trigger animations with text tokens

miccel123

Hello!

I am not quite sure if this question has been come up here before. I searched the forum and found similar questions about how to use tokens but no anwer to solve my problem.

I want to use five talk animations for all of my 3d humanoid characters in my game. (The animation-controller is shared with all other characters)

anim_talk_aggressive --> 1
anim_talk_normal -->2
anim_talk_sad -->3
anim_headshake_yes -->4
anim_headshake_no --> 5

I would like to use these animations as text-tokens for a more convenient and creative-flow-friendly way of telling a story since my models don't support lip-sync which is well explained in your video and handbook.

Some of these animations are very long (up to 20 seconds) in order to make a longer text look more realistic instead of looping every few seconds. Sometimes I need two or more different anim_talk animations in one line of text.

The functionality I have in mind should roughly look like this example.

[anim:2]
Hey Peter! We should talk.
[anim:stop] (after anim:stop the characters animation should go back to locomotion idle)
[wait:3]
[anim:3]
Tell me. Is it true? Have you been involved in all of this?
[anim:stop]
[wait:3]
[anim:1]
Why don't u tell me the truth?
[anim:stop]
[anim:5]

In this example the _end-token means the animation should blend back to locomotion idle. If there is no _end-token set the animation continues or blends into another anim_talk if I start one: for instance:

[anim:1]
Why on earth haven't you told us?
[anim:3]
U know we love you!
[anim:stop].

I am aware that I need to set-up the animations correctly inside the animation-controller first but I don't think that I need to use the already integrated talk-book when implementing this solution. Am I right?

My approach would involve custom events and text event tokens.

Thank you very much for any help!!

ChrisIceBox

In this example the _end-token means the animation should blend back to locomotion idle.

I'm not seeing any "end" token in your example, but this should indeed all be possible using speech event tokens. I would, though, take a moment to speak up for AC's Timeline integration as you can much more easily sync animations with speech.

Speech event tokens work by hooking into the OnSpeechToken custom event - see the Manual's "Speech event tokens" chapter for details.

Your implementation would be something like:

using UnityEngine;
using System.Collections;
using AC;

public class TokenEventTest : MonoBehaviour
{

    private void OnEnable ()
    {
        KickStarter.dialog.SpeechEventTokenKeys = new string[1] { "anim" };
        EventManager.OnSpeechToken += OnSpeechToken;
    }

    private void OnDisable ()
    {
        EventManager.OnSpeechToken -= OnSpeechToken;
    }

    private void OnSpeechToken (AC.Char speakingCharacter, int lineID, string tokenKey, string tokenValue)
    {
        if (speakingCharacter == null) return;

        if (tokenKey == "anim")
        {
            Animator _animator = speakingCharacter.GetAnimator ();

            switch (tokenValue)
            {
                case "stop":
                    _animator.SetInteger ("CustomTalkAnim", 0);

                case "1":
                    _animator.SetInteger ("CustomTalkAnim", 1);

                case "2":
                    _animator.SetInteger ("CustomTalkAnim", 2);

                case "3":
                    _animator.SetInteger ("CustomTalkAnim", 3);

                case "4":
                    _animator.SetInteger ("CustomTalkAnim", 4);

                case "5":
                    _animator.SetInteger ("CustomTalkAnim", 5);
            }
        }
    }

}

This works by changing an integer parameter's value (named "CustomTalkAnim") to 0,1,2,3,4 or 5 depending on the token's value - instead of playing an animation by name. This is just a suggestion, though.

I don't think that I need to use the already integrated talk-book when implementing this solution.

It'll depend on how your Animator Controller is set up to transition to the animations. It's not necessary on the AC side of things.