Hi everyone,
I’m working on a game in Unity, and I’m running into challenges with character animations, particularly with exporting from Blender and managing the logic in Unity.
Here’s the setup:
- My game is a racing game inspired by Sonic Riders. Characters ride different vehicles (boards, bikes, and skates).
- Characters and vehicles are separate models. Characters have shared rigs, but some have unique features (e.g., extra tails or wings).
- Unity version is: 2018.4.20f1 (No, I won’t update it).
Issues I’m Facing
1. Exporting Animations from Blender
- I managed to get one character’s animations working in Unity, but I forgot to take notes, and I do remember it being very finicky (there was a setting in a window somewhere with the animations). Animations aren’t exporting with the FBX file consistently.
- Any tips for properly exporting animations with characters from Blender?
2. Reusing Animations Across Characters
- My characters share rigs with minor variations (e.g., one tail vs. two tails). In Blender, animations can be reused (just ignoring what doesn’t match) but Unity doesn’t seem to allow this unless the rigs are identical.
- Is there a way to reuse base animations across characters and layer/override animations for specific features?
3. Unity Humanoid Rig Issues
- The humanoid rig type does allow for animation sharing, but using the humanoid rig seems to introduce weird behavior, it seams to keep the pelvis rigid and makes it the root, and it mangled my animations, and my characters need significant pelvis movement due to all the skateboarding inspired movement, so that’s not good.
- Is there a way to make the humanoid rig work for this use case, or should I stick to generic rigs?
4. Performance vs. File Size
- I’ve heard that Unity performs better when each character has unique animation assets, even if the rigs are identical, that way it just uses the deformation data, instead of moving the bones and having to calculate the deformation data on the fly, but I could be wrong, this has all been confusing. However, duplicating every animation for every character seems inefficient.
- Should I create unique animation files for each character, or can I reuse base animations and add character-specific adjustments? And if so, how?
Questions
- How do you approach animation logic for characters with shared rigs but unique features?
- How can I reliably export animations from Blender to Unity (e.g. FBX export settings. and I wanna say I had to adjust the settings in some window, but who knows where that was)?
- Are there any tutorials or resources you’d recommend for Blender-Unity workflows and animation management?
Thanks in advance for any advice or resources! I’d love to hear how others handle similar setups.