So, i’ve been getting deeper into mecanim. so far it’s shaping up to be everything that’s been said.
But i would like to know something… and this is more to see how far i can push it to shave down things like space.
Can i use a bare rig with no actual mesh attached to create animations and use that with mecanim? i would assume i can (even though that might be tricky to use for visualization unless there was some sort of mass involved to show me the volumes as i animate.) what i’m thinking is to have the character that i want to animate as the mesh with all the pertinent information but have the animation source files being just the barest rig possible (so, essentially, if i have a control-object setup, i’d just collapse all the animation data to the bare rig and then strip out the control objects so that all that that file is is the skeleton/bones and animation data.
reason i am asking is because although i am likely to just reuse animations from one character on others, but i’m more asking if this can be done and the reasons why and why not.
or does it need a mesh somewhere to interface properly? if so, i guess i could just put in a really low-poly proxy mesh but still, i’d like to know before i invest too much time into trying this out (and asking to see if someone has already tried this before.)
So, i just went ahead and tried it… and it worked.
no need to attach anything to the export file… just exported as usual but only having the bones and that was enough to set up the systems to be able to read it.
A point to consider, however… if you’re doing this with a different rig in the hopes of transferring animation data to another mecanim system (of which is one of the things i’m hoping to do) you will need to get that rig that you’re exporting into a default pose so that you can set it up properly with it’s own avatar. if you don’t, your model will assume that it’s first-frame will be it’s neutral pose and as such the animation data will be offset and probably look groty.
Hmm, not sure i follow… are you asking about how to apply that animation data without mesh information to the object you’d want to animate? for that you’d want to be using mecanim’s avatar setup thing… I’ve only tested this method using the humanoid setup and not with any other types… also, when using this method, i’ve had to make sure that i’m setting it up to use another avatar and not one generated from that data itself (though i guess you could make each animation segment have it’s own avatar as long as the first frame of the animation clip has the basic t-pose and you just prune that out of the animation clip in the animation tab.)
If that’s not what you’re asking, can you elaborate a little bit?