Playmaker Forum

PlayMaker Help & Tips => PlayMaker Help => Topic started by: Red on July 22, 2012, 07:27:59 PM

Title: Combining animation data?[SOLVED]
Post by: Red on July 22, 2012, 07:27:59 PM
I've been reading up on the blend-animation action (and the related animation actions) but i'm not 100% sure that what i'm aiming to do is do-able with this set.

what i'm hoping to do is to create animations that can be isolated and merged together... so, having a walk cycle in a few frames (and the upper torso in a non-moving/neutral pose) and having (for example) the "holding a weapon" animation on the upper torso..... and blend them together so that the walk cycle and the weapon animations are together. so that when i blend the "attack" animations with the "movement" animations, there's no odd visuals.

hoping that this is do-able since it would mean that there would be a LOT more flexibility of animations (so, i could isolate the moving animations and the attack animations and tell Playmaker to manage them accordingly.)

Am i missing something important here? is this primarily a unity3D kinda thing?
Title: Re: Combining animation data?
Post by: artician on July 25, 2012, 09:08:00 PM
I believe you would do that via Mixing Transforms.  I have been using them for several months, and I have never gotten them to work even once.  I still can't tell if this is a PlayMaker issue or my own, but for all the combinations of events and scripting reference I've messed with, I think it's a broken action. 

Bug Alex, maybe? 

Title: Re: Combining animation data?
Post by: jeanfabre on July 26, 2012, 04:59:24 AM
Hi,
 
Not really acquainted with animation blending and all that, but  If you can find a working example using just scripts, I can then rebuild it all with playmaker, and thus we would be able to extract a working system. If I have a working source, then I can do it without problem.

Bye,

 Jean
Title: Re: Combining animation data?
Post by: PlatinumPlayer on July 26, 2012, 11:47:20 AM
You need to set animation weight for the animations and this unity article (http://docs.unity3d.com/Documentation/ScriptReference/AnimationState-weight.html) will explain simply how to use it. I have already tried it and used it. However i'm not sure why i need the set the weight every frame for it to be effective. Can't it be set as a base value? I think a new playmaker action needs to be made to make this a property that doesn't need set every frame.

Oh! And make every higher level animation 'additive' blend, instead of blend. The lower animations should be set to blend blend to the higher animation.
Title: Re: Combining animation data?
Post by: artician on July 26, 2012, 12:23:34 PM
That covers animation blending, but what about the Mixing Transform?  I have had blending work as well, but I got the impression that Red's needs were similar to where I got stuck, which was isolating and combining multiple animations.

Thank you guys for your input and time.
Title: Re: Combining animation data?
Post by: PlatinumPlayer on July 26, 2012, 01:46:32 PM
This is exactly how its done.

Example:
Layer 0 Idel, Walk, strafe left, right
Layer 1 Weapon held
Layer 2 Weapon attack

Now layer 0 dose not need weight set...
Set both layer 2 and 1's weights to .5 (example you need to tweek it based on animation)

So by default when you move without a weapon all your movement animations run unblended.
When you have a weapon play the weapon held animation. because its weighted the weapon held animation will play over top of all layer 0 animations. So if you strafe, run forward or back, your upper body should hold the weapon properly.

Now when you attack with weapon attack on layer 2, its weight is before weapon held, so i overrides weapon held if they share the same slot, and weapon held will blend into attack, all the while bellow it all your movement should stay seamlessly responsive at the bottom of the layer stack.

I have already dose this in a turret defense turret. The top cap of the turret is always rotating (its idle animation. could just as easily be a characters run animation), and it has two laser cannons attached to the side of its body (not the cap). When the turret attacks theses cannons animate a recoil that dose not interfere with the caps rotation because they are on different levels and are weighted.

