Bone Driver
Kinematic Bone controller for Custom Unity Assets
Yeah, so what's this for?
Basically, think about all those simple moving things :
doors opening and closing, fans or car wheels spinning, rocking chairs, seesaws,
those grabby things like tongs or pincers, drawers sliding in and out... you get the idea.
It's for making ALL of that stuff move and interact in real-time.
And the kicker? You can do it with just ONE asset. No pre-baked animations needed,
no messing around trying to piece together separate parts. just add and enjoy.
Features
The asset's bones can be manipulated using parameters.
Poses for the asset can be created and saved together within the scene.
It can be animated using a timeline or triggers.
Advantages
It's intuitive, with one plugin for one asset.
No additional Atoms are required.
It operates lightly because you can select only the necessary bone axes for movement.
Precise animation control is possible using sliders.
Optimization Requirements
Requirements
The asset must be rigged (Armature bones, Weight Paint).
Collisions should be created on bones or their children.
(If the asset will not have physical collisions implemented, you can ignore the collision creation.)
Mesh collisions do not work smoothly and heavy.
It is recommended to create collisions by combining Unity's built-in colliders such as capsule, box, and sphere,
either by using empty objects or by adding components directly.
Optimization cannot be guaranteed for several hundred or more bones.
Hard Folding Parts example
Soft folding examples (weight Paint)
Collision Tips
The box collider is the most cost-effective type of collider. Generally, creating multiple built-in colliders on empty objects is much more helpful for physics calculation optimization than using a single mesh collider. This is especially true for animated bone objects, where colliders should be even simpler, which also offers significant advantages in VR environments. The optimal collision setup involves adding colliders directly as components to the bone object; however, since rotation isn't possible with this method, it's limited to bed-like shapes as described above. The compound collider method, which involves duplicating and overlapping colliders assigned to empty objects, offers precise collision shapes but adds to the cost of moving many objects. Therefore, for moving bones, the optimal approach is to use box and capsule colliders directly as components whenever possible.
example - adding plugin & posing
example - Infinite Roll (with Acidbubbles - Timeline)
example - UI slider link
more details..
Select the bones you want to activate from the right column. Then, check "Activate" in the left column to make them move and allow them to be automatically detected by other triggers or add-ons. Bones whose parameters have been changed or are activated will have an asterisk (*) next to their name for emphasis. You can activate the X, Y, and Z axes simultaneously by clicking the checkbox in each section.
It is best to consider the parameters in the right column as supplementary tools for simple posing, testing, and understanding bone orientation. If you adjust animations using UI_slider or Timeline, the parameters might be applied cumulatively or not at all, which can cause various inconveniences.
If you plan to create animations or move bones interactively through triggers, it is highly recommended to press "Defaults all Bones" to set the initial values to zero. Pose saving simply stores the parameter manipulation state in the scene; there are no separate libraries or files. Therefore, if you intend to manage poses systematically, it is better to use the pose feature in the timeline.
Additionally, if errors occur in position or rotation, as a last resort, reload the Asset first, and then reload the Plugin. This will return the plugin to the same state as when it was first added to the CUA (Custom Unity Asset), and everything should work normally. However, you may still need to delete any remaining keyframes in the timeline. For the same reason, if you reload the same asset and activate the same axes, the timeline can automatically recognize the parameters and continue the animation. If you switch to a different asset, you will need to manually remove the existing target keys.
