Actually, the Rifle pack does have root motion, absolutely. The root bone travels around and turns with the character for sure, just like the Mobility. Many folks that own the pack can attest to this, so I’m really not sure what you are looking at or doing to think it is missing…?
Actually, I might make a short video of our animations in the creation software (Motionbuilder) to show all folks that aren’t animators what they look like under the hood and how they are constructed. A lot of sharp users and programmers know how it’s all supposed to work in UE4 in detail and when it’s right or wrong, but aren’t totally familiar with what the hierarchical animations really look like making it work or not.
Anyway thanks for all the other comments/info, thought I’d just address the root motion really quick. I think was planning on looking at the pack some more and jump in on the conversation, so hopefully he’ll post something soon and go over things as well better than I can.
A couple months ago when I began my current arrangement with Motus Digital (and directly) I was having issues matching speeds as well. You think it’s hard to match speeds in the rifle pack? Try the Zombie pack! As such, I asked if there was a way to extrapolate the actors velocity/speed from the mocap inside motion builder. After a couple days, was able to gather this information and put it into curves (as attributes attached directly to each animation) that can be used in code. FYI, I am currently sub-contracted with Motus to build player controllers to be distributed with the animation packs (Basic - Pro versions.) As I build these, there are several things I have been working with on to get either added, removed, or fixed within the animations. This, as you can assume, is a lengthy process but rest assured we are working on it. As the packs get updated, they will provide my example controller(s) as well as updated animations including the curves. A lot of the feedback you have provided will help out tremendously. We are currently working on updating the Mobility pack, the others will soon follow. Needless to say, the curve has been a huge saving grace to ensure no foot sliding but there are some tricks to using them, which will be evident when my controller is examined.
I agree, there are some lengthy animations. While building these controllers, I need to leave the animations “As Is” and try to make them look good and blend properly; not an easy task! However, as a developer, I appreciate the fact they didn’t cut everything up for us. Having the extra length in the animations can be useful depending on the type of game you are producing as well as for cinematics. It leaves the decision to the developer on when/where to trim and use the animations for their specific needs. I would rather have more than less.
Root motion is done correctly. I went back to the mobility pack and check some of their root animations just to confirm.
The red line you are seeing (orange when selected) is the visual display of root travel. If you look at it in Jump animations, the origin of this line is the point of jump (UE4 doesn’t do or handle root Z movements) and the mesh begins moving towards the origin and at the apex of the jump the line trails the mesh, all from the center point of the jump. One thing I noticed when moving into the mobility pack after having played with the animations in Zombie and some in the rifle, is in the mobility they ensure that “EnableRootMotion” was set to ‘True’ in (nearly) all of the root animations while in the Zombie and Rifle pack, they are not set for us. You will need to ensure that this box is checked in each of the root animations. Once you do that, the mesh will seemingly turn into an “In Place” animation and no more line is visible. However, to prove that the root is in fact moving with the animation properly, keep “EnableRootMotion” set as ‘False’, select the “root” bone from the Skeleton Tree then play the animation. You’ll see at that point that the root is in fact moving with the animation. For further clarity, go to ‘Show -> Bone -> All Heirarchy’, you’ll then see all the bones that are connected to the root bone. And for final clarification, with the root bone selected, the 3D translation widget, which is connected always to an objects origin whether static mesh or skeleton, also follows along with the animation at the root location.
In the following image, you’ll see that I got the “red line” to show using the Rifle animation W2_Jog_F_Loop. While I didn’t test all of the root motions, I feel comfortable is saying that they all (or at least nearly all) have proper root motion set on these. If you find any that truly don’t have root motion on them and they are marked root motion (as you found with some of the IP animations) then let know and he will surely take care of it.
Yes, we have some prone and crawling animations we captured, want to work them into packs as well. Also some ladder, and we’re looking at doing wall traversing as well. As usual, so much older stuff on our plate needs updating, hard to say when. We are trying to be better about at least news updates etc. so you fine folks have a better idea what is imminent at least, best we can. I’m putting together an update video now about where we are with the controllers, should be up soon. We appreciate the conversation with all you guys.