Isn't this the very effect red is looking to achieve?
Title: Re: Combining animation data?
Post by: artician on July 26, 2012, 05:49:57 PM
I don't know if that is what Red is looking for exactly, but I just did a test in my project and it doesn't function exactly as you say.  The correct animation plays over the top of the characters movement, but the characters movement animation either stops or blends to the idle animation and then back. 

I tried setting the Layer 1 animation to different weights between 0-1, but nothing worked as you say.

Setting Layer 1's animation to be Additive instead of Blend causes the animation to go crazy.

I know this is Reds thread but I'd really appreciate it if you could help me solve what seems to be the same issue.  Here's a screencap of my "attacking" state:
(http://www.creathcarter.com/site_media/unity/animBlend.jpg)

For what it's worth, I was always told Mixing Transforms were the way to do this, since you're essentially isolating a portion of the skeleton to play another animation. 

Thanks.
Title: Re: Combining animation data?
Post by: Red on July 26, 2012, 06:15:28 PM
Aaaah okay! i wasn't sure what those were (nor the terminology... yes, i'm still relatively new to all this.)

i'm going to see about tackling those actions... and if i can get something to work, if i can find some screencasting software (as my trial period for camtasia has expired) i'll put something together for the youtube videos.

though, since this IS a learning experience for me, i would probably want to test this out first (and i'd have to finalize the animations on the character i'm working on to get them to do what i want them to.)
Title: Re: Combining animation data?
Post by: Red on July 26, 2012, 07:04:09 PM
As for the scripting to use for making animations and being able to merge/blend different animations, this is what i've found in the unity manual... not sure how useful that'll be but it's still a start...

http://docs.unity3d.com/Documentation/Manual/AnimationScripting.html
Title: Re: Combining animation data?
Post by: PlatinumPlayer on July 26, 2012, 07:25:53 PM
I don't know if that is what Red is looking for exactly, but I just did a test in my project and it doesn't function exactly as you say.  The correct animation plays over the top of the characters movement, but the characters movement animation either stops or blends to the idle animation and then back. 

I tried setting the Layer 1 animation to different weights between 0-1, but nothing worked as you say.

Setting Layer 1's animation to be Additive instead of Blend causes the animation to go crazy.

I know this is Reds thread but I'd really appreciate it if you could help me solve what seems to be the same issue.  Here's a screencap of my "attacking" state:
(http://www.creathcarter.com/site_media/unity/animBlend.jpg)

For what it's worth, I was always told Mixing Transforms were the way to do this, since you're essentially isolating a portion of the skeleton to play another animation. 

Thanks.


Change the weight to something higher then 0, try .2-.5 and change the animation settings blend type to additive. That should fix all the issues.
Title: Re: Combining animation data?
Post by: artician on July 26, 2012, 07:31:19 PM
Unfortunately, like I said in my text, that didn't make a difference.  I dont know what the issue was there.

However there is some happy news, I actually got it working with Mixing Transforms.  Stupidly, (though I reserve the right to call all my friends who looked at this and missed the issue stupid too!!!  ;) I didn't input the full path-name to my mixing transform (bone).  I had only input the bone name.  very stupid of me. 

Anyway, thanks for that.  It turns out that the Mixing Transform approach probably is what Red wants to use.

I believe the reason you see better results using blending, PlatinumPlayer, is because you're not seeing animated characters.  I could be wrong (usually am!) but maybe the organic nature of character animation makes the shortcomings of blending additively stand out more, whereas your turret movement and recoil animations are much simpler, no real animation curves, etc.

At any rate, this puts to bed an issue I have had for a better part of 6 months.  Thanks for everyones help.



