UMotion - Animation Editor

Yes, you can. Sorry, I must not have made it clear what I was trying to say. That's exactly how you'd use the two together, it just takes a bit of the usefulness of umotion out of the picture. This is more so on the UMA side of things than it is any sort of problem with umotion.

 

Thanks for the reply. After further investigation it would appear that this is due to the way the character is set up. It seems as though it's been exported with multiple sets of hair, all of which have a version of the same skeleton in their hierarchy. I'm not sure why the original author of the asset wouldn't have just parented the hair to the head joint, but like I mentioned, I didn't make it ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

How difficult would it be to implement a script of some sort within umotion that could rename duplicate bones? Might be a handy feature to look at including in future releases?

 

Hi @DeadSeraph,
unfortunately I haven't been able to look into UMA yet, I'm sorry. But generally speaking @hopeful is right, when UMA generates correct Mecanim humanoid avatars, it will be able to play any humanoid animation even if you created it for a different character.

Isn't the whole point of UMA to have customizable/varying characters? As long as you don't want to create an animation for every possible character variant, what benefit would it have to animate the UMA character directly?

I think the way to go would be to use a "base character" with a rig available at edit time for animating with UMotion and use the resulting humanoid animations on any UMA character variant. The base character should be an average/typical sized character so that your animation looks best on most of the character variants.

 

Is there a way to import image sequence or videos to use as reference for animating like its done in Maya?

 

Sadly Unity offers no way to play a video inside the Unity Editor at edit-time (at least I haven't found a way). If you find a way to play a video inside the Unity Editor let me know.

 

Due to migration to a better forum software, the UMotion Support Forum is currently offline but should be up again in a few hours.

Thanks for your understanding.

 

New improved Support Forum

I have upgraded to a new forum software for the official Soxware Support Forum. This decision has been made because the old forum software suffered from some serious spam issues and I haven't been completely satisfied with it's features and UI anyway.

I hope that the new support forum provides a much better user experience due to it's modern, clean UI. The forum can still be used without creating an account (which has been important for me). Because this is a completely different forum software, it has not been possible to keep the existing questions/answers. Anyway I see this as a chance to get rid of old answers that are not correct anymore for newer versions of UMotion.

You can find the new support forum by visiting the following link: https://support.soxware.com/

As always, let me know what you think

 

is it possible to animate 2 humanoid chars together. I wana animate where one char lifts other char and throws him. Is it possible to do this

 

There are several ways:
1) Use 2 animation clips (one for each character):
1 a) Use Unity Timeline (and UMotion to sync with Unity Timeline)
1 b) Synchronize UMotion with the Animation Window
2) Make sure that both characters are of type generic and make them a child of an empty GameObject with an Animator compontent. Drag&drop that empty parent object into UMotion and animate both with a single animation clip.

If you have any follow-up questions, please post to the official support forum (this thread is for announcements/general questions): https://support.soxware.com

 

Out Of Office

Hey guys,
I'm out of office from August 13th until August 27th (inclusive). Your support requests might not get answered during that time frame, but I'm going to make sure to answer all of them on August 28th.

Thanks for your understanding.

 

No work, F***.. If you do not support humanoid so wrote at least... When you try to add a humanoid object.

 

Humanoid is supported by UMotion. As the error message indicates the humanoid avatar applied to the humanoid character you tried to animate doesn't seem to be configured correctly. The bone that was configured as "hips" in the avatar configuration doesn't seem to be present in your character.

Select your character model (usually *.fbx) in the Unity project window. In the Inspector, click on the "Rig" tab and click on "Configure...". Make sure that all bones are green and everything is setup correctly.

If you can't get this working, please create an empty Unity project that includes just your character and UMotion and send it to me via the email support form (you can request a link to my Dropbox if file size is too big). Please make sure that the problem is reproduce-able before sending. This makes it much easier for me to provide you dedicated support.

Best regards,
Peter

 

https://www.dropbox.com/s/5pi7lqcqfqz2tg4/man.zip?dl=0

3d Model humanoid (50mb)

 

@hummer_4x4: I've moved your support request into our deticated support forum and answered there (to keep this thread organized): https://support.soxware.com/communities/1/topics/97-required-human-bone-hips-not-found

 

Here are the features that I lack in this asset:

1. Merging layers. Technically you can do this by exporting the animation and then importing it as a new clip, but having this feature would simply speed things up a lot.

2. Blending animations with weights set frame-by-frame. Blending is already awailable in the current version (override layer with layer weight slider) but I need to be able to set the blending weight frame-by-frame. This is a MUST feature for me.

