Mobility Pro and Rifle Pro Packs - New Updates - Mocap Online

Our Mobility and Rifle Mocap Animation Packs both have a major new release on the Marketplace.

“Mobility_01 MoCap Pack” has a new updated version: "Mobility 01 Pro - MoCap Pack"
“Military_Rifle_01 MoCap Pack” has a new updated version: "Rifle 01 Pro - Mocap Pack"

We’ve changed the names to reflect our new offerings of smaller packs at lower price points. “Pro” are the full complete packs, “Basic” is a more fundamental set, and “Starter” is a small pack to get rolling with.

All “Pro”, “Basic” and “Starter” packs are all available with all details on our web store now, and will be available on the Marketplace in the near future.

Rifle Pro 2.5 is the major update including all Root Motion and In-Place, diagonal strafing, added transitions and more.
360 animations and 40 aim offsets. 760 total animation files.

Mobility Pro 2.6 now includes all animations with Root Motion and In-Place, along with added animations and all the features of 2.5 including diagonal strafing, added transitions and much more.
219 animations and 18 aim offsets. 456 Total Animation Files.

Please check out the update details below:

Mobility 01 Pro - MoCap Pack
237+ Mobility Motion Capture Animations

Description:

View Animations on Sketchfab: Sketchfab (***Sketchfab animations are old, need to be updated)
Video: Mobility: 3D Character Animation - MoCap Online on Vimeo

Updated: Rev. 2.6
Major update - Including all with Root Motion and In-Place, diagonal strafing, added transitions and much more.
219 animations and 18 aim offsets. 456 Total Animation Files.

INCLUDES: Idles, Walking, Jogging, Running, Crouching, Strafing, Turns, Hops, Jumps, Fidgets, Deaths and Transitions, and more.

Please read the complete motion list with descriptions:
https://goo.gl/0x8O3s

Technical Details:

Rev. 2.6 Update:
Unreal Engine 4.9 - 4.xx
Major update highlights:

  • All animations included as root motion and in-place.
  • Large number of animations added.
  • Diagonal Strafing, including back pedals.
  • Left and Right foot up Jumps, with pose and velocity matched end frames.
  • Stand and Turn to Walk/Jog/Run Forward in eight directions.
  • Crouch and Turn to CrouchWalk Forward in eight directions.
  • Transitions to Walk/Jog/Run are now all posed matched, for more seamless blending.
  • New Look-At aim offsets
  • FYI: The new Skeleton has two additional bones, “hand-l-wep” and “hand-r-wep”, for alternate attachments in upcoming Rifle and Pistol animations. They have no animation and can be ignored for this pack. They will not affect any animations not using them.

Motion list has descriptions and notes of each animation.
All animations are on the UE4 template skeleton with IK bones.
In-place animations noted as “_IP”.
All idles and transitions have been carefully pose-matched, for seamless motion trees.
FBX source files are also included as single Take animations on the UE4 template skeleton, ready for direct import on any other character using the UE4 template skeleton, or for skeleton-to-skeleton retargeting in UE4 to any other Humanoid character. They are in “\Content\Mobility_01\Source\FBX\” (not visible in the UE4 editor) along with other documentation.
A Motionbuilder 2015 file is included with the UE4 template skeleton setup with the the HIK rig. Any of the FBX files can be imported, edited and animated as desired, and re-exported as new animations.
A Maya 2015 file is included with the UE4 template skeleton setup with the the HIK rig. Any of the FBX files can be imported, edited and animated as desired, and re-exported as new animations.

More Details: http://www.motioncaptureonline.com/collections/ue4-mobility-packs


Rifle 01 Pro - Mocap Pack
400+ Motion Capture Animations

Description:

Updated: Rev. 2.5
Major update! Including all Root Motion and In-Place, diagonal strafing, added transitions and more.
360 animations and 40 aim offsets. 760 total animation files.

View Animations on Sketchfab: Sketchfab (***Sketchfab animations are old, need to be updated)
Video: Military Rifle: 3D Character Animations - MoCap Online on Vimeo

Large set of Military Rifle animations for a third-person shooter game.
All idles and transitions have been carefully pose-matched, for seamless motion trees.
Includes looking and aim offsets and firing motions.
A matching fully textured Rifle is included.

