I have made two animations in a flashlight model in Blender: one for adjusting the scope of the lens and another for removing the cap at the end. The lens adjustment animation is made with five “shutter” parts closing in on each other. When I export the relevant meshes and armatures to Unity, the resulting Animations tab is a three-page long list of incomprehensible minute details, as shown in the Untitled file. The relevant meshes and armatures are in this Blender file, under the 294LPMaglite empty. How can I simplify this animation into something I can manage on the Unity side?
One way is to animate in Unity instead of blender.
Although Unity’s animation system is inferior to nearly any other 3D software animation system, one thing it does well is simple animations - that do not require a lot of complexity.
Also consider reevaluating if all the extra animated elements for the flashlight are needed. If the user/player is going to be disassembling the flashlight while the player looks directly at it, maybe that functionality is needed? If not - maybe the ‘illusion’ of replacing parts of the flash light can be provided to the player instead of the player - actually having to change parts and watch while the mechanics of that process happen.
Although this might not be what the original design called for - the designer/developer should consider if this process is supposed to be fun - will the player have fun doing it, will the player enjoy this process if the process is repetitive? Alternately - if the mechanical functionality can be faked - just to make it ‘look/feel’ like the lenses are changing, that might be simpler and provide a better experience - than mimicking real life.
IMO the flashlight could be animated in Unity - as well as looking at the scope of the animation and seeing if all those little moving parts, which are represented by the longs list of animations in the inspector, are really needed for the final product.