Blender Rigging

Unity Engine
,
1

Before I get too far into rigging this model I want to figure something out. Is it possible to create 3 rigs and THEN parent them? I say 3 rigs because I’m rigging a bird, but I’ve planned it in my mind to rig the beak and head-feathers seperate from the rest of the model (feet, tail-feathers, body, wings, head). Will this work, or do I have to find a way to make all 3 rigs, into one?

1 Like
2

I think you need the rigs together if they are for the same model. Is there any reason why you don’t want them together? Even if it could somehow work separately, I’d say it is more convenient to put it together.

Note that when you are creating the animations, nothing says you have to create keys for all the bones, rather only the bones that actually move in an animation. I don’t know if that is relevant to what you are thinking, but hey, I put it out there anyway.

3

If your goal is to play different animation tracks on these three parts, I would also suggest what kburkhart84 describes:

  • create a single bird rig in Blender

  • set up your animation clips (as independent actions using dope sheet’s ‘action’ view in Blender - Unity will import these as separate animation clips)

  • create 3 body masks in Unity, selecting only the bones belonging to the respective body part

  • set up a Mecanim animation state machine with three layers, assign the body mask to each layer and use the Blender animations meant for the right body parts in these layers.

You could also create 3 rigs, but I believe this will require you to also split your mesh into 3 parts. The armatures will import cleanly (though I haven’t tried what happens with actions (B) / animation clips (U) yet), but you might run into trouble keeping the meshes in sync (eg. head turns, but feathers stay or opening beak deforms neck but body mesh stays).

4

I would suggest rigging the bird model with one rig.
It’ll be easier for you too.
And less confusing for you when animating it.
And probably less CPU intensive too.

I know rigging animals like birds and dragons can be quite hard and challenging.
But there is always a way to do it.

Also, don’t try to use too many bones.
Only use them in necessary places of the birds body, eg. Wings, neck, legs etc.
But obviously, you already knew that. :smile: