Motion Controller

hahaha... I know there's a lot, but I try to be thorough.

In the Sword & Shield Motion Pack's User's Guide, check out the FAQ section (page 41). That should take you through the steps. A couple of quick reminders:

On your character, you'll setup a mount point for the right hand (sword) and the left forearm (shield).

The names of Basic Inventory slots should match the names of the character's mount points (spaces and underscores are the same).

There's already a "Sword_01_mp" and "Shield_01_mp" prefab setup for you. Just use those names (with the "_mp") in the Basic Inventory item's "Resource Path" property.


There's also a demo in the Sword & Shield Motion Pack called "demo_Combat_UsingMountPoints". That's a good example that shows you everything already setup.

 

I think that the part that I missed after reading this for the first time is that as long as there is a mount point in the general area of where the sword is going it will automatically snap to it and orientate correctly. So if i had a mount point to the sword and a mount point to the right hand and assign the sword to the right hand, it should automatically snap to that point. Is this a correct assumption?

 

That's pretty much what Mount Points does.

 

Hi, I got another question: My character can not land on slope after jumping or falling,
I tried to set the walking slope limit to a higher value, tweak the grounding variables, but nothing helps.
I still don't know which value should I tweak to adjust the landing smoothness, any suggestions?

 

Hi! I have a quick question again. Where exactly is PSS_BasicAttacks.Activate() ran from? To put this in context, I want to go in and make the "Combat Attack" input entry activate a different motion.

 

I'm not really sure what you mean by "cannot land on slope". When I jump or fall onto a slope, he seems to land and go back to idle.

 

The TestActivate() function determines if the Activate() should be called. You should just be able to disable or remove the motion and add your motion. Most motion processing is self contained.

 

Then maybe it's me changed some values in the wrong way.
In my case, when I land on a slope, character still in landing motion and "slide" down to a flat area, then he can perform the landing animation then back to idle.
I'm not sure which values should I tweak to adjust this, maybe you can give me some hints?

 

I wonder be in front of my computer until Monday, but try this...

On the Actor Controller is an checkbox that says Force Grounding. After that is a number. It should be something like 0.3. try setting it to 1.0 and see if that helps. Can you email tim.@ootii.com a picture of your character on the slope? Im curious how steep it is.

I'm on my phone too. So please excuse any miss types.

 

Hey, thanks for the tip, I'll try it in next Monday (same as you, won't be in front of my computer until Monday )
The slop is under 45 degrees, and I set the character's slope limit under 45 degrees.

 

I finally get it! Whew that took a lot of video watching, documentation reading, and code digging. Thanks for the info!

 

One video done! one to go!! (Working on the Combat Tutorial)

 

I setup a simple scene with a 45-degree ramp. Then, I set the character's slope limit to 30. He falls, hits the slope, and comes out of the fall right away:



I'm thinking your issue might have to do with the AC's body shapes and colliders. Do your colliders look similar to the green spheres above?

 

@Tryz
I recorded a short video to show my results and settings, anything I got wrong? Or it's only because I used an older version of MC?
I also added several lines of code in the Jump motion to let it cost character's stamina, don't know if that matters.
Video here:

 

I believe so.

It looks like you're using a version of the Actor Controller from March... before I did a major update. I can tell because your "Slopes" section is very different.

The behavior will be somewhat different too as I re-wrote the whole AC. If you would do a full update of the ootii assets, that may clean it up.

 

Finally the Combat integration

Turn on Subtitles .. so you can understand better my Cuban English (Spanglish)

 

AMAZING! I love Malbers!

 

Great integration! I will come back and ask you about some details when my game come to this section

 

That makes sense
I'll try to update motion controller some days later, see if it conflicts with my own motions (unprofessionally written )
Edit1: BTW, how should I update ooti's assets? directly reimport or delete the old folder entirely then reimport?
Edit2: I'm using ICE creature control, it has its own creature status system and I quite like it, how can I integrate ooti's combat pack(sword & shield pack) with ICE creatures?

 

sure !! NP I'll be around!

 

Sounds good.

Just reimport the updates right on top of your existing project no need to delete anything first.

I haven't used ICE. The owner of ICE did contact me and I gave him my assets, but I'm not sure where he is with that.

