hey guys,
can you please advise how to go on building in-game animatics in Unity?
Assuming we are using maya, we setup the scene, animate the characters, cameras cuts, all good…
What are the best practices into bringing all that into Unity? FBX for mesh and animations is great… but what about the lights, cameras etc…
with bit of research I end up using the null camera object(exported from maya to Unity) as parent to the Unity camera with some axis flipping managed to get it close, but each time we need to update the path of the camera or the scenario or whatever, we need to go back to maya and do it all over again!
How are you guys doing it? Does other engines provide some sort of solution or tools to help build animatics?
any input is highly appreciated.
thanks
I personally do this kind of stuff right in the engine.
Modellers are nice and give you great control over things that work within them.
But as soon as such things are meant to go out, they commonly break or require a lot of hazzle should they ever need to be touched again.
Either way they require significantly more time than if you do them straight in the editor.
but how do you animate (keyframe type animation) say the camera in the engine?
While still having control over the curves, camera movements etc… while playing characters animations.
I found it pretty hard to get a decent camera animation without being able to see and adjust its movement curves and timing most importantly.
Seems there is no straigh forward approach is there?
how do they do it other engines, say UE3?
anyone had any experience he can share?
thanks
Well the first step clearly is that you implement a basic system that does it.
There are script that you can use as base for that like the camera path thread for example or the Unite presentation on editor expansions that shows you how to render camera views into window rects in editor so you can visually position cameras etc.
With Unity 2.6 (or with 2.1 if you are on mac) there is also the animation editor that allows you to do many powerfull things.
The Unity Editor scripting capabilities are massive to put it simply, you can enhance your workflow significantly by diving into it and using them for your project.
Other engines often come with basic functionality in that direction, but there is a reason why they cost you 150 - 600 times a unity pro license and that per title.
Ah I see, fair enough.
thanks for the info dreamora.
I will check out those script and get some setup then.
yeah i can imagine other engines better provide that for the price they sell.
Can’t complain, unity is the best I’ve seen in it’s category.
thanks again