Please read the complete motion list:
https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B-Z-hxYLrNEUQlpLZ2N4RWJDMUk

Technical Details:

Rev. 2.5 Update:
Unreal Engine 4.9 - 4.xx
Major update highlights:

  • Many animations added.
  • All animations included as Root Motion and In-Place.
  • Diagonal Strafing, including back pedals.
  • Left and Right foot up Jumps, with pose and velocity matched end frames.
  • Stand and Turn to Walk/Jog/Run Forward in eight directions.
  • Crouch and Turn to CrouchWalk Forward in eight directions.
  • Look-At aim offsets
  • Along with the two right hand weapon sockets, the Skeleton has two additional bones “hand-l-wep” and “hand-r-wep”, for animated attachment of the Rifle. “hand-r-wep” creates the correct Rifle position always, including holstering. They will not affect any other animations not using them.
  • The “ik_hand_gun” bone is animated to follow the “hand-r-wep”.

The rifle mesh is attached to “hand-r-wep” in the Persona skeleton view for preview.
All animations are on the UE4 template skeleton with IK bones.
FBX source files are also included as single Take animations on the UE4 template skeleton They are in “\Content\Military_Rifle_01\Source\FBX\” (not visible in the editor).
A Motionbuilder 2015 file is included with the UE4 template skeleton setup with the the HIK rig, and the M4 Rifle mesh with constraints setup for one and two handed connections. Any of the FBX animation files can be imported, edited and animated as desired, and re-exported as new animations.
A Maya 2015 file is also included with the UE4 template skeleton setup with the the HIK rig. Any of the FBX files can be imported, edited and animated as desired, and re-exported as new animations.

Contact and Support

support email: UE4@motusdigital.com
website: http://www.motioncaptureonline.com

A note about the Sketchfab viewers:

The packs have gotten a bit large since we are including every single animation as in-place as well as root motion, so Sketchfab has gotten a bit problematic. We are hitting it’s file size limits and it’s getting buggy with uploads.

Rifle Pro now has 360 animations and 40 aim offsets. 760 total animation files with the in-place.
Mobility Pro has 219 animations and 18 aim offsets. 456 Total animation files with the in-place.

We were going to split each pack into two viewers, root and in-place, but that didn’t work out since Rifle has 400 base animations not including in-place and still breaks Sketchfab. So…
Plan is to make more parts as needed. Say, a Rifle part A and B for root motion, and A ans B for In-Place. This seems the best solution for now, we are working on it. We apologize the Sketchfab viewers are out of date and incomplete at the moment.

Sketchfab really seems the best way to present our animations so you can see what you are really getting in any current pack. Making videos takes too much setup, rendering and editing time to stay current every time we make updates. Sizzle reels are cool to show what it all could look like in context, but not for raw presentation of the individual animations.

Actually there is one exception to that, the old original “Mobility” demo video we still use. It shows every single animation in the pack (at the time) tiled together with no blending, and sort of tells an entertaining(hopefully) story of a dude avoiding rolling balls and moving walls etc. while showing off every motion as is. At least that was what the artist in me was going for when I created the movie. :cool: If you haven’t seen it already and have five minutes to burn:

Back on topic…

The Rifle Pro 2.5 is the big update with lots more animations, all root motion, and all in-place included.
Mobility Pro 2.5 to 2.6 has added all in-place now, CrouchWalk turns, and left and right running jumps.
Check the motion lists of course for full details.
As I mentioned, the Basic and Starter Packs are available on our website now, and we do offer an upgrade discount to buy a smaller pack now and get the Pro Pack later.

Zombie Pro 2.5 is in progress, with all the hyper attacks and runs, on fire and deaths, knock backs, etc., out in a few weeks fingers crossed.

Is the Zombie update coming soon? :slight_smile: I noticed you have the new 2.5 update mentioned already in homepage. Cant wait to try the new hyper attacks and other new anims.

Zombie Pro 2.5 pack with the new hyper moves is out now!

Yes!! The Zombie Pro 2.5 pack with the new hyper moves is out now!
It’s available on our www.motioncaptureonline.com store anyway, it has been submitted to the Marketplace and will appear when it goes through their system. We’ve made different versions for all platforms, and all get deployed on our store first.

You can check out the animations on Sketchfab, it’s a little annoying trying to read the list of motion names, but they are all there.
View 3D Animations on Sketchfab:
https://skfb.ly/QFCt

New moves include:
Three different style fast runs, including starts from standing.
Knock backs from attacks.
Knock backs from walks and chases, then resuming pursuit.
Hit deaths in four directions.
Eight variations of being on fire and death.
Stand to Crawl and Crawl to stand transitions, including legs getting knocked out.
Three new different varied Idles.
Four different standing arm swinging attacks.
Four different hyper aggressive flailing arms attacks.