3. Full body IK keys for additive layers. What I mean by this is the ability to set a key on frame 100 of the additive layer that says "nomatter what happens before this, in this frame, this part of the body must be F***en here! (Idealy this means rotation AND translation).".

If you add these - the asset is priceless.

P.S. For some reason, if you set "next key" as "D" and turn on translation gizmo (meaning start working with position keys of the root bone), "D" does nothing.

 

Hi,
thanks for your feature request. I've added them to my list with "ideas for the future" and they are considered for future updates.

Mixing and blending whole animation clips is something that is usually done in an animation sequencing software like Unity Timeline. With UMotion you would create the separate animation clips and with Timeline you would combine them to a bigger sequence of animations. This makes especially sense if you want to loop an animation several times in a sequence (as that would consume quite a lot of memory when done within a single animation clip).

I'm sorry I'm not able to reproduce this issue. Please post a bug report on the official support forum with some further information (best would be a short video showing the problem). Thanks.

 

It would be much better if your software had this feature. Moreover, everything is ready for this, you just need to create a special interface to record how much blending there should be at each frame. Listen, I am not an expert, but right now, from what I know from my experience and from talking with my friend who is quite an experienced animator, modenr animation tools are S***. Just S***. You have an oportunity to create something truly special. I don't know if you realize that. You have an oportunity to create Substance Painter.

 

Just to expand the answer: your solution (using the timeline) does not allow for cases, when I want to blend two animations and then add an additive layer on top of the result and modify the resulting aimation further. And further still.

Btw, it's quite easy to add blending-by-frame: just introduce a new "bone" at the top of the bones list for every layer that the user adds called "Layer Weight" and let users set keys there. Then use those keys to controll frame-by-frame blending.

Here is another feature which would just be awesome: folders. So say I am blending two animations, but before I blend them, I want to change the second animation with an additive layer. But I want it to be non-destructive, so I actually add a layer on top of the second animation and put these two layers (my original second animation and its layer) into a folder. But why do I need a folder? To position the entire stack on the timeline and modify the position in the future. Obviously blending should now be applied to the entire folder and not to the single layer recursively.

Now if on top of folders you actually add masks (the ability to specify which bones and keyframes the current folder/layer should exclusively affect) - that's how you make the Substance Painter. If you want an idea of how the interface should look for this kind of thing - just check Substance Painter.

This is a lot of work man, but I don't know if you realize this: the future is not in hand-made animations, the future is in combining readily-awailable mocap animations from gigantic free libraries into the one that you need AND THEN applying hand-made final touches. That is what happened with texturing. That is why Substance Painter became so big.

 

Hello, good morning!
I am getting an error message when trying to export animations. It says to change the framerate because 25fps is not supported. How do I do that in UMotion Pro?

Thanks you.

 

Try File->Export->Export Settings, choose "Clip" tab and set Framerate there. Note this is set per clip.

 

Hi @cubrman,
thank you very much for all your ideas and feature requests. This means a lot to me. I've took notes of all of them and they are going to be considered in future updates.

 

Not quite "in" the Unity editor - but certainly "over" it.
Set up VLC media player to run in minimum interface mode, always on top.
Then install and run (as adminstrator) "peek through": http://www.lukepaynesoftware.com/projects/peek-through/
Set a hot-key to toggle peek through app on and off, and in the settings, also check "allow click through of transparent windows".

You get to play videos in a semi-transparent window, but your mouse clicks go "through" the window into unity.
If you need to use the video playback interface, select the app from your taskbar (so the window has focus, even through you can't click on it) and hit the hot-key combination a second time; the video player goes back to normal.

I've used this approach to create key frame poses using UMotion.
I only bought it yesterday but already have a couple of pretty sweet, realistic looking animations, using this technique.

 

@blinky465 thank you very much for sharing your "video overlay" solution with us. Really nice approach

 

This asset fab mate! loving it!

 

UMotion V1.20 was just released on the Asset Store

ATTENTION: Delete the "Editor Default Resources" folder with the "UMotionEditor" folder in it before updating. The update is going to fail if you don't perform that step!

Update now: UMotion Pro V1.20 | UMotion Community V1.20

Raised minimum required Unity version to 2017.4
Support for Unity versions below 2017.4 was deprecated. This is due to the fact that usage of those versions went below a very low percentage. If you are still using a version below 2017.4 you can continue using the previous UMotion releases (V1.19p03 and below).

Assembly Definition Files
The upgrade to Unity 2017.4 finally allows me to use assembly definition files for the UMotion scripts. This is something that has been commonly requested. As a positive side-effect, you can now place your UMotion installation folder into a "Plugins" folder (this wasn't supported previously).

