Animation View (v4.5) issues and missing features

Unity Engine
1

Hi,

I’ve identified some issues and missing features with Unity 4.5’s Animation View (listed below).

If UT does not plan to resolve them in Unity 5 and if there’s a high enough demand I’ll resolve these issues myself and throw them up on the Asset Store in downloadable plugin form.

Issue #01: Track References Break
When the hierarchy is restructured or renamed existing animated tracks lose their references (highlighted in yellow in the Animation View). Animators have to reanimate all the keyframes for those tracks with missing references as it is not possible to retarget/rename the track or copy/paste the keyframes into a new track.

Current Solution:
Reanimate all keyframes for the track (ouch!)

Issue #02: Scaling Keyframes (missing feature)
Key frames cannot be scaled easily.

Current Solution:
Spend a copious amount of time readjusting your keyframes or hire a programmer to write an editor scaling script.

Issue #03: Inconsistent behaviour when copying and pasting keyframes
When animating different animation clips for the one object. Copying keys from one clip (source) into another (target) clears all the previous keyframes in the target and pastes all keys from the previous clip not just the selected copied keys.

Current Solution:
Avoid copying/pasting keys from one clip to another.

Issue #04: Enable/disable (aka. show/hide) tracks in preview mode
At times an animator may want to isolate an animation and the Animation View is not able to temporarily turn on/off tracks.

Current Solution:
None, good luck!

Issue #05: Lack of organisation
Animators can not organise tracks into folders.

Current Solution:
None, good luck!

Issue #06: No search/filter functionality
Animation clips can get rather complicated at times. It would be great if animators could filter what their animating via a search bar like the one in the project and hierarchy view.

Current Solution:
None, good luck!

Issue #07: Unable to multi-select then add tracks
Animators can not select multiple tracks to add to the animation clip all at once.

Current Solution:
Animators have to add each track individually.

If you have any other issues with the Animation View, I want to hear about them!

1 Like
2

Hey There - we just ran into a bunch these issues most notably 1. Did you ever end up finding a solution or developed an asset addressing any of these issues ? We’d love to get better native animation support in Unity!

3

Very much agree with these. I’ve been doing an ungodly amount of copying and pasting component values back and forth just to sync up the beginnings of clips. Being able to copy all the values down a single frame would help immensely.

Another one I’d like to add to your list is the ability to edit the pivot point during an animation. For instance, there are times when I do attack animations with weapons when I want the pivot of the weapon to be different. I find this most often with 2 handed weapons (like a big hammer or club). The pivot I use for Idle is not as useful for attacks, I then have to go through the painful process of shifting the weapon for all the in-betweens.

1 Like
4

i guess in unity 5 nothing has changed concerning the missing references after a rename?

5

Yeah sadly no big updates on actual animation creation in unity. Mechanim is great for the setup, but would love some more robust tools for actual Animation within Unity. Would help a ton for small Animations like UI elements and sprite animations.

6

I needed to copy a set of keyframes to another track. Solution? Open the anim clip as text in a text editor and copy paste the keyframes in there.

Talk about bad user experience :wink: