Still no way to get fine-grained masking with humanoid animations?

[JoeStrout]

I’m not sure — I’ve moved on from the project where I needed this — but I might suggest looking at the Animancer plugin. I use that in most of my projects nowadays, and it does a good job of fixing or working around most of the boneheaded limitations in Unity’s animation system. It performs well, and I also find it substantially easier to use.

[Kybernetik]

Animancer won’t solve this problem out of the box since it uses the same AvatarMasks as the Animator Controller system, but it supports animation jobs which should make it possible to implement. One of the Animation Jobs Samples is a weighted mask mixer which would let you not only mask individual bones but give them individual weights as well. I haven’t tried using it myself, but I’d be happy to work with anyone who has a real use case for it.

Edit: the Weighted Mask Layer system is now included in Animancer.

[netpost]

I can’t believe that we are in 2021 and such a simple thing can not be done in Unity. How can you make a serious production if you can’t have a mask for the face bones only (without having to mask the head too). Does someone from unity read these post? 8 years and still no solutions. Really?

[netpost]

In the meantime I use UMotion Pro to copy blend shapes from one animation to the other but revised scripts is a common thing in the animation chain. replacing one facial motion capture with another revised one should be an easy process. Not rocket science…

[o1o101]

Still wanting this in 2022

[Whatever560]

That is such a pain … we can’t have a humanoid mask that exclude the body and shoulders transform, but that keep the rest of the arms …

The control there is on humanoid mask is very limited. That is such a shame

[bennes4]

I need this too…

[qvp]

No one at unity gives a damn.

[Whatever560]

@qvp

No one at unity gives a damn.

Or under the radar. Don’t know who we should ping for this.

Though, it strange that no solution exists, I would guess someone at least found a workaround, this looks like a common thing you’d like to have in any game relying heavily on animations and there are a bunch released.

[maewionn]

So, another half years has passed, it’s over 9 years since the thread started and no one at unity even said a thing? Wow…

[alicja121]

I need this please anyone guide me

[wshjle]

@JoeStrout

OK. Here’s what appears to be happening:

Any bone which is mapped to a Humanoid slot can be controlled only by the “Humanoid” section of an animation mask. The Transform part of the mask is irrelevant to these bones.

Any bone which is not mapped to a Humanoid slot is controlled by the Transform part of the animation mask.

I took great care in this test; I actually dragged an avatar out from the model, to another folder, and named it TestAvatar (it was written out as a model, which contained TestAvatarAvatar, but whatever). Then I made sure that the model itself, the animation I’m testing with, and the mask were all using TestAvatarAvatar, and all set to Humanoid.

The result: when I turn off everything under Humanoid in the mask, the model is frozen in the relaxed-fetal position… except for the eyelids. The eyelids continue to blink, as long as those transforms are checked in the Transform part of the mask. I believe this is because the eyelid joints are not mapped to Humanoid slots. When I uncheck the eyelid bones in the Transform section of the mask, then the blinks stop too.

Conversely, for any bone that is slotted into the Humanoid part of the avatar config, checking or unchecking it in Transform makes no difference whatsoever. These only respond (in groups I have no control over) to the Humanoid portion of the mask.

I’ve been thinking of “Humanoid” and “Generic” animations as two separate things, but I guess really they’re not — every Mecanim animation has 0 or more bones slotted into the Humanoid framework, and 0 or more bones which are not. “Generic” is just the extreme where there are no Humanoid bones at all, but in a Humanoid animation, there may nonetheless be some bones (like the eyelids in my test) which are not slotted, and so don’t suffer from all the limitations (or benefits) of Humanoid animation.

So I guess this could work fine for something like a humanoid character with a tail or wings… these joints would simply be ignored by the Humanoid system, and so you could mask them as you please at the Transform level. The problem only arises when you are trying to have finer control over bones which are also part of the Humanoid system, e.g., layering control of the jaw. But I may be able to just unslot the jaw and other face joints, and deal with those in a Generic way, while continuing to use Humanoid animation for the body and limbs (for which Humanoid’s crude masking is probably good enough).

Still not what I would call an AAA solution… but possibly an adequate work-around, now that I understand what’s going on.

It’s 2024 and Unity still hasn’t solved this fundamental problem. Unity can’t claim to be able to do AAA games

[Wiloux]

Keeping this post alive until Unity got this fixed!

[Kybernetik]

Might be worth asking about in the new animation system thread: Animation Status Update (Q3 2024) Unite Announcement

[Whatever560]

Yes, even if they don’t add it at start, if they’re serious about the new animation system, and looking at its flexibility we’ll probably have a thing for that.

[Shaun-Fong]

For those still looking for a solution, Layered Blend Mask might be able to help you. It supports all animation types, whether Humanoid or Generic. And it allows you to add blending layers without limitation and enables you to adjust the blend weight for each animation bone individually.
Forum

[brianzaubar]

Still not implemented in Unity 6. Why can we even see the “Transform” list in the Avatar Mask if it has no effect on a humanoid avatar anyways?

[Whatever560]

If I’m not mistaken, avatar masks are used both for Humanoid and Generic animations. (I use humanoid). The transform list has indeed no sens in an Humanoid setup.