There are actually three versions available now, with smaller packs to get your feet wet:
Pro - 100.00 (The current full version, new name)
Basic - 35.00
Starter - 5.00

New animation list(s) here:
https://drive.google.com/folderview?id=0B-Z-hxYLrNEUUlhsS2tuVlZHRGc&usp=sharing

More Details:

Zombie Pro - MoCap Pack

150+ Zombie Motion Capture Animations

DESCRIPTION:

Updated: Rev. 2.5
Major update! Hyper Zombies, and all animations as Root Motion and In-Place

INCLUDING: Hyper-Chase Running, Hyper-Attacks, On-Fire Variations and Deaths, Hits, Knock Backs, Crawling/Transitions, Standing Idles Variations, Walking, Slow Chasing, Directional Deaths, Reaching, Turns, and Shambles.

Create and control your own Zombie Horde with this set of flesh hungry Undead animations. We obtained and motion captured actual REAL Zombies in our studio! (No we didn’t) Bring your undead game to life. Now with Hyper Zombie moves to energetically wreak havoc in the Zombie apocalypse!

View 3D Animations on Sketchfab:
https://skfb.ly/QFCt
Watch Demo Vimeo:

Please read the complete Zombie Pro motion list here:
https://drive.google.com/folderview?id=0B-Z-hxYLrNEUUlhsS2tuVlZHRGc&usp=sharing

TECHNICAL DETAILS:

  • UNREAL ENGINE 4.10 - 4.XX
  • Rev. 2.5 Update
  • Major update highlights:
  • All animations as Root Motion and In-Place.
  • Many animations added.
  • Hyper Attacks with variations.
  • Hyper Chases/Running with variations and transitions.
  • New Idles and variations.
  • On-Fire animations and Deaths.
  • Knock Backs, Hits, and Death animations.
  • Standing and Crawling hits and transitions.

***NOTE:
Anyone who purchased it already on the Marketplace and wants the update now instead waiting for it to show up in a few days/weeks(?) can email us at UE4@motusdigital.com and I’ll get it to you directly. Please include your original Marketplace order confirmation!

We have gotten a lot of positive feedback so far on the new animations, hopefully you guys will agree and dig them as well!

Best,

Here was my new video with the zombie anims in action as you requested. :wink: Very WIP, but just in case. Have had much fun with the anims. Planning to mix some custom anims to add jumping and climbing for zombies.
v=uUpCZSZetlA

Awesome! Thanks for sharing, cool to see them swarming after you and all lit up on fire at 1:27, too much fun. Looking forward to seeing further development.

When will the Pistol version 2 update with root motion be ready? :slight_smile:

Great question! Don’t have a great answer. We’ve been hit with a lot of good paying external work for a while now, which is great for our small company’s bottom line and the smile on the boss’s face, but is keeping us very busy so not so good for updating our mocap packs. Thanks for the nudge, I’ll bring it up and see if we can at least get the existing pack as is updated with root motion (not adding all the new stuff we shot) sometime soon(er). Sorry again for the long wait.

Thanks for the quick response , it is much appreciated. I will be looking forward being able to use those root motion animations soon.

Please post when you have any new information :slight_smile:

Is the Ninja set getting updated?

Yes, that is another pack due a huge update as we captured a whole bunch new moves for it last year that has taken us forever to get to. After chatting with SOLO via our support email, we are going to try and get the current Pistol pack as is updated with root motion, no new animations for now to at least get the badly needed root motion out there. Ninja is up after pistol, they are the last two current packs that haven’t been updated yet. Thanks for everyone’s patience.

I understand you must be very busy, but I personally think a bit more transparency on what is happening with the updates (and more frequent communication through either the forum threads or the comment sections on your assets) will do you good. Back at the beginning of the year you made promises in your marketplace descriptions and comments about big updates coming but then provide no real news all year about the updates on your packs until after the fact.

It now being the end of the year and I believe only a few of the packs have received the updates.

When will the Pistol Pack be updated (Rough ETA not looking for an exact date.)? and is there any news on the AnimBlueprint templates you have mentioned many times over the past year.

Pirate, your critique of infrequent communication and updates on the forum is well taken, but typically has been because there is little to announce on a regular basis. A bit awkward to regularly make announcements “nothing new yet”. I’m a technical director/supervisor and animator, I’m always swamped with animation work (to get new work/animations/packs done) and trying to stay on top of support emails. I prefer to keep my head down and work, the job of forum mouthpiece was decided for me, so yes I can suck at this public update stuff. Plus we worked on a AAA title for three months (NDA prevents me from saying what) and other contract work including VR this past year that has distracted us from MocapOnline animations. Porting assets to multiple platforms is tedious as well. Not looking for sympathy, just stating the facts, we do a lot of different things to stay in business. I’d take a more jovial tone with all this, but you seem genuinely annoyed and I don’t want to make light of that.