Sad to hear that your backlog is filling up so quickly Guess you should hire some more people
Well prone and crawling is really lacking from all of your anim packs, so I’m not sure if I’m confident enough to be able to find appropriate anims that could fill the gap, that’s why I held of on purchasing any packs at all. Well I guess only time will tell.
Great to see there is more packs coming and looking forward to try the zombie anim update with the walking speed curves. Using movement anims as inplace is much easier in UE4.
The Zombie PRO and Zombie Basic packs with Blueprints and IPC are now available!
They are up at www.MocapOnline.com now as a free update. They will be up on the Marketplace in the next couple of weeks.
Anyone who already owns the packs on the Marketplace can contact us and include your purchase confirmation email. UE4@MotusDigital.com
We can send you a link to download the updated packs before they hit the Marketplace.
For packs purchased on Mocap Online, you should be getting an auto update email with the new download link.
Check out the video talking about the Zombie Packs and controllers, as well as the Mobility controller in the works.
Mobility is planned to be a beta download for GDC.
Thanks for the zombie update. Its much better now to use the IPC, since with rootmotion UE4 charactermovement settings dosent seem to have any effect and needed to use tick to turn the zombies. Working very awesome now. Looking forward to buy more packs soon. Great to see those life-packs coming, getting some sooner or later. Would be fun to get anims for sleeping/resting on bed, eating (while sitting/standing), drinking (while sitting/standing), injured anims (like sitting/lieing on ground), healing anims, bathroom anims (pee and poo). Having clinic-life features in my Project so maybe even sick people, doctor/nurse actions and some handyman/cafeteria moves.
FWIW, I finally figured out what was going on with root motion. I had retargted your animations to my own skeleton mesh and, for whatever reason, the root motion didn’t come along. There was an old bug that root motion wasn’t being applied to retargeted skeleton meshes, but Epic has said that’s fixed. Maybe it’s back. Any word on any updates, particularly with the Pistol pack.
As of last week the new Zombie Packs with IPC Animations and Blueprint Controllers are now on the Marketplace!
Starter doesn’t have a blueprint, but it does contain the new IPC animations.
Mobility PRO 2.7 - with IPC and Blueprint Controller
is putting a couple of final tweaks on a couple of jumps etc. now, and it’s done, looking good. It’s my understanding he then wants to clean up any code and notes for release, as well as update the Master template he has made for it and all future pack controllers. The “Master” will allow him to a great extent drop in new animation packs and expedite controller creation.
I am finishing up the Rifle PRO 2.7 IPC Update with many animation and root motion fixes, like better pose matching with Walk transitions and better root alignment with transitions in general. Finishing the IPC split jumps now and done. They will be ready for to drop into the Master template(I make it sound so easy) and get the Rifle PRO controller made asap after Mobility. The additional state of Aiming will undoubtedly make for more work and a few surprises compared to Mobility. So a Rifle controller shouldn’t be too far(?) behind the release of Mobility PRO 2.7. I know 's life has been very busy lately, so he works at the pace he can, and we appreciate all the time he puts in.
Pistol PRO 2.7 -
Okay, the major Pistol update, the gorilla in the room who smacks us up side the head occasionally to remind us he(or she) is still sitting there waiting.
No it is not forgotten and I am starting on it THIS WEEK. (The crowd gasps) Yes, I have been sanctioned to get it rolling. I have to do the generic FBX MotusMan version first for release. From there for the UE4 version I will retarget to SK_Mannequin and create all the root motion and IPC, and it will end up being a full current 2.7 update with a controller. Once again, the core FBX version will be made first, and the UE4 version is a high maintenance retarget with lots of extra work after that. And as usual there will be other things requiring my time and attention such as…
Sword and Shield -
We’ve had a lot of feedback and requests on the subject, so we recently shot a large Sword and Shield pack. Along with core Sword/Shield we captured Dual Wield, 2H Sword, Heavy Sword(think ultra great swords in Dark Souls), Axes, 1H/2H Spears.
The core Sword and Shield pack will be the first major large pack we’ve put out in a long time, and it will be a lot of work to make the moves look great, dynamic and kick butt, so we are excited to get started on it to be released later this year. Once again core FBX gets made first, then the retarget to UE4 and root motion, etc.
