Jumping into Animation : Is Unity Animator worth to learn ?

Alright, so I'm currently building a Voxel Editor and by using an awesome Asset I am able to export my Voxel Meshes as simple .obj

Before I continue I have some questions about Unity Animation: 1: Can unity create RIG and Nodes like Maya ? 2: Can unity create animation and not just "control them".

At first my plan was to take the .OBJ file. Import it into Maya, create a rig and animate it. Export the final Model as .FBX (Since .OBJ doesn't support animation) and Import it into Unity. Next I will need to setup the controls for it but that's it I think. Am I missing anything ?

I made a Human in Voxels and since I want my games to be optimized and run fast, I decided to animated them and export them as .OBJ so that they are not multiple square but instead a single mesh.

Another question related to a Sword Swing animation. Here is a pretty good and short way I determined how to do it : 1: Take your main model mesh 2: Choose a point inside his hand and put a sphere gameObject there (I like to call it Grip) 3: Save as prefab (Final Model) 4: Take your Weapon mesh 5: Do the same with the weapon (add a sphere and such) 6: Save as prefab 7: Now all you need to do is just make the Weapon Prefab and the human grip to always be connected and to make the weapon follow the same rotation as the grip. Dat way, you end with a weapon that completly follow your characther swing animation and works ?

EDIT :: Bumped a single time.