And yes, early in the year we talked a big game about AnimBlueprints coming out and such, and then had to do a lot of backpedaling after realizing it was unclear how long it was actually going to take and find possibly multiple local folks to dig in deep and work on them with us to full fruition and “perfection”. I’ve done a certain amount of explaining and foot-in-mouth apologizing for the ill made promises and no certain ETA in other posts and responses on the forum, so it is what it is. We’ve had some promising leads during the year, but decided not to blog about them since we didn’t want to get folks hopes up and get burned again. My recent tact has been keep mouth shut unless we have something to shout about.

OKAY, all that apologizing and tiny violins aside, stuff we’ve been sitting on and just happened…

NEWS:
The Zombie Packs are getting an update including AnimBlueprints and custom Velocity and Yaw attributes for implementing In-Place animations.
This was alluded to in an ongoing Ninja discussion here: Ninja_01 MoCap Pack - 167 Ninja Motions - Marketplace - Epic Developer Community Forums
Anyone wanting to chime in there about a hands retrofit please do.

Our friend **** at 3 Prong Gaming has made demo controllers for the Pro and Basic packs, and will be making shortly videos on their construction and use. Go ! He wanted me to wait on the announcement till he had the videos ready, but since we’ve been so silent a news update was in order. They will feature 3rd person movement and multiple attacks. also has been working on Zombie AI as antagonists, I will defer to when/if he will be releasing tutorials on his YouTube channel. He also worked with us on new custom attributes for the In-Place animations, which track frame by frame the Velocity and Yaw. When tapped into they can enable exact control of character movement and no foot sliding, especially for an erratic zombie where movement is not a constant speed or direction.
(The concept is similar to what what the guys working on Paragon are doing, and where I got the ideas from watching their streaming tech videos. Seriously great stuff. v=1UOY-FMm-xo&feature=youtu.be&t=1631)

ZOMBIE SCREENSHOTS:

The custom attributes can be deleted from each animation if they are not desired and considered dead weight. We figured it better to include all parameters that could be deemed useful by whomever versus limiting them.
Zombie Packs are in final stages of packaging, then to availability on www.MocapOnline.com and submission to the Marketplace. If anyone has any changes or suggestions please speak now, we want to get these up ASAP to everyone (DUH), even if minor changes are to be made in a future release.

And at risk of sticking giant foot in mouth again:
NEWS:
Mobility and/or Rifle Packs will have a AnimBlueprint soon.

We have been working with our friend Nate over at UNDOING, a VERY COOL indie game in development, giving him a lot of custom animation and rigging support. He has been working on Mobility and Rifle AnimBlueprints based on his ongoing WIP for the game’s 3rd person controller. He is a perfectionist and has reassessed and started over several times to make it look top notch, including feedback with us and altering existing animations. Dude is awesome. Nate says he is very close to something he feels good about releasing to us. We hope to release before the Holidays, if shortly after, fingers crossed. BTW Nate is also a full time student and definitely burning the candle at both ends. Go Nate! He really prefers to keep a low profile and not talk about or release anything before he feels it’s ready.

The MocapOnline Blueprints and packs will not contain all the custom “Undoing” animations and tweaks, but will be based on and benefit from the same core Blueprints. It is likely the lessons learned and custom animations will trickle down to our stock packs in the future, no promises when.

And not to be forgotten:
NEWS:
Pistol Pack getting v1.5 root motion update and custom attributes.

Pistol Pack animations have the root motion made, and have all the custom Velocity/Yaw attributes like the new Zombie IP animations. (We are labeling them “_IPC” signifying they contain the custom attr.) A few more animation tweaks needed, and then on to packaging them in the different packs/ update and upload to MocapOnline/ then submission to Marketplace. Same drill. Yes, it’s way overdue with the full 2.5 treatment, that is an end of January possibility. (and Ninja of course, see the thread noted above.) As before, hopefully for the Holidays, if not right after.

