Mate-Engine/Assets/UMotionEditor/Manual/HowToCreateBetterAnimations.html
shinyflvre 091ae7be88 Public Release X3.0b
# MateEngine X3.0

## Windows and Taskbar Sitting Rewrite

* Avatars sit more naturally on windows and the taskbar. Legs render in front while hair renders behind for a seamless look.
* Transitions between dragging and sitting are smoother.
* Alignment with windows and the taskbar improved. If a model looks off adjust **Y Offset** in settings. Some models may need minor manual tweaks due to different bone rigs.
* You can give headpats while the avatar sits. The avatar closes its eyes and shows sparkling particles. More headpat animations will be added later.
* The avatar no longer jumps off the taskbar when the Windows Start Menu or Search opens.
* You must hold the avatar for at least one second before it will sit to prevent accidental sits during fast moves.

## Feed System (Alpha)

* Avatars can drink. Press the middle mouse button to open the Food Radial menu. Spawn smoothies and bring them to the avatar to feed. This is an early access feature.
* When Spawning a Smoothie it will always spawn a Random smoothie! Keep in mind this feature is new and not perfect but i think it is a nice to have!

## Drag Smoothing

* Dragging the avatar feels smoother and more stable.
* A light smoothing effect was added to make dragging natural without noticeable delay.

## Taskbar Sitting Changes

* The circle menu is disabled while the avatar sits on the taskbar, showing only **Jump Off**.
* This prevents visual overlap from other UI while sitting.
* Moving the menu up while sitting increases cost, so it remains off for taskbar sitting but works normally on window sitting.

## Animation Changes

* Minor rotation adjustments to dragging animations.
* Improved transition timing for intimate animation for smoother flow.

## Minecraft Integration

MateEngine reacts to Minecraft events in real time. The avatar comments on gameplay, warns about danger, and celebrates victories.

### How it works

* Install the **MateSignal Forge mod** in Minecraft and run **MateEngine** on the same device or local network.
* MateSignal forwards in-game events to MateEngine so the avatar can display messages or play animations.
* Intended for singleplayer and private multiplayer use. Avoid competitive or official servers where live alerts could be an unfair advantage.

### Examples of reactions

* Day start: cheerful wake-up
* Night start: reminder to stay safe
* Nearby mobs: instant warnings for creepers, zombies, etc.
* Low health or hunger: worried or encouraging lines
* Crafting: excited comments
* Weather: reactions when rain starts
* Death: sad or comforting messages
* Biome discovery: happy or curious reactions
* Eating: cheering during meals
* Killing mobs: victory reactions

### Requirements

* Minecraft 1.21.10
* Forge Mod Loader
* MateSignal installed and integration enabled in MateEngine

## Dance Player Update

* Added **Lock Mode (Experimental)**. Enables camera tracking for dances that move the avatar far left or right so the window follows their motion.

## Hand Tracking Changes

* Hand tracking is more accurate to the mouse position.
* Reduced activation zone to prevent unwanted tracking on smaller avatars.

## Buy Option

* Added a buy button to the Minecraft Integration and Steam DLC categories. These buttons appear when running the free GitHub build.

## Bug Fixes

* Avatars no longer attach to windows or the taskbar while custom dances are active.
* Fixed avatar disappearing after sitting on minimized windows.
* Fixed incorrect positioning when a window closes.
* Fixed teleport when a window is maximized.

## Internal Changes

* Removed unused code to reduce missing script warnings.
* General cleanup and small performance adjustments.
2025-11-01 10:12:19 +01:00

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<h1 class="headline1" id="">How to create better animations</h1><p class="textBlock">Animating is a creative process just like 3D modeling or painting. Even though UMotion is offering all the tools you need to create good looking animations you will need to practice in order to make your animations look appealing. It's easy to quickly create an animation but often the result will look unnatural. There are 3 common problems that make an animation look unrealistic:</p><h3 class="headline3" id="">1) There are poses in your animation that don't respect the anatomy of your character.</h3><p class="textBlock">Make sure not to rotate joints in a direction which is not possible in the real world. In a simple example like a knee not being able to do rotations to the left or right it may seem obvious, but what if you are animating e.g. the hands of a character? What kind of joint limits does a thumb have? You should carefully think about that before you even touch the thumb with the rotation tool. Otherwise you may end up in a very unnatural looking pose.</p><h3 class="headline3" id="">2) The duration between two poses is slightly too short or too long.</h3><p class="textBlock">The more frames there are between two poses, the longer/slower the animation will be in this section. A wrong duration between two poses will break the "flow" of the animation. Play around with the number of frames between your key poses and try to find the sweet spot.</p><h3 class="headline3" id="">3) The Secret Sauce</h3><p class="textBlock">You finished keying all poses of your animation clip and perfectly arranged them in the Dopesheet. But when playing the animation, things just don't look natural...</p><p class="textBlock">The secret sauce that is missing are correctly setup animation curves. All the motion you see between two keyed poses is defined by the animation curve. With the curves you can define exactly how fast something is moving or rotating at a specific time in your animation. In the real world, movement is never done at constant speed. Depending on the movement, there is always some accelerating and decelerating happening. And that's exactly what, if done wrong, can make your animation look really odd.</p><p class="textBlock">Try to think of an animation where a character is punching against a punch bag. Without manually adjusting the animation curves, the punch will first smoothly accelerate and then smoothly decelerate before it hits the punch bag. This will look weird and unnatural. A correctly setup animation curve would make the punch accelerate until it finally hits the punch bag where the fist is decelerated very quickly. Depending on how fast you decelerate the fist, you can define the softness of the impact at the punch bag.</p><h2 class="headline2" id="">Test, fine tune, repeate</h2><p class="textBlock">To test your animation, reduce the playback speed and watch your animation in slow motion. This makes it much easier to detect parts of your animation that behave unnaturally. Try to fix those parts step by step than check the animation again in regular playback speed. You can continue this process a few times to gradually fine tune your animation.</p><h2 class="headline2" id="">How to improve your animation skills</h2><p class="textBlock">Don't be afraid to show off your work and get some feedback. The Unity forum has quite a few very professional animators that might give you some useful hints on how you can improve the look of your animation.</p><p class="textBlock">Search Youtube for some good animation tutorials. Once you know the basics of UMotion it doesn't really matter anymore if somebody is showing you how he does a e.g. walk animation in a different application than UMotion. The principle mechanics (posing, creating keys, etc.) is usually quite the same in all animation applications.</p>
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