Rifle Raised, Sprinting

MoCap take for a character sprinting while raising a rifle.

Rifle Raising Up

MoCap take for a character quickly raising a rifle and aiming up, to be possibly used in a blend tree for an aiming system in a shooting game.

Rifle Raising Down

MoCap take for a character quickly raising a rifle and aiming down, to be possibly used in a blend tree for an aiming system in a shooting game.

Rifle Raising

MoCap take for a character quickly raising a rifle and aiming.

Rifle Juping

MoCap take for a character jumping while holding a rifle.

Rifle Idle

MoCap take for a rifle idle animation.

Spine IK

Controlling entire spine with Unity IK, may be useful in the future:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gsVZOpMia7w

Aiming Without IK

Aiming by controlling the character's spine or chest bone without using Unity IK:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6UgB7TMk3Bg

Controlling individual bones of a skeleton can be a useful alternative to Unity IK when only a simple solution is needed.

Foot Placement

More on foot placement/planting with Unity IK for the future. Some of these are too advanced for me to grasp at the moment, others may be very heplful as an introduction:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NKIZCPenIas

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5eDt-bh9OTY

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MonxKdgxi2w

Sharp Accent 3rd-Person Tutorials

These are all of the tutorials from SharpAccent regarding 3rd-person character controllers:

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCq9_1E5HE4c_xmhzD3r7VMw/playlists?shelf_id=10&sort=dd&view=50

They deal with climbing systems, 3rd-person shooters, and advanced 3rd-person character controllers. They will be integral in going into more depth on creating character controllers for 3rd-person games/shooters with advanced mobility mechanics.

To get started with the Advanced 3rd-person controller:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3YTR_9_Trsg&list=PL1bPKmY0c-wnvW9F4BDJMwDHmq2SQ8m3L

More on foot placement with Unity IK:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5eDt-bh9OTY

FPS and Climbing

This youtuber has many tutorials to do with First Person Shooters in Unity, as well as a climbing system tutorial series:

Main page:
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCOTOF6DP6XxeBnyLRCS46kA

Climbing system:
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLZcQtrQ9JcLxzUwz1VvabjOVD64v1ixOG

Will I create a climbing system for my game? No, but I at least want a ledge grab, if I can fit it in, and for my character to grab or strike other objects. Also, the concepts behind these tutorials will be helpful in learning about and implementing Unity IK.

Unity IK Gotchas

This guy explains all of the problems that can happen when trying to get Unity IK, Animation Layers, and other features of Unity Mecanim to work together:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RfQUosJh2DU

This one will be essential to troubleshooting problems that can occur when working with Unity Mecanim.

Sharp Accent Intro to IK

A helpful introduction to Unity IK, though I have not been able to implement the foot planting, and he gets into other advanced applications of Unity IK as well. I have a feeling that this one will be helpful in the future:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EggUxC5_lGE

This is another youtuber that I highly recommend for getting tutorials for scripting and animation within Unity, though his are more advanced.

Unity Documentation, configuring the Avatar

Unity Documentation on correctly configuring the Avatar upon import. Also very helpful:

https://docs.unity3d.com/Manual/ConfiguringtheAvatar.html

Unity Documentation, IK

Unity documentation on Unity IK. This one has been helpful in getting me started with Unity IK, as I have been having some trouble grasping it to begin with.

https://docs.unity3d.com/Manual/InverseKinematics.html

Blend Trees 03

Another good tutorial on Blend Trees:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YgaLKrSApWM

Blend Trees, Best Tutorial

This one is the most helpful regarding Blend Trees. Explains how to modify existing animations in Unity when making Blend Trees:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E-zQw4GabKw

Blend Trees 01

Another Unity Official Tutorial, helpful in explaining Blend Trees:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HeHvlEYpRbM

Animation Layers 03

This one was also helpful in giving me another perspective on Animation Layers and Avatar Masks:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LXYq7Wo9DgE

Animation Layers, Best Tutorial

This one has been the most helpful in getting me into using Animation Layers/Avatar Masks in Unity:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-SAnr8-Xfgg

This youtuber is very good. I recommend her to people looking to get into game scripting and and animation in Unity.

Animation Layers, Official Unity Tutorial

This one is very basic, but still helpful in introducing me to Animation Layers:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fi4O1i8a2Ro

Henceforth, I will be posting all of the tutorials and resources I have been looking at during the past couple of weeks, plus the ones I will be looking at in the future while I work on this project. All of these resources are related to Unity Mecanim and scripting character controllers in the Unity Engine.

I am still getting comfortable with Unity IK. I spent a lot of time trying to figure out how to do foot planting. That is, using the IK to blend between it and the animation at the appropriate time so that the foot will stick perfectly flat to the floor upon contact. This makes actions like ascending a staircase or walking over bumpy terrain more convincing and have relatively less clipping. I need to start with something simpler if I am to achieve meaningful results. I have nothing to show for today.

I spent a lot of time with Unity IK today. I am still getting comfortable with Unity IK, it requires much scripting in C# in order to correct animation. So, I have nothing to show for today.

This has nothing to do with Unity IK, but it is an alternative. I am controlling an individual joint in the spine by having it's rotation value equal to the target object's position. I can also offset the bone's rotation in the script to make it properly line up with the target. Tomorrow, I will dive headfirst into applications of Unity IK. 

Character Rig Issues

I got the Motus Man working with Unity IK. Here, we can see the Unity-Generated IK Effectors.

