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Author Topic: Playmaker vs. Mecanim  (Read 3977 times)

mikejkelley

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Playmaker vs. Mecanim
« on: December 13, 2013, 04:39:39 PM »
Both are state machines. What advantages are there in using Mecanim instead of Playmaker for purposes of animating?

Originally I decided to use Mecanim because of the potential of using body masks in override layers. This has proved useless for my purpose as there's (currently) no way two concurrent animations can animate their respectively controlled bones with their respective root transformation/rotation parameters. One root transform to rule them all.

http://forum.unity3d.com/threads/217042-udesireable-feet-waggling

So long question short, why would you use Mecanim instead of Playmaker? Is it just the blending functionality?

jeanfabre

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Re: Playmaker vs. Mecanim
« Reply #1 on: December 14, 2013, 01:30:29 AM »
Hi,

 Mecanim is not replaceable by PlayMaker, they can work together, but that's about it. They are two totally different systems defined to serve very distinct purpose.

 Mecanim is a dedicated Animation system to define animation states and so much more.

 I think you are getting confused because they both feature a visual way to work with them using states, but they have very little in common actually.

Now, having said all this, you could create a PlayMaker fsm that would behave just like a Mecanim tree ( in essence, it's actually always the case basically), but it would not be able to apply/expose all of the Mecanim wonderful technics and very productive features to control animation blending and all. Essentially you would only be able to control legacy animations with PlayMaker this way.

 Bye,

 Jean

mikejkelley

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Re: Playmaker vs. Mecanim
« Reply #2 on: January 14, 2014, 03:51:01 PM »
Hi Jean,

I've done anims both ways and I understand that they're different but (and you seem to confirm this) the only functional difference from an end-users perspective seems to be Mecanim's ability to blend. 

Lane

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Re: Playmaker vs. Mecanim
« Reply #3 on: January 14, 2014, 04:11:28 PM »
Why recreate Mecanim when its already there and you can react into it when necessary with Playmaker?

There is a lot of 'auto-magic' with Mecanim. It does a ton of things automatically that when you add them all up it would seem to be a waste of time to try doing it another way. When doing complex biped characters, retargetting rigs and blending animations it really shines.
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mikejkelley

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Re: Playmaker vs. Mecanim
« Reply #4 on: January 15, 2014, 06:49:55 PM »
Meh. Retargetting isn't really a feature if you're doing custom work. I've already identified blending as being a "feature." But even it is fairly useless. The engine already handles a bit of interpolation (as I understand it). With most of my animations (ie leveling a gun) I want the transition to be nearly instantaneous anyways. And you can blend in Playmaker.

The only benefit Mecanim could provide (but doesn't fully, see bit about transforms) is the ability to mix and match anims through the use of masks.
« Last Edit: February 08, 2014, 09:48:51 PM by mikejkelley »