You should be able to inherit from my IDamageable interface and implement the needed code for ICE. I just don't know what that code is.

 

Unity 2017 is up and I'll be playing with on and off all day.

If you find any issues, please don't hesitate to email tim@ootii.com.

[EDIT]
I'm happy to report that everything seems to be working fine across my assets.

At one point, you do have to accept a Unity script update and I'll clean that up during the next update. But, everything seems fine so far.

 

Hello, as I was looking for a decent character controller for my game I stumbled over the Third Person Motion Controller. I watched a few videos on YouTube and I think the controller could fit to my game. As I only have a small budget for assets I invest a lot of time into research before I decide to buy an asset.

Can you help me out and tell me if your Third Person Motion Controller is capable of the following actions (without the need of buying additional assets):

- Can you fixate the camera to a specific angle? I need the camera to follow my character but I don't want it to rotate. It should always follow the character in a specific angle (like in Diablo and other top-down games)
- Does it work on mobile? If yes, how is the performance (please be honest )?
- Haven't seen actions like pull/push/climb/ledge up in the videos. Are these actions still included with the specific animations?

Thank you in advance!

Best Regards

 

Hi @baumxyz ,

I totally understand.

Yes. In your case, the easiest thing to do is parent the camera to the character and set it at the offset and position you want.

I do include two camera rig, but I don't think you really need them given your description.

I promise to always be honest. I'd rather have no customer than an unhappy one.

It does work on mobile. I've used it on my android (Galaxy S4) and I know others are using it with iOS. Performance always depends on hardware, but on my S4 I was able to have 8 active characters before I saw the framerate start to dip. If you disable movement collision and other features for NPCs you can increase that number. This test was done about a year ago.

On the PC, I had 100 units actively moving before the frame rate went below 100 FPS.

There are about 5 different climbs, jump, ledge shimmy, ladder climb, and wall climb. However, there is no push or pull. You would need to create motions for these if you need them. Fortunately, the MC was built to be expanded on. So, it's definitely doable.

 

Awesome, thank you for the fast and informative reply. I would only use one character controller, so mobile performance shouldn't be a problem, right? I'm not targeting old and poor performance mobile devices anyway.

One last question: If I parent the camera to my character like you said, are my inputs always relative to my camera? Because everything else would be confusing for players.

I will watch some more videos and wait for your reply. Chances are good that you have a new customer

Thanks again.

 

You'll be fine.

Yes. In this case they would be. I have a couple of different "Walk/Run" motions, but if the camera were locked to the player, the inputs would be relative.

With the MC, you can use any camera solution you want. I include two simple camera rigs a "fixed" one and an "orbit" one. However, you can use any other camera solution you find or create. I have one called the Camera Controller, but that may be overkill for your needs.

 

Nice job, I don't always buy upgrades, but I did to support you, as you been doing some great work.. Keep it up.

 

I been using MC for a few years for a mobile game I been working on and off.. and its also networked.... with Bolt. MC has worked nearly flawlessly and no performance issues at all with MC... ran into a few networking issues, but with the help of Bolt, got that fixed.. So mobile is NOT an issue with MC.. But I think TIM added some new networking fixes, for others.. I have not tried it myself, but I did look at it, and looks like it should work fine, if you decided to network MC at some point....

Regardless, MC is a damn good controller and I don't typically like buying controllers as I make them myself....But the time MC has saved me tons of money and time..
and I been able to add all my own custom motions, is why I bought it, almost 2 years ago I think its been since I owned roughly.

 

Thanks @recon0303! I really appreciate it! I'll keep adding more features along the way

 

Has anyone been able to use the Effect18 from Krypto Realistic Effects Pack v4 with the spell package from ooti.

It seems that the rotation is off but sadly no matter how much i turn the rotation on the effect nothing happens it seems that it is always shooting to the side:



My spell projectile looks like this:




Has anyone succeeded with making this work?

 

First, I love that you're building spells! I've been waiting to see what people come up with.

The problem is that Krypto built the spell to shoot out the side. You can see this by dropping Krypto's Effect18 prefab into a scene (with no ootii assets).


