Putting meshes in separate file to speed up animation import times

Unity Engine
1

I’m working on an animal. Originally I had everything in one file: the animations, rig, and meshes.

Because there’s so many animations the import time is long, up to 3 minutes. During development this is a long time when someone needs to import the file 20 times a day.

So I created my own workflow to have two separate files: one for the animations and rig, and another one just for the meshes.
The file with the animations and rig just contains “dummy” shapes like cubes and planes. During start up, a script swaps out the dummy shapes with the actual meshes in the separate file. This results in not having to re-import the file with animations over and over again when just the meshes are tweaked, thus reducing the import time from 3 minutes to 20 seconds.

I was just wondering if anyone else uses this type of workflow?

2

Sure, but I primarily use Humanoid retargeting so I don’t have to swap anything out. I also use Mixamo animations for the most part, which are usually downloaded with the skeleton only and no mesh. Even when I was using legacy animation, as long as the skeleton matched I didn’t worry about putting dummy objects on the animation.

1 Like