Hello, my name is Jelle Booij. I made a model sawmill model for my rts game. it has some animations, the model consists of differend pieces that have constraints on them. I whas wondering how i should export this model to unity. should I join all the pieces or keep them seperated?
Howd you animate the objects - bones or direct object keying?
What software are you using?
If direct object keying the animation will need to be baked as vertex based animations - not very effecient.
If bone based animations should export fine as fbx.
Not to clear on the process for separated vs joined. If bone based animation this question answers itself.
Test it out to see which is better if vertex based animation.
Thanks for the reply
I made the model in maya with multiple objects that have constraints on them and 1 bone. the animation is based on the contraints that the differend objects have(I put the constraints directly on the objects). for some reason I was able to join all those objects together and the animation still worked but when i exported that version the model has no animation. i was able to export it with all the objects kept seperate. the only porblem is that now i have a lot of objects and i have to assign the material to all objects seperately and I whas wondering if this is a problem for the performance.
Hey Jelle
Great info.
I believe you can work out the attached version if you add another bone and skin all the unmoving pieces to that unmoving bone.
That should get the combined model working as intended.
You might have to fiddle with the hierarchy of the bones a little bit - maybe making the new unmoving bone the root bone or parenting all the bones including the new one to a base null object.
Thanks for all the great help,
I tried to skin all the parts that don’t move to a bone but it does’t work. in unity, the model doesn’t have a animation. the combined version is really weird because it has no keyframes but it still works(in maya). I was wondering how most people import animated objects that consist of differend pieces to make the animation possible( like a gun model where the slide needs to be seperate)
Ok - I think I see.
Well usually for “inorganic” moving parts except for character based inorganics like robots - most pieces are animated with a rigid bone - or imported into Unity and the animation is performed there as a separate mesh object.
Using your example - a slide on a gun - Two ways to do this
- export the gun as two pieces - could be sharing the same texture - and in Unity the slide could be animated - then that animation could be timed/coded to the character shooting animation to happen 15 frames after the gun fires.
The other way is to have 2 or 3 bones, one root and one rigid bone for the main body and one for the slide. This could be animated in 3D app or Unity.
Inorganic animations are a less complicated imo than organic animations but if put into a complete system - like a big robot character - the best approach is a total control rig.
You may want to look at other inorganic animated assets in the asset store for reference. Car/truck rigs or maybe some animated RTS assets.
Thanks for all the help, I am new to animation but your tips really help me. I am going to study some models in the assets store and hopefully i will be able to export my animation correctly.