This is my first post ever on the unity forums so Hello!
I’m curious about modelling player characters and how to animate them. I have limited knowledge about doing it from scratch in Maya and 3ds Max but will learn it soon. So far i can model a character, skinweight it and create a walkcycle in Maya.
What i would love to know are the following:
3rd person from behind player model where upper body/weapon follows mouse and legs are controlled by WASD.
Do i animate the legs separately from the upper body in Maya and export to Unity.
Could i animate a run cycle, export it for the whole character to Unity, and in Unity separate the animations for the legs and control it in detail? For example running diagonally, without actually animating the diagonally pointing legs.
Are there standards for these kind of things?
If anyone has any answers i would love to get some insight. 
I actually am quite curious to this question as well. I was trying to figure this out for myself. Like, when you upload your character into a game, do you pre-animate it or can I animate it in Unity? I don’t mean to steal his fire but I’m just adding onto his question.
Thanks for adding to my fire =)
I know it is possible to fully animate it in Maya and export to Unity. I also know its possible to animate in unity and also break up the animations in unity.
To clarify my question, concidering the amount of respone i get.
What is the best workflow between maya/3ds max and Unity?
I’m asking this because sometime in the near future im going to start up a project and im an artist in education. What i dont have is a programmer to ping pong the workflow with (yet). What i want to do is to start creating the graphical elements like characters and whatnot before i get my hands on a programmer. Thus the question about the best workflow.
Thanks.
I’d suggest taking a look at the Locomotion System for automating the variety of alternate motions for direction and the like, using your basic foreward/backward/sideways motions as a base.
Thank you.
Looks interesting. I’ll download and take a look. Maybe i can get some idea of how it works and plan my models after it.