Title: Re: Combining animation data?
Post by: Red on August 01, 2012, 02:58:51 PM
okay, i'm asking this here since i've not found an answer that helps me elsewhere.

when you're setting up the asset to animate with this blending/layer system, how do you isolate various body-parts to tell it what to animate and what not to animate?

for instance... i want to find a way of taking the walk cycle and stripping out the upper body parts... same with the "walking/running/firing the weapon" animations (stripping out their lower torso so that the leg movement won't blend over the walk/run/idle animation data.)

if you need me to try and explain it a bit better, let me know... i just need to figure out this before i can go forward with the rest of this particular issue.
Title: Re: Combining animation data?
Post by: artician on August 01, 2012, 04:34:56 PM
Now that I've drudged through the process so much I can probably help you quite a bit.

As you probably know, character skeletons are a hierarchy.  In order to isolate one part of the skeleton for exclusive animation, you need to identify the node/bone that this animation will be allowed to control up to, and assign a Mixing Transform to that bone.

In the scenario you outline, you want to combine the movement animation (walking) with the interaction animations (attacking). 

Tell your character to play the movement animation under whatever conditions are necessary (when Joypad up is pressed, etc).  That much of this process is the same as the normal workflow. 
Then identify the highest bone in the hierarchy that the attacking animation should be allowed to control.  In my case it was the shoulder, because my character was swinging a weapon around and all I needed was the arm motion. 

To mix the animations together, assign a Mixing Transform to the bone where you want the new animation to stop affecting the characters (and be sure to put the whole path in, which turned out to be my latest stupid mistake), so you should end up with a Mixing Transform assigning an animation "Attack" to a specific bone in the hierarchy: "pelvis/spine/ribcage/rightShoulder".

When the conditions for playing the Attack animation are met, the animation will take over every bone on the character starting at the node you specified for the Mixing Transform, as well as all child bones(so in my case, the bones: rightShoulder, rightBicept, rightForearm, and rightHand will play the Attack animation, while the rest of the skeleton continues to play whatever other animations are appropriate.)

I could probably clarify this much better, so let me know if that doesn't make sense.  I'll send you a screen cap of my FSM for this too, if that helps.

Regards.
Title: Re: Combining animation data?
Post by: Red on August 02, 2012, 08:13:29 AM
That is very helpful, thank you! i think i've gotten this down (now to execute it) but i'm curious... i'm aiming for an as compact as i can manage it sort of system... do you think it would be worth considering to give these animation mixing transforms globally accessible events so that the main animation controller (which is stored at the root of the heirarchy) is sending events to the specific bones to control these motions?

i'm going to see about isolating the walk cycle first... and this also means i might have to adjust the rig i've made (i've been making my own rigs... mainly because that's what i've focues my training on mostly.) i can imagine that if one wants to separate the lower from the upper torso, i'd have to make sure that the rig heirarchy branches out in the appropriate areas (i have one main rig node that controls the entire body which has children attached that control the upper and lower torsos respectively.)

i might want to see a screenshot though... also to help those that might also be facing this sort of issue... but if this works out, at least it'll be one more milestone met, so my sincerest thank you. not sure if i'd have been able to figure this out on my own :P
Title: Re: Combining animation data?
Post by: artician on August 04, 2012, 01:44:53 AM
That is very helpful, thank you! i think i've gotten this down (now to execute it) but i'm curious... i'm aiming for an as compact as i can manage it sort of system... do you think it would be worth considering to give these animation mixing transforms globally accessible events so that the main animation controller (which is stored at the root of the heirarchy) is sending events to the specific bones to control these motions?

Well, all you're really needing to do is to call the animation as you would normally.  There's no need to send any event to the bone itself, let alone have a script on it.  You can set the Mixing Transforms up beforehand in whatever state initializes your character.  So whatever states you usually call your animations in (sounds like the root transform), just tell it to play "animation X" and the Mixing Transform will isolate the animation at the previously specified point.

Does that make sense? 

Quote
i'm going to see about isolating the walk cycle first... and this also means i might have to adjust the rig i've made (i've been making my own rigs... mainly because that's what i've focues my training on mostly.) i can imagine that if one wants to separate the lower from the upper torso, i'd have to make sure that the rig heirarchy branches out in the appropriate areas (i have one main rig node that controls the entire body which has children attached that control the upper and lower torsos respectively.)

