What do these Import Warnings mean?

[LaneFox]

For those curious, here’s what I’ve found.

Welcome to the rabbit hole.

Warning #1

‘ElbowPart1_L’ is inbetween humanoid transforms and has rotation animation that will be discarded.

This means that there is a bone placed between two common “Humanoid” hierarchy bones. It’s probably a twist / stretch bone. You can fix this a few ways, all of which include removing the bone from the inline chain of the Humanoid hierarchy path.

• Remove the bone indicated

• Move the bone to be in the same level as it’s current parent (side by side, has some caveats)

• Don’t use Humanoid

The problem is that Humainoid wants a clear, uninterrupted path up and down the hierarchy with items that it is absolutely familiar with so it can guarantee mapping and animation accuracy. Fair enough.

Warning #2

Copied Avatar Rig Configuration mis-match. Inbetween bone rotation in copied configuration does not match rotation in the animation file:

I’m speculating that this is an issue when you retarget to a different avatar but the orientations don’t line up perfectly. This is due to some auto-magic way that Unity interprets the orientations of bones in order to align them into T-Pose and thus map them to other animations using Humanoid. Is it whatever is at frame 0? Is it an average of the pose? Who knows! It’s not documented officially anywhere.

T-Pose required

Camtrack is right, the T-pose when you setup your avatar is really important. We do use this pose to calibrate your avatar and retarget any motion on it.

You can always use the option in the Avatar tools

if it still doesn’t work you will have to manually adjust your transform to try to match a T-pose, Avatar must be Z facing, Y up, both arm parallel with X and palm hand looking -Y

Your file must contain a T-Pose at frame 1. This was discovered by a user, and isn’t officially confirmed as far as I can tell. Officially, the T-Pose is just… “used”, and your rig must be in a T-Pose somewhere, but it’s not documented where or when.

Pose RIG Problem

After a few tests, the solution is : Export all your animations with perfect T Pose in frame 1, then import to Unity, T Pose of avatar is fully respected. Just configure your animations to begin in frame 2. So simple.

How to properly rig a Mecanim Humanoid so animations play correctly?

Camtrack is right, the T-pose when you setup your avatar is really important. We do use this pose to calibrate your avatar and retarget any motion on it. You can always use the option in the Avatar tools Pose/Reset Pose/Enforce T-pose if it still doesn't work you will have to manually adjust your transform to try to match a T-pose, Avatar must be Z facing, Y up, both arm parallel with X and palm hand looking -Y

No length correction

When Unity knows the animation’s T-pose, and knows your figure’s T-pose, Mecanim will interpolate everything else based on those angles. T-pose is arms parallel to the ground plane, and legs perpendicular to the ground.

It doesn’t know how long the arms and legs are, hip width, or size of torso/head, it just interpolates those T-pose angles.

This isn’t accurate enough to (for instance) touch your nose with a finger. For more precise movement where the hand or foot needs to be somewhere specific, you’d use IK along with the animation.

Mecanim Humanoid doesn’t account for limb length. Thinking about it now, I suppose that’s understandable.

My humanoid animations don't look right on other models. Is this a sign that my rig is bad?

Hello, I made a custom human rig for my game, and my animations don't look right when played on other models that don't have my rig (like the Unity preview model). I'm concerned this might be a sign that my rig will cause me problems for the long-term. Is this a bad thing?

Hierarchy rules

Hips – Upper Leg – Lower Leg – Foot – Toes
Hips – Spine – Chest – Neck – Head
Chest – Shoulder – Arm – Forearm – Hand
Hand – Proximal – Intermediate – Distal

This is the hierarchy Mecanim Humanoid expects. Anything in between is ignored. The naming assumptions are undocumented, so we have no way of knowing how it automatically finds these bones to assist with importing automation. You simply have to import, see what hooks up and go from there.

For example - Maya Advanced Skeleton calls the shoulder “Scapula”, and the Upper Arm bone “Shoulder”. This automatically breaks the mapping and you have to either rename the bone in your rig or retarget the bone manually in the Avatar Configuration.

In the end

Differences between humanoid and generic animations

It may not be worth it, and generic starts looking really attractive as it’s significantly closer to lossless animation while Humanoid is often unstable in even basic scenarios. Due to the way it interpolates things to get remapped results there is an unknown level of inaccuracy which you absolutely cannot control and are not guaranteed to get consistent results.