Hello again everyone,
A few friends of mine and I are thinking of making a game…eventually.
One friend will be making models in Blender. Then the model will be passed
to me for animation, and I am thinking of using Messiah Studio. It would
then be imported into Unity for programming by a third member.
I am wondering if this is even possible? Will all of the exporting and
importing be completely compatible with each other?
Thanks everyone!
-WolfShield
It’s been awhile since I did some animating. After a few frustrating app store rejections I took a break from Unity. Have been lazily chipping away at an Android game though. Please allow me to ramble a bit.
I have had moderate success Using external tools and pushing models through file formats to get a certain animation. It’s not easy if you have no formal training. Poser 7 has a nifty walk designer that I used to get some walk cycles made. But it was a nightmare getting my workflow down to get the animations into Unity. There are a few things to focus on to increase the chance of a successful animation import.
In my opinion, Make sure you can get the model into FBX format. There’s a ton of ways to store animation info. But you might get discouraged early on watching an animation play perfectly in your animation program… and not playing at all or terribly in Unity. For example, I have a friend who had an amazing talent for animating using 3D Studio. Unfortunately, none of his animations imported into Unity. (this was years ago though, when Unity was still basically in a Beta) Those first few trials are why I ended up getting C4D in the first place. =) It’s not perfect though… as it’s hit me with it’s fare share of animation bugs.
Cinema 4D is able to animate objects and formulas without keyframing each frame. In my experience, this data is lost in the FBX export. To get the animation looking just like it does in your animation program, make sure to have a keyframe for each frame. C4D handles this nicely. I’m not sure about other programs.
Be aware of each program’s import and export settings. Every import and export that the model goes through can subject the model to having it’s data corrupted of scrubbed completely. If I save a TXT file, I don’t really have all that many options to choose from to save it. With these 3D / Animation imports and exports there are several different versions of the file format. FBX 5 and FBX 6 would be good examples. Plus, each of these programs (Unity Included) has several options for each import and export. If you are new and don’t know what you are doing this will drive you crazy trying to track down where things are getting changed. Prepare for lots of trial and error.
I highly recommend, if at all possible, to run a model or 2 through the process BEFORE anything is purchased. The last thing you want to do is run out and charge up some software on your Credit Card that isn’t compatible. (Not that I’ve ever done that =p )
Understand that even if all animations are Pixar quality and able to compete with the best of animators… You still have to know how to control the animations in Unity with scripting. It depends on how complex you want to get with them. Me? I’m a decent animator. But I suck at programming. It’s been my biggest handicap in trying to produce anything in Unity. The guy you have doing the Unity end of things really has to be able to handle that aspect of the game engine. Starting, stopping, and blending animations are easy enough to do via scripting. But there’s always a case or two that really frustrated me in a few of the things I tried to create.
Just my 2 cents. Hope you guys can create something awesome.
-Tom
Thank you very much Tom, I had already some problems with a very simple animation so I decided to send back animation stuff to later on… I think I’ll start with even simpler things and just some experiments to have a workflow that actually works, and then start with the real thing.
I have used messiah:studio in game pipelines with modo, lightwave, 3ds Max, Maya, and Blender and it works with all of them
All you really need is a game-ready 3d model (good poly count, UVs, etc) to be imported into messiah:studio. messiah:studio seems to work best with lwo or obj formats, although lxo and 3ds should also work. Once in messiah:studio all rigging and animation can be done and exported as fbx for use in unity.
I want to add that you can buy this software for a limited time for 10$ the base version or 40$ the pro version and this is really a BIG DEAL.
I just bought mine, better you hurry up because it looks like the time is ending soon.