So, is there a reference anyone can point me to that will tell me what the best hierarchy would be for making a rig in 3ds max that’s mecanim compatible?
I tried searching, not much came up that didn’t point to a “just use biped” which isn’t a valid answer for what i need to use it for.
I have the same problem. When you use Generic Rig on import and CAT animation in Max, it is a total mess. The issues with axis pointing in different directions in Max and Unity are not easily corrected because of the structure of bones in CAT animations. On top of that both CAT and Mecanim are pretty buggy and you never know with which bugs you are dealing. For example, my blending tree works great and I can control my CAT character with joystick, but as soon as I assign it a Follow script it no longer works properly. Instead of Following a target, it runs away from it and no amount of rotation within Unity or in Max fixes the problem. Is this a CAT bug? Is it Mecanim? I have no clue… The worse thing is that as soon as I think I have an answer and found a workaround, something new pops up and have to deal with another set of problems.
Same as with you, the Biped is not an option for non-humanoid characters and those do not get much development attention neither in Unity or Max. If you find a good solution, please let me know. I’d love to use Mecanim instead of legacy animation…
The auto-rig created by Mixamo works well. So create your model and rig it in Mixamo and test in Unity. Then if you like it you can see how that model is rigged and rig future model you make directly yourself in Max.
I’ve found ‘advanced features’ in Max / Maya don’t export nicely as FBXes to Unity so I just create simple meshes in Blender and export those as FBXes.
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Sorry, I missed the not-biped. For the problem, create an empty gameObject and instantiate the model into that fixes orientation problems I’ve heard but have not direct experience with.
Thanks for the tip regarding empty object. I’ll keep this in mind for the future, even though it does not fix the problem in this case (Just tried and it made no difference). I suppose the next thing to try is to export Max rigs to Blender and see if it can be corrected there. (I usually re-import them back to Max and try to fix things – this converts CAT animations to generic bones).
Oops Blender doesn’t import FBX files. I tried the “unofficial” importer from Japan, but the animation did not come through… So I am stuck with Autodesk…
Biped and CAT work just fine with Mecanim if you setup your Rig in your inspector correctly. If you are using a humanoid character then setup your Animation Type to “Humanoid” and everything should work fine. But if you still have problems say for example your mesh explodes or it just looks crazy and its not animating then it could be a scaling problem you did in 3DS Max and you may have to reset xforms or your scale factor from one animation to the other is different in unity. I have use Biped and CAT for a long time and I have never had any issues with them. Majority of the time when there is a problem it’s user error. If you don’t believe me import the Constructor from the character controller and change it to humanoid. And create a avatar for it. The constructor is a biped character rig.
Also if you are not using humanoid as your avatar setup and you use generic. Inside Root node pick Bip001 then Bip001 Pelvis. This will stop your character from dropping through the ground when you play the animation.
Showoff,
I have used CAT characters in Unity also, all of them non-biped (I would have used Biped instead of CAT rig otherwise) – I got them working as Generic Rig as long as I was controlling them directly – all the blend trees worked fine. The characters moved around as expected. The moment I use “Follow” they no longer work properly. I wish you were right, and this is as simple as making sure that the XYZs are properly set between Unity and Max, unfortunately it doesn’t seem to be the case…
Here is a link to a very basic test rig I created to send to Playmaker gurus, it includes the Animator controller with the Idle, Walk, Left, Right animations and blend trees. (You don’t need to use Playmaker to see the problems, the regular “Follow.cs” script has the same issues) – http://www.bodytko.com/error/
I appreciate any comments, especially if they lead to solutions!
the package doesnt have the follow.cs in it and I dont see a animation controller in it either to test. I did put one of unity default smoothfollow.js onto the model and it follow the model.
Follow.cs is the script from Mecanim sample package and it was used on bears that follow the main character.
My 4-legged prefab should have both the Animator and Character Controller attached. (Did you mean Character Controller when asking about Animation Controller?)
I’d love to see my 4-legged generic rig joining the bears in following the main character of the Mecanim sample scene. The camera script you used should just drag the model behind without any animations – …Not?