Hello,
After a lot of searching I’ve seen similar questions asked repeatedly but I haven’t seen an answer. I’m asking this again because I think it’s very important and I haven’t been able to find a solution after searching and trying numerous ideas.
What I’m trying to accomplish is:
- Have a base model and rig stored in its own Maya file. No animations are created in this file.
- Create multiple separate animation Maya files that reference the base model and rig.
- Animate in the individual animation files.
- Export FBX files for use in Unity, using the @ convention outlined in the documentation here: http://unity3d.com/support/documentation/Manual/Character-Animation.html#ImportFile
Here’s what happens:
- I make a base model / rig file. Let’s call it “”. I export this as an FBX into my Unity asset folder.
- I make a new Maya file for animating and reference in .
- Maya adds a namespace prefix, “:”, to the referenced elements in the DAG.
- I animate some bones in that file.
- I export to FBX, using the @ convention.
- Unity picks up on the fact that the animation from the animation FBX file should be associated with , just like the documentation says. The animation clip is added to the prefab for .
- At runtime, playing the animation on does nothing.
Why is this happening? Is there any way to use Maya references in this way with Unity?
Copying and pasting the model and rig into each individual animation file is unacceptable on a large project with many animations where the rig may have to change. My team really doesn’t like the workflow of doing all animations in one file using different frame ranges. That method doesn’t scale to multiple animators.
I dropped both the prefab and the @ prefab into the scene. The latter animates while the former does not. Both of them have the same animation clip set in their animation component. Here’s what a simple test hierarchy looks like.
I would expect that “test” would be animating, since it is referencing the animation clip from “test@bounce” in its animation component. Unfortunately, it isn’t. On the other hand, “test@bounce” is animating. (Normally I would never put “test@bounce” in the scene hierarchy. I’m only doing that as a test to compare the two.)
If I had to guess, is this being caused by the namespace in the reference? Does the animation clip exported no longer know how to find the correct transforms on ? Is there some secret FBX export voodoo to make this work?
Any help is greatly appreciated.
Mark
