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How exactly do I prepare an animated character for Unity? (using Maya)
I have experience in the past with making models and giving them bones in Maya. I've also been using Unity a lot lately, and working on a project. However I've been trying to check on what exactly I need to animate my character in Maya and stick them into Unity. I know that my character needs animations, but I'm still a bit iffy in that area. Basically what I'm asking, is there some sort of guide I can find to help me out with this area? And no, I'm not sending it to an animator. Thanks.
Answer by Velketor · Mar 14, 2011 at 02:47 AM
Check out the link below:
http://unity3d.com/support/documentation/Manual/Character-Animation.html
You can access animations created from your 3D package (such as Maya or 3dsMax) in two ways.
Method 1: Save out a different Maya or 3dsMax file for each animation, like so:
enemy@idle (these are what you name your 3D files) enemy@walkcycle (these are what you name your 3D files) enemy@runcycle (these are what you name your 3D files) enemy@jump (these are what you name your 3D files)
Import the files into your Assets folder.
Now you need a script to call each of these animations depending on what key you press. If you press 'w' to move forward, then enemy@walkcycle should play. If you press 'shift+w', then enemy@runcycle will play.
Method 2: Save out 1 Maya or 3dsMax file with all of your animations in 1 file. Then use a script to call specific frames from that file. You could have frames 1-48 be the walk cycle and frames 58-96 be a run cycle, etc.
All of the above settings can be accessed from the importer.
For more information, please check out http://unity3d.com/support/documentation/ScriptReference/Animation.html Hope this helps! =) Let me know if you have any more questions ...and if this solution helped you or not. Thanks!
Shawn