UMotion - Animation Editor

In the Child-Of Constraint sample project, the cube is not locked in the hierarchy and its properties appear in the Animated Properties list. But when I create a new project and drag Kyle_4 to the GameObject to create a new configuration, the cube is locked, and the properties can't be modified. How can I configure the hierarchy so it will be like the one in the sample?

 

Found the answer here.

https://support.soxware.com/1685/animating-additional-object-with-humanoid-rig?show=1685#q1685

 

I am trying to animate a character's jawbone when editing an existing humanoid animation. In the Clip Editor it is playing perfectly and I have exported this animation & assigned the new clip to the character, but it is not playing the jawbone animation, only the existing humanoid bones animation. I have tried both base layer and additive but still no. Am I missing something perhaps?

I've noticed this on the Animator too:

Binding warning: Some generic clip(s) animate transforms that are already bound by a Humanoid avatar. These transforms can only be changed by Humanoid clips.

 

Hi @Deckard_89 ,
thank you very much for reaching out.

I just did a quick test using the "DefaultAvatar" character from the raw mocap pack and it correctly exported the jaw bone animation there. Probably this issue is somehow related to the character you are using. May I ask you to send me a unitypackage via the email support form that includes:

• The character (without textures if required)
• A umotion project where this problem occurs
• The corresponding exported animation

This makes it much easier for me to further investigate this issue. A quick workaround that might work would be to export your animation as *.fbx (I recommend using the "Update Existing File" mode to export your animation into the characters *.fbx, that saves you from dealing with the avatar setup).

 

UMotion V1.18 was just released on the Asset Store

Update now: UMotion Pro V1.18 | UMotion Community V1.18

HDRP/LWRP Oficially Supported
The bone/rig rendering code has been reworked. The new rendering code provides the same experience across all of the existing rendering techniques of Unity:

• Unity built in renderer
• High definition render pipeline
• Lightweight render pipeline
• Custom scriptable render pipelines

UMotion Scripting API
I've added a simple API that can be used to access basic functionality of the Clip Editor and the Pose Editor via editor scripts. The API currently supports:

• Opening the UMotion windows
• Opening/closing UMotion projects
• Switching between animation clips
• Assigning or removing a GameObject to/from the Pose Editor

Please check out the "UMotion API" chapter in the UMotion manual to learn more.

You could for example use this API to create a menu button to easily switch between UMotion projects and the related animated characters, useful when animating multiple characters that interact with each other.

I would love to hear what you would like to do with the API and what functionalities I should expose in future updates.

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

UMotion V1.18
New or Changed Features

• All scriptable render pipelines (LWRP, HDRP, custom SRP) are now officially supported.
• Added an official UMotion scripting API.
• Improved the behaviour when copying & pasting rotation keys from one clip to the other when the clips use different rotation modes.

Bug Fixes

• Fixed an incompatibility issue with Bolt 2.0.
• Fixed an exception that is thrown when a GameObject with bones/transforms that contains slashes in their names has been added to the Pose Editor.
• Fixed that an inactive GameObject that is assigned to the Pose Editor is deleted.
• Fixed that exporting an FBX fails if the animated GameObject's root has one direct child with the exact same name as the root.

Manual Changes

• Added 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.

 

@SoxwareInteractive Hi, thanks for your reply. I fixed this by re-importing the rig after making them the same structure (the model rig and animation rig). The model initially was rigged with mixamo and imported straight into Unity, whereas the animation I was editing was a 3ds Max biped version of that rig, which somehow caused an incompatibility when converting to humanoid in Unity. Changing the main rig to 3ds max biped as well fixed my issue.

 

Do you think it could be possible to link the Animation timeline to a VideoRenderer time to be able to use a video as reference for the animation ?

 

Hi,
if you can get the VideoRenderer running in the Unity Editor I could add a method to the UMotion API that allows you to query the current position of the UMotion frame cursor so that you can sync playback.

 

What do you think about feature like:
You press hotkey or something on umotion clip timeline and you see same character but in gray colors in previous frames?
Just a idea ...

So far, I'm sitting on the alpha version 2019.3 where the new UI interface has broken a Umotion interface...

 

Using Unity 2019.3.0a3 Pro and UMotion Pro. The Clip Editor and Pose Editor are not legible. Attached is a pic.

 

Hi,
I already have this feature on my "ideas for the future" list but currently don't have immediate plans to implement it as there are other things with higher priority.

Hi @bakedArteest,
thank you very much for reporting this issue. I really appreciate that. I'm already aware of it and am working on a fix. Please note that UMotion doesn't officially support alpha versions of Unity. Unity alpha versions are intended to perform first tests (e.g. for asset store publishers to see what changed), not for production use. Please consider using Unity 2019.1 instead.

 

Hi SoxwareInteractive, I couldn't find this in the docs, apologies if I missed it, What is the best way to edit an animation so that it is slower at the start? I have an animation of swinging a sword and I would like the "wind-up" to be longer. Thanks

 

How can i setup my character to use arms roll bones ?

 

Hi @Her3tic,
thanks for reaching out. Select all keys in the dopesheet view (CTRL + A), then use the blue box handle (on the end of the animation) to stretch the whole animation.

Hi @jorg3n3gr3iros,
thanks for your question. Unity's humanoid animation system doesn't support a roll bone (it will translate the rotation of the roll bone to a rotation equally distributed between the elbow and wrist bones). If you are aiming for a high quality animation where the roll bone is really necessary, I recommend using generic instead of humanoid.

 

I just wanted to say that this tool is amazing . It saves me tons of work (I've already submitted my review on the Asset Store - 5 stars of course). I will release a tutorial on how to use it for motion capture inside Unity Editor soon. I've switched my animation pipeline to UMotion completely at this moment and I'm very happy I did.

 

Unity humanoid rigs don't support roll bones out of the box - but you can get around it pretty easily. I would still recommend using humanoid rigs as always and attach a twist relaxation script to you roll bones. The goal of such a script is to interpolate the rotation of the hand bone and forearm bone (along the forearm's axis).

 

Thanks, that works perfectly. I however have another problem now. According to your docs Rootmotion will always be applied with a Humanoid Rig. Due to our very specific setup we need Humanoid animations but the one's we will be editing need to have no Rootmotion. At the moment the animations are appearing wrong unless rootmotion is enabled in the Animator, and enabling rootmotion interferes with the system we have built. Is it possible to import an animation from a Humanoid rig, but disable rootmotion for that "in-place" animation?

I̶f̶ ̶n̶o̶t̶ ̶w̶o̶u̶l̶d̶ ̶t̶e̶m̶p̶o̶r̶a̶r̶i̶l̶y̶ ̶c̶h̶a̶n̶g̶i̶n̶g̶ ̶t̶h̶e̶ ̶i̶m̶p̶o̶r̶t̶e̶d̶ ̶r̶i̶g̶'̶s̶ ̶t̶y̶p̶e̶ ̶t̶o̶ ̶G̶e̶n̶e̶r̶i̶c̶,̶ ̶e̶d̶i̶t̶i̶n̶g̶ ̶a̶n̶d̶ ̶e̶x̶p̶o̶r̶t̶i̶n̶g̶ ̶t̶h̶e̶ ̶a̶n̶i̶m̶a̶t̶i̶o̶n̶,̶ ̶t̶h̶e̶n̶ ̶c̶h̶a̶n̶g̶i̶n̶g̶ ̶i̶t̶ ̶b̶a̶c̶k̶ ̶t̶o̶ ̶H̶u̶m̶a̶n̶o̶i̶d̶ ̶c̶a̶u̶s̶e̶ ̶a̶n̶y̶ ̶p̶r̶o̶b̶l̶e̶m̶s̶?̶
EDIT: This does not work as far as we can see. Unfortunately we are not sure if we can use this asset as its baking rootmotion into in-place humanoid animations. Hopefully we can find a workaround.

Thanks

 

Hi @Her3tic,
you can make in-place animations for humanoid too. Just remove any undesired movement from the root/hips bone (check the curves view of the hips bone). This should work with Animator's root motion enabled/disabled. Also check the settings (e.g. "Bake Into Pose") of the exported *.anim (shown in the Inspector). If this doesn't help, please issue a support request on the official support forum (no login required) with some further info (maybe a video).

Hi @m-i-e-c-z,
thanks for the review and I'm glad you like it. Looking forward to the video. Make sure to post it here in this forum thread so that other's don't miss it

 

@SoxwareInteractive no idea why and how, but on Unity2019.3.0a5 Umotion UI working fine =)

 

Thanks for letting me know. I think this has been a Unity bug that was fixed in 2019.3.0a4 (I haven't been able to reproduce the error in a4 already). Please let me know in case the bug appears again in future versions.

 

Hi,

we encountered a strange problem when exporting an animation as an .fbx and then using it as a Humanoid Animation: The pose starts to deviate over the duration of the clip, not a typical root motion offset since it happens inside one cycle. The editor preview, .anim export and generic .fbx export show no signs of such drifting, however we would however apprecitate to use the humanoid .fbx way. The difference gets bigger the longer the clip runs, e.g. see difference of the poses at 15% and 89% between humanoid and generic clips.




Any idea what might cause this?

 

Hi @BPR,
thanks for your support request. I've answered your question on the official support forum: https://support.soxware.com/2256/humanoid-animation-is-drifting-when-looped?show=2257#a2257

Please answer there if you have any follow-up questions (no login required).

 

Does it has option to save and load poses

 

Hi @witcher101,
thank you very much for reaching out. In UMotion, poses are defined by keys placed in an animation clip. You can copy the keys of one pose (using CTRL + C) and paste it at a different place in your animation clip (or in a different animation clip) using CTRL + V.

Please let me know if you have any further questions.

 

I am talking about ability to save and load poses from different projects
something like this

 

If you want to re-use a pose you've created in Unity project A, just copy the UMotion project into Unity project B. Try to use one UMotion project per character to have all your poses within one UMotion project.

Generally speaking, poses are only valid for one character. In order to share poses between different characters UMotion would need to re-target the pose (similar to how Unity's humanoid animation system allows sharing an animation between multiple characters). That's currently not supported. But you can workaround this by exporting a humanoid *.anim clip that contains your poses. Then import that *.anim clip in the UMotion project of your other character.

 

Is it possible to pin an IK position. Like I want the hand IK to stay in 1 position while i move around the spine.

 

Hello, I would like to second Mr-Knieves request. I have quite a lot of external assets and want to keep a clean folder structure by having them all in Plugins. I use assembly definitions for everything and, if missing, add them myself. None of my assets so far had any issues, if at all I had to adjust a few paths. Not so much with UMotion. I do not have and do not want Assembly-CSharp-Editor dll and I certainly do not want UMotion to be flying around somewhere outside the Plugins folder. Architecture-wise it's also a bit weird, the module (dll) relies on it's own external API (cs scripts)? I really hope you will fix this.

 

Sure, please take a look at the following video tutorials:
UMotion Pro - Inverse Kinematics ...how to setup IK
UMotion Pro - Child-Of Constraint ...watch this before the IK Pinning tutorial
UMotion Pro - IK Pinning

If you have any further questions, don't hesitate to start a support request on the official support forum (no login required).

Thanks for reaching out, I've responded on your question in the support forum: https://support.soxware.com/610/keeps-complaining-about-assembly-definitions?show=2328#c2328

 

I'm trying the free version:
I have a simple movement of hands, but in-game I can not rotate the body or other parts, as I can make ONLY apply the animations to the arms

 

Hi,
thanks for reaching out. You need to remove all the key frames in the Clip Editor for "Animated Properties" that don't relate to the arms (e.g. spine, hips, ...). If there is a single key frame on any other body part, Unity's Animator will animate that body part and thus will override any changes you do in a script's "Update()" method.