Going on simultaneously…
NEWS:
New LIFE/ArchViz Packs - Stadium Crowd, Office Desk and Meeting and Death

I guess Death isn’t exactly an ArchViz thing. :confused: Anyway, new Death Pack being ported to UE4 now.
http://www.motioncaptureonline.com/collections/life-animations/products/fbx-deaths

New Stadium Crowd Pack being ported to UE4 now.
http://www.motioncaptureonline.com/collections/life-animations/products/fbx-crowd

New Office Desk Pack being ported to UE4 now.
http://www.motioncaptureonline.com/collections/life-animations/products/fbx-desk

New Office Meeting Pack being ported to UE4 now.
http://www.motioncaptureonline.com/collections/life-animations/products/fbx-meeting

A lot of ArchViz folks have gotten in touch, and we’ve been working with a couple of crowd simulation software companies, so our “LIFE” animations are growing. They of course are useful for populating background characters and scenes etc. as well.

NEWS:
New FAQ - UE4 Version Compatiblility and Usage

Always a lot of confusion and questions about our Packs compatibility with newer and current engine versions, this FAQ clears it all up, hopefully. Please have a read and feedback or suggestions welcome.

Blog Post:
http://www.motioncaptureonline.com/blogs/news/ue4-version-compatiblility-and-usage-new-faq

PDF Download here:
goo.gl/gXK49z
UE4_Version_Compatiblility_and_Usage.pdf

Spent all day writing all this, better get back to work on actual animations. :stuck_out_tongue:

Onward,

Sorry to take your day away from work to write this. But I myself and I’m sure other customers are quite happy for the update.
Thank you :slight_smile:

It’s all good! Update badly needed.

This is why I moved to using your packs for a lot of anims. You guys being active here, listening to the customers and keeping things updated. Good work.

…and some decent sales.

Happy New Year Everyone,

Just a quick update on what’s going on with our packs. The blueprint controller is forefront and trickle down dictating a few things.

Our friend with 3 Prong Gaming](3 Prong Gaming - YouTube) has still been working hard in his free time on the blueprint controller for our Mobility pack. The “Basic” pack at the moment (There are Pro/Basic/Starter packs on our store, only Zombie has the three versions on the Marketplace right now), which has about half the animations of the full Pro pack. The controller therefore has less capabilities than the Pro will, but he’s using that as a starting point with lessons learned for the far more complete Pro pack next. It’s looking pretty good and has gamepad support with analog stick movement and acceleration. The Pro version will add a large amount of animations filling in 45 angles and transitions, so it will have it’s bugs and caveats to work through.

It’s my understanding he’s using Root motion as well as In-Place in combination for the best results from both. We have also test split the IP jumps into takeoff/air-loop/landing which is looking great. The full set of 3 way split jumps still needs to be created for Basic and the full Pro pack, so a lot of work left to do to get him all animations needed for proposed controller.

All IP animations in the new controller/pack will also have custom attribute curves and be labeled “IPC” as such. We boiled it down to two custom curves to keep it simple and most useful: “Speed” and “Rot(yaw)”. Speed will be the cm/sec for all directions, and Rot(yaw) will be deg/sec for turning L/R. (This is in contrast to the the multiple curves we did for the Zombie IPC animations and controller, which we may revise - another discussion) User input will specify direction so for most situations only one speed variable is needed.
So is tweaking a few things with me for Mobility Basic, then I will make and modify any and all new animations (split jumps, IPC attributes, etc.) for Basic and Pro to function fully, and get the Pro controller also tweaked to our satisfaction where we feel okay about a public release.

Then, ultimately all this knowledge will be copied/applied to making similar controllers for Rifle, Pistol and Ninja. The Ninja will definitely benefit from a good jump system (and yes we are still looking at redoing the evil hands/arms many are asking for a more generic pose).

Which brings up the Pistol update. A number of people are asking for the long overdue Pistol update now, but it makes most sense to complete the update with the new animation set/list needed for the controller, not spend a large amount of time on an old list. So when we lock down the Mobility controller specs/animations they will be applied to the Pistol update as a model to replicate. The same basic deal with the Ninja update, copy the Mobility controller specs, which is long overdue.

SO…

All this means the exact date of all these updates is still uncertain, but we want and need to do it right looking forward. We’ve been working on other private contracts, going through missed stuff from the holidays, finishing OEM arch viz anims for a couple of vendors, etcetc., AND looking at best way to proceed in updating our packs including the UE4 versions of course. (UE4 is the only platform we are making controllers for) We are having meetings the rest of the week to try to put a more detailed plan together.

Sorry for the long and a bit meandering post with no bullet points, just wanted to check in and let everyone know we are working on a bit of everything. It seems the WIP controller progress is important and will positively affect and direct current and other packs moving forward. is the brains at this point with the controller, I am tester and feedback. Please feel free to contact him with questions or comments.

