too difficult. I appreciate the video and that you used the suggested animation pack. It helps to see an actual animation modified.

 

The Play mode alone made me pick it up. Thanks.

 

You're welcome. I'm glad you like it.

Thanks for your purchase Let me know if you have any questions or problems. I have a dedicated Support Forum where you can ask any question without the need to register/login.

 

Could someone explain what is the difference between Umotion and Final ik, please?

 

Sure.

UMotion is a complete Animation Editor (famous examples: Blender, Maya,...) integrated into Unity. You can use it to create new or edit existing animations. Once you finished your work with UMotion you get a *.anim file that you can then use in the Animator/Animation Component.

FinalIK is a runtime (= in game) Inverse Kinematics solution. Something like this is commonly used while playing your game to e.g. correct the foot position while walking up on stairs...

 

Can we use this for creating poses during runtime? Without having to go to the editor? We would want users to be able to poses characters.

 

Hi @CurtisMcGill,
thanks for reaching out!

I'm sorry, UMotion is only available inside the Unity Editor.

Let me know if there is anything else you need to know

 

Yes, which is huge, I bought this as someone who does a lot of animating... I have to do tweaks to animations all the time, Maya to Unity , Maya to Unreal I don't have this issue...but Unity, sometimes they don't always match, which drives me nuts so having something like Umotion is nice, so you can make adjustments in play mode ..or not. Which is great...and already paid for it self.... The first few times I used...

So if you do any animating in Unity, this should be a instant buy... for anyone that deals with characters for sure....

PS: I also own Neuron MoCap Software and Suit...Works great with the data from motion capture... Which is the main reason I bought, so I had a program in Unity to make tweaks...

 

Thank you very much for your nice words

 

I checked the roadmap and find that the animation component properties are almost finished.
Wondering if there will be an update after this section is done and when will the detailed description of all the new functions added in this section come out?

 

Hi @Harekelas,

thank you very much for your interest into this topic. Yes, as soon as this feature is finished a new Update (V1.04) will be released. Would you be interested to participate a short beta test of the new version over the weekend? If so, I would send you the beta as soon as it is ready (I have your email address).

A detailed description of the new features will be available in the UMotion manual and in the release notes. I'm planning to update the "Custom Property Constraint" video tutorial, too.

 

Sure! Happy to test new features!

 

UMotion V1.04 Released

UMotion V1.04 was just approved by the Asset Store team.

IMPORTANT: Please remove the previous UMotion installation before updating. Otherwise you will get an exception when starting UMotion.

Feature Highlights:

• Custom Property Improvements:
  • Animate Blend Shapes
  • Animate any Component/MonoBehaviour Property
  • Animate Animator Parameters
  • Now also available in UMotion Community!
• Playback Navigation Improvements:
  • Play From Beginning Toggle
  • Play Backwards

The Custom Property Tutorial Video has not been updated yet. Please check out the appropriate chapter in the manual ("Clip Editor/Constraints/Custom Property") to learn more about the new features.

 

Wow, at this speed Motionbuilder will be obsolet in 3 month.

 

+/- one or two days Thanks for the nice words

 

Just a crazy idea, would it be possible to add mesh skinning support?
I'm just recently using uMotion, and I see you can display the vertex weights already.

Would it be possible to make a Skinning tool also? so we could rig and skin directly inside unity?

I don't know how much work would it require, but it seems like this asset already has a lot of it figured out.

Even if it's a separate asset I would buy it, just saying

 

Same here.

 

Hey,
thanks for your feature request I highly appreciate that.

Technically speaking this would be very hard to realize.
Also, animating inside Unity has the big advantage that you save time because you don't have to switch between applications and you can easily make an animation fit into your game's scene/environment. For skinning, I don't see much benefit as it is a process that involves no application switching and is completely independent to the game's scene. Additionally services like Mixamo can rig and skin a model automatically and it's also one of the (few) things that are fairly simple to do in Blender.

I'm sorry but due to the fact that it would be really complex to implement for not so much benefit I'm not able to fullfill this Christmas wish I hope you understand the situation.

 

Hi,
I would like to ask if your amazing looking asset could help with re-targeting of bones/meshes (or adjust the skeleton rigging of a mesh)?

 

Hi @khos,
thanks for your question and for the compliment.

When characters are set to be "Humanoid" in Unity, they automatically support animation re-targeting. That way you are able to use the same animation for multiple characters. UMotion supports editing humanoid animation so you can use UMotion to edit and improve re-targeted animations.

UMotion is designed as Animation Editor meaning that it is supported to modify and create animations but rigging and skinning is not possible (please check out my previous post for more details).

Let me know if you have any further questions.

