I created a simple model in Cinema 4D 11.5 and added some joints. After converting those joints to bones and playing around with auto weight, I managed to get my bones to behave as expected.
Now, I manually exported my model (FBX 2010.0, only FBX export option available) and then imported it into Unity 3.
The model imports just fine, but there are simply NO BONES. I followed a tutorial on this forum and in Unity the model is supposed to have some kinda subfolder, showing the bones.
I’m pretty sure, there is a problem with the FBX exporter, because when I try to load that previously exported FBX back into Cinema 4d, I experience the same problem.
I searched the forum for this issue and found some similar discussions on Cinema 4D 12.0. So, this tells me, that upgrading my version won’t solve the problem.
Ok, problem solved! Seems, like converting my joints to bones was a bad idea. I followed a tutorial on vimeo and back in the days Unity could not read joints.
Did a quick test with my rigged model now and joints appear fine in Unity 3.
Problem is not in Unity. Quote from Cinema4D guys:
Unity 2.6 uses FBX6 plugin in Cinema4D for conversion. Unity 3.0 uses FBX2010 plugin for conversion. So that why one supports joints, other supports bones.
I am a newcomer to Unity but have used Cinema since ver. 8. I would like to encourage all users to submit problems to the Cinema support site and to the Cinema forums as they have been very helpful to me. I received assistance from Dr. Sassi and Web-Support. I teach Animation and Game Development at a high school level and cannot afford continuous upgrades. So I am stuck at v 11.23 for now. After working with them on the FBX export from version 11 I have the following workflow established.
According to my contact at Cinema support there is a problem with exporting Hypernurbs with any smoothing other than 0. It will fail to recognize the weighting to Bones. If you create a model, set the smoothing to what you require then use Function>Current State to Object you can then create armature and rigging for this Mesh. Not ideal but it works.
Build your armature and animations using Bones or use Joints then Character>Conversion>Convert to Bones. Then use Cinema Export>FBX to export your models and animations into Unity. The automatic import will not work.
I don’t believe it’s required to convert to bones. The FBX export from R11 should do that automatically for you, while later versions should keep them as joints.
After repeated attempts and discussion with Maxon support about FBX export I assure you the conversion is necessary. This ONLY applies to version 11, version 12 export works with joints. Joint export with v 11 will export the mesh but animations will fail.
So what about motion capture files. I’m using r11.5 and when I import a mocap into cinema 4D it imports in bones instead of joints. When I converted the bones to joints I lost the animation. Then I used the retarget tag found in the character tags to transfer the bones rig animation onto the joints rig and it worked fine. However When I imported the rig binded to the character into unity 3 it all got messed up.
The question is how am I going to transfer the animation from bones to joints without using the retarget tag??