Cheers,

Overall the rifle package is good. There are problems and difficulties configuring the animations, but overall I think it’s a good value (maybe just a bit pricey). I’ve spent about a month messing around with the animations trying to put together a character that can use them. It’s been a lot of work, but the results are generally good. Here’s a synopsis of what I encountered.

Retargeting: well, it’s retargeting, what can I say. The trick is that you need to take the Motus skeleton mesh and align the arm bones of your mesh proportionally with the arm bones (clavicle, upper arms and lower arms) with it. If you don’t do this your skeleton mesh’s hands will never be in the correct place. When you do this you’re probably going to have to re-weight your mesh and fiddle with the hand bones, otherwise you can end up with some bad mesh deforms. This was a lot of work (I’m really understating this I think - it was like two days per skeleton mesh!).

There are some missing animations, e.g., w2_walk_b_to_stand_relaxed_ip (only ru/lu). Generally not a big deal since you’ll probably want to use the ru/lu animations anyway (if they exist), but it’s noticeable when you just start putting these animations together. Frankly I wonder if all of the animations that have both ru/lu animations and non-ru/lu animations should ONLY have ru/lu animations since the non-ru/lu animations are almost exactly the same as the lu animations. shrug

Inconsistent foot placement - fwd only starts with ru (or lu, I forget) causing problems when blending between fwd and l/r animations. For example, when constantly starting/stopping in the “forward+left” direction the feet will tend to twitch between poses. This could likely be solved with more ru/lu animations.

Bkpd (l/r) (backpedal) animations are just reversed fwd animations of the same direction - causes problems when using stopping animations not to mention the weirdness of leaning forward while running backwards. Players probably won’t notice but it looks weird to me. It makes the stopping animations pretty useless since there’s a lot of snapping when transitioning.

Only “straight” backward stopping and starting animations - no l/r stopping/starting animations when moving backward. Causes issues when backpedaling to a stop. You can mitigate by, well, not using them and instead using only l/r forward animations. I don’t like this since running to the left while aiming (right-handed characters) looks awkward and unconvincing. There’s no mitigation when running l/b or r/b (i.e., it only looks correct when running straight backwards).

Turning in-place transition animations (e.g., stand_to_jog_aim_l45) don’t rotate the mesh (e.g., aim_to_jog_aimL45 doesn’t rotate). Different than aim_to_jog_l/r which does rotate the mesh. Head also turns with the mesh which means you can’t really use it (i.e., head will not be turned in the direction the player is “facing”); at least I’m not sure how I’d use it.

Tough (impossible?) to blend between transition animations from l/f/r because of different and inconsistent foot placement. Feet often end up “swirling.” Can be somewhat mitigated with curves/animation playback changes/rotation rate, but it’s work to do so (and tedious).

Some “ip” animations are actually root motion animations (e.g., w2_stand_aim_to_walk_aim_f_ip). I only found a couple of these, but it means you have to select “ignore root motion” in your animation blueprint if you’re going to use them.

A few animations travel at slightly different speeds (and I mean their feet, not the actual mesh) depending on what direction your character is going (e.g., a few L’s are slightly faster than their corresponding R’s). Results in obvious foot sliding that depends on what direction the character is going; it’s tricky to adjust the speeds in whichever direction you need to. I don’t remember which ones but it wasn’t many, like one or two… maybe three. (This really wasn’t that big of a deal, but it’s work I don’t want to do!).

Some transition animations are missing, e.g. walk_relaxed_to_walk_aim etc. There are stopped transition animations (crouch_to_crouchaim for example) but not while you’re moving. Requires bone blends to mitigate. Standard blends between the poses are good enough so I’m honestly not even sure why these (stopped transitions) were included (i.e., this is really minor).

Aim offsets are not set up correctly. They’re more than one frame (3 frames) per pose, and AAT is not set to mesh space. Easy to fix, but tedious.

Aim offsets are missing aim_point_rd90/ld90/ru90/lu90 which restricts movement unnaturally. This really messes up the interpolations between the aim points. Also missing crouch aim_points (w2_crouch_aim_point_D/U45) both aim & look. Really a killer and really makes the package less valuable (you really can’t do crouched without heavy modifications/additions of some animations) and your character is never going to point their rifle in the correct direction regardless of whether or not you’re crouched).

