Is it possible to put the rig and animations of a FBX model from the Asset Store into my model.

Unity Engine
1

I bought a dog asset from the Asset Store. It is in FBX format and includes a Mecanim generic rig, an Animator Controller, and a bunch of animation clips.

I made a voxel bulldog in MagicaVoxel and imported it with Voxel Importer. With Voxel Importer (and Skele) it is possible to rig and animate my bulldog. But I want to use the rig and animations from the dog asset I bought on the Asset Store.

Is there any way to successfully transfer the rig, Animator Controller, and Animations from the Dog I bought on the Asset Store to my bulldog model?

Note: I know how to get the Animator Controller and animations on my Bulldog. But I can’t find a way to get the rig in it. Of course I can just drag the rig into my model but the bones will not be bound or weighted to the skin (mesh) of the model in order for the bones to move the corresponding part of the model.

2

Hmm.
Well - if you have the fbx or the dog you bought with original animations (and even without) you can take that fbx into 3D Max (I don’t know about other 3D packages).
In 3D Max you can do a couple things.

  • Skin wrap the voxel dog to the original dogs skinned mesh. The voxel dog will inherit the skin weights from the original dog. Edit the skin weights as desired then export and re-import back into Unity.

  • Another option with Max is to just delete the original dog and skin the voxel dog to the rig (with animations), but skin wrap is a time saving workflow.

  • If the fbx does not have all the animations included, all animations are contained within there own fbx files with the dog model in it’s own fbx file with no animations, you can still perform the process above, and do the (code way) to retarget the animations onto the new “generic” rigged voxel dog. @TonyLi has explained this process several times to people in these forums. Search his post history.

Lastly - I think using the process TonyLi has explained before - you can rig the dog as closely as you can to the original rig (pull from Unity and import into your DCC package of choice to use as reference). Make sure all the transforms of all the bones match the original, and all the bone names are the same and the correct length. Then import the newly rigged voxel model into Unity and use the generic rig retargeting process mentioned above.

Sorry I do not know of a Unity internal process for this. If you find one - please share.

3

@theANIMATOR2b Thanks for that detailed explanation. I give all the non-3D Max suggestion a try (I don’t have that app and it is a bit too expensive for me.)

4

There may be a comparable workflow in other 3D packages. I’m not sure about blender - but Maya ‘does’ have a skin wrap feature - very similar to Max’s. Maya LT is cheap compared to the sub or full price of the full version.