after moving my animation component for my character from his hands(don’t ask, i don’t know why i put it there) to the top of his hierarchy, all the animations have missing properties. they are all yellow now and no animations work. is there a way to re-link all my game objects back into it. they didn’t go anywhere, every animated object is still there, the main component just moved up the hierarchy. this would save me alot of time, otherwise ill have to reanimate a couple animations.
edit: i just realized the animation component doesn’t see them because they aren’t directly children of the object the component is on, so i guess that answers me question. although if i could link them without having to move the animated objects up the hierarchy that would be best.
You actually can relink animations even if animated objects are moved deeper into the hierarchy.
You just need to click twice on the name of the missing object (in Animation panel) - note that normal double click won’t do it, you have to click once and then again shortly after, just as if you were renaming a file. This will let you edit the object name. If you want to point to an object deeper in hierarchy, simply use / character, just as you would do with files and folders, i.e. change “Tree” to “Forest/Tree” if you moved the Tree game object inside Forest game object. You will see the indentation on the Animation’s object list change slightly and the animation will start working again.
Another method I’ve discovered, which may be even better if there are several bones to relink:
If you already have a standalone .anim file, skip to step 2. Otherwise, if the animation is i.e. a part of an .fbx, first duplicate it with Ctrl+D - this will create a standalone .anim and ensure you do not make a mess in the model itself.
Open the .anim file with a text editor (Notepad++ works good for me). Look for lines that start with path: and just do a Find & Replace action on the bones you need to rename.
Save the .anim and go back to Unity - it will reload the animation.
Continuing what @MuHaGames_Avee was talking about, you can just simply press “F2” as if you are renaming something to change the child of the object.
How it works is like a file system, for example “FPSCamera/Weapons/Slot1/shotgun/…” etc.
Quickly adding a key frame for the new child you want and pressing F2 on it is a good way to get the path you want as well.