How to manually fix an animation

Unity Engine
1

Hello world

I am intensively using animations in my current project and I am getting trouble to get nice results.
Recap :

  • The project uses Mecanim and Humanoid bodies.
  • The characters are from Rocketbox CCHD, they are fully rigged and come with a bunch of animations (which are correct). They use a common avatar.
  • In addition, I am using animations from the asset store, Huge FBX Mocap library (Unity Asset Store - The Best Assets for Game Making). Each animation uses its own avatar.

The animations from Huge FBX Mocap library are not of an equal quality. Some of them are nice, others are horrible.

Problems:
How can we fix animations’ issues like a “crazy leg” effect or a slight offset in the movement ?
Is it possible to do so in Unity ? With an asset from the Asset Store ?

Example:
One of the animation is “answering to a cell phone”. There is a bunch of issues:

  • The legs are straight or bent in the wrong direction.
  • The mouth stay opened.
  • The arms and hands movements presnet a slight offset.

What I have tried so far (not working):

  • Use a mask on the animation to not affect unnecessary parts, like the legs ==> Since there is no animation data for this part, the character go inside the ground… Use a BlendTree with a correct animation for the legs ?
  • The mouth stay open even with a mask.
  • I don’t know what can I do.

Thanks in advance for your help.
If you need a sample file or something like screenshots, please let me know.

return 0;

2

did you try re-importing FBX in your DCC tool?

3

I have not tried this, I am better at coding than modeling. Probably, since the animations were created by using a mocap setup, they are not very clean.

Would it be possible to clean it in Unity ?

4

never tried in unity, didn’t get their keyframes editor yet, i know motion builder has Tools to clean mocap data, i prefer get an anim in Max and clean it…

5

I second this.
Max has a great keyframe reduction process for mapping mocap data onto a biped rig.
I’m unsure of a process to successfully accomplish cleanup in Unity as well - due to a more familiar workflow for me using Max.
If Max is an option - using keyframe reduction on mocap import will help reduce the keyframe data. Then if the animation data is incorrect in Max as it is in Unity, using biped’s built in layer manager can fix the errant limbs to be animated as desired.
After fixing the animation with layering, mix down the animation layers, and export as fbx, then retarget as normal in Unity.

6

There are a lot of little things that could be going wrong. The animation could be looking for bones that don´t exist on your model. You mentioned the mouth, that is almost assuredly because the animation is looking for a certain bone that doesn´t exist. If memory serves me, you can deselect that bone in the animation rig window and it will fix the issue. For limbs that are turned backwards, I don´t think they can be fixed.

For cleaning up bad animations, I cannot recommend enough Skele Unity Asset Store - The Best Assets for Game Making

I am not sure it can be used to fix problems with bones like you have, but it can be used to make jerky or just bad animations much smoother and higher quality. It is an animation editing tool that is used withing Unity.

7

Thanks for your replies.
Seems that the best way to fix these issues is to import the animation in Max.

I have checked and the animation do not have the same bones. I thought this would not be a problem because both use an avatar, which, if I understand correctly, is used to abstract the animation to the target character.

I will try Skele, I hope we can adjust an existing animation.

Thanks again.

8

I believe, and I am probably wrong, that the avatar only assigns certain required and standard bones, but both the animation and model can have other bones. I have read numerous places where people had problems with the mouth because the bone layouts for face are usually very specific for the animation/model used.