"Does that mean that I now have to use assembly definition files in my whole Unity project?"
No - Only the UMotion scripts compile into there own assemblies. You can continue using no assembly definition files for your game scripts if you want to.

"Can I rename the UMotion assembly definition files?"
No - Please don't rename the UMotion assemblies. The UMotion *.dlls reference to those assemblies by name.

Removed "Editor Default Resources" folder
The "Editor Default Resources" folder has been removed and UMotion is now installing the "UMotionEditor" folder directly into your "Assets" folder.


Copy & Paste across different properties
It is now possible to copy & paste keys from one property to another:

1. Select the keys that you want to copy and press [CTRL] + [C]
   (or use the "Copy" command in the context menu)
   
2. Select the destination property by clicking on it in the Animated Properties List
3. Use the (green) frame cursor to define the frame at which the keys should be pasted
4. Press [CTR] + [V] to paste the keys
   (or use the "Paste" command in the context menu)

Please note that it is only possible to copy & paste between compatible properties (e.g. Position to Position, Rotation to Rotation, etc.).

Updated selecting behavior in Clip Editor
Clicking on a key in the Clip Editor now automatically selects the related animated property (and the related bone in the scene view if selection syncing is enabled). This matches the Clip Editor's selecting behavior with Unity's default Animation Window.

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 V1.20
New or Changed Features

• Selecting keys in the dopesheet now automatically selects the related animated property and the related bone/transform.
• Copy & paste reworked: It's now possible to copy & paste between compatible animated properties.
• Key context menu entry "Select in Scene View" renamed to "Select and Set Frame Cursor".
• New minimum requirement for UMotion is Unity 2017.4 (or higher).
• UMotion now uses assembly definition files for all *.cs files. If desired, UMotion can thus now be placed inside a "Plugins" folder.
• Channels that are not allowed to contain keys in an additive layer are now greyed out in the Animated Properties List.
• UMotion isn't installed to the "Editor Default Resources" folder anymore.

Bug Fixes

• Fixed that the Child-Of constraint doesn't correctly calculate the position/rotation when the animated character is scaled.
• Fixed that "select all" in curves view selectes also keys of curves that are hidden (via the eye symbol in the animated properties list).
• Fixed that hiding a curve in curves view via the eye symbol in the animated properties list, doesn't deselect selected keys of that curve.
• Fixed that the tool assistant window isn't correctly displayed in the scene view when "Aura 2" asset is installed in the Unity project.
• Fixed that the move tool doesn't allow moving the hips and the IK pinned legs simultaneously.
• Fixed that the label in the animation event function search window was truncated.
• Fixed that it was possible to add keys to channels that are not allowed to contain keys in an additive layer (e.g. the Child-Of Parent channel).

Manual Changes

• Updated "Dopesheet / Curves View" chapter based on the changed context entry menu.
• Changed minimum required Unity version to 2017.4 on first page of manual.
• Removed known issues that are related to Unity versions older than 2017.4.
• Updated the UMotion folder description in the "Getting Started" 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

I was wondering if you would be willing to add the ability to author a curve (or many curves) based on a set of keyframes for a particular set of limbs/transforms, then have the animation frames adhere to that curve as best as possible (giving preference to the first selected transform/limbs if the curve cannot be fully adhered to across a chain of bones -- such as an arm/leg). This would make authoring fluid motions AMAZINGLY simple and intuitive.

For example, you'd start with any selected range of keyframes (and joints/transforms), build an approximate curve out of them (giving the individual points on the curve gizmos that align with the keyframe timing in the graph), then tweak the curves/splines in 3D space to both visualize and tweak the overall motion across space/time you want (you're essentially authoring the movement arcs), then apply the final arcs you've edited to the selected transforms on their respective keyframes to make them follow the positioning/rotations along that curve -- purposefully adding more keyframes using the curves if one desires to.

Please? -- I'd bet money animators would flock to your asset if you had this feature.

 

Thank you very much for sharing your idea with me. I really appreciate that. I have something like this on my "ideas for the future" list, but currently my focus is more on improving existing workflows. There are still a few things that can make the existing features easier to use and I think it's important to focus on these first.

 

hi , having an issue when EXPORTING to Fbx a blend shape animation , it says " Ignoring property ".Smile" component properties are not supported in Fbx , So to mekeit clear Umotion Dont support Export animated blanshapes???

thanks

 

Hi,
I've moved your support request into the official support forum (no login required): https://support.soxware.com/communities/1/topics/148-export-blend-shape-animation-to-fbx

Please respond there if you have any follow-up questions.

