I’m curious to know what the current adaption rate of Mechanim is so far… and or when you plan to switch over to it if ever, or maybe just stick with Legacy forever (which may mean you stay on an older version of Unity as Legacy gets phased out)
So when do you plan to fully switch over to Mechanim if ever and Why?
Primary reason I ask is because I have some plans in the works for potentially creating a new Unity Asset that will make full use of Mechanim Animation System. Correct me if I’m wrong but I think currently most Unity Assets Primarily Only Support Legacy.
So I think this will be some good stats for all of us… So go ahead an Vote! and feel free to share any thoughts…
It’s hard to say. For my 3D stuff I really like Mechanim’s workflow with mocap assets, but almost everything but the characters I still handle with legacy.
Makes Sense, I currently see Mechanim as a Character Animator Tool, not sure how it will help for other basic animation needs, seems like Overkill for basic animation stuff.
I just finished going through the Mechanim Tutorial I’m really impressed with how easy it is to blend animations by creating Avatar Masks to block out the parts of the body we want or don’t want to animate during a New Animation Event. I have to say that’s one major Plus for me, I always found blending animations with Legacy Painful. So i’m beginning to see alot of the Pros of Mechanim now as far as Humanoid Character Animation is concerned, not sure how well it works for Creatures or Other Non-Humanoid Characters.
I find legacy the exact opposite, a total ease to blend animations based on weights and using layers. With the right knowledge and skills legacy is perfect…almost.
I already have since it came out. The retargeting is elegant and begs the question, “Why can’t Autodesk do this?”
Anim Blending is superb as well, though not quite perffect
I will switch to mechanim when:
A) Clips are reusable. I can add remove replace etc at runtime and they play nice like in legacy if the names of the hierarchy are the same
B) When I dont HAVE to use a controller even when I don’t really need a controller, for all I wanna do is play a simple animation without the fuss
Same Here.IMO mechanim is too limited and demanding when it comes to scripting. Although , mechanim does have many cool features like root rotation and transformations.
Does anyone know if Unity plans to somehow Integrate Legacy Features into Mechanim for Basic Animation Usage? as yes, I do agree It is overkill to require an animator controller for simple animation stuff. Or better yet why not just leave Legacy as is…? I recall someone mentioning because it’s more overhead to continue supporting legacy technology, but if we all need it, then they can’t just take it away… so I wonder how they plan to address these issues.
The humanoid avatar mask is actually one of the reasons I cant switch to Mecanim. The problem is that the hip and the spine bones are in the same body part of the humanoid mask. The most common scenario for using a body mask is to have your walking/running animations on one layer and your upper body animations on top of it. With Mecanim humanoids I just can’t do that, I cant separate the hip and the spine. Looks like a classic case of over-simplifying things to the point where they become useless.
I really like mecanim and i very much like the root motion idea, using an animation to drive its own movement seems natural and you can tweak to your hearts content
Autodesk does have this btw, in the entremely powerful Motionbuilder. Need some more of that in Unity
And you can do what you like with a bone in a rig in LateUpdate() as mecanim is done with it by then (including upper body movement or just having a head face something). I’ve used it to do exactly as you mentioned, if i understood you right
No, no I meant upper-body animations you know like handling a prop, aiming a weapon at different directions and so on… You need to keep them separate from your locomotion animations unless you want to end up with hundreds of animation clips. With humanoid I can choose between either having my locomotion without hip movement which basically looks like hovering or having my upper-body animations without spine movement which is just wrong.
For asset store use, It would be a bit limiting to switch to mecanim as there are still many developers using the 3.5 cycle. I found no real problems with the old animation system, except as mentioned retargeting. If retargeting isn’t super important I feel it’s a no brainer. Just be prepared for people asking you for a version in Mecanim as well… unfortunately even though 4.0 has been out for a while now, I feel we’re still in an in-between stage.
Now, If I were developing a standalone project, and not something on the asset store, then I’d probably reconsider this approach and work with mecanim.
