Hey there,
first of all, I know there are several threads regarding this Topic.
But after some hours of looking for the right term/wording for my Problem and my lack of understanding enough about UNITY AND biped Animation I came to the Point where I just wanted to write the Problem down and maybe it is very Special or someone could just send me a link with the right Thread…
Sorry
I m a 3D Modeler working for a Client who wanted a 3D female character in an Idle Animation Standing in a Scene (this is not the only Thing I m doing, but it is part of the Problem ^^ ). As I m an Envioronment Artist and not a Chacter Artist I made the suggestion to buy a good Model that has already been rigged and would be ready to go.
The Mesh itself is preatty clean and the Biped seems to be good aswell.
What I already learned, by using this Forum is, the Hirachy is realy important, thats why I took a look into the Schematic in Max and made a new order for some parts.
Because deleting was (as far as I could see it) no real option as it destroyed the skinning on the Character
It seemes that I have to Import it into Unity by dragging it in, clicking on the Model go to “rig” → Humanoid → Create from this model.
After that I get some Error Messages that are related to the Spine bone Count (would love just to reduce them from four to two, but that destroys the skinning again) and Invalid Parents.
When I want to configure it, it shows me some greyed out “Spine bones” and the Clavicle seems to be off, maybe because my T-Pose is wrong?
Hope all the Pictures are helping and during the time it tooks until someone may answer I ll search deeper in the web. If I find any solution I ll post it aswell!
I hope my Problem is understandable so far, if not, dont hesitate to ask ^^
Thanks so much for your support
Does the character already have animations? If the character (in Max) already has animations. Just export the mesh and all bones and set up the rig in Unity to be generic. Avoid all the humanoid headaches.
If the character does not already have animations - you will need to match the bones you can with the bones in the humanoid rig in Unity. This is going to be a problem - because you have bones that are inbetween the humanoid bones from the schematic view you provided. Whatever bone is between spine 2 and 3 is a problem. This should not be like this, unless the character came with some unique bones specific to the character. Make sure those bones are not included in the avatar set up and it should ignore them when retargeting animations onto this character.
Try to map the spine bones to the supported 3 spine bones in Unity and match all other bones including the clavicles. After that - then you can retarget some animations onto this character. Make sure you match the avatar from the character onto the animations - or you will encounter more issues.
If this ends up being more problematic than you can handle, consider applying some mocap animations onto the biped in Max instead. Max supports a large variety of mocap files but the best to use for biped is .bip files. Applying the animations to the character in Max will let you export the character with animations - so you can bypass the humanoid set up in Unity. The skeleton does not need to match exactly in Max, it will interpolate the motion onto the existing bones.
Future tip - don’t do this on rigged characters. Leave this type of work to animators/riggers.
How would I doo this? If I Delete them in Max the Skinned Mesh, will be distorted. I mean… at Least this could be a possible sollution, but my Client wouldnt be too happy about the extra time ^^
As far as I understand it, there is no tool in Unity to say for example " this Bone is the Spine bone". If it would be like this would there be a solution aswell to ignore some bones without generating Problems?
I recommended this to my Customer, but he wasnt too happy with this solution
hahahah yeah, I would do so, if I would work in a Company Environment but as a freelancer this isnt a real Option ^^
No this is done in Unity. Check the documentation on humanoid set up and avatar definition.
Check setting up a humanoid in the documentation and learn section. You are nearly there - you just need a little more info.
What I meant - which I think solves the issues you are experiencing is - you can retarget animations onto the biped a lot easier in Max - than in Unity, using .bip files.
Since this is all the client wants. Find a idle mocap file - retarget it onto the female character in Max. And then when the animation is on the character - export it to Unity. This way - you can bypass the humanoid set up and use generic (easier) instead. This process is pretty easy - just search on google/youtube.
The animation will play the same - you just won’t have to conform to the humanoid rig.
Humanoid is beneficial if retargeting animation(s) onto a character. If all you need is one animation playing on one character - just use generic setup instead.
This is something I would tell the customer - if they asked me to do something I was not very familiar with. Unless they were willing to pay me for my time researching, prototyping and troubleshooting. But scope for a project should be defined at the outset of a project, so both parties know what is expected.
Hey theANIMATOR2b
Thank you so much for your time, I m gonna check the humanoit set up out, right now! Thank you so much ;)! I ll let you know as soon as I have some progress… or there a new questions
Hey There…
I think I ve kind of did it at least half the way ^^
After watching two videos about the humanoid set up and avatar definition I ve done two things.
First of all, i took other Spine segments into the channels so that the order is a bit more evenly,
and Second, I ve played with the overall Mapping and Poses and it kind of worked… Sadfully I m not quite sure how I ve managed to do this but I ll find out.
Only thing is, the head seems to have strange “Bone distribution” and the Hands are not affected by the Mocap files…
And I m not sure if it has something to do with the file itself or with my rig…
When I check the “Muscle Features” the Hands work so far, so that seems to mean the Mocap animation doesnt support it, right?
Man… I m looking forward to work on Rocks and other static objects again ^^
I found a big Mocap library that supports BVH, bip and FBX files. Sounds good I would say. The thing is, if I drag the FBX Container into my “Assets” menue, and put it into my Animation controller AND press play, the Character is in some kind of Crouch Crawling Position.
Ok, after I found out, that you have to set up the Idle FBXes (to Humanoid) as well, I thought, here we go ^^
Thats only half of the truth… Some things started to work properly and others still causeing Problems.
At the Moment I ve a lot of Problems with the eyes.
In 3Ds Max they ve been controlled by a Morph rig. After i deleted the Morp modifier from the stack I was hoping that UJnity would just bind them to the Head Biped bone… But no ^^
Probably - the mocap does not include animations on the hands. Older motion capture did not capture finger movement, so this is probably the issue. No animation on the hands because the mocap doesn’t have hand/finger movement.
LOL - I feel the same way when I have to texture a building with multiple textures and shaders.
You figured out the problem for this - the animations have to be humanoid, and also have the same avatar definition as the character does.
In the export dialogue - make sure all deformations is checked - might help.
But - really - you can simplify the process a bunch if you retarget the bip file you want (idle) onto the character in Max, rather than trying to do it in Unity.
Then when the animation is working in Max on the character, export the character (with the morph modifier on the stack) out of Max.
Import into Unity - and just set the character/rig to generic rather than humanoid. The character will have only one animation - the idle and if needed make the animation set to generic and avatar definition from the character. I don’t think this is required with generic set up, but better to mention it to be safe.
This will bypass the humanoid rig/avatar set up with the animation and character and probably also solve the issue with the eyes/head bones.
I gave up and did it your way I mean I came pretty far for no Knowledge at all ^^
I cleaned a Mocap Idle and sent it to my customer. Explained him the workflow and he was happy, to my surprise ^^
Glad you were successful with the customer.
Humanoid isn’t terribly difficult - but has its quirks and takes a little time to get used to. Especially when dealing with a non-humanoid (added bones) character to begin with.
