Good resources for animating game characters

Questions & Answers
1

Hey all I am getting pretty good at C# now and have managed to create some pretty cool mechanics but I am getting hindered every time I try to get a game to progress past the core mechanics. I am pretty good at 3D modeling with Blender and have managed to get some animations to work but I always get stuck when it comes to finding a workflow to get things done and correctly.
My questions are basically:

  1. What is the best way to animate for player weapons ect? Should I import the weapons to create the animations?
  2. Do you know any good resources for animation workflows and how I should manage my animations?
  3. Should I rig and animate in Blender then import to Unity or is there any built in features that make it easier in Unity?
  4. I would really like to use IK for things like the weapon animations so I can have an “AR run animation” and reuse it without having limits like how far apart the hands are limiting my choices for weapons. Is there any resources to show me how to do this and/or some basic IK information?
    Thanks in advance I know my questions are rather broad but this is the only thing I am struggling with that is stopping me progressing.
2

The " easiest " solution for me is mixamo, since you can rig and get animations for your characters, but it’s limited to general movements. For objects such as weapons for example, i had to do anims manually.