So, we have to compensate for this by putting his prefab into a container and then rotating his prefab. We'll now use the "container" prefab since "forward" is +Z as we'd expect.


Use that "container" inside the ootii ProjectileCore because "forward" is now really +Z (since we compensated for -X being "forward" in Krypto's prefab).


Now, when we cast, the "forward" direction is actually as we'd expect.


You'll find I had to do small tweaks to several things in my other examples, but none of it has been too tough. Once you get these tricks down it should be smooth sailing.

 

@Tryz

Is it possible you could upload the asset? i can see what you mean but can't really make it work

 

I figured it out Thank you so much!

 

haha... good timing.

 

One more question. How do you find your self as a target?

You have an action called: Actor Effect - Modify Attribute.

However this requires that a target has been found. What if you want to target your self?

 

Great point.

With some nodes, you can set the target to "Owner" and that means yourself.


However, I think there should be an "Find Owner" node. I'll create that. Send an email to tim@ootii.com and I'll send it to you early to play with.

 

smart move Tim, glad your adding this, makes it easier.

 

I am having one issue with the target locking.

I have the Camera Controller along with the Sword & Shield pack. I am using the "3rd person follow". So when I right click, the camera orbits the character. Everything works fine there.

However when I lock on the target then unlock, right click does not orbit the character anymore. I notice when I target it stops the camera from orbiting which is what I would expect. But it doesn't seem to allow it to orbit after unlocking.

Any help would be appreciated.

 

Hmmm... I just got home and it's late here. I'll check it out first think in the morning.

 

Hey @tchris ,

I've been playing with it this morning and I'm not seeing the issue you're talking about. Here's what I did:

1. Started a new U5.6.2p1 project
2. Downloaded and imported the latest MC, SSMP, and CC
3. Added the animations and meta files for the SSMP
4. Opened the SSMP demo_Combat scene
5. Setup the inputs for the MC and SSMP (the button presses)
6. Changed the Camera Rig from the Orbit Rig to the CC and pressed 3rd Person Style
7. Hit play

I could orbit the camera with the right mouse button. Then, I'd target the NPC by pressing the middle mouse button and could no longer orbit. When I pressed the middle mouse button again, I'd stop targeting the NPC and could orbit with the right mouse button.

I'm wondering if the CC is using your targeting button press to leave the 3rd Person Follow camera and move to another. When you come out of targeting, which camera motor has the far right check-box checked?

If you could send me some screen shots of your camera setup, that may help. Just send them to tim@ootii.com.

 

Hi Tim
Thank you for making assets and videos they’re excellent.

Yesterday I bought Motion controller & Sword shield pack and node canvas (based on your recommendation) then I felt I needed your camera controller so the cost was about £160 which is roughly 50% of my annual development budget.

I’m of that old school that believes 3rd person Destroyed immersion, so this is a request – nay plea to throw some love in the 1st person controller / camera direction I feel it needs it.

The best I’m been able to do thus far is…
create an empty make it a child of my characters head bone place it 0.2 in front and use that as the anchor in your first person view.

Done a little vid to explain

I feel there is much more we could do with 1st person and your systems:
I think I’m right in saying we can change camera stuff based on specific animations?
So when I jump off the ledge I could momentarily fade the character model out?
When I look down at my characters body (when in idle) change FOV even do some depth of field?

The goals I set myself are
1. The camera to never ever clip through the player or anything else
2. Try to minimise / eliminate head bobbing when running
3. Have a first person system where I can lock on to a target strafe around hitting it
back myself into a corner to stop mobs sneaking up behind me
and if it all goes wrong the ability to break off Stun and Run

Nice to have’s
3. a Vanity camera when n
4. A key & camera to momentarily look over my shoulder to see what is chasing me.

I’m sure my goals are doable, I’m just asking for little help achieving them,
PS. Video is my favourite media for learning ;-)

Cheers

Roy

 

I notice the same thing, we are using Tim's Camera asset, and first person, is a bit of a pain, we ended up using just arms for our first person for now... which I 'm not a fan of, I rather have full body awareness. I plan to spend some time, figuring out a better way, with my own camera, I got it to work, but I like some of Tim camera better.. Than our own. Only complaint is the first person, we have same issue, as seen in your video....I plan to spend more time on it, to see, what else I can do . Third person works perfectly.

