Animation Questions

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RogueSnake

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Hi, I'm now starting to look at creating animations within the UFPS tool. I watched the videos I found in the documentation for it but have some basic questions. In my current project, I decided to duplicate the FirstPersonArmsDemo (Animator Controller) and start duplicating/changing some of the animations in that. I know one of the videos in the documentation said you recommended to start your own animation controller from scratch. Maybe I'll do that eventually, but for now I wanted to do something easier and make a few tweaks to what came with the demo.

1. I duplicated the AssaultRifleMeleeAttackFirstPerson and am trying to make some edits to the keyframes, but every time I edit one (either by adjusting the rotation of a component, rightclicking rotation, clicking update key or by clicking the record button and moving things around) then click off of it and go back to it, it puts the value at some other odd value far away from what I set it to.
 

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2. What's an easy way to show the weapon you're making the animation for in the editor while editing the animation in the exact position it will be in in play mode?
 
Hi, sorry I'm not sure I'm following, could you please make a recording of your animation modification attempt so that we are on the same page ?

As for your second question, once again I'm not sure I understand, is this still related to the arms animation ? Or is this about the animation of the weapon itself while it is held in a specific way by the arms ?

I'm not an animation expert, but I personally rarely use Unity's Animation window, and instead use UMotion Pro when I need to change or create animations. There's a free version as well on the UAS. Blender might also be a more appropriate tool for animations.
 
I uploaded a video here showing what I mean:

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1FKPdAQLgUVNsz_Hz_TtVq25kNGxBb53d/view?usp=sharing

At around 37 seconds, I right clicked and added keyframe but I guess the screen capture didn't capture that. But basically, everytime I make some change it seems to just put the arm somewhere other than where I tried to put it.

For question 2, I'm just asking what's the easiest way to show the gun in his hands in the place he will actually be holding it since I'm just editing his arms here. I could drag the gun into the hierarchy and try to position it right while animating, then delete it afterward, but was hoping there was an easier way.

I will look into Umotion Pro that you mentioned.
 
Looking at umotion, seems like that might be the way to go though, but I'd still be interested to learn what was going wrong here
 
Hey, an authorization is required to access your drive link 😅 Could you please make it public so that anyone who wants to help can take a look at it ?
 
Alright, so after a little bit of searching, the issue is about the animations' read-only mode. If you select the clip dropdown at the top left corner of the Animation window, you'll notice that there is written "(Read-Only)" at the end of all of them. If my understanding is correct, animations from an fbx file are automatically marked as Read-Only.

The most straightforward way to bypass that is to select a clip file in the Project window and press Ctrl+D. This new duplicated clip will automatically be editable, but it won't have the advantages that come from animations in fbx files, like events and root motion parameters - which I guess is one more reason to use a proper 3D modelling/animation tool instead.

Edit - apparently there's a better way to extract the clip using Unity's FBX Importer, but I haven't dug into this.

As for your second question, well yes you can just position the weapon underneath the character's right hand in the hierarchy and then delete once you're done with the animation work, I see nothing to be overthinking about here.

Hope this helps !
 
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I did actually duplicate the read only file and the one being edited here is the copied file. It lets me edit it but it doesn't go to the place I tell it to. Does UMotion let you edit FBX files? Like could I copy the existing animations and edit them exactly how they were edited before when they were initially created?
 
Thanks @Cheo!

Cheo is spot on. We don't animate within Unity so I'm not actually sure the answers to your questions. For the animations we used Blender and that allows for a ton more flexibility.
 
Ok, what would be your recommended procedure for editing the existing animations or making new animations with the same rig? Import to blender and edit there? Would UMotion also work like Cheo mentioned before?
 
@RogueSnake Hi, after taking another look I think I actually reproduced the issue you showed in your video, with rotation values being somewhere between their initial and recorded value after moving to another keyframe and then back to the original one. Might be worth mentioning that I tried on Unity 6.0.38. This however is not related to Opsive and it would be more appropriate to post about it on the Unity forum or maybe even to make a Unity bug report.

Lastly, you can import fbx animations into UMotion, I just tested with the demo arms animations, but you'll need to enable Resample Curves in the fbx Animation tab. Also the exported animations will be separate animation clips, events and root motion will need to be set within UMotion.

Hope this is helpful !
 
Hi coming back to the subject of animation, can I get some clarity on how the animations were made/should be edited? One of Justin's comments said they were all made in blender but one of Cheo's comments said he used UMotion pro. I tried the free version of Umotion but it won't let you import clips, you have to have the pro version for that. I'm considering buying that, but before I decide, can you tell me if it's recommended to edit these animations in blender or umotion pro? And can you confirm they were all initially made in blender? Umotion pro is within unity which I would think would help but blender might have better options, so IDK which is better.
 
UMotion Pro is in my opinion convenient if you want to make edits and simple animations within Unity. But I'm not sure it's recommendable for complex animations, especially if they involve interactions with other elements, where a global timeline is much helpful.

What can be said for sure is that Blender is an amazing tool which scopes extends to much further than just animation, and it can only be recommend to any game developer to learn the basics of Blender. For this, there is no better than Blender Guru's donut tutorial !

 
Do you think you could make a short video just showing a basic workflow for importing the animations and arms model from the demo in unity to blender and editing the animations? I dragged the Atlas First Person Arms Inport Settings and Assault Rifle Melee attack clip into blender but only the bones animate, not the models. I looked through the video you linked but he doesn't go over animating rigs in it. I've taken a Udemy course on using blender which does go over animating rigs a little but I haven't used it a whole lot since that so far. 1745384385492.png
 
Unfortunately that is outside the scope of the character controller. This is more of a general Unity question so if you post on Unity discussions somebody may be able to help.
 
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