Does include aim_point_l45/r45 which are fairly useless as aim offsets since the blend from aim_point_center to aim_point_l90/r90 handles this. scratches head

The turns (rotates) are difficult to work with. They are overall way too long (turn 180 is 4.5 seconds long - has 1.5 seconds of idle). Their timing between the rotations (particularly same-angle l/r rotations) is inconsistent and tricky to make look good. Root motion may help here, but that brings with it a whole new set of problems.

There are no “continuous” turns (rotations). When a player continuously turns the character and you use the included turning animations it plants the last foot. You can’t really adjust this either (well, I don’t know how to adjust it!) since chopping off bits of the animation results in “snapping.”

Some animations are incorrectly labelled. For example, crouched_relaxed_moving_to_idle_ru should actually be crouched_relaxed_moving_to_idle_lu as the left foot is actually the foot that’s up. (lu should also be ru - perhaps these two are just misnamed).

Fidget animations are really wonky. The root motion animations are fine, but the in-place… I’m not even sure I can describe what’s wrong with them. It looks like the root motion was taken from the pelvis rather than the root bone. For the in-place animations neither the pelvis nor the root bone move resulting in the feet just swirling around. I’m not sure why the pelvis doesn’t move and if it did you wouldn’t even need root motion for these animations, at least I don’t think you would. Bottom line is the in-place fidget animations aren’t usable.

There are no notifications in the animations, you have to add them yourself. It takes a lot of work to add all the left/right foot down notifies.

I’ll update as I keep finding more, maybe even post a video if I have time. Motus seems pretty responsive so hopefully they’ll look into this.

TheCouch,

Thanks for digging deep into the Rifle pack, and the detailed analysis and critique. This kind of attention and feedback is gold to us. Did we speak via tech support before, about the L/R 90 up/dn aim offsets?

I’m out of town now(actually in meetings discussing our packs moving forward) and you really got into a lot, but I’ll try to briefly address some things here for all right now. I’d really like to discuss all your findings in detail offline, please PM me and we can do a Skype or something so I can get into and go over the nuts and bolts of the animation implementation.

Pretty sure I’m following you. To be clear, the non-L/R animation transitions are typically legacy originals we left in. They are “as is” captured motion of the actor naturally coming to a stop or jumping with no limit for number of steps for beginning or end in consideration of user input, exactly what was naturally acted, more appropriate for a cinema or truncating as you wish. The L/R ones are mostly truncated versions of the long ones, so they are not unique in that respect. I believe we did go through and pose/speed match the end of most of them to the cycle FWIW. I know there are some that look not as spot on as others.

More or less tru nuff, more ru/lu animations could help out.

Oops, that’s a mistake. Which ones?

Tru nuff, it was mocap and the actor did what he did. We tried to match things up pretty good.

Not sure all specifically you are talking about, but yes definitely a number of specific anims are missing. The packs have grown considerably and it is still hard to include everything.

Dandruff problems? :wink: 3 frames (0-3) is bad/a problem? First I’ve been told but cool. Is 1 frame(0-1) what you are looking for? Honestly we initially used another very popular developers packs as an example of best practices, and 3 frames was there. No problem future updating our packs with 1 frame if that is a better universal fit. And the 45s with 90s missing were there too. No problem creating/providing the LRupdn 90s as I mentioned.

Yeah the current turns were captured pretty relaxed, cinema realistic but not so good for consistent crisp game play. And YES, no continuous turning! Nate brought this motion up with me, wasn’t sure exactly how it should be animated, but basically a continuous loop of them stepping an in-place circle. Definitely on the addition list.

Oops again.

Okay that doesn’t sound right or make sense. Unless, okay a couple of the fidgets he steps out of place and turns which incurred a moving root versus a stationary one. The IP versions of all animations were created by removing the animation on the root, another paradigm we used from another popular content creator. (the RnD in progress is using custom attributes derived from the root motion to recreate the correct movement and speed blahblah) So, yeah they are going to look weird/wrong with the root deleted, that’s my thoughts, we will check into it more…

I’ll say it again, this feedback and critique is golden as we really haven’t gotten into any nitty gritty of IP implementation till recently, has been educating me(an animator) a lot as to what is needed tech wise with IP and it is ongoing. These animations all started out sold as solid raw material for animation/game studios to edit into what they needed, the complete game ready anim tree packs is a relatively new thing we are still refining. There will always likely be some customization needed for some animations for each persons needs and wants. We do want them to fit as many folks as possible of course, hence this dialog.

Please give me a shout again and let’s chat next week to get into it more. Appreciate the input.

