Parent constraint from Maya to Unity

Questions & Answers
1

I’m working on quite complex rix for Unity, and I keep bumping in an issue.

Parent constraint from Maya binds only transform and rotation between parent and children. But when exporting to Unity it makes default parenting, which also bind scale.

This can be problematic when you try to scale neck a bit in Maya, in Unity whole head of characters gets scaled because of that scaling property being passed to all children.

I could write simple script that acts as parent constraint in Maya, but that will probably make previewing animations painful (script would only work in play mode).

Did anyone encounter this issue and whats the best way to solve this? Or is avoiding this constraint best practice?

2

In general, avoid complex and custom rigs in Maya unless you plan to bake the animation. For instance, if you create an animation in Maya where you scale the neck, and bake the animation in Unity, it should work properly.

If not, or if you’re planning to script some kind of rig motion in Unity (not animated), you should rig almost entirely with bones. Example of how to make your rig work:

Neck bone > Head Bone

Scale the neck bone along its axis to increase the length of the neck. It should’t scale the head bone at all.