You actually don't have to do anything abnormal like this.  Most skeletons parent bone is the hips/pelvis.  You don't actually need to "isolate" your walk cycle because it will be playing a lower-priority layer.  So basically make your base-level animations use the default (0) Layer (walking, running, jumping), then when you're setting up your animation to be played with the Mixing Transform, make sure it uses a higher layer than default (like 1).  It will blend in right over the top of your movement animations without a noticeable hitch.

So, did you still want a screencap or a helper?  I can send you an example FSM if you want.  Sorry I didn't reply sooner!
Title: Re: Combining animation data?
Post by: Red on August 04, 2012, 09:47:02 AM
hmm, a screenshot or example FSM would certainly help... i'm still struggling with getting this up and running properly in the way which you're suggesting.
Title: Re: Combining animation data?
Post by: artician on August 04, 2012, 04:38:50 PM
I have two FSMs that control my animations.

'FSM_animation' controls my animations relating to movement.  There's absolutely nothing unique done here, and it focuses solely on the Walk, Run, Jumping animations, and transitioning to Ragdolls and back.

(http://www.creathcarter.com/site_media/misc/mixTrans1.jpg)

'FSM_weapons' controls my attacking animations, which vary depending on the type of weapon the player has.  There is only one state that plays the attack animation and uses the Mixing Transform, so I included the relative actions in my screenshot for it:

(http://www.creathcarter.com/site_media/misc/mixTrans2.jpg)

I hope that helps.  I would also appreciate it if someone who knows more than I do could vet my scripts and tell me if I can do anything differently (though they work fine for the most part as they are now).

Cheers!
Title: Re: Combining animation data?
Post by: Red on December 28, 2012, 01:47:15 PM
Hey there, sorry for taking so long to get back (i had to do a push to get the animation data correctly imported.)

i've followed along as best i could but it doesn't seem to want to play the appropriate animation... almost like the other animation data (walking, standing, etc) is overwriting it's ability to play the weapon striking animation.

could you elaborate on the states of the regular animation? is there some setting i'm missing? if you could do a screencast that'd be really awesome (i find it easier to follow along as things go.)

also, can i take a peek at the heirarchy of the object you're animating? maybe it's the way i have mine set up (everything is named appropriately in the stack) that's causing these issues. oh, and could i take a look at how you have those variables set up (namely the "attackType" variable) in the variable list and the attacktypeA/B/C states?
Title: Re: Combining animation data?
Post by: artician on December 28, 2012, 02:59:29 PM
This is just a quick reply, but have you set your animations weight?  That makes the difference for me, as it gives priority to each animation being played. 

https://hutonggames.fogbugz.com/default.asp?W91

I'll try to reply more later.
Title: Re: Combining animation data?
Post by: Red on December 28, 2012, 05:30:20 PM
I'll certainly give that a go. to be honest, this is still new territory for me ._. but i'm not unable to learn.
Title: Re: Combining animation data?
Post by: Red on December 29, 2012, 03:43:32 PM
Oh, one thing i'd like to ask... would you recommend adding those weighting and setup actions to the "movement" animations as well?
Title: Re: Combining animation data?
Post by: FractalCore on December 30, 2012, 07:30:58 AM
I just happen to try this out for myself today and got surprisingly good results. The last time I attempted it, my character was swinging his arms all over the place, but this time it worked and I think I have a handle on it now.

This is for an enemy ai that needs to walk around looking for the player then run at the player and swing to attack. I set it up as a walk on the spot test at first, shifting it on to a moving enemy in the game should be easy.

In the first picture you can see four "moving" states. These all animate the entire character and all have the exact same action settings. All looping, blending, stop same layer, blend time 0.3. Most importantly, all layer 0.