 

Hi @nomax5 ,

Welcome and thanks for the kind comments.

In the video, I see two issues:

1. The eyes, ears, nose, etc. showing in your 1st person view. Later, you hid those meshes which is the exact right thing to do. I don't think it's the responsibility of the camera to manage meshes like that. Doing it as you did in the scene setup or as a game-specific component makes sense.

2. External head view with some motions (ie Jumping). I think your question about hiding the body during some motions is probably the best approach. There's a couple of other options like using the head as the anchor or using a custom non-character bone as an anchor, but each of them has their own challenges.

Yes. The MC allows you to tap into motion events (MotionActivated, MotionUpdated, MotionDeactivated). For example, you could have a custom GameObject that watched MotionActivated and MotionDeactivated, you could look for specific motions and change the mesh or camera based on which motion you're entering and leaving.

Here's a quick example:

Spoiler: Example Code

Code (CSharp):

1. using UnityEngine;
2. using com.ootii.Actors.AnimationControllers;
3.  
4. namespace com.ootii.Demos
5. {
6.     public class MCWatcher : MonoBehaviour
7.     {
8.         private MotionController mMotionController = null;
9.  
10.         private void Start()
11.         {
12.             mMotionController = gameObject.GetComponent<MotionController>();
13.             mMotionController.MotionActivated = OnMotionActivated;
14.             mMotionController.MotionDeactivated = OnMotionDeactivated;
15.         }
16.  
17.         private void OnMotionActivated(int rLayer, MotionControllerMotion rNewMotion, MotionControllerMotion rOldMotion)
18.         {
19.             if (rNewMotion.GetType() == typeof(Jump))
20.             {
21.                 // Fade character out
22.             }
23.         }
24.  
25.         private void OnMotionDeactivated(int rLayer, MotionControllerMotion rMotion)
26.         {
27.             if (rMotion.GetType() == typeof(Jump))
28.             {
29.                 // Fade character in
30.             }
31.         }
32.     }
33. }

You can certainly change the FOV. To do this, you'd use the CameraController's TargetFOV property. That would help the FOV move in and out smoothly. Another option would be to have a separate camera motor for this view, but that's probably overkill.

When to change the FOV is probably the tricky part. You'll have to test the camera direction and determine when you feel it is "looking down enough".

I'd do this in a separate component or motor as well. This way customizations won't be overwritten during my updates. Creating a custom motor that inherits from 1st Person View (ViewMotor.cs) and then extends the PostRigLateUpdate() with your logic should be pretty easy.

This one is a little trickier if the anchor is any part of the character. For example, earlier I mentioned using the head as the anchor. Due to all the animations, this is actually a bad idea. I think it will make the camera wobble way to much.

I think the best idea is a separate "Anchor Follower" GameObject that mimics the position of your character, but changes the height at certain times. This would give you complete control over the height, bobbing, etc. It's something I've wanted to test with the 3rd Person Cameras as well. This separate object is already on my list. I just need to get to it.

Some skeletal meshes actually have a separate bone for the camera. This way, it can be animated with the body. Unfortunately, most models we see on the Asset Store don't do that.

Definitely doable. I do something similar in my Sword & Shield Motion Pack's PSS_WalkRunTarget motion. The key here is to rotate the character and the camera together or else you can get jittering.

In the motion, I tap into the camera's OnPostLateUpdate event. I do it like this:

Code (CSharp):

1. ((BaseCameraRig)mMotionController.CameraRig).OnPostLateUpdate += OnCameraUpdated;

So, the camera is forced to look at the target and then the motion rotates the character to the direction of the camera after the camera updates. This keeps the direction in sync.

You can use the MC's WalkRunStrafe motion for this and add in this bit of code to create the "strafe around" part.

With both your 'Nice To Haves', I think we're talking about separate camera motors that just transition in and out based on a key press. Totally doable without extra code.

Check out the Camera Controller's User Guide (page 23):
http://www.ootii.com/Unity/CameraController/CCUsersGuide.pdf

This will take you through creating the transitions and how to setup the key press to be a toggle or hold.