I have not been able to retarget my cleaned MoCap animations to my proxy/basemesh character. It seems that Blender rigs don't play nice with Autodesk Motionbuilder. I think it is due to weird rotations on the joints that Blender does not eliminate like Maya can with freeze transformations. When I tried characterizing my character in Motion Builder, everything seemed fine, then when I pressed play, the limbs just freaked out and started having spasms. The joint rotations were not where they were supposed to be for the animation. I will re-rig my character in Maya when the model is completely finished. Until then, I will need to use other characters for my experimentations with Unity IK.

I have been running errands and doing homework for other classes. I foresee that I will not be able to experiment with Unity IK until tomorrow.

Unity IK Issues

I read through the Unity documentation concerning Unity IK, Avatars, and Masks. I have confirmed that in order for Unity IK to work, an Avatar must be correctly configured for the character being used. This took a while for me to figure out since all video tutorials skip that step entirely. So, I have read through all of the documentation needed to determine all other steps to be taken for Unity IK to work on a given character. In this example, I have a Team-Fortress-esque character in an idle pose, whose legs I am controlling with IK effectors.

Now, I can proceed with experimenting with ways to functionally apply this Unity IK to make any given character do a variety of interesting things.

Unity IK Issues

I have been watching a ton of tutorials, looking at Unity documentation, and expeimenting with Unity Mecanim, Animation Layers, Avatar Masks, and IK. I haven't gotten anything concrete working yet, but so far, it seems that Unity IK does not work well with Animation Layers and Avatar Masks, or that Avatar Masks only work when the character rig and animations in question are set to "Humanoid" rather than "Generic" in the Animator viewport. This does not work with all character rigs and animations, such as the MoCap character I am now using from the asset store. I will have to find a correctly configured Avatar to proceed.

MoCap First Shoot Results

This is one of my MoCap actors that I had suited and booted last week. I have finished cleaning a few animations from him that I will show in the next posts. So, I found out that there was nothing wrong with the MoCap shoot I did with him. The results were near-perfect. The problem was that I forgot to reconstruct and solve my takes. I haven't done MoCap in over a year, so I forgot that I needed to reconstruct and solve each take in Vicon Blade in Post. 

Hello, I am Cyrus Majidy, a digital media and game design student at the Westphal College of Media Arts and Design at Drexel University. I am looking to increase my skills in, and possibly specialize in combat design, or just to get good with Mecanim in Unity.
Right now, my goal is to capture tons of MoCap animations, then use these animations to make combat systems in Unity. First, I will be focusing on animation layers, blend trees, and IK in Unity.
The game idea is an FPS/3PS where the character is a super-soldier or some incredibly hypersensitive enhanced person. In all honesty, I have countless game ideas, all revolving around different types of combatants and enhanced people from samurai to super soldiers to telekinetic super-beings with unreal mental and physical attributes.
I have seen people use Unity IK to modify the angle at which a character is aiming a gun, or detect, reach out, and touch a wall.
Perhaps we want the player character in a 3rd-person game to be able to auto-target and shoot anything onscreen? Maybe we want more challenging enemy types in an FPS can do things like deflect the player's bullets with a sword, having the sword move exactly to contact of each round to add more realism, or reach out and grab the player with telekinesis without looking at the player. Or, perhaps we want the player to be able to catch enemy grenades midair, and have the hand move exactly to contact? Maybe we just want to make a simple game of catch? My goal is to test the limitations of Unity IK and see what is easily possible and what is not as easily realized.
My process/pipeline will be as follows: model and rig characters in Blender, motion capture in Vicon Blade, re-targeting and enhancing MoCap animations to character rigs in Motion builder, then experimenting with animation layers and IK in Unity.

Animation Issues

I made quick blockout animations in Blender for testing on my basic rig in Unity, but those bugged out. I have reason to believe it was due to the nature of Blender rigs. In Blender, the armature/bone system is very different than in Maya, and there isn't exactly a way to freeze transformations like there is in Maya. Even so, this is the first time I have had such an adverse reaction when importing a Blender rig into Unity.

I then resorted to Mixamo, and found that their animations and rigs do not work with Unity animation layers/avatar masks. I was still able to test out experimental movement where the player can sprint in all directions. I am reading Unity and Vicon Blade documentation. I don't want to attempt animation layers again unless I have usable MoCap data. Until then, I will focus on programming a FPS/3PS character controller.

Today, I did another MoCap shoot. It failed, so I am talking to Nick to find out where I am going wrong. Tomorrow, I will make simple placeholder animations and experiment with animation layers in Unity, or get animations elsewhere.

Today was the day of my first mocap shoot. Some unexpected things came up for my actor, so he had to leave early. I did not get any mocap data for today, but this week's mocap shoots are meant as a trial run anyway. I have another shoot tomorrow (Friday). In the event that I do not get any usable data this week, I will make simple placeholder animations using the character rig I created until I get the quality mocap animations I need.

I have scheduled mocap shootings with friends as actors for Thursday (tomorrow) and Friday. I have taken the time to re-familiarize myself with Vicon Blade to avoid as many hicups as possible. 

I have finished creating a sort of proxy mesh for my character with a very basic rig using Blender. It works pretty well. I have chosen to do this instead of getting a model online because I have a particular character in mind that I wish to create for this experimental game project.

I have two mo-cap sessions scheduled for this week in order to get animations in as quickly as possible.

This blog has now been created. That is all for today.