In the second picture you can see the attack animation. This is isolated to only affect the torso up, so the legs keep walking/running/idling. Most important thing to notice, layer 1. This lets it play over top, stopping the arms swinging from the "moving" so they can punch, then blending back again.

Note, there's no weight changing here. In my tests so far I haven't needed it. The layers are doing all the work. I even added a 3rd layer so I could test out a quick impact reation animation (set to additive), for when the character is shot. It works perfectly. So he can now be walking, transition to running. While punching at the player, while his body shakes, taking multiple hits from the player.

Hope this helps.
Title: Re: Combining animation data?
Post by: Red on December 30, 2012, 12:20:23 PM
Okay, i've tried both methods of adding the appropriate transforms and i'm at a loss... it's just not doing it.

though, for that string where you tell it the transforms (the "add mixing transform") it seems to be using a string... but, i've tried to tell it the root node of where i want to determine the layer (the first bone in the spinal system) and assuming it'd follow the heirarchy upwards... and i've told it to focus on ALL the bones in the heirarchy on up.

so, to illustrate... the first test i had a string variable with "bn-spine1/bn-spine2/bn-spine3...bn-hand1/bn-hand2" yielding no change... second string i just had "bn-spine1" and still nothing.

both are not yielding any results at all... as in, no indication that the movement is taking.

is this possibly somehow limited by the rig i'm using? it's not a standard biped (i really can't stand using it as i find it to be awfully limiting for what i need it for and it is practically useless for non bipedal creations.)
Title: Re: Combining animation data?
Post by: FractalCore on December 30, 2012, 04:54:38 PM
I have to say, I like the Max Biped. Especially for games, with it's ability apply any animation to another biped even if it has a different number of bones. But it should be fine either way.

It might almost be worth trying initial tests with it, since it's guaranteed to export using fbx. The problem could very well be the way you've set up the bones hierarchy.

One thing though. You don't specify the WHOLE chain of bones. Only up to a point. On a standard Biped with four Spine bones...

Bip01/Bip01 Pelvis/Bip01 Spine/Bip01 Spine1

So if you use Biped and copy and paste that in. The animation will only effect the "Bip01 Spine" and up. Then make sure that animation is on a higher layer than what you want it to play over (what the legs will be doing).

Also, I'm not adding a String variable. I just type the words in there. The sequence has to start with the first bone, then follow through to the one the animation should play from. Bip01 in this case.

Another thing. I animated separate animations in Max. So there's a full body run cycle. Then in another max scene with the same character, I cleared out ALL animation keyframes and make the punch animation. Then use the technique where you export each rigged animation eg. Robot-A@Run, Robot-A@Punch. Then in Unity they automatically get loaded on to the Robot-A character. I highly recommend this over doing all animations in one scene then "Split Animations" in Unity. That gets messy and export times climb when you get hundreds of frames in there.
Title: Re: Combining animation data?
Post by: FractalCore on December 30, 2012, 05:17:46 PM
Hey artician. I see you seem to have a ragdoll setup, I wonder if you could shed some light on my Capture Pose / Add Animation Clip problem...

http://hutonggames.com/playmakerforum/index.php?topic=2832.0
Title: Re: Combining animation data?
Post by: Red on December 30, 2012, 05:36:11 PM
Though that is a good idea, like i said, i'm averse to using biped and that doesn't really help with this current situation as i'd have to re-animate about 8 assets at this point (and some aren't bipedal so using biped isn't going to help with them.)
Title: Re: Combining animation data?
Post by: artician on December 30, 2012, 11:48:49 PM
Red and FractalCore: Use CAT (Character Animation Toolkit, included with Max 2010 and onward).

You will never need, touch, or want for anything rigging-related for years.  It's everything you could possibly need, and feels like having your own dedicated Technical Artist on staff.  :)

FractalCore - I'll reply to your Ragdoll thread directly.  It took me a while, but I got them working okay.

