Hi everybody.
First of all i want you to ask how you create facial animations for Unity using Blender?
My approach is to create shape keys in Blender and then export my mesh as *.fbx zu Unity application.
Doing it this way, im able to create lots of single facial animations.
But… what if i want to combine several single facial animation unsing shape keys into one big animation? In Blender i would use shape key drivers and create the animation by using the action editor / nla editor.
So…my question is: Can Unity hande shape key animations created in blender using shape key drivers?
Or… if you think my approach is less effective… what would you do? How do you create facial animations for Unity using Blender?
Ok… thats it! Thank you for your advice
Cheshire Lip-Sync
Create nine shape keys in Blender, one for each basic phoneme shape. Import your Blender model into Unity the normal way. Go to the Mad Wonder website to download the Cheshire application. Use the Cheshire application to rip the timing out of whatever recorded audio you are using, and save the timing as a basic text file. Add that text file to your Unity project. Go to the Asset Store, and add the Cheshire plugin to your project. It’s free! Add the Cheshire component to the 3D model you want to animate. Select which shape keys you want to pair with which phonemes. Create a Unity animation file using the text file and audio. Done.
For various “expressions,” you can simply open up Unity’s animation editor window and add/edit keyframes for individual shape keys as necessary.
I should probably provide a bit more explanation. Blender doesn’t import shape-key based animation into Unity very well. However, shape-keys created in Blender will import into Unity just fine. Unity has it’s own system for creating various animations. You can create whatever shape keys you want in Blender, import the 3D file into Unity, and then create whatever shape-key based animations you want in Unity itself. Just create a new Unity animation file, pair it up with the imported 3D model, and add keyframes for whatever shape keys you need to animate. To access the Animation window in Unity go to Window → Animation, or just hit Ctrl+6. Everything you need for creating new Animation files, adding keyframes, and previewing should be accessible there.
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