Hello everyone, i was wondering, how can i animate 2 different objects together and import them into unreal or unity? For example, a gun and the character arms, do i have to animate and export both of them separate or just animate them together and export as fbx? If i have to animate them separately, how can i make sure it'll be precise enough to not clip? Thanks!
Hello Eduardo, I can explain the process using Blender and Unity as that's what we use. If you animate say a first person rig with a weapon you can animate them together in Blender as separate objects. Typically you'd have the rig on the arms and the weapon as a separate object attached to the hand, although sometimes you can make the weapon/arms all one rig for custom weapon animations with the arms. When you go to export you'll export an FBX and in Blender you'd typically select to export the mesh and armature.
When you import it into Unity it should import with both objects and the animations attached as well. Sometimes the separate object may not be connected to the arms, but you can add it as a child of whatever you had before such as the hand in Unity.
The objects shouldn't clip assuming they didn't clip when you were creating them. In this course I used a first person rig, so if you'd like to see the process of how it's used you can download the project files and watch the videos: https://cgcookie.com/course/fundamentals-of-weapon-mechanics
jgonzalez Hey Jonathan, thanks for the awesome reply, i just realised that i watched your tutorials on youtube to create and animate first person arms, it would be awesome to have it on cgcookie!
Off Topic: I can't get used to unity's interface, that's why i use unreal, but unity's 2018 version seems really interesting, are you planing to do a series on the new features?
eduo Ah yes that's a popular video, funny thing is I don't really do a lot of rigging and animating myself in Blender, but I know enough to do what I need for the most part. I am interested in doing a game animation course in the future, but would like to use something like Umotion Community.
Mostly covering the animation aspects of rigged characters, but may include some tips and tricks on proper rigging for games. Animating for games is definitely a different beast altogether and could be a fun topic to explore especially when combined with scripting to actually use the animations in a practical game example.
As far as Unity 2018 I'm using it for all new courses, what new features would you like to see covered?
jgonzalez One thing i'm jealous of unity users are these awesome free assets. I'd really like to know more about the upcoming features, the new renderer is the one i'm really into, 2d animation inside unity looks awesome as well. I really like c# and sometimes blueprint on unreal can be a pain, i constantly think about switching because of this and the amount of support unity has on the internet, probuilder also seems really good for blocking a level out.
eduo I would definitely get a Unity account to check out the Unity asset store. It's definitely a great place to find all sorts of assets. It's a bit of a guilty pleasure of mine just to buy a number of different assets. I'd like to cover the new rendering features of Unity, although it would probably entail multiple aspects such as shaders knowledge and using things like post processing and lighting.
Regarding 2D we don't get a lot of support for it, so I haven't focused much time on it. If we had enough support for more 2D based projects I'd definitely like to add more courses around it. ProBuilder is now a part of Unity as well, the developer behind ProBuilder actually used to teach a few courses here on CGCookie as well so we have a close relationship with him. Level design could be a fun course that delves into using ProBuilder more exclusively.
jgonzalez I didn't know that, that's pretty cool, do you mean 2d support from cgcookie or unity team? I'll definitely try unity when the 2018 version gets a full release
eduo 2D Support from members here at CGCookie. Very rarely do we get asked for more 2D based content for the game development side.
jgonzalez That's a shame, i really like 2d, specially retro metroidvania games, it would be really cool to have a platformer course or something like that
eduo It's something I'd like to create in the future. Possibly dedicate a whole flow to 2D developing including how to create the 2D art or maybe even pixel art. A platformer could be added in. Also thought about a 2D shooter, something along the lines of Contra would be fun to build. Also easy to port to mobile.
eduo If you have any specific game ideas in mind let me know. I know of some popular 2D games, but I usually don't play much if any 2D related games.
jgonzalez I love castlevania, it marked my childhood, i was developing a platformer similar to castlevania in GameMaker Studio 2, but i got frustrated with some of the limitations that the engine has(no 3d support, so i couldn't make 3d scenerys with 3d characters like symphony of the night) , right now i'm still deciding if i'm going to focus on godot or unity, both are looking really awesome but i have a weakness for open source projects