Pitch: Create a Unity Editor tool developed to help quickly test and assign Grab protocol to hand-held props.
Design Problem: Animators needed to make a custom animation for every grabbable asset that would be brought into the app, including separate animations for each hand. This was becoming increasingly tedious!
What I Did:
- Created an Editor tool which, when the item was labelled as “Grabbable”, would allow you to create GrabPoints, which attach to a given joint on the Avatar skeleton) (e.g. right hand) and represents where item is held (position/rotation of the item when held).
- In the Editor tool, when the GrabPoint is selected, an Avatar hand is visualized so that user can see what they’re working with!
- Added a GUI slider allowing the user to change the Hand Tightness (e.g. 0 = open hand, 1 = closed fist)
- Added support to switch hands, so that if the GrabPoint is set up correctly for one hand, user can easily mirror that set-up on the other hand!
- The GrabPoint information is saved as part of the Item object, so whenever the item is loaded into the scene for the Avatar to hold, the GrabPoint settings override the existing hand animation.
- This tool made it much faster to create grabbing/holding animations for multiple items, and allows items to be easily swapped for the same animation!
- Also supports future meanings for grabbing/holding/attachment, since GrabPoints don’t only need to represent hands (as shown with the mouth example)!
- Cross‑functional scoping for feature work (Unity clients, services, shaders)
Pitch: Create a Unity Editor tool developed to help quickly test and assign Grab protocol to hand-held props.
Design Problem: Animators needed to make a custom animation for every grabbable asset that would be brought into the app, including separate animations for each hand. This was becoming increasingly tedious!
What I Did:
- Created an Editor tool which, when the item was labelled as “Grabbable”, would allow you to create GrabPoints, which attach to a given joint on the Avatar skeleton) (e.g. right hand) and represents where item is held (position/rotation of the item when held).
- In the Editor tool, when the GrabPoint is selected, an Avatar hand is visualized so that user can see what they’re working with!
- Added a GUI slider allowing the user to change the Hand Tightness (e.g. 0 = open hand, 1 = closed fist)
- Added support to switch hands, so that if the GrabPoint is set up correctly for one hand, user can easily mirror that set-up on the other hand!
- The GrabPoint information is saved as part of the Item object, so whenever the item is loaded into the scene for the Avatar to hold, the GrabPoint settings override the existing hand animation.
- This tool made it much faster to create grabbing/holding animations for multiple items, and allows items to be easily swapped for the same animation!
- Also supports future meanings for grabbing/holding/attachment, since GrabPoints don’t only need to represent hands (as shown with the mouth example)!
- Cross‑functional scoping for feature work (Unity clients, services, shaders)