USD (Universal Scene Description) is an file format originally developed by Pixar for describing 3D scenes. A scene can include a collection of sets, characters, and props. In this blog I give a quick introduction, including how it is used to compose a hierarchy of sequences and shots similar to the Sequences package in Unity. … More Universal Scene Description (USD) format from Pixar
In my last blog I introduced this new series on applying machine learning to screenplays with the goal of automating some of the tedious steps of creating an animated cartoon using 3D character models and animation. Even if you are not in the animation space, you might find it interesting in an introduction to the … More Applying Machine Learning Classifiers to Screenplays for Animation Automation
This is a first post in a new thread looking at using machine learning to speed up my process of assembling camera shots in an animated cartoon series (the series I would be working on if I did not get distracted all the time by shiny new technology to learn… ahem!). Can I speed up … More Machine Learning for Assembling Animation Scenes
For my hobbyist animation efforts I started with friends as voice actors. However, not having many friends… I mean, it is hard for my numerous friends to commit to being a voice actor over a long period (and it’s unfortunate if voices of characters change mid series). The obvious answer is to write the script … More Emotional speech synthesis for animation is here!
When you use a walk animation in a Unity Timeline using an Animation Track with Scene Offsets applied, you may come across a problem where you want to have the character end up at a precise location at a specific time. The problem is if you are in Preview mode (the default), moving the character … More Precise positioning with walk animations in Unity
Here is my current implementation of captions in Unity, the writing you see at the bottom of the screen that shows what the character is saying. You might do this when the original movie is in a different language, or in my case, I am using captions to avoid having to worry about voice actors … More Implementing Captions in Unity using UI Document
I am using Unity Sequences to create a cartoon series (slowly). It is probably more accurate to say I am learning the technology to create such a series as so far I have spent more time on technology than delivering results! But getting closer. One problem I came across was how to split a Unity … More Splitting a Master Sequence between Scenes in Unity
The Unity Sequences package support has a number of features to make it easier to create movies, game cutscenes, or in my case short animated video clips for including in my motion webcomic. When I first started using Sequences, I planned to use Scene Activation tracks, but over time I found a number of limitations … More Why I Stopped using Scene Activation in Unity
There was an Animation Rigging incompatibility with Sequences in Unity which has been fixed in version 1.2.0 of Animation Rigging. (It results in lots of exceptions in the Console and frequently fails to work correctly.) Unity 2022.1 has not been officially released yet (still in beta), so this is the versions I am using at … More Unity Sequences and Animation Rigging Versions (April 2022 update)
I have been exploring the new Sequences package beta for Unity for animation and one of the things it makes heavy use of was Prefab Variants. I had heard of Prefab Variants, but never really quite “got” how they were different from Prefabs. So I did some hunting around and thought I would summarize my … More Prefabs vs Prefab Variants in Unity
Extra Ordinary, the Series 