I’m in search of an efficient workflow to fine-tune existing humanoid animations to fit my character model seamlessly. Whether the character is sourced from the Asset Store or exported from a Blender Auto-Rig Pro setup as a Unity humanoid, the core issue persists.
The challenge arises when applying pre-acquired humanoid animations (from the Asset Store or Mixamo) to my character. For instance, during ledge grab or climbing animations, the character’s hands and feet don’t align correctly with the intended positions. The goal is to modify these animations so that the limbs remain stable, avoiding any glitching through surfaces or unwanted movements.
What I’m looking for is guidance on the appropriate workflow to achieve this. The process would likely be more straightforward if I could utilize Inverse Kinematics (IK) to assist with the adjustments.
Could you recommend any free or cost-effective tools, assets, or workflows to accurately and consistently synchronize these animations with my character model? Your advice on this matter would be greatly appreciated.
Are the errors on the arms and legs? How large would you say the offset is? I’m not familiar with how the Blender Auto rig asset behaves, only some experience when converting/exporting animations from the Blender Rigify. A wild speculation is that it may be related to differences in some bone orientations at the start.
I have checked the rig again and found no errors. However, the main problem is that the Mixamo rig differs from mine, and the positions of the limbs are different anyway. My main issue is that I don’t know exactly how to edit a Mixamo animation precisely to my rig so that the positions of the limbs are accurate (e.g., with an edge when climbing).
With errors I mean the parts that have unexpected or unwanted positions (like hands going through wall when climbing or so). As you mentioned “the character’s hands and feet don’t align correctly with the intended positions”. The animation itself is working fine I guess, but as I understand some positions are not what you want? If you look at it, is the error/missed alignment on the arm/legs joints? Or just the hands/feet?
Hmm, it’s hard to say, but it’s most noticeable in the arms/hands and legs/feet. Unfortunately, I only have the following footage at the moment, but it describes the situation quite well: https://twitter.com/anbagames/status/1580636329838538752
It’s a humanoid character from the Asset Store with an unmodified Mixamo animation - but It’s the same problem with my own character. You can clearly see that the hands don’t stay in one place while climbing and the feet drift a bit as well. When I look at the ‘Climbing’ animation in the official Mixamo animation preview, the hands don’t move at all while climbing. I think it has something to do with retargeting? Every character is a bit different, limbs are of different lengths, bones are angled differently, etc. But I don’t know what can be done about it?
Thanks for your help!
Looked at the video, think it’s most noticeable in the arms (the legs might be ok, more normal misses, of course I don’t know the original), and the shoulder parts and head follows the arms/hands down.
You can try to check parent bones (of the IK chain) start rotation/roll (between original and the problem rig), see if you can get a clue from that what would be the best way to correct the animation.
If you like, to understand better what I’m talking about…
I made a tutorial video and page (about metarig and Rigify animations to Unity), where the problem I’m thinking of is described, the examples are very simplified and for beginners but even if your problem is different you may perhaps get some ideas on where to look and how to fix.
The problem part is at 10:57 in the video, but there are also illustrations on the tutorial page.
under Part 3: Rigify animation to Unity (unfold text) the page with the illustrations is on page (See Arm rotation problem explained in images) Mixxus Studio - Rigify offset.
Don’t know if this is of any help, but anyway I think it is some bone orientation issue.
@MixxusStudio Thank you very much for your help! The approach is very interesting to fix the problem and I will test it in the coming days. I also have to figure out how to do all of this in Auto-Rig Pro. The video and your website have definitely given me some ideas and I think this is a possible way to solve the problem! Thanks!