If you have follow-up questions, please use the official UMotion support forum (no login required).

 

Hey there. 2 questions:

1) Working on a project and I've been handed a model to animate that I didn't create. Best I can tell it was purchased off the unity ap store but was originally created with DAZ 3d (I believe it is the Deucalion humans model on the ap store).

When I try to use it with umotion I get an error: Human bone mapping for human bone "hips" is not unique: Found multiple transforms named "hip"

As far as I can tell there is only one bone in the skeleton named hip, or at least that's how it appears in the unity inspector. Any idea what might be causing this or know of a possible work around? Other models with skeletons seem to work as intended.

2) Have you looked into integrating umotion with UMA? From what I can tell, this doesn't seem to work currently since UMA does things at run time and you can't actually see any of the bones? Would a potential solution be to use UMA and umotion in tandem with the UMA powertools?

Thanks in advance.

 

Hi @DeadSeraph,
thanks for reaching out.

1) This warning means that there are 2 transforms in the hierarchy with the exact same name (both named "hip"). Please refer to a similar support request I received in the past: https://support.soxware.com/577/unique-found-multiple-transforms-named-error-getting-causing

2) I've moved your question to the UMotion support forum and answered there: https://support.soxware.com/2352/is-umotion-compatible-with-uma?show=2353#a2353
Please comment there if you have any follow up questions (no login required). This makes it easier for other users with similar questions to search for answers.

 

Don't know if this question has been asked before, tried reading thru the forum but it's taking too long, so here goes:
I have a legacy skinned mesh model in my scene, with it's own legacy animations, can I change a legacy animation on a legacy rig by adding a layer or whatever? I'm using Umotion Pro. Cheers.

 

Hi @wheelbarrow,
thanks for reaching out.

Yes all UMotion Pro features are compatible with legacy animations. When you create a new UMotion project, choose "Generic (Legacy)" as project type. Once you export your animation, all the "fancy" features that legacy animations wouldn't support out of the box (like animation layers or IK) are baked into the final animation.

 

Hi, Can UMotion Pro support editing UMA? Right now, I have no use for UMotion and I hope changes in the future.

BTW, your competitor VeryMotion can support runtime UMA animation editing. Therefore, I believe it's possible.
Thanks.

 

Hi @chrisk,
thank you very much for reaching out. Please refer to the answer I gave to this question to a different user: https://support.soxware.com/2352/is-umotion-compatible-with-uma?show=2353#a2353

Please add a comment in the thread linked above (no login required) if you want to further discuss this topic. This keeps things more organized. Thanks.

 

Thank you for your reply. Just to be clear, I can add more/alter animations on my old legacy avatar model with UMotion Pro? That's terrific (It's the only character model I can find that suits my project, unfortunately, and the asset author never updated it to humanoid).
Cheers.

 

There isn't much for me to add.
It's just that UMA is pretty popular these days and VeryAnimation already supports runtime editing.
I don't see why UMotion cannot support it. I strongly feel that UMA should be supported by UMotion without workaround.
You should try using UMA if you haven't before.
I'll wait for the official announcement.
Thanks.

 

I'm not a UMotion user, but can't you use the included male and female models, or the skeleton created by the bone builder in UMA, to get animations working in edit time, as opposed to runtime?

UMA is supposed to be able to use mecanim, which uses animations created outside of runtime.

 

Yes you can edit existing animations or create new ones from scratch for your legacy character.

 

UMotion V1.19 was just released on the Asset Store

Update now: UMotion Pro V1.19 | UMotion Community V1.19

Position/Rotation/Scale properties can now be disabled
You can now disable position/rotation/scale properties of individual joints/transforms. This is very useful to reduce the number of animated properties listed in the Clip Editor (especially when working with characters of type generic).