Title: Re: Combining animation data?
Post by: Red on December 31, 2012, 11:26:10 AM
I'll be sure to look into CAT if this cannot be solved.

a step that i'm trying to see if that might help is to turn all the objects in the scene that are linked to the heirarchy into "bone" objects since a thought crept into my head that since these objects are technically, according to the file, not actually "bone" objects, then maybe Unity doesn't know how to handle them (or maybe it's Playmaker... not being a coder i don't know.)

past that, i'd be upset if i have to go back because we're talking about three week's worth of work down the tubes if i can't blend this animation. i can still use the non-blending animation data (such as the spiders i have been working on lately) since they're basic and not that advanced... but i kinda don't want to have to go back to formula if i can avoid it.

other than that, i might see about looking at some coding for animation blending via scripting... because if this is a limitation of Playmaker itself, it'd be good to know.

and, last but not least, this could very well be the kick in the pants i need to finally take some time to learn Mecanim... since i'm guessing that Playmaker support will eventually be added (and all you're really working with are four types of variables, right? so, just feeding the appropriate data into mecanim seems to be the thing that i'd need fo rthis.)

but yeah, just going to give a head's up... if all this doesn't work at all, i'll still be back at square one... which will be a real pain.
Title: Re: Combining animation data?
Post by: Red on December 31, 2012, 11:56:03 AM
To update, even with setting it to bones (and also finding ONLY a set of bone objects that are actually bones) it's still not doing it.

it's basically just telling everything to stop and the animation freezes. so, i have tried all sorts of things and the only thing i can think of that's causing issues is that the entering of the name as a string isn't connecting to the actual bone object.

so, it's been confirmed, the rig is not the issue here. it's either the animation actions or how i've got it set up.

since this action is working on objects in the heirarchy, why not set them to use gameobjects instead of strings? using strings seems like too much of a wild-card in this issue which isn't working in this case probably because even though i've literally copied/pasted the name of the bone in the stack, it's still not taking.

i've even tried changing the order, adding the settings to the moving animations to try and tell it to only look at the legs... and still nothing.
Title: Re: Combining animation data?
Post by: Red on December 31, 2012, 12:41:57 PM
So, i've set up an exported package with the setup i've got... i would be greatly appreciative if someone could take a peek and see what i'm doing wrong.

http://rapidgator.net/file/66740279/Export-of-Level-for-Animation-help.unitypackage.html


I do have to state, however, that since this is currently set up with assets for my game, i can not give people permission to use them in their own games... sorry, but i have to do say this. feel free to pick the FSMs apart all you want though.
Title: Re: Combining animation data?
Post by: jeanfabre on January 01, 2013, 08:33:15 AM
Hi,

 haven't looked at your package yet, but can you double check this:

http://hutonggames.com/playmakerforum/index.php?topic=2267.msg10191#msg10191

 this might answer your problem actually, it basically is an example on how to combine and blend several animations at the same time ( like firing and running).

bye

Jean
Title: Re: Combining animation data?
Post by: Red on January 01, 2013, 10:29:01 PM
I've taken a look at that, tried to apply it to my scene... and it still isn't taking.

it's something to do with the layers... is there some sort of naming conventions i should be avoiding such as underscores or dashes?

i even went so far as to drop a new asset in with only a handful of bones in there and just added that to it and THAT worked... but i can't figure out why my other asset is not blending.

and i even went and rearranged the system so there were no non-bone objects in the animation stack.

i;m going bald here.
Title: Re: Combining animation data?
Post by: Red on January 01, 2013, 10:31:05 PM
I also completely reworked the system so that the "play animation" fires and then carries on to an idle "waiting" action." also, i tried just dropping the following actions.

add animation clip
set animation layer
add mixing transform

in the same order as the test object.

what the heck have i done wrong that it's completely ignoring the layers?
Title: Re: Combining animation data?
Post by: jeanfabre on January 02, 2013, 06:04:04 AM
uhm... get back to me at the end of the week, I'll have a look.

