Maya animation in Unity

Unity Engine
1

Hi,

Does Unity support animations from Maya? Skeletal, vertex,… wich ones? Using the Maya file format (MB or MA). Or they need to be exported as FBX?

Thank you in advance

2

Unity imports skelatal animation from Maya with both ma and mb files.
You can use IK or FK. (If you are using IK, you need to turn on the Bake Simulation check box in the import settings (Assets → Import Settings…) )

3

Thank you Joachim

4

Is there a way to use vertex animation (from Maya) in Unity (rather than the bones)? Our main character is set to deform perfectly with all our weighting in Maya, and he looks kind of sad when we bring him into Unity.

In other words, our last engine used vertex animation, so we got him looking perfectly there, and we’re not sure how to make him look good using real-time bones. We’ve simply never used it.

Or is there a workflow that will get him looking better using Unity’s vertex weighting?

5

How about baking the animations on import into Unity?

6

As I understand it, that’s just baking the IK effects into the animation–it’s not getting rid of the bones. But if there’s a way to bake the animation into the vertices and ditch the bones, that would be perfect!

7

Hi,

Last time somebody replied on that thread was 2006. Since then, any progess? Is there a way to bake the vertices? I’m not talking about morph tagets or blendshapes. Just importing a Maya scene with animation on vertices.

Robert

8

As far as I know, there’s been zero progress on that front. You’re still limited to tying any vertex animation to bones. So no subtle animations via morph targets, blend shapes, modifiers, or just plain vertex animation. I can’t wait for Unity to prove me wrong though so we can start bringing in higher quality animations.

9

Hey Bigbrainz,

Actually there’s a script that does blendshapes and I’ve been able to make it work but not in any way useful. Sure I can see the geometry morphing but I can’t trigger it by a button, control it with a slider or anything else. It just blends and that’s it. At least if I knew how to run a script from a button that would be a start, something like:

function OnGUI () {
if (GUI.Button (Rect (10,10,150,100), “Morph me”)) {
WHATEVER HERE THAT WOULD RUN THE MORPH SCRIPT
}
}

Any ideas?

You can find the morph script here:

http://www.unifycommunity.com/wiki/index.php?title=MeshMorpher

10

See, UT? There IS a demand for Vertex morph animation support! :smile:

11

Yes there is :smile:

12

We are also looking into Unity to our pipeline, But need it to do morphs and layered animation at the same time (so he can move, with pre-animated cuts, and speak with synthetic voice recognition

. there is some morph info over at http://forum.unity3d.com/viewtopic.php?t=16425&highlight=morph+targets

so there is a need for this. Any one have success with this, please post. Likewise I will post as soon as I get something. Using Max (I’m a Maya’r though ) but a morph is a morph.

Thanks

13

Yes, we’re also still waiting for morph-ability. We looked into doing it ourselves, and I believe the wall there had something to do with some messiness in the .fbx exporter that makes it tricky to figure out. But hopefully the geniuses at Unity will work it in soon!