[solved] blender armatures - the most basic step by step ...

Unity Engine
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1

Hi,

I had some import issues with bone animated blender models (http://forum.unity3d.com/viewtopic.php?p=356667#356667)
and because it wasn’t possible to find out what i did wrong, i would like to ask another question about using armatures in blender and importing them …

my question is: what would be the most basic way of creating and using an armature in Unity ?
Let the task be the most simple that is possible: -Create one Cube with a single bone which is attached to it
-Import it into unity, so that this bone can be moved in the editor and creating an effect

Here is what i’ve done so far … tell me if i missed something.

  1. Used the standard cube which shows up in blender on creating a new model
  2. Created an Armature
  3. Moved it to it’s top-left vertice position
  4. Selected both and clicked “make parent/armature” in object mode (don’t create groups)
  5. saved
  6. Imported it into unity, left all import settings unchanged, instantiated it, and got my error.
  7. I Used Blender 2.49b / Unity 2.60 and updatet later to 2.61

I did not change anything else than that, neither in unity (new project) nor in blender.
(So if there is anything essential what i didn’t explicitly wrote down here, please mention it.)

This is NOT a double Post.
Topic is not what i did wrong with the mentioned sign model I used there. I just want to know the basic steps … if it works, then i can built my model on top of this most simple example.

I hope anybody can help me.
(And i believe that we have a lot of people here that already successful used armatures in their models, so there MUST be someone to know the reason this time)

2

Unity reads bones influences from vertex groups and bones weightmaps. You NEED to create groups when parenting the mesh to the Armature, and then watch for the correct binding of EVERY vertex to any of your bones.

Then, for the example you are asking for, if you want some vertex to move apart of others in the same mesh, you will need to include more than one bone in your armature and assign some vertex to one bone and other vertex to another bone, so that when you move one of the bones, the other part of the mesh stays at the default place.

3

i just looked at your blender file in the other thread. the setup is all correct (parenting and hierarchy of the armature) but there were no vertices assigned to any bones, thus the error.
you need to weight paint the mesh onto the corresponding bones.

here’s a good tutorial on how to go on from your model.
http://www.blender3dclub.com/index.php?name=News&file=article&sid=21

and here’s some general information…
https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikibooks/en/wiki/Blender_3D:_Noob_to_Pro/Advanced_Tutorials/Advanced_Animation/Guided_tour/Mesh/vg

4

that sounds promising, (at last, now i’ve got a clue what could have been wrong)
i’ll look and try that out :slight_smile:

Edit:
Very nice, finally my problem was solved thanks to your help :slight_smile:

Now i’ll play around with it and try to make a single bone face a target in unity
(seems that unity doesn’t set the facing direction the right way, but let’s look how to work around that)

Thanks,
David