 

Hi,

Is it possible to set up an animation so that there is no interpolation between keyframes? I am looking to replicate a stop-motion/ hand drawn effect and am not sure where to start.
Thanks in advance

 

Hi,
I've moved your support request into the official support forum (no login required): https://support.soxware.com/communities/1/topics/149-no-interpolation-between-keyframes

Please respond there if you have any follow-up questions.

 

I decided to try free version of UMotion, out of interest. The tool feels pretty promising. I tried it for maybe 30 minutes and here are some findings.

Please discard things I mentioned that are actually already implemented, I didn't bother to check the manual yet. Tested on the latest version, which I downloaded just before.

P.S.
I also got a couple of crashes, when selecting sliders in that floating tool box, it crashes UMotion with some Unhandled Exceptions, related to IMGUI I think.

Edit: Sorry for the wall of text.

General use
Saving - Editing animation does not have a save feature, edited animation is changed automatically? This means that trying some tweaks and then discarding a change becomes cumbersome, if any clip must be duplicated before opening it.

Wish: Opening project doesn't remember scene character that was used last time. Maybe add option to try to use last used scene object, it isn't found then discard it and make user pick a new character.

3D viewport
Centering - now it seems Unity standard F to focus gets disabled when UMotion is activated. This is frustrating, I usually use this to jump to different parts of skeleton / scene.

Camera follow - I couldn't find an option to track position of picked object. Sometimes it would be useful to be able to make view follow root / hips. Even better if with option to disable some axis (to prevent vertical movement of character affecting camera follow).

Animation keying
Selection/keying sets - can't find anything like this. It would be great to be able to select Animated Properties, then click some button to create new group. These groups would be selectable from a dropdown, and autokey/key would automatically set keys on these bones. Also, it could have secondary option to also show those bones only i.e. upper body group selection would hide other bones, allowing to concentrate working on certain bones.

On screen tool box
Rotation Tool window - Locking joint free angles is essential. But seems like this is only for all objects, not per object?

Bug? Pressing M to key, changes tool box to show Muscle Groups window? I didn't retry replicating this, maybe it was caused by activating sync selection, but I happened every time

Timeline
Bug? Maximize view (shift space) and the restoring the view closes the currently open animation... this is not so fun, as sometimes I don't have that much screen space, and maximize view is useful to get overview of keyframe layout.

Keyframes - Move to previous or next key with keyboard shortcuts.

Wish: Reset time line zoom. There is zoom in and out, but usually it is convenient to have reset zoom, so one can judge the overall keyframe distances.

Play animation - When play is stopped, animation current frame marker should return back to start frame where play was pressed. I know there is start and end markers but this would be more convenient when tweaking certain part of animation. It would be easy to tweak some keys then verify animation is working, then continue where I was working.

Green scrub bar - is it / would it be possible to move current frame marker by just pressing some key + mouse dragging over dopesheet? Similar to middle mouse dopesheet drag? No I must concentrate to try to hit that tiny line in top bar for something I need all the time.

Selection/Synchronize with Clip editor - Seems to select 3d skeleton matching tracks in Animated Properties. But rotating bone and releasing mouse also deselects selected bone on screen, and from Animated Properties. This does not make any sense. To me, logical solution would be to keep animated properties selected, and screen selected bones should stay selected too, and only picked/active bone should have brighter color than others that are selected in Animated Properties.

Animated properties
Wish: Move up and down in animated properties with keys. Not sure if it is possible now.

Skeleton / bones
Wish: bone box display mode. Would make it easier to animate without mesh, with boxes it is easy to judge facing direction of head, torso and legs. Would be great for fingers too.

Wish: sticks bone mode seems to be only unlit. Could it be using shaded shapes too?

Wish: bone diamonds don't actually scale the "standard way". When making bones thinner, the height of root "pyramid" should also get shorter. Also, it would be nice to have some sort of minimum scale, now acceptable "thin" bones for limbs makes fingers to be way too thin to be usable.

 

Thank you very much for your detailed feedback. I've moved it to a separate thread in the support forum to keep things organized. I've added my answers there: https://support.soxware.com/communities/1/topics/154-feedback-on-umotion-community#

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

 

When exporting the animation into FBX file, is it possible to not export Scale keyframes? I have removed all Scale keyframes, but exported FBX file generates one keyframe at the start and at the end. For performance reasons Unity advises to not use Scale keyframes.

 

Hi,
thanks for reaching out. Looks like the *.FBX exporter is exporting properties even if they have no keys. I'm going to fix this behavior (to be similar to *.anim export). Thanks for reporting.

Best regards,
Peter

 

Hey @SoxwareInteractive got a feature request for uMotion Pro. So I have a VR headset and Motion controllers. Would it be possible to get support for posing, animating, and Key framing while in VR with uMotion Pro?

