Editing/Moving/Deleting Keyframes in the Animation Window takes forever

Unity Engine
1

Using unity 5.1.2. When a large number of keyframes is deleted, moved, pasted or whatnot I lose about 5 minutes in wait time for the editor to unfreeze. Is this to be expected and is there any way to speed up editing within unity? Such a productivity killer.
Thx,
Chris

2

Have you considered using an external animation editor? Maya, MotionBuilder, Blender (free) are all very good tools. Unity’s Animation window is pretty rudimentary and is only really useful for animating non-complex objects. Things like doors, chests, buttons, etc. When you have a complex bone hierarchy like you do with a character, the amount of keyframes causes the editor to hang.

3

I have, but

I have considered it, but then complications arise. I’ve gotten pretty familiar with mecanim and it’s the most simple for me to use. I have Blender as well as Maya and Motionbuilder but the learning curves are a bit steep and I always seem to run in to complications exporting and whatnot…

4

Their communities aren’t nearly as robust and helpful as Unity’s but they are pretty much essential to humanid/creature animation.

You can use an external tool to create the animations, and then use Mecanim to determine game behavior as it relates to the animation, but trying to create realistic, fluid animations with the legacy animation window is kind of like trying to build a tunnel through a mountain with a nail file. There are a lot of good tutorials for MotionBuilder, and I imagine even more for Maya (although I just cant stand the interface). It’s true there are a lot of complicated tools in each, but you probably won’t be using any of them anyway.

Being able to apply IK to your animation development process is pretty essential in these times. MotionBuilder’s character rig setup pretty much handles everything you need once you’ve defined the bone structure. From there you have access to all the Unity animation window features and more. You can use FCurves if you like animating with curves more than with keyframes, and you can use the Dopesheet if you’re more into placing individual keyframes.

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