Animation Export Bugs

O

Ocias

0
Animation Export Bugs

I've been trying to bring Cheetah3D animations into Unity3D, and while they look fine in C3D, the limbs and head flip out in Unity.

Baking IK improves the issue somewhat, but does not fix it. After some testing, I've found the FBX exporter in Cheetah3D doesn't seem to obey constraint priority.

Repro steps:
1. Open attached file.
2. Bake IK on the Kneel or Throw animation. (Shouldn't animation be baked automatically on FBX export anyway? It doesn't seem to happen)
3. Export to FBX.
4. Open newly exported FBX and play the animation.
 

Attachments

  • animationProblems.jas.zip
    68.3 KB · Views: 275
Hmm. Unity 4 or Unity 5? It imports fine into Unity 4 for me.

Now, when I went from Unity 3.x to Unity 4.x there were massive changes in the animation system that forced me to tweak all kinds of import settings before things looked like they did before. Maybe there's a similar issue with Unity 4.x to 5.x.

Nice looking low poly character by the way.
 
podperson said:
Hmm. Unity 4 or Unity 5? It imports fine into Unity 4 for me.

Now, when I went from Unity 3.x to Unity 4.x there were massive changes in the animation system that forced me to tweak all kinds of import settings before things looked like they did before. Maybe there's a similar issue with Unity 4.x to 5.x.

Nice looking low poly character by the way.
Click to expand...

Thanks!

It's Unity 5... the only import option that I can think of that might affect this is anim compression, but no effect there. And either way, it doesn't explain why exporting and importing an fbx gives the same broken result just in Cheetah3D alone.

Here's a picture of the problem I'm talking about, Unity on the left, Cheetah on the right.
Vmtt02s.gif
 
OK I see your problem now (in U4). Sigh.

I think you could try manually keyframing the hierarchy and then turning off the IK and exporting that way.

This may be a bug – Martin?

(I tend to use FK for most stuff, so I don't run into the IK workflow issues much.)
 
Some more info: if you bake then export to .DAE then the baked animation is correctly used... So it's just baking to FBX that doesn't work for some reason.

(Although now I've also noticed that baking IK bakes keys into one of my controllers, so that's another problem.)

EDIT: It worked the first time I exported, but now it DAE breaks just like FBX.
EDIT2: switching the rig type to generic then back to humanoid improved the DAE animation again. No progress on the FBX one though.

EDIT3: Ok I've got things mostly working now, here's my workaround:
- Rearrange my rig so that any controls that are keyed do not use constraints
- and "priority" is only used on controls, not on joints (leave at 10)
- Make sure the entire control hierarchy is keyed on the first frame of each animation
- "Bake IK" prior to saving or exporting.
- Play back the animation, if IK elements are unstable, delete keys on skeleton, restart Cheetah3D and bake again.
- In Unity use "Generic" rig instead of "Humanoid"
 
Last edited:
Ocias said:
Some more info: if you bake then export to .DAE then the baked animation is correctly used... So it's just baking to FBX that doesn't work for some reason.

(Although now I've also noticed that baking IK bakes keys into one of my controllers, so that's another problem.)

EDIT: It worked the first time I exported, but now it DAE breaks just like FBX.
EDIT2: switching the rig type to generic then back to humanoid improved the DAE animation again. No progress on the FBX one though.

EDIT3: Ok I've got things mostly working now, here's my workaround:
- Rearrange my rig so that any controls that are keyed do not use constraints
- and "priority" is only used on controls, not on joints (leave at 10)
- Make sure the entire control hierarchy is keyed on the first frame of each animation
- "Bake IK" prior to saving or exporting.
- Play back the animation, if IK elements are unstable, delete keys on skeleton, restart Cheetah3D and bake again.
- In Unity use "Generic" rig instead of "Humanoid"
Click to expand...

That is a pretty damn ugly workflow.

Is it possible that you exporting 30fps but only animating on a 15fps timeline and the problem keys are IK solutions you do not see? If so, try adjusting your FBX output settings (or your timeline):
 
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