Root bone problem. Character floats along Y axis.

Animation
1

Hi guys, I have a problem with my animated model shifting position in the Y axis, despite selecting a root bone.

Problem is that I have no clue as to where it goes wrong, especially since the animations work nicely but I somehow can’t get the character to stick to the ground without it going off in the air. In Maya it sticks to the floor.

Maya 2012 with FBX 2012 exporter should be fine I read, so I am starting to think that it might be something wrong with my rig, or perhaps with the animation itself.

Please check the images for an illustration of my problem. I am rather new to animating in Maya, so perhaps I should change something in the graph editor.

The import looks good, root bone centered at origin exacly as in Maya.

1203512--48387--$01rootOrigin.jpg
1203512--48387--$01rootOrigin.jpg1278×558 175 KB

When I play the animation in Unity’s animation preview, however, the model shifts upwards and starts floating. The animation itself is exactly the same, no issues here, just the vertical position it seems.

1202843--48322--$02rootFloat.jpg
1202843--48322--$02rootFloat.jpg1278×558 165 KB

Any thoughts on what goes wrong here? I’m stuck at this issue for days now, any help is greatly appreciated!

Thanks

Thijs

2

I think I know where the problem is and was wondering whether anyone else ran into it.

Whenever I use the legacy system, Unity automatically takes the ‘hip bone’ (between te back lags, where the tail starts) as the ROOT. This means that when the kitten is sitting, the rest of the model floats up since the root bone stays at its position. Hence, the model goes up since the hip bone goes down.

Problem is that whenever I use GENERIC, and actually point to the root bone that is at the center (as illustrated in the above screens). Unity still seems to take the hip bone as the root of the model.

This is really weird, and I am not sure whether this is a Unity bug, or something I should fix in Maya.

Any thoughts?

3

Does your models rig start with that bone as root bone in the hierarchy? Maybe this is the issue, Unity thinks, it should be the root. Or is there maybe a wrong fbx export from your 3d Program which transforms your animation? By the way, how did you do that nice hair texture for the cat ? Looks great!