Makehuman --> Blender and Rigify --> Unity workflow for IK in Unity

Animation
1

Hey,

I am trying to create a model in Unity, which I can animate in Blender, and then also need IK animation support in Unity (for picking up items whose location may not be fixed).

While importing the Makehuman exchange file in Blender, I use the Rigify rig (exported Rigify option while importing), and this also includes facial bones for some face animation. I created some animations in blender using this rig.

Now, when importing in Unity as a generic rig, I have no issues in running the animations created in Blender. But, if I use the humanoid rig:

  • by default, it maps mecanim to ORG bones, and all my animations look weird (distorted arms etc.).
  • If I replace the ORG bones with DEF bones (and try to follow this manual page: https://docs.unity3d.com/Manual/BlenderAndRigify.html), I get the error that bone parenting is not correct.
  • If I simply fix the parenting structure of bones, the animations get distorted in blender.
  • If I export makehuman model with a gamerig, then I only get the FK gamerig, and a few shapekeys to do my blender animations. It is very difficult to do some animations without IK.

Is there any solution, other than discarding the Makehuman rig and rigging the model on my own?

Thanks in advance!
Aman

2

Check out this thread: Possible pitchipoy rigify blender to unity problem?

The manual for Rigify contains very bad advice.

Rigify uses the following bone structure (sadly, it is inconsistent in this in a select few places, but those can be fixed by hand):

// ORG-Neck
//  + DEF-Neck
//  + ORG-Head
//    + DEF-Head

So the deformation (DEF-) bones are always direct children of the origin (ORG-) bones. If you pick the DEF-* bones, as you can see in the exmaple, DEF-head is not a child of DEF-neck and this confuses Mecanim. The ORG-* bones are the right ones to select.

From personal experience, you only need to change the parents of the upper_arm.* bones and this should not destroy existing animation clips (aka actions). The thread I linked at the top shows the minimum change required.

3

Thanks! This really helped, and I am able to do IK inside Unity without problems. Animations aren’t 100% the same as with the generic rig, but good enough visually.

Someone should update the Unity manual for Rigify!