Odd Animation Conflict

freshkosose

My apologies to start off with... I'm new here and very new to animation and the animation engines, etc. I know if I looked at the Unity docs I wouldn't be able to find what's going on here but I thought you folks might have an idea. I have this bear who already has animations but then AC seems to place an animation controller on top of it when I set him up as a character so he is moving, but his legs aren't. He's jumping, but steady and his head is moving. So there's like a disconnect with two animation engines going on here. I have no idea how to resolve this so any insight would be very appreciated. Here's a quick video - https://streamable.com/879zz5

ChrisIceBox

Welcome to the community, @freshkosose.

Can you share more details about the way the character has been set up? The video shows the issue, but not much in the way of things behind-the-scenes.

Are you looking to integrate this character with another motion controller or animation system other than the one provided by AC? Or just need help getting the charater set up in a regular way?

A tutorial on setting up a standard 3D character can be found here, but if you can share more details in terms of screenshots and background I can try to see what's wrong specifically.

freshkosose

So maybe this might help. Here is the exact asset in the store. You can see what it comes with in terms of animations; controllers; etc. https://assetstore.unity.com/packages/3d/characters/animals/syla-the-bear-wild-series-118497#content I'm not changing him in any way and just dropping him in the scene and then sending him through your character creator. I like the idea of having the
1. Idle + Sit
2. Walk + [side & backward]
3. Run + [side]
4. Jump
5. Turn
6. Eat
7. Sleep
animations but once I send it through you creator it seems to be placing your creator on top of this one but I can't get these animations to play (I know I probably have to map them to the keys in some way). I come from making VR games so I never had to set up a primary character, if you know what I mean. Also, when I do send him through your character wizard it says at the end 'Go to settings and look under Player Settings and set him as Primary Character' - I couldn't find that anywhere. Let me see if I can get these up on the web somehow. It's way early and my mind's not thinking straight how to get these photos a URL.

ChrisIceBox

Thanks for the details.

It doesn't sound like anything's getting "doubled-up" - AC will make use of your Animator / Animator Controller for playback, so if the character already has one, then AC will use that as opposed to adding its own.

The Character Wizard is there to help simplify the process, but it's not necessary - creating a character is mainly just a case of attaching either the Player or NPC component to your character's root, as well as anything else he may need (e.g. a Rigidbody or a Capsule Collider).

The main thing to note is that - unless you have Apply Root Motion checked in the Animator - animation and motion are handled separately by AC. Your character will move even if he's not animating.

To get him animating when moving, you need to add Transitions to your Animator Controller that change the current animation based on Animator Parameter values. The main one being a "Move speed" float - so that it plays an Idle animation when zero (or close to), and a Walk animation when positive.

You then need to go into the AC Player or NPC component and configure the Mecanim parameters panel to tell AC which of these parameters it should affect. For example, setting the Move speed float field to your Move speed float parameter in the Animator will tell AC that it should update this parameter with the character's speed. Other parameter fields exist for things like turning, talking and jumping.

Animation transitions and parameters are a Untiy concept - AC's just making use of them. If you're new to Unity animation in general, I'd recommend going through Unity's own docs on this subject.

See also the tutorial I linked to above, but as this is for a biped character it's likely you'll want to do something more complex for a four-legged animal - e.g. a 2D Blend Tree. Again, though, this is more of a Unity topic - AC will make use of the Animator Controller you supply, but will only change the parameters that you allow it to.

For things like eating and sleeping, you can create Bool parameter in your Animator that cause the character to transition to special animations when True. From an AC ActionList, you can use the Character: Animate Action to set these parameter values at runtime.

Go to settings and look under Player Settings and set him as Primary Character'

This refers to the "Player settings" section of the Settings Manager, which is the second of the eight tabs that make up the AC Game Editor window, available from the top toolbar. If you first make your new Player character a prefab, you can drag-and-drop that Player prefab into the Player prefab field here to make him the default Player.

You will first need to use the New Game Wizard if you haven't already, though, to create these Managers. I strongly recommend watching one of the tutorial videos if you haven't already, as they act as primers for AC's workflow principles - many of which are transferrable between 2D/3D and game style.