[solved] Blender 2.49 - Animation

Unity Engine
,
1

Hello,

i am having problems importing an animated Object which i created with blender.

Since this is my first day working with blender,
chances are, that i perhaps have done something wrong in blender itself.

I have read the sticky post, and it seems that the creators of blender have fixed this issue since the importing itsel worked, and there are none of this code blocks in the mentioned python file…

what i have done:

  • Created something that later will look like a bee ^^
  • animated it: Created keyframe, 5 frames later added another key frame with the wings rotated and translated
  • saved it
  • imported it in unity

and here the trouble started … there were no animations displayed, so i entered “idle”, frame 1-5 … but nothing changes …

my question is now: Have i forgotten something in blender OR in unity?

I’ll attach my model to the post and hope that someone is kind enough to open it in blender and then tell me if it IS animated or not …
and perhaps even import it in unity, and tell me if my mistake was there.

Maybe noobish (as usual for me ^^) but i would not know any better way to ensure that my mistake is found.

Thanks,
David

322884–11376–$beeflying_184.blend (158 KB)

2

If you are using the IPO editor for the animation, Unity can only read the animation if you export you mesh and animation to an FBX file. My experience is limited but I know Unity can read actions out of the blend file but for IPO animations you have to export to FBX. Try that real quick.

3

hi,

it worked :slight_smile:

i don’t yet know what an IPO Editor is,
but exporting to fbx worked fine for me.
Thank you very much for the fast reply.

-david

4

Hi reculum,

Direct import from blender files should work, but it this case I can see that animation is not imported. I’ll raise a bug on it and I’ll investigate it later.

Use manual export to fbx for now…

BTW: Nice bee :slight_smile:

5

Is this a bug? Everyone I’ve talked in the IRC channel said that IPO animations are only supported via FBX export and it’s been this way for a long time. Actions are supported directly out of blend. I’m just surprised, I thought that’s the way it was!

6

Well, yes, I think it’s a bug :slight_smile: The main indication that it’s a bug is that you can export it properly when doing manual export to FBX. Unity does the same thing - export from Blender to FBX using FBX plugin in Blender, so if it works when doing manually - it should work in automated part too.

I believe that this problem might have existed for a long time:) but that still doesn’t indicate that it’s not a bug :slight_smile: Problem was that I didn’t have a bug report on it and we can’t fix things that we don’t know about;)

I want to encourage people to submit bugs. And even if we can’t fix it ourselves, we can pass it to Autodesk/MAXON/Blender and they are usually willing to help us on their side.

7

Haha, well thanks to you reculum for bringing this up then and thanks to you Paulius. I’m sure other Blender users will be happy about this and I’ll chastise them for not filing a bug report a long time ago :wink: I for one will appreciate not having .blend files and .fbx files sitting in my project!

8

I am sorry to disagree but, IMHO, this is not a bug but the way it works. And I am not sure if it could work differently, or if it would be better than now. That’s why it has not been reported as a bug :wink:

First, in Blender, IPOs are just function curves. Any animated parameter uses IPOs: bones, objects, textures, anything. The matter here is if the animation is stored in an Action or at the general timeline, called the NLA (non-linear-animation) window in Blender. Also, Armature animations are the only ones you can use Actions for, and you cannot animate bones outside Actions.

So if you want to have an Armature animated with an action, and then also animated as an object (transforms), you will first build an Action and then add the transform animation for the Armature Object at the NLA timeline, where you can also mix and match several Actions, playing with their influences, duration and so on.

The fbx exporter was developed specifically for Unity, and his main purpose is getting Armature animations inside Unity (object animations can be easily done inside Unity itself, and are often managed by the game logic and/or physics). And one of the benefits is you get each Action as a separate animation in Unity automatically. No need to painfully separate them again in Unity, no need to build up a lot of different files, each with a different animation. The perfect workflow.

But what if you want to animate some Objects in Blender? Well, you can still do it using the NLA window, but for this not to collide with the Armatures-Actions workflow, you must first indicate you want to use the NLA data (the exporter option “Current Action”) instead of exporting the Actions as takes. If the objects you are animating are Armatures with Actions, then what you get exported this way are the baked bones animations, but re-edited with the NLA tools. No need to export the original Actions, as it would be redundant and you can have some Actions not used at the NLA. And how can the exporter know if you want the first or the last option when Unity launches it automatically? It simply cannot.

I have seen other exporters trying to resolve this issue too, as the DTS exporter for Torque, and I think the current solution is the best one. The last version of the mentioned exporter switched form the Actions-as-takes approach to the “Export the NLA animation” way, and I frankly think it is worst now, making me stay with the old version.

My 2 cents.