bye,

 Jean
Title: Re: Combining animation data?
Post by: Red on January 02, 2013, 10:54:36 AM
I think i may be on to why this is happening...

i've been doing some tests and taking it one step at a time... also, redid the entire rigging (managed to find a way to save the animation data but that was because i created an identical set of bones and just constrained them positionally and rotationally to the old rig... then extracted the position and rotation data and reapplied it on a new layer and then collapsed it back after deleting the old rig... this was hairy and i'm still not certain that i'm typing the process up exactly)

but, i think when it comes to handling animations, only one layer is allowed to be set to a particular animation sequence, regardless as to how you've told it to behave (such as only animate the upper torso, lower torso, etc.)

going to do some more testing to confirm this and to figure out more about it... but, if it is confirmed that only one layer per animation set, i wonder if there are any resources that state this that i (and maybe another person) may be overlooking or if it's just not stated, it ought to be.... still testing to confirm though.


NOTE and UPDATE... yes, i have confirmed that even if a FSM is trying to access a layer itself, the animation data can only hold one layer value across the entire game as far as i have been able to figure.  next step will be to take the animations i want to give two separate layers to is to just add in additional animations in the animator in the inspector and just tell it to use it separately... i'll update to see if that has resolved the issue.
Title: Re: Combining animation data?
Post by: Red on January 02, 2013, 12:43:23 PM
Yes, it is confirmed... one animation layer per named animation.

now all i have to do is figure out a way to synchronize them up (so that the frame that the animation is on in the run/walk/idle movement animation controller is the same frame as the run/walk/idle weapon anomation controller.)
Title: Re: Combining animation data?
Post by: jeanfabre on January 02, 2013, 02:35:10 PM
Hi,

 Nice debugging session I can see.

 Is it a Unity restriction or a Playmaker restriction?

bye,

 Jean
Title: Re: Combining animation data?
Post by: Red on January 03, 2013, 09:44:21 AM
Hi,

 Nice debugging session I can see.

 Is it a Unity restriction or a Playmaker restriction?

bye,

 Jean



That i don't know (the restriction) so i've asked around to see if this is a Unity specific thing, a game-dev specific thing (which i don't think is likely since you can code any behavior if you're not restricted by an engine's limitations) or a playmaker thing. if it's a playmaker thing, i can't see it being problematic as i'm trying to see about finding a way of reusing animation clips but just changing the name that they've had applied to them, but i don't know if that will overwrite the clip's "name" or if it will just say "this is a new variable that happens to access this same animation clip."

and as for the timing, i figured that one out and it was a blonde-moment on my part... one of the animation clips i was declaring was the wrong one... so, when he was idling, his shoulders swayed from side to side... and it was a timing thing, it was that i accidentally declared the "holding gun while idle" animation as "running with the gun" animation. as things stand, i've managed to get the animation layer system working... it was tricky but it's done as well as getting other FSMs to fire off events to play particular animations. (*which is something i've recently learned... it doesn't have to be a global event for another fsm to fire off an event in the first system... i'm not sure if it throws errors if the system it's in doesn't have the appropriate event in the list of events to use... and i have no idea how to test that... but so far the system that i've been working on has worked.

i'll see about posting a screencast about it so others that might be having issues will understand how to deal with it... but, i want to make sure i have all the facts first before i leap into that.

Other than that, thank you for the link. i don't think i would have figured this out without those assets to pick apart.
Title: Re: Combining animation data?
Post by: KozTheBoss on July 01, 2013, 07:18:33 AM
Hey guys - I realise this topic is quite dead, but I just wanted to say that i followed Artician's suggested method of using mixing transform, and it worked like a charm for me :) thanks alot for explaining so well and adding the screenshots :) Just leaving this here in case anyone (like me) is searching for this and stumble across this thread - It still works! (july 2013)

Thanks :)