Mechanical animation

Unity Engine
1

Hi,

I trying to create a training app to show the correct way of deploying a fairly complicated piece of mechanical equipment.

I’ve already animated this in 3ds Max for a video and I’ll be reusing the model (with some tweaks) in unity.

How do I control the animation?
I created a very simple version of my model, a shipping container with 4 doors that open, I want to open and close the doors independently. I animated the doors in Max and imported it into unity, but of course in unity all the doors open and close at the same time. Am I right in thinking that each door will need to be in a seperate Max file so that I can control the doors independently?

Linked objects?
I also have a fair amount of hydraulic pistons in the model, in Max these are attached to null objects (point helpers) with look at controllers to keep the pistons pointing in the correct direction. Is this going to import into Unity OK or will I have to find some other way of rigging it?

Mecanim?
I’m confused by the documentation, it says that Mecanim is the new animation system, but everything seems to relate to character animation, I don’t have any characters in my models. How do I use it for basic mechanical animation?

  • Garry
2

  1. You can do many animations (with just one door at a time) in Max or just use avatar masks in Unity and mask the doors you don’t want to be affected by the animation and then you use only one animation. Both ways work. One way you’ll end up with many animations and the other way you end up with many masks.

  2. I don’t really know Max. You will have to try to import and see if your rigging is ok.

3)Mecanim is for any type of animation. Just make sure that in the Rigs tab it is set to Generic. Generic works for everything.