I understand with Mecanim you can retarget animations to other humanoid rig models, but is there anything else that really sets it apart from Legacy? I started using Unity a time after Mecanim was released, and so I don’t really know what limitations Legacy would have had.
Does Legacy not blend animations?
Mecanim does things differently and does tons of work for you. Legacy could blend animations, and even do root motion, but this all had to be scripted manually. To make someone run and jump in legacy required a bunch of work setting speeds, turning gravity on/off, or adding forces at various times. In addition, it never really looked right unless you spent a ton of time getting the animations and scripting just right. In Mecanim, it’s done visually, and just requires checking a box, adding transitions, and adjusting the animation curve.
Ah I see. Thanks alot, pal.
i think fragmotion which is dirt cheap allows you to do retargetting of legacy animations
legacy you create controller programically using lets say c# or javascript (i dare not say boo so close to halloween without everyone giggling)
for legacy there is also free standard 3rd party controller and numerous very affordable controllers.
with mecanim you can do it in unity very easy and you dont as much script as create a controller visually and then setup the prefab
but to be honest i have found that mecanim controller can be a little sluggish and animations blend a little strange i think. and there are some other issues cause mecanim does not quite support events which result in the animations sometimes feeling strange.
and since you micromanage legacy if coded correctly you dont have these issues
i also found that a lot of characters come with legacy animations. and there are lots of mecanim animation but you will have to setup your characters for and you will need to create a controller for.
sadly they sell you the animations but not the controller that comes with it. personally im still looking for a good set of mecanim animations with a good controller
the character system comes with lots of good but the controller is horrible very unresponsive, glitchy, jerky at times, laggy and massive in size and sadly undocumentated and tons of code.
so shop around for your solution. look at the characters you like and what they come with. also look at the numerous animation packs in unity. there are number of good ones for $30-$50 or less
Can you please elaborate on Fragmotion? I am also currently looking to retarget legacy animations that I’ve purchased to be used on my own character.
Fragmotion
Unwrap3d
be warned the author of fragmotion appears to be awol it is some what dated buggy product, but if you dont have adobe tools its better than nothing…
what you basically have to do is use unwrap3d to convert from fbx2012 to fbx2010 cause fragmotion cant handle anything newer
then i load the fbx2010 into fragmotion and pray that it’s correct
then i do map bones for each animation, try it out to see it looks ok and save it
finally i use unwrap3d to convert from fbx2010 to fbx2012 and again pray it still good
what a pain, all this cause adobe tools are not affordable for indie users.
fragmotion has like trial version, but be warned you cant save/export, it only works for limited number of days for he makes you recite the full version of the lords prayer before each start!
sweet baby jesus. thanks for the response!
so where does my skinned model come in? i’m assuming after i load the fbx2010 to fragmotion and then import my model then map bones?
just go to youtube and watch some videos about doing this kind of stuff with blender and with fragmotion as alternative to doing it with blender…
fbx contains your model with the bones and animations!
i guess it can come from some other format that they support as well that contains models, bines, animations
and the animations you will be adding also come from an fbx
and as before i guess they can come from some other format that they support as well that contains animations to be added
also you can i think do this sort of thing in blender
so you need to look around
i use fragmotion cause the stuff is in fbx format and blender that i have does not read fbx format so i have to convert it which is problem
if blender read my fbx i would have used it…
also fragmotion is old and buggy and sometimes toasts the animation being loaded with model and added
i mostly use it to combine a number of model/animation fbx files into a single model/fbx file. so it does not repeat the model mesh.
so you have like model@idle.fbx model@run.fbx and you create like model.fbx which has both the animations inside split.
that way i save on size since there is only now a single model.fbx with a single mesh. and if i tweak a model i now can just do it in one file.