Configure avatar Special Actions & Special Poses

Special Actions and Poses are user triggered animations and are not part of the face tracking retargeting system. Think of special actions as cool dance moves that you want your avatar to display, while special poses are moods (make the avatar sad by changing the color tone of the face to blue).

While the possibilities of Special Actions and Special Poses are limitless, all Special Actions and Special Poses must adhere to certain requirements and behaviors:

• if your avatar has an idle pose, then the special action must end in the idle pose. Otherwise, your avatar will remain in the state of the last frame of the special action
• special poses animation inputs are overwritten by tracking retargeting

i.e., if a special pose changes ParamEyeLOpen input to 0 (eye shut), the parameter will be overridden by face tracking. It is recommended to use inputs that are not mapped by the Animaze tracking system.

The Animaze Editor system tries to detect and import by default all the special actions and poses at import. The format is *.motion3 for special actions & *.exp3.json for special poses, exported from the Cubism editor, and they can be added, rearranged and removed within the Animaze Editor. 

Steps to configure Special Actions:

1. In the Editor Panel, click on Special Actions bar to expand it

2. Clicking the Configure Special Actions button will open the configuration window 

3. The Editor lists the animations detected at import

4. Here you can Add, Remove & Rearrange the special actions. Click OK when you are done.

5. Click the Activate button to trigger the animation and watch it perform the action

The configuration for Special Poses follows the same exact steps. The system will look for *.exp3.json files in expressions/ folder of the avatar

6. Save the avatar in the Hierarchy Panel when you are done