Best,

Sorry for the delay, I didn’t expect a response so quickly! As I mentioned, I really like the package.

Yeah, once I latched onto the lu/ru animations I didn’t use the non-lu/ru animations, except where there weren’t any. Backwards could really use them too (hint, hint).

There were at least two. I’ll have to check when I get home. I’m almost sure that one of them was the “idle to forward relaxed” ip animation.

The hard part was figuring that it was happening. I thought I had a bug and was adjusting speeds incorrectly. It’s easy to fix, but it took me a bit to figure out what was going on. I understand it’s mocap so it really shouldn’t have caught me, but, well, there it is.

I’ll bet. As I mentioned URE4 is really(!) good at blending between different poses so I don’t even think these animations are necessary. At first I used them and thought “Hey! Some are missing!” then I realized that the URE blends looked almost exactly the same.

Pretty much what that says. There’s really no reason to include anything other than one frame (but I don’t think it really hurts anything other than maybe some perf). Also I don’t think you need aim45l/r/u/d. I think you only really need aimLU90, aimU90, aimRU90, aimR90, aimRD90, aimD90, aimLD90, aimL90 and aimCenter as URE will do a great job of interpolation between the aim points (technically you probably don’t need aimCenter, but it feels weird without it). It’s okay if the mesh is distorted when doing lu/ru/ld/rd90 as most developers aren’t going to let that happen anyway (e.g., they’ll rotate the root). It’s the interpolation that’s important.

I had to fiddle with the turns quite a bit to get them to look reasonable. Again, I know it’s mocap so it’s not reasonable or feasible to be precise (stupid humans with their stupid imprecise movements!). But cutting down on the idleness would make them easier to work with. And yeah, the continuous turn would be really helpful. (I actually stood up in my office to see how you could record that and you’re right - it’s not as easy as it sounds!).

I think the problem here is the IP animations for fidgeting end up with a lot of foot sliding. I was trying to give some sort of diagnosis for why this might be happening, but like I said, it’s tough to explain. Interestingly enough the “root” animations are (almost) exactly what you want for this since you don’t want your character’s feet sliding around.

Speaking of root motion, the root motion animations in the rifle pack aren’t really root motion. For URE root motion the root bone MUST move with the skeleton mesh and the root bones for these animations don’t. Interestingly your mobility pack and/or convo pack (one or the other, maybe both, I don’ recall) do root motion correctly (i.e., the root bones move). I think I understand what happened here. Root motion in URE is much less about foot sliding and much more about moving the skeleton mesh’s collision capsule (another mesh), specifically, keeping the collision capsule wrapped around the skeleton mesh. It just so happens that the way that Epic did this had a very happy side-effect of solving the foot sliding problem at the same time (I’m sure they intended it to do so - it’s really quite clever). Keeping that in mind, here’s what I think happened with the rifle animations. When I’ve animated characters before (I’m no animator and certainly no expert in this area BTW) one technique that I’ve seen used to prevent foot sliding, particularly with animation loops, was to have a root bone that stays in place while the rest of the mesh+bones move in the desired direction. When the cycle is complete the root bone (which has been stationary during the cycle) would be snapped into its new location in-between frames to continue with the next cycle. This prevents foot sliding. I think that’s how these animations were done. However, that’s not how URE4 works. What it does for root motion is somewhat bizarre (but quite effective). It tracks the motion of the root bone motion and applies that motion to the collision mesh. Remember that your skeleton mesh is actually parented to the collision mesh (usually a capsule). This has the same effect as moving the root bone (from an animation perspective) for foot sliding purposes while at the same time keeping the skeleton mesh wrapped in its collision mesh. I haven’t used root motion very much because of various (and rather vague) warnings about multiplayer networking issues, but I think I have a pretty good handle on how it works. Maybe someone who’s an expert can add to this (or correct anything I’ve gotten wrong).

The way you can tell root motion isn’t set up correctly is to open up the URE4 editor and look at your root motion animations, both the rifle convo/mob ones. For the convo/mob ones (again, one or the other, maybe both) when the animations are occurring you’ll see a red line being drawn from the origin to the root bone of your mesh. That’s URE4 displaying the root motion. If you look at your rifle root-motion animations you can see that the root bone stays fixed (at 0, 0, 0) and there is no red line. “No red line” is a very good indicator that the animation doesn’t use root motion from URE’s perspective.

Anyway, hope that helps. I’ll still be working with these quite a bit and will keep posting what I find.

TheCouch

P.S. Moar death animations! (crouched, aim, aimcrouch)