Subject states most of the things I’ve been trying.
Here’s a simple example.
Make a primitive. Convert to polygonal object. Add deformer (Explosion for example). Make two keyframes (0 strength on frame 0 - strength 100 on frame 90).
Now Primitive explodes into polygons.
Now If I wanted to transfer this into Unity.
I’ve been told to cache and bake.
So - I add a point cache tag. Press the store state on cache tag. then press the calculate button.
Now it’s cached and deformer can be disabled - animation still plays.
Now on the timeline - select the object and ask to bake object.
There is an option to bake PLA there’s also an option to bake expressions.
I’ve tried them all - and exported Using FBX and Collada.
I know that the exporter is supposed to be messed up and I’m using C4D11.514
But still, I assume this stuff can be done (though may be computationally expensive once in Unity) - has anyone succeeded?
No, this is not possible. BTW this is not a C4D limitation - its a limit of the file formats Unity can import.
However it would be possible to write a custom exporter for C4D and an importer and runtime for Unity which support vertex point animation.
I can see that Unity doesn’t import PLA (Point level animation) - but then is there no way to bake the animations into anything that is readable in Unity?
Oh well…I guess I’ll be letting that go.
There’s so many wonderful effects one can pull off easily in C4D that it would be a waste not to use it.
One simplistic solution would be to use rendered animations for sprites.
As for your second suggestion @bigbug - I find that one interesting. If there is no built in ways to import these types of animations this would be worth while to look into.
I’ll test out what information I can get through baking and exporting. I know FBX has a text file option - I’ll have a look at that and see what info is in a baked file. (C4D can bake the animations so they have a keyframe on each frame. I’m wondering then where the problem would be if all the objects (shatters of the original object for example) are exported as normal polygonal information.
I’m assuming that if someone (other than the Unity people) pulls off a PLA runtime for Unity they should make exporters (or make sure there are exporters) for the different packages as this would probably fetch a good $$ price.