Quick help request for Maya - how should I (and how do I) correctly setup the pivot for an animated character in Maya.
At present, I have about 12 character anims and the pivots are all different - im trying to get things in order.
I think the important pivot is tied to the hip , and that it should be positioned at ground level and always be stationary, even if the character is in motion?
Im guessing i also have to fix this in every file, since the pivot is related to the animation and not the character (im using the character@walk/clap/jump.mb style)
Hmmm, not positive about what you’re trying to do, but would parenting the Maya object to an empty GameObject in Unity to use as the pivot point solve this?
Or in Maya parent the character to a locator which is at the desired location for the pivot in each animation file?
A little more info on what you’re trying to do would be helpful I guess.
If there is any way you can still change it, i really recommend you use animation splitting instead of the @ approach. It makes it so much easier to update animations. And it’s a lot less work to set up too.
Thanks Ethan - I’m not sure I can explain it correctly, so a screenshot might be better.
Basically, in this shot you can see the ghosting of how the character moves in his walk animation, and the pivot is centered in his hip.
For some other animations the pivot is set differently - and im getting problems.
I was wondering what the best way to setup the pivot was in Unity - should it be stationary or move with the character, and where should it be positioned (hips, feet etc)
Joachim,
I was really wanting to join the anims into a single file - but i got them like this from the studio and no one in our company knows anything about Maya.
If there was a possible way to join the twelve files into one, I’d do it… but I’m so crap at Maya its painful :?
Oh no, from what I can see the joints transform along the Z… make a backup copy of these maya files, delete the z transformation in the graph editor… you only want these animation cycles to be stationary so only the joint rotations export.
Ethan, thanks again - got it all working… Ended up using the lattice transform tool in the Animation editor to fix up everything.
Im not sure how to join the animations together - but it seems to be working OK with the @ method - I guess I’ll research that later.
