Is there a way to export and play per-vertex animation?

I have a scene in Maya full of meshes with soft-body physics deformation. I’m looking for a way to bake the results of this simulation to an animation that I can play in Unity. To be clear, I’m not looking for a dynamic physics solution in Unity. I’m looking for a way to play an animation where each vertex of the mesh has it’s own unique animation curve.

I’m considering the possibility of creating a bone for every vert in Maya, but I’m worried about the performance implications of that technique.

Last time I checked, Unity doesn't support per-vertex animations. You might minimize the amount of bones needed if you use multple vertices per bone with different weights. That's the only workaround I could think of.

2 Answers

2

BlendShapes.

So would I make a blend shape for every frame in Maya and then in Unity swap to the next blend shape?

Yeah - blendshapes or the megafiers plug-in in the asset store.