This is how the animated properties list typically looks like for a generic character:


Now you can switch into Config Mode, select all bones (CTRL + A) and then disable all the properties you don't need:


Resulting in a much shorter list:


Furthermore the IK Setup Wizard automatically disables the scale properties for the IK handles now.


Mathematical Expressions supported by Input Fields
All numeric input fields now support mathematical expressions:




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

UMotion V1.19
New or Changed Features

• All input fields now support mathematical expressions (e.g. "5+4").
• The position/rotation/scale properties of generic bones can now be enabled/disabled in config mode. This is useuful for reducing the number of animated properties displayed in the Clip Editor.
• The IK Setup Wizard now automatically hides the scale properties of the IK Handle and the IK Pole Handle.

Bug Fixes

• Fixed that the keys of the IK pole rotation property contribute to the total clip length even though the pole rotation property isn't used (because a pole target is used instead).
• Fixed that the playback end cursor (white arrow) was reset to the clip end when switching clips.
• Fixed an exception that is thrown when exporting an animation with a custom component property where the related component is missing.

Manual Changes

• Fixed a typo in the "UMotion API" chapter.
• Added a description of the new "Properties" setting to the "Pose Editor/Config Mode/Configuration" 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.

 

Amazing update

 

I made a post where I talk about the differences between UMotionPro and VeryAnimation. Check it out here https://forum.unity.com/threads/umo...st-humanoid-animation-editor-of-unity.713612/

 

@BonyYousuf thanks for the write-up. It's very objective and a fair comparison, good work!

 

Yes, this should work in theory. Then you'd just export clips and assign them to your UMA as needed. The only drawback here is that part of the usefulness of umotion is being able to make adjustments in the scene view on the fly (which is very useful). That can't be done with UMA unfortunately, since UMA generates everything at run time. A possible work around here is to use the UMA power tools (available on the asset store), and export your uma as a prefab, then use umotion with that, but the problem then becomes that you lose UMA's functionality when it comes to swapping out clothes and item slots, etc, as your prefab will be wearing whatever clothes you exported it with.

It would definitely be nice to see the UMA team and umotion work together to figure out a solution to this, as they are both very powerful tools for what they do.

 

I still don't get it. The only thing about UMA that relates to animation is that it allows you to adjust the length of the bones at runtime. Other than that, it's using a standard mecanim humanoid skeleton. While you can do animals and other models (even cars) using generic animation, by far most of the UMA usage is based on default mecanim humanoid skeletons.

Maybe I'm just not comprehending the specific issue, in which case I don't want to be a bother. No need to keep on trying to explain, if you don't want to. But my understanding is that because UMA is using mecanim humanoid animation, which transfers to any humanoid model, there should be no real problem using any animation creation method - including UMotion - with UMA.

 

When you say that it supports UMA, can you expand on that? Since UMA does everything at run time, how does VA handle that? Does it just let you edit the animations in that state, or can you do both (animate at both run and edit time)?

I'm looking for a solution to integrate an animation tool like umotion with UMA. Currently, umotion looks like the superior alternative, but being able to use it with UMA is also important to me (see my previous post as well in this thread).

 

There isn't a problem in that sense. You can just take the UMA model / skeleton and make new animation clips with umotion, and export those. So yes, it should work that way. The issue is that when you're using UMA, you just have a static placeholder in the scene that doesn't do anything until you hit play. So you can't scrub the TL and see your animations *before* runtime. It's not so much that the 2 aren't compatible as it is that this is a slightly prohibitive workflow. One of umotions most powerful features is being able to change animations right in the scene view, so I guess what I'm saying is that in a sense, using the 2 together eliminates *some* of the benefits of umotion.

It's still technically possible to use the 2 in tandem, it's just not ideal because of how UMA handles everything at run time.

 

Can't you just use the UMA male / female models, the Unity dude, or Ethan as your animation modeling dummy? This will show you what the animations look like.