Blender animation question (without rigging)

Unity Engine
,
1

I am doing some simple Rotation animations in Blender. I don’t see a way to name the clips in Blender though. It appears the Action editor is just for character+bone animations. Should I just do my Rotation animations in the Unity Editor, for convenience?

2

Actually I can use the Action Editor in Blender to create basic Rotation animations. So I have a set of named actions in Blender. However the clip names don’t show up in the Unity import dialog. AFAIK the Blender FBX exporter doesn’t do actions except for Armature animations. Is this the case? I am using Blender 2.48.

Also, which script does Unity use to convert to FBX? Is it this one?
blender.app/Contents/MacOS/.blender/scripts/export_fbx.py
I just want to be sure what settings it’s using when creating the FBX. Any suggestions appreciated.

Thanks!

3

OK it appears that the Blender FBX exporter script simply does not work with Actions that don’t have Armatures. So all rotation+location+scale types of animations must be done in Unity Editor, correct? But… [quote]
Timeline window for creating animations directly in Unity was removed in 2.5. Of course you can still author animations in a 3D application. This feature will return even better in Unity 2.6 including High-end Curve Editing and support for animating any property including material animation.
[/quote]
Just glad that I am using Unity iPhone not Unity 2.5! Seems like a critical missing feature for Blender users, if I am correct in how the Blender exporter handles animations. Actually one could pop over to the 2.1 editor to create some animation clips, and then add them to the 2.5 project I guess.

4

Bone based animations are the only type of animations supported from Blender

5

Blender does export object transform animations as fbx, without using armatures, but you need to export them as fbx explicity. Those animations should be done in a NLA window instead of an Action window, and then select the object and export only selected as fbx. The animation will have the lenght of the scene timeline and will run just fine once inside unity.

6

Thanks for the tip GusM. I tried as you described and in Unity got an animation clip named “Default Take”. It’s good to know this is possible with Blender! For me I think using the Unity Editor is easier since I can name and organize the clips. Also it looks like Unity 2.6 is getting a new animation editor too!