Here is an example of what I mean:

This would greatly speed up my animation workflow for me in uMotion Pro.

 

Thank you very much for your feature request. I have something like this on my ideas for the future list. Currently I'm more focused on improving the "pancake" version of UMotion, though.

 

Hi, Just bought this awesome asset, but I'm having an issue, with the exported animation, if I try to play it in the animation editor, it runs fine. But on gameplay runtime, the animation is weird, what could be causing this issue?

I've attached a screen shot showing the issue. Thanks

 

Hi @romi-faunzi,
thanks for the nice words. I moved your topic into the support forum and added my answer there. Please reply there if you have any follow-up questions (no login required!).

https://support.soxware.com/communities/1/topics/199-exported-animation-looks-weird

 

Hi! .. awesome asset .. was wondering if would be possible to add a simplify curve option.

Also.. if I select the base layer and export, all the modifications present on other layers are baked on the exported file, right?

 

Hi, thanks for reaching out. I have such a feature on my "ideas for the future" list but currently can't promise anything if and when this is going to make it into a future update.

Correct.

 

I bought the Pro Version but I am having some issues. I want the animation curves that Unity lets you set (I use it to play footfalls at points in the animation) but that only works on FBX Files. My Umotion .Anim files are really good, but no matter how much I tinker with it the results on an FBX export are terrible. I have to choose between giving up my Unity's native functionality (Curves) or find a way to turn your .Anim files into FBX that doesn't distort them beyond usability.

 

@kitchen54 thank you very much for your support request. I moved your topic into our support forum to keep things organized. I've added my answer there. Please comment in the support forum (no login required) if you have any follow up questions.

Your support thread: https://support.soxware.com/communities/1/topics/246-problems-with-custom-curves-and-fbx-export

 

Okay, this might be my fault for missing a step somewhere along the way to export FBX files. But I ran into this error which I tracked back to the exporting from UMotion.
I used the YBot from Mixamo to test out the program, so all bone structures would stay the same. But upon exporting, I found that an additional root node gets added on top of the existing one, which causes the error when matching up to the original bone structure. I even tried importing the FBX into 3DS Max and removing the top node. This fixes the error and the to rigs match up perfectly, but when removed the root node information is gone and causes the model to float around in the animation. I'm guessing the world space location is stored in that node?

Any help with this issue?

 

Hi @Kolb7 ,
I recommend setting "Write Mode" to "Update Existing File" in the UMotion Export Settings. This allows you to write your animation into an existing FBX file (e.g. the *.FBX of your character) and re-use the existing bone structure.

If that doesn't help, please open a support ticket on the official support forum (no login required).

 

That worked perfectly!

I just made a copy of the character FBX, renamed it to the animation I created, plugged it into the UMotion Selected GameObject [pose editor]. Changed the export option to "Update Existing", as you noted above, and change the export path back to that copy of the character FBX I created. Hit export and done!

Thank you for your help!

Feature Request: a way to export FBX without the mesh. The animation only would be nice!

 

Good Day
hi I just purchase Umotion Pro and I cant wait to see how it works. I have one question how to use Umotion on my third person shooter project that already have Animations on the character. all I need to do is fix the hands on the rifle and pistol in correct position. can someone tell me how to fix please?
thanks in advance

 

Hi @dnaster,
you can use IK and the Child-Of constraint to make e.g. the left hand a child of the rifle (so that it moves with the gun). Here is a related topic from the support forum: https://support.soxware.com/communities/1/topics/100-two-handed-animations-for-gun
Related video tutorials: Inverse Kinematics | Child-Of | IK Pinning

Please open a new thread in the support forum if you have further questions (no login required).

 

Your asset just destroyed an entire project. Whatever I clicked that creates an endless loading bar saying "if this doesn't close, load the clip editor" (which still doesn't close it) did it.

Luckily I have backups, but what the hell? Please, fix this. Maybe patch out the loading bar that bricks the editor and destroys all script references...

Edit: Opening the project after uninstalling Unity Hub forces a recompile of Assembly Definition Files and fixes the project.

 

Hi,
thank you very much for your bug report. I think I'm able to reproduce your situation: When UMotion tries to reload the assemblies, but there is a syntax error in any of the scripts in your current Unity project the dialog window that you've mentioned doesn't close automatically. As soon as the syntax error is fixed (or the Clip Editor is closed and re-opened), the window closes automatically.

If you found any other case to reproduce this issue, please open a bug report on the official support forum (no login required) which a step-by-step instruction how I can reproduce this issue.