Hi all,
I’ve been drawing “I say that trying” some Magica Voxel art but now I want to animate it “Spider Droid”, I’ve tried this before with an imperial walker I was messing with, but I found trying to get the legs to move in the correct way is a huge pain I’m a coder not an artist/animator, Now I know I could try blender but I’m new to that and find it difficult to use never mind in rigging it, I’ve split the Magica Voxel up into parts.
Has anybody got some really good pointers before I tackle such a thing and before I pull my hair out again, in frustration
Thanks 
Showing an image of the model would provide more info so we can give better feedback.
Unfortunately - the best suggestion I can give is rigging/animating in 3D app is easier, better, and results in a more fluent workflow (my opinion).
Do you have a friend competent in 3D or animating? Maybe you can barter some code work in exchange for animation services.
@theANMATOR2b
Thanks for getting back to me, as requested here is an image, unfortunately I don’t know anybody that draws 2D/3D locally or otherwise, I’ve got no time scale for this game it’s a take on TD/C&C, the droid “green one” in the background fly’s around the Path “Sphere you see”, with thrust on/off to keep it in the air, this is done by script no animation, including rotating at the cubes “The towers etc”, and fires the laser beam.
The SpiderBot is based on the Spider Droid in Starwars, so it will move similar, I have bitten the bullet, and started learning blender, I’ve decided that was what I was going to concentrate, my time on this week, I start my new job next week so I’ll have less time, on this and update my existing game I have on Google Play which I do every few week for my users, to play new maps.
Blender interface is challenging but enjoyable “I’ve done a snowman so far”, not bad for a first real us of blender, I know I have to look into bones etc but that’s down the line, I suppose I could learn to move the snowman with bones but I’m not sure how to get that to work in unity as I’ve not done that before as all my other stuff is 2D, would you still rig the same for the spider bot as it has two move legs parts.
I was basing the idea of this clip on youtube
so see how it could move, I would love to do a proper spider, but that’s way done the line for me.
any help is appreciated.
Those legs might be actuators which will need to be animated up/down with a dummy instead of a bone, or (sorry to say) an even a more complex rig with IK, look at controllers and orientation constraints to control the up vector of the actuators. (Note: I’m using 3D Max lingo - blender tools/titles are most likely different, but it’s all the same)
If the leg didn’t have that actuator, instead was just a simple two bone setup, or 3 bone setup including the foot, you’d want to look into IK controls in blender. And after the animations are complete in Unity set-up would be a simple generic rig setup.
Keep at it. To be honest - I think all people starting out animating in 3D should do a robot type character. Because the software does that very well by default. 
Also - have you looked into point cashe ‘stuff’’ for Unity? I have only passing info about that - but seems I remember discussions about point cashe regarding multi-frame animation generation.
Might be something to look into.
@theANMATOR2b
Well I must admit, I have not clue as to what your saying, apart from the last bit, I think I will try a Minecraft character it’s boxes so they are simple, I’m don’t care for materials/UV at this stage, I’ve checkout a great tut on bones and weight painting, although he does not put that into unity so I need to figure a tut out for that, this is well out of my comfort zone but I’ll keep with it.
At the very least you have confirmed my endeavours, I’ve just checkout the “actuators” thing so thanks.
@theANMATOR2b
No not herd of “point cashe” to be honest I will look at anything, it’s a difficult subject, that’s why people are employed to do it, maybe like yourself, Like I have always said artist can be programmers but programmers will never be artists, but I’m willing to give it a go or I’ll never get a new game out like I want to.
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