Life/Arch Viz Packs -
Several “Life” packs are also in the works for quick(?) release. “Scared”(for horror/hostage/war civilian scenarios), Street/Park/City Square(people hanging out), Children Playing, Bar/Tavern/Restaurant(could be used for NPCs in RPG taverns etc.), “Crafting”(crafting items in RPG), and others.
That’s pretty much the gist of what’s going on with us.
Rifle pack needs proper holster/unholster anims. Holstering/unholstering a rifle at the hip is… odd. I suggest over-the-shoulder-reaches for both left and right shoulders since we may have characters with the “crossed-rifle-on-the-back” configuration.
Need some “get up after being knocked down” animations. Those might already exist in another pack and/or I haven’t seen them yet (I’ve got mob, convo, rifle and pistol… maybe another, not sure; seems like mob would be a good place for them).
Need simple prone w/ rifle+pistol. Probably less important for pistol (seriously, who goes prone with a pistol? ).
Need throws; left-handed grenade throw and toss (e.g., underhand/overhand), right-handed knife throw, etc. for rifle/pistol pack.
Need melee knife wielding; this might be in your Sword and Shield pack (and probably a good place for it) for when we want to let our snipers get up-close and personal.
Need melee hits with rifle (rifle butt sideways strike, rifle butt direct strike, bayonet, etc.). Pistol needs “pistol whip” anims.
FWIW the Rifle equip/unequip was originally done to be realistic and shot with a short combat sling. FBX users like this for making movies, but we totally get wanting the over-the-shoulder paradigm for typical video game weapons systems and Pistol on the hip. Yup.
The new Rifle PRO 2.7 animations with many fixes and tweaks plus IPC animations and split jumps is in 's hands, and he is working on the controller as we speak. That will likely take at least a couple of weeks with his schedule.
That being said, we hope to have Tony suit up and capture the over-the-shoulder equips within that time and add them to the 2.7 before release.
All the other suggestions, already captured some of that such as prone and grenades(knockdowns good idea) and plans to capture more, hard to say when they will be available.
MOBILITY PRO 2.7 with Blueprints is finished! Just now, we will be getting it packaged for release/update on MocapOnline.com and UE4 Marketplace shortly. (3 Prong Gaming) created a template while doing it so Rifle will be dropping in a lot of assets versus coding from scratch and should accelerate its completion - with of course the added complexities of Aim and Relaxed states, Firing, etc. so we’ll see how fast goes.
Anyone wanting a pre-release copy of the Mobility PRO 2.7 with controller, contact us quoting a proof-of-purchase email for UE4 Mobility and we’ll try to get it out to you asap before it hits the Marketplace. Those of you on MocapOnline.com, just your order number. UE4@MotusDigital.com
iamjustagamer75 - Don’t know about multi-player compatibility, that would be a question.
And FWIW, pleeeez anyone who owns our [COLOR=“#FF0000”]ZOMBIE PACKS please let us know you got the 2.6 updates with the new IPC animations and Blueprints![/COLOR]
There was a hiccup at Epic and no one was getting notifications in the Vault there was an update, then it changed to “Create New Project” from “Add To Project” complicating it more, even though it is now “fixed”.
If you haven’t gotten the update THERE IS AN UPDATE WITH BLUEPRINTS. More details over here:
Additional NOTE: As I’ve stated many times before, we are a small group of guys working on stuff in many formats and stay busy with other projects besides making packs for sale, so we appreciate your patronage and patience getting all this stuff out there.
To the point, if I may brag for a moment, we are excited to say we created a few hundred animations for the game “PREY” that was just released. We can say that now that it is out! It was great working with our old and new friends at Arkane Studios on such an awesome project, and we spent about 3 months on it last fall - obviously taking us away from pack development so apologies again. But what a frickin’ cool game! We are so stoked to have worked on it. Self promotion over…
Guess you should hire some more people 
Well I guess only time will tell.
and looking forward to try the zombie anim update with the walking speed curves. Using movement anims as inplace is much easier in UE4.
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I suggest over-the-shoulder-reaches for both left and right shoulders since we may have characters with the “crossed-rifle-on-the-back” configuration.