3DS Max - Unity 3D pipeline Issues

Unity Engine
1

Hello Everyone,
Our company is currently developing online learning for the Canadian Military and using Unity 3D as our platform. Due to developing for this client we are restricted by what versions of software we can use, we are using 3.5

That being said I would like to point out our pipeline issue we are having which we would like to make more efficient.

Currently our development method is to animate our entire project within 3D Studio max in a timeline fashion, this includes camera animation. From here we export our object animation as an .FBX and our Camera as a separate .FBX. In Unity we alter the .FBX files to identify which frames have corresponding animations in them. I.E Frame 0-48 - Camera Animation Part 1, Frame 50-80 - Object Animation A, etc.

The problem we have is upon getting client revisions, in some cases we are asked to add extra animations into a timeline however due to the fact that our animation is timeline dependent in 3DS max it becomes troublesome to shift the animations around to add room as we would need to re-identify all takes in Unity from that point in time forward.

To somewhat solve this issue we allow for a lot of extra keys in between our animations encase the revisions arises, however this makes navigating in 3DS Max timeline quite troublesome as we have too many key frames in our timeline range, This is a solution but we wonder if other users have had this issue and have developed an alternative pipeline.

We have tried using Unity 3D to Animate our scenes however its makes the review process quite difficult as all animations are called through programming which means our review of the animations would not take place until the product is done which is very inefficient. Also we run into a lot of animations problems as we need to use 3.5. Using Unity 3D to animate our product is not an option.

2

I’ve ran into a similar issue and ended up using the script provided here.
http://answers.unity3d.com/questions/8172/how-to-add-new-curves-or-animation-events-to-an-im.html?page=1&pageSize=5&sort=votes

I always keep an un-animated scene as backups for this cause. I animate the updates in a new file and export the fbx into unity and use the script to strip out the animation data into an .anim file and then add the .anim file to the current mesh that needs the new additional animation.

3

I think I found the solution:

  • Save out animation as a XML file.
  • Load it into the Motion Mixer
  • Split up animations and name clips in your reservoir that you want your takes to be named.

From here I seen there is a script by motion tracks that will export your motion mixer animation as a XML and load it as an animation in Unity with your the clips separated as takes however I can’t find the script anywhere. All the links from the user “fano_linux” seemed to be broke however he has shown the capability of his script here : http://forum.unity3d.com/threads/155595-3ds-max-Animation-auto-Splitter-plugin-(auto-split-animations-in-unity)

Once I get in touch Fano_Linux" and test out his script I will update you.