Mecanim animations

carlosrovira

Hi,

maybe a bit off topic, but maybe useful by others in this community...

I think I'm not fluid with mecanim animation and my AC Player is walking and running, Idle...

but the animations are the ones provided in other free assets or sample.

But I'm now facing how to make my player make different movements for my own game.

For example, I want the player grab a fire torch from a wall.

How people are getting the animations? is there a place to search for this kind of mecanim animations?

I'm using blender. Is the preferred way I try to make the animation with blender?

some insight to know how people are doing this would be very useful.

Thanks

Snebjorn

Check out www.mixamo.com - they've recently been acquired by Adobe, but are not yet integrated in their license system, so currently not accepting payment for stuff - but you get a number of free animations from their library when you sign up.

Blender is definitely the way to go (unless you really WANT to spend money on software). I would especially recommend the Rigify add-on, which provides a really nice rig for working with humanoid animations.

The workflow is described here: http://docs.unity3d.com/Manual/BlenderAndRigify.html

carlosrovira

Thanks Snebjorn,

I already checked mixamo but I couldn't find what I need (animations holding a torch or a weapon would fit me, walking, running, idle...but with one hand lifted).

So I think I should go blender. I'm already using Rigify, and my model is already working on unity with free animations, but it's this part what worries me.

Do you know some specific tutorials showing how to make different kind of animations with all this pieces in place? (i.e: sitting in a chair, or walking with a hand lifted...)

Thanks for your help!

Snebjorn

Uh, that's a tough one ...

This one goes through creating a basic walk cycle: http://cgi.tutsplus.com/tutorials/create-an-animation-walk-cycle-in-blender-using-rigify--cg-17812

... and then you just expand from there. :-)

Character animation is a huge subject. I personally learned a lot from this DVD: http://www.blender3d.org/e-shop/product_info_n.php?products_id=157 (even though it uses a different rig).

The really hard thing is getting your animations to look natural. This book has been very useful for me, though I'm still not quite satisfied with my results: http://www.amazon.co.uk/Animators-Survival-Kit-Richard-Williams/dp/0571238343/

... but I guess it's just a matter of getting lots of practice! :-)

carlosrovira

Thanks Snebjorn!

Just the links I was looking for, I'll check it out to see if I can evolve my skills in this subject

Thanks!

Carlos

radiantboy

Aquiring good quality mecanim compatible humanoid animations is very tough, suprisingly tough - but all is not lost, you might likely be able to capture your own using a $50 3D camera, thanks to our beloved MS ... Mixamo is good but the animations are very limited and costly - not to mention they are now closed until Adobe finishes their hopefully worthwhile faffing after their beautiful & much needed purchase which gave me full access until 2016 when I had been paying monthly . Another option is to create animations yourself using poser (game dev pro) - semi, semi painstakingly drag and drop each bone - and export them as fbx anims, or you can get .bvh files (lots from carnegie mellon there are 2500 anims here if you look) load them into poser then export as fbx anim (most are noisey but there are semi-cleaned up packs if you look - you can clean them yourself using motionbuilder but this is hell- unfortunately without this most of the carnegie melon anims are almost unusable so dont build hopes too high - Im not amazing with unity's animation import stuff  yet but i think it *might* have a way to dampen shaky anims, not sure). You can also use motion capture devices to get them like Xsens (probably too expensive, they turn up at unity gatherings and you might get an anim for free that you request lol), or a budget approach using a MS Kinect (im in the process of setting this up in a greenscreen room at my "studio" - i suspect it will be basic and maybe not even feasible certainly i dont expect fingers, but possibly for grabbing a flaming torch from the wall it *might* be good enough, if I can do anims for myself I can do some for you too also btw but time will tell ). Theres also a guy on the asset store who will accept requests and then make them for you using his rig, and add them to his collection, I cannot recall his name now unfortunately but its there under one of the large animation collections. And packs like TrueBones can help. Im very interested in this field too so if you find a really easy way to animate let me know I swear using a MS Kinect & Poser could be the easiest way, I will let you know in a few weeks.

Snebjorn

Final IK (available on the asset store) looks like it could solve a _lot_ of issues with animating interactions, e.g. picking up objects, sitting down on a chair, opening doors ...

I only got it recently, so haven't had the time to integrate it properly yet, but results so far look very promising.

It's being discussed in this thread: http://www.adventurecreator.org/forum/discussion/360/anyone-using-final-ik-with-ac

carlosrovira

Thanks @radiantboy to share all the possibilities you see.

This days I was making some research and found some tools could help with the task. Not in the plane of "record-your-own-movement" (I see a kickstarter project called Perception Neuron that looks good, but I see many delivery problems in the forums and it has a significant cost, maybe cheaper than other solutions in that space).

I'm going through tools that let me do as much as possible inside Unity. I found two.

1) Final IK. This one is a IK solution that has interaction capabilities. You can use some basic mocap animation and "deform" a bit to get what you want. Integrates with Playmaker. If not needs some lines of code and scripting. In Final IK you can't bake the anim (there's a concept video but the author said Unity needs to incorporate some more things to avoid a weak implementation)

2) Skele. This one is very new to me, I found digging through Final IK. With Skele you can generate new animations modifying others. Final IK author reference it when people ask him about baking Final IK.

I think I should solve most of my needs using this tools along with some free mobcaps out there.

But still some difficult topic to deal with and any trick others could bring to this forum should be great!

Thanks!

carlosrovira

Hi @Snebjorn, I see we are moving on the same track! hehe

Snebjorn

Regarding Mixamo, I just remembered one thing that can cause small, but annoying problems: their root node is generated procedurally by tracking the hips and projecting that to the floor, so in some cases it's not 100 per cent accurate.

I think it's something they're looking into fixing, but who knows what they're really up to these days?

carlosrovira

For me Mixamo is not a solution. I was digging searching for some animation that could fit my needs and never found nothing useful, I think I have some free anims, but can't use them as I don't find what I need.

Snebjorn

@carlosrovira : Maybe we're just using the wrong approach here - a much simpler solution would be finding a number of nice-looking random animations, then build your story and game environment around those?  :-j

carlosrovira

yeah that would definitely work! xDD

carlosrovira

About Skele, this is a nice video that shows how you make a copy of some animation and modify inside Unity:

Snebjorn

Just got it from the asset store sale - seems like a very useful tool!

carlosrovira

Great @Snebjorn!

It's a cool asset!