 

Hi, many thanks for your answer. Could I ask for more clarification please: What I am trying to find is if I could use your asset to modify bones/skeletons of custom animals to work with another asset called " Horse Animset Pro 3", I think it might be possible, would be very cool if this were the case. re-targeting rigging and skinning? e,g, rename the bones, might that work, or move them around to nicer positions?

 

Sure no problem, thanks for answering... I knew it was a crazy request.

I have another request...

Could you add a toggle button or something in the Display menur or an eye icon or something, to Hide the parameters that have no Keyframe info or modifications yet?

Just hide it from the timeline to have a clearer view of my keyframes

Perhaps that's already possible and I just can't find it.

 

Also another feature that I think It would be really nice to have is when Animating Humanoids with Hands.

There's this Software for Character Posing to be used as references for drawing called DesignDoll, they have this feature for posing Hands.

http://terawell.net/terawell/?page_id=2407

 

this asset already did it with Humanoids rigs... using the muscle avatar editor....
https://www.assetstore.unity3d.com/en/#!/content/32233


Just saying you can do it too Peter

 

Hi @khos,

maybe @Malbers can join this conversation (he is the creator of "Horse Animset Pro"). Unity (and thus also UMotion) doesn't support re-targeting animations of type Generic (I assume that the Horses are set up as generic). I'm afraid that doing the re-targeting "by hand" by renaming and adjusting the rig to match the rig the animations have been created for might not produce usable results.
Anyway to answer your original question, you will need a 3D modeling application to do modifications on the rig (renaming bones and modifying the bind pose). This is not supported by UMotion.

Thanks for the feature request. Yep that's already on my Roadmap (see "Property Filter").

What you can do already is setting bones/transforms visibility to "Locked" (you can do this in Config Mode). That makes them disappear in the Clip Editor and in the Scene View.

Also 100% agree with you. This feature is also already on the Roadmap and scheduled for the next update (their will be patch releases in the meantime). See "Humanoid Muscle Group Editing".

Hey @Malbers,

thanks for pointing that out. Yep I know that asset. It is using the same sliders as you see when configuring an avatar in Unity (when clicking on the "Muscles" tab). My implementation is planned to use different "muscle groups" as I think the current groups that Unity defined are not meant for animating and don't seem to be very useful in my opinion (except the finger groups). I guess I will have to do a few experiments to find some nice combinations.

 

Hi, I have another christmas wish

Could you add an "Auto-Loop" option? so when it is checked the First and Last frame of the animation would always mirror eachother?, So if I make a change in any of them I don't have to update the other and then ensure a loop able animation.

 

Hi @daville,
thanks for the feature request.

I agree that this might be useful. Because you can currently copy and paste the last frame onto the first one (or the other way around) using just 2 mouse clicks (right click --> Copy on the "master key" of the last frame then right click --> Paste on the first master key) I need to give other features higher priority (things like the muscle group editing etc. which have been requested already several times). I've put this on my internal to-do list so that the idea doesn't get lost.

 

Is there some reason everything is dumped into Editor Default Resources? Why is there hard links to that location? In a bigger project organization is important and that's a weird one. Far better to put it in Plugins/Umotion so it doesn't add to the assembly reload times of the rest of the project. If you need it to be in the Editor Resources dir it does not need to be in a root directory called Editor Default Resources. You can put a sub directory of your main UMotion directory called Editor Default Resources and put the necessary files in there and Unity will still find it.

 

Hi @Fuzzy_Slippers,
thanks for reaching out.

EDIT: Since UMotion V1.06 it's possible to place the UMotion folder anywhere in your project.

The "Editor Default Resources" folder is a special folder defined by Unity. UMotion is using the Editor Default Resources folder for 2 reasons:

1. It is a convenient way for editor scripts to load assets on-demand by using the EditorGUIUtility.Load method. (not used since UMotion V1.06)
2. It ensures that none of the files of UMotion (which is an editor only asset) ends up in a built game.

(source: Unity Wiki - Special Folders - Editor Default Resources, Unity Manual - Special Folders)

The code of UMotion is already inside a plugins folder (see "Editor Default Resources/UMotionEditor/Plugins"). As UMotion is built as a *.dll (except a few small *.cs files) it should add nearly no additional compilation time to your project.
I tested moving the Plugins folder out of the "Editor Default Resources" folder into the root of the "Assets" folder as you suggested but I noticed no difference in compilation times.

EDIT: Possible since UMotion V1.06.

According to the Unity manual that this is not possible for the special "Editor Default Resources" folder:

(source: Unity Manual - Special Folders)

I fully understand that using several assets inside a big project can get quite messy. I think the way UMotion's folder architecture is currently organized is already the most practical for an "editor only asset". I would also wish that the "Editor Default Resources" folder must not be inside the root of the "Assets" folder but according to the Unity Manual that's a limitation we have to live with...