I’ve viewed a few tutorials and I still don’t quite understand. Is Mecanim just a state machine for existing animations? Do I still need to make the animations in an external system? I’ve a Mecanim rigged character, but I can’t seam to figure out how to create an animation for them in Unity. Maybe I’m misunderstanding how all this works? Can anyone clarify or point me to a few more tutorials/documents?
Yep you need to make the animations in a 3D modelling app. Mecanim is not an animation creation tool so you can’t create an animation with it. Mecanim allows you to blend between pre-made animations using a state machine and retarget skeletons so you can reuse the animation from one character on another character. You can’t create an animation that works with Mecanim using Unity. The animation editor inside Unity is for the legacy system and is not compatible with Mecanim. If you want to learn to animate and you want to use Mecanim, you will need to learn to do it in a 3D modelling app. So the best I can do is to suggest looking at tutorials on how to animate using your 3D modelling app (Blender, Maya, Max…etc…)
Ok, I understand; thank you. Was just confused with what Mecanim was supposed to do exactly.
Alrighty, can’t afford the 3rd software to import my FBX models into it and animate. Is it possible to animate a generic 3D model that is T posed and the import the animation into Unity and use it on my models? The models I have a mecanim ready and purchased from asset store; they’re T posed already. Unfortunately Blender can’t import FBX and all the findings regarding this don’t look too good. Unless someone has an alternative software I can animate in? I’ve tried Daz3D and well it’s terrible IMO.
Yes thats one of the features of mecanim called retargeting. So you can make one animation on a certain skeleton and reuse it on another. For this to work your character needs to be set to Humanoid in the rigs tab.
Maya and 3dsmax student versions are free for non-commercial use and blender is free.
Thats great !
Usually when you buy a character you will receive the source file not only the fbx. What models did you buy ? I would suggest contacting the person that sell these models and ask for the original source file so you can edit it or re-export it in another format that is more convenient.
Its even possible your characters were made in Blender since Blender can export to fbx just not import. Regardless, when buying a model you need to make sure it includes the source. The other way is use Maya or 3DMax as they should be able to import the fbx file.
This is very good news! Yes, it is indeed marked as Humanoid. Thank you, can use a generic humanoid in blender to create the animations then!
Have Blender, not a student so others don’t apply to me am afraid; they can’t be used for commercial away. Hope one day to own 3DSMax, lol.
The source files are the FBX, which is fine; just Blender doesn’t have a decent FBX import. It’s funny that Blender can export to FBX, but not import; really odd behavior to have… is what it is I guess. Below is what I bought.
The reason is that FBX is a format owned by Autodesk and it is a closed format. It doesn’t play well with Blender’s GPL that is why it cant import it. Once its exported in fbx, blender cant open it anymore so exporting it doesn’t break their rules.
Also the source file of a model cant be fbx as there are no 3D modeling apps that have fbx as a default save option. Fbx is only an export options so although he calls it source, its not really the source file. In blender the source is .blend in Maya its, .mb or/and .ma etc… not fbx. Anyways I’m sure that the author is nice and if you ask for another format I’m sure he will not say no if its possible for him to export to something else.
Will give it a shot, but from what I can see most if not all the models on asset store if they include source it’s always FBX. Looking like I’ll need to stick with buying pre-made mecanim animations, which I guess is ok… suppose is cheaper then the software needed to animate as I absolutely hate using Blender.
Little update on what I am doing to handle animations. I’ve got a Kinect I’m not using and am going to explore using Brekel to do motion capture animations. Looks quite promising. I mean if it was good enough for Halo 4 team to use in a few cinematics then surely it’s good enough for indie! I at first purchased Mixamo animations, but am not impressed (lack of selection, customization, and weird purchase process). Anyway, if successful (and if I remember) will post a capture of an animation!