So I have a model with already existing animations that I wanted to use. Those also work perfectly fine, but I would still like to edit some of them… which I can’t, since all clips are in “read-only” mode and I really have no idea how to fix this. I was reading that copying the animation clip with CTRL+D would fix it, but creating a copy doesn’t even work.
The model file and the animation files were also in a .smd format at the beginning. So what I did was:
Importing the model and the animations into blender
Exporting them together as one fbx file
Importing it again to Unity
So as I said, the animations work fine with the model, but I’d LOVE to remove this “read-only” part, since it bothers me now for a long time…
I believe you can turn off read-only by going into debug mode - check documentation to learn more about debug mode.
For future animation edits - strongly consider editing in a 3D software package like blender, 3D Max or Maya.
This will save you hours of frustration, compared to animation editing in Unity.
BTW - if these are humanoid setup animations you will not be able to edit and keep the changes in Unity. Humanoid setup is for imported animations, not internal edited/created animations.
You will have to use the generic rig instead to allow for in engine editing.
There are tools available in the asset store to overcome this mecanim restriction, but I’ve never used any of them so I can’t say how they work, how user friendly they are.
Hard to say - probably the rig defaulted to humanoid and you didn’t set up an avatar properly, but that is a wild guess based on very limited information.
Consider strongly working through the animation training/learning material in the learn section. This will give you a great base to proceed.
@zeropointblack Did you realize that after duplicating the animation just so that you could edit it, that the duplicated animation blows up the file size ? Check it in your file explorer.
My original imported single animation from Mixamo (without skin) was 1MB+. I duplicated it as i wanted to remove part of the animation (e.g. removed the head and neck movements). But i realized the duplicated animation file was 10MB +… and thats for ONE animation!
Anyone running into this issue? Isn’t this going to blow up the size of the build?
yeah, now that you mention it, im noticing my .anim files are a bit bigger than the .fbx versions.
i thought maybe because the fbx can be set to optimize the key frames, but then i checked the original fbx files, before unity, and they also are the same small file size. so no idea whats going on there, unless the .anim process is adding more frames or keys somewhere.
for me its not that much. maybe a jump from 325kb to 4 megs. pretty big difference, yeah, but still small enough not to worry about.
thanks @davejas . this was really helpful. i downloaded some animations from mixamo, and unity was giving them as “Read-only” type. now, its gone and i can use its options. as well as put some events in the frames.
Duplicating works, but anyone know why this happens in the first place or how to fix it without having to duplicate dozens and dozens of animation files?
I think by creating a duplicate file of read-only file, By Select, the animation in your assets folder then Expand the file with the little arrow in the circle, Select the animation itself, the icon with the play button Press Command-D (on Mac).
The animation in the fbx is in binary form. The animation clip Unity creates from importing the fbx lies inside the Library folder and you don’t need to look for it as it’s ReadOnly, and it makes it easier for the Importer to handle everything, without the user messing with the resulting file. If you duplicate the animation from the fbx, that creates a second file(beside the fbx since that’s how you’d look for it), but since it’s a Unity anim clip, it’s not longer in fbx format, but in .anim which is YAML, which if you have text serialization, means it’s a text file. Text files tend to be larger than the equivalent data in binary form, more so if the serialization format used (e.g. YAML) is verbose( has more stuff written to keep track of links etc).
Same thing happens with fbx after import in Unity. If you navigate to the folder, you only see the fbx and its meta file. But in the Project window, it shows like a prefab(with a thumbnail etc). The prefab lies in the Library folder. If you create a prefab variant based on the fbx, again it’s a Unity structure, therefore will be serialized in a YAML file. This one will be visible the file explorer, contrary to the prefab made by the fbx.
It also explains how the Library folder gets that big in no time.
