What animation software is everyone using

I'm new to animation but what software is everyone using to animate a humanoid walking etc..
I see there is lots of movements to use in the asset store. Probably all I need too. Fbx file type.
I've just spent 12 hours trying to get 3ds 2014 to work. Finally figured out how to add a bip walking motion from a bip file I found online.

I was wondering if there is some better software out that that only does animation and nothing else.
Or the easiest one to use where I just add in a fbx file would be really nice.


thanks ahead of time for any responses

 

First, reference all the free stuff in the asset store with animations. Why make an animation when you can find a suitable one for free?

Then maybe look into something like Skele, which is available in the Unity store, or even Blender, which is a free standalone program.

I'm new to animation as well, but that's how it looks to me.

 

thanks for the reply hopeful

That's what I meant. I'm not looking to make any new animations. I'm just looking to load my model into a program so I can apply the animation I find in the asset store so I can have it as an asset for Unity.

I bought a model on turbosquid.com yesterday and loaded it into 3ds max and I can see the rigid body through the skin of the model. Not sure what the deal is with that. talking to turboquid about it now.

Seems to be so many compatible issues with this stuff

 

If I'm understanding you correctly, if you aren't trying to create new animations you don't need to add animations to a FBX using an outside program. That's how the legacy system operates, but with mecanim you apply existing animations inside Unity using a mecanim state machine (aka "animator").

If your FBX has a humanoid compatible skeleton, import it into Unity and go to Rig and select "humanoid." Also import a mecanim ready model with animations and an animator from the asset store, like Ethan from the Sample Assets or the mecanim dude from old mecanim tutorials. Once you have both a working humanoid version of your model, plus a set of animations you can see are working through mecanim on a mecanim model, you can basically just add the mecanim state machine you're using to your own model and you're off and running (literally running, if you are a 3D computer character with a run animation in your animator).

If you're confused about what I've just said, then you need to spend a little time browsing through the Sample Assets demos and maybe other tutorial assets and videos as well. Setting up a model to use mecanim and setting up a primitive mecanim state machine (animator) is well documented, and it's surprisingly easy once you get the hang of it.

 

Really appreciate you helping me get over this bump hopeful. My entire idea of how this works was way off. Didn't realize unity can control a characters rigged movements by using an animation file. When I load this guy into unity3d he has no skin materials on him though. Using a fbx file type too. Am I having some sort of compatible issue?

Now that my guy is In my scene. Trying to figure out how to add one of the animation fbx files to the model. I figure I could just drag and drop it onto the character in the project window. I also notice it doesn't let you right click and delete a animation already on a character.

Oh im thinking that the fbx file doesn't need to be on the character that after I create the animation controller I can just drag the fbx animation into the component script

 

When I click on a model and go to Animations
I can see where it shows a list of current animations
Can't figure out how to actually add a fbx animation into this list.
hitting the + just duplicates the top one in the list

 

I made a little bit of head way.
I'm able to take a fbx animation I download from the assets store and change it where its using my character model.
But now I"m left with 8 different separate animations that's not attached to a single character asset. Maybe that's ok though cause now in the animator window I can just drag those into there.

One thing I notice though is when I watch the animation of my character in the animation preview window its really far away from the camera. How do I zoom that in?

 

Just to be clear ... if you have animations on your model, then it is in "legacy" mode. If you want to use mecanim, you need to be in "humanoid" mode. So be sure you're checking under Rig on your model to see whether it is in legacy or humanoid.

When you convert to humanoid, any animations you had on that model will now be available for use in a mecanim state machine and may be used on other humanoid models.

There's a lot of stuff in there to fiddle with, and there's no way I could cover it all. Like the effects of the Root Transform Rotation settings in your picture above. You'll just need to spend time playing with clicking this and clicking that, and seeing what happens.

If you haven't done it yet, you should also look into all the options for manually configuring your humanoid model.

If you get stuck, there's tutorial videos, Unity reference info, articles, forum threads, and so on that talk about this stuff. It's not superbly documented, I guess, but most everything you need to know is out there in one form or another.

As for your model being far away from the camera in preview ... maybe your model is actually scaled too small. Try adjusting the import setting for scale and see if that helps. It's fairly common to have to adjust scale on import to get models into a uniform in-game scale.

 

If you are planning on using assets from the Unity store. Then use Humanoid. The muscle system is built for this, since it adds rotational restrictions and the Unity store data can be "dirty".

If you plan on using character studio. Then I would suggest using Generic. Since CS uses Bip01 for translation of the characters pelvis, and the actual pelvis bone is for rotation. Generic allows this. Humanoid only allows for one hip bone for rotation and positional animation, since it is assuming mocap data will be it's primary source of animation data. CS also builds 3 spine bones by default. But humanoid only needs to 2 spine bones. So people tend to over look this and suffer from it.

There are ways to set up CS to use Humanoid effectively. You just need to know what you are doing.

This video goes over what you need to do in order to put animations on a character. It helped me alot.

 

Thanks a lot for that video Jself

I got it to where it shows my character for each animation. So that means I successfully did it?
So when I drag my character into the Hierarchy and go to animator window I should be able to then open up the animation containers below and drag the animation into the animator window.

so really the preview window is just showing that I have the settings correct so I can use that animation for that character.
There is no real actually connection to the animation to the model.
Cause before I was thinking I would need to have a set of these animations for ever character

 

Yes. The preview window is just that...a preview of what to expect.

So typically. You would want to assign your avatar to the animation (connect the animation to the model), so that you can see that the animation works correctly in the preview window. Usually what you see in the preview window is what you will see in game, when that particular animation is triggered.

When you are ready to put animations into the Animator controller. You will need to select the clip inside of the animation FBX and drag that into the Animator window.

The video goes through everything you need to do in order to put animations onto a character. It even goes over some things you may not need to concern yourself with just yet. But it illuminates the necessary pipeline to adopt in your production.

 

Thanks alot jself. I actually already understand the animator window and controling it with c#

Im just learning everything backwards. When I started out doing tutorials setting up a animated character was already done. When I saw the play icon for the animations I thought they were like avi files(video clips) of animations.
Idk why I thought that. That wouldn't even work out lol. So idk what I was thinking lol

 

Yeah @Shadowing I agree you are kinda doing thing backwards.
No problem just check out the learn tab at the top. Should get up to speed in no time - with how quickly you've progressed so far.