I think your ideas are great and all of them are doable. As with any custom game, there may be some custom code required to make things work exactly how you have it in your design. The hooks are there with the MC and CC. It's just a matter of adding the pieces that are specific to your game.

With 1st person games, there's probably more examples I could code and add to help people. I'll add that to my list, but the list is getting pretty long. I prioritize things based on how many people ask for them.

I hope this all helps and I'm always happy to answer more if you want to shoot emails to tim@ootii.com.

[EDIT]
One last things I forgot to add. Most games that use 1st person or a mixed mode end up using different character models. They do this to handle the oddities of 1st person: perspective, extra meshes (eyeballs, tongues, etc), etc. Firewatch was a good example of using a 1st person specific model.



https://twitter.com/ollymoss/status/697926382861492224

 

Thanks for taking the time to respond and thanks for the detailed help it’s going to take me a while to digest it but it is greatly appreciated.

I want to give you some feedback from a brand new customer who only discovered oottii 2 days ago:

I discovered you through your spell casting promo video.
I wasn’t looking for a motion controller or a camera controler or sword sheild animation or indeed an AI solution I have behaviour designer and others already.

You meet my criteria for an asset developer, Good support Good documentation, Video tutorials and it looks like you’re going to be around in the future.

But the reason you got my money is I share your view: you cant view all these systems in isolation they’re interrelated and need to be interconnected.
By provinding common interfaces and colaboration with other asset developers you are unifying these systems and setting the standard.

That’s why I think my money was well spent.

Thank you for making assets and the ongoing support I for one really appreaciate it.

 

Hi Tim,

Is there a way to make the simple motions context sensitive? I have added some actions I want but I only want them to execute in certain circumstances. (when menu option is shown etc.)

Also can I make the character move using the simple motions? My animations are in place not "root motion" so the character is not moving forward.

 

Hey @AndyNeoman

The best way to handle this would be to disable the motions until they are valid. To disable them, just uncheck the checkbox in the list. Then, to re-enable them you would do this:

Code (CSharp):

1. Jump lJumpMotion = mMotionController.GetMotion(0, "Jump") as Jump;
2. lJumpMotion.IsEnabled = true;

I show some other examples of controlling the motions through code in the User's Guide (page 28):
http://www.ootii.com/Unity/MotionController/MC2Guide.pdf

The simple motion will allow for movement as long as these two check boxes are NOT checked:


However, this motion wasn't built for a serious "movement" motion like WalkRunPivot or WalkRunStrafe. The other thing you'll want to make sure is that your animation is setup to allow motion. For example, Root Transform Position (XZ) should not have Bake Into Pose checked.

Hopefully that helps. If not, feel free to email tim@ootii.com with more information about your animation and I'll try to help.

 

Hi Tim,

I have purchased player model through the asset store and the animations are baked onto the model (I believe this is the correct terminology). Is there a way for the motion controller to access these animations? Or do i have to get them off of the model in some way?

**Edit** Sorry for being a noob. I was able to copy the animation from the model by selecting the animation and hitting CTRL-D. This copied the animation and allowed me to easily add it to an animation controller.

 

Hi @keiabrow ,

The MC actually includes all of its own animations. So, you don't really need any of the player model's.

As you get used to the MC, you can use your own custom animations to create motions or replace my animations with yours. In fact, I'm working on an update right now to make that easier.

In that case, you can use the animations right off your model. You don't need to extract them separately. Unity's import process will all allow you to get to the animation clips from the import inspector. Just make sure you set the rig to "Humanoid".

 

The animations are included in the character fbx. They do not show up separately when importing in the asset from the store. In either case, duplicating them worked for me and allowed me to create some animations for the motion controller. There are some animations in the controller that I do not like as well as the ones that came with the character. That doesn't mean that I think they are bad, it just means that I like the way the other animations look with these particular characters.

Here is a link to the pack in question. I believe that the

https://www.assetstore.unity3d.com/en/#!/content/55307

 

It sounds to me like you are on the right path. Everyone wants to use custom-selected animations for their own projects, so that's expected. To further customize things to your needs you may need to adapt / write your own motions. Motion Controller and the motion kits are there to help you get started. If you have a very simple game, they might be all you need.