Great tutorial. One thing I can't work out is how to import an alembic mesh (from a Maya bifrost animation) without getting the 'No animation data available in this model' warning in Unity. and deleting the history of an alembic in Maya deletes the animation.
+Angelique Ang You can do this, but you will end up with a bizarre scale factor on your fbx in Unity. This is particularly when you export from Maya. Max handles it's units slightly differently, as does Blender, you would need a different scale parameter when working in those applications.
you could see that the animation after export is mirrored 'cause maya is using right handed coordinate while unity is using left handed coordinate. How could I possibly fix this?
Hi, the reason this won't work for 'simulated' animation is because unity requires keyframes to be able to animate. Mash and deformer animation is performed in maya using nodes that Unity doesn't understand, so those properties don't appear in Unity, thus, no keyframes could possibly dictate any animation. With Mash, I think you could just 'bake' the animation by selecting your objects and going 'edit>keys>bake simulation'.... as for the deformer.... I'm not sure.... blend-shapes would carry over to unity... so if it's possible for you to bake the deformer animation to a blend-shape somehow... ?
Hm, hard for me to troubleshoot without seeing... if you dont see "take" animation in your fbx with Unity, then the export is the culprit. In Unity, there's a little 'preview' viewport at the bottom of the inspector when you check your fbx, the viewport could be hidden, you may have to click a grey bar at the bottom of the inspector to reveal it. While you're in the animation tab, you should check in the inspector that your fbx file has animation that you can preview , if not, something is odd with the export. If you can see animation in the previewer, then a couple things to check... - Your fbx has been dragged into the scene as a game object. - that your game object has an Animator component applied - that the Animator component has a runtime controller in it - that the runtime controller's graph (when you double click the runtime controller) has your animation dragged in to it, and that said-animation has been right-clicked and set to default (should appear orange) off the top of my head, those are all the things i can think might need addressing. Hard to tell with seeing it first hand myself though.
WOULD SOMEONE PLEASE SAY HOW TO OPEN THAT LIST OF ITEMS FROM THE LEFT? all the tutorials have it open already and i dont have it and there's like a billion buttons to try before i find it.
wops, sorry, didn't check my emails, you're referring to the tool settings I think. this is a bit different in Maya 2017, but accessed the same way. It's the icon at top-right in maya that has a hammer or something on it.
yeah it's okay, i'm just that bad/new at maya. But i guess you and every other tutorial out there can't explain what every button does in every single tutorial. It was very helpful nonetheless. I managed to animate my model on unity and switch between two animations
great, but in my project folder, the animation "take" did not show up, I ended up finding it and trying to apply it to my object - but with limited success. Any tips to point me in the right direction?
cried for help too quickly, repeating the same step a 5th time worked I think... Update - just keep finding how watching the same 10 seconds over and over for 10 minutes really helps
hi guys every maya to unity tutorial i see here in youtube skipping the linking animation part in Unity ie doesnt seem to show about step by step of how to create 'animation controller then linking it to rig in unity. iam just struggling to attach or link animation(FBXfile1: only skeletons with animation information) to rig (FBX file2: skinned character model without animation) in unity.... ! anyone please help me
ok i finally have some time to specifically answer your question tho i suspect you've found your answer by now. Basically you have a character with mesh and skeleton yeah? Well you export this without any animation. We will call this your base character. Now say you have this referenced into other files and you need to export many smaller fbx files. Well, assuming skeleton and mesh share the same parent, just grab that parent and export as usual, you may like to unload your mesh reference, it's not needed and will waste file size. When you import this to unity, each FBX will have it's own animations you can extract, and those animation clips will appear when you expand the FBX file in your project view. Drag/Drop your base character in to the scene and give him an AnimatorController. You can drag/drop those animation clips into your Animator Graph. That's pretty much all there is to using multiple files with animation for one base character. I still have to do videos for this stuff at some point but I really don't have a decent amount of time lately.
Thanks Regan Music for solution. i did the same way as you have told here. now the issue is iam not able to play the facial blendshape animation (which is with base character.fbx. ie mesh and bones with facial animtn in bind pose) ) and body animation (which is bodyanimation.fbx. ie bones with body animation without mesh) in unity. seems two different 'Take001' cannot be attached and played at the same time. if you can send me your email id i can share with you. thanx again.
Finally, a tutorial that wasn't "just put the maya skeletal character rig into unity :)", and compact too! thank you so much for this!
This is one of the best I've seen, this is fantastic!
Great tutorial. One thing I can't work out is how to import an alembic mesh (from a Maya bifrost animation) without getting the 'No animation data available in this model' warning in Unity. and deleting the history of an alembic in Maya deletes the animation.
When Exporting into Unity, always change parameter for Units from centimeters to meters.
+Angelique Ang You can do this, but you will end up with a bizarre scale factor on your fbx in Unity. This is particularly when you export from Maya. Max handles it's units slightly differently, as does Blender, you would need a different scale parameter when working in those applications.
+Angelique Ang using centimeters at the export stage will avoid THIS result:
imgur.com/Z4D3Jv3
you could see that the animation after export is mirrored 'cause maya is using right handed coordinate while unity is using left handed coordinate. How could I possibly fix this?
So I followed all the directions and I thought everything worked out okay, but when I hit play nothing animated...it just sat still.
Hi, the reason this won't work for 'simulated' animation is because unity requires keyframes to be able to animate. Mash and deformer animation is performed in maya using nodes that Unity doesn't understand, so those properties don't appear in Unity, thus, no keyframes could possibly dictate any animation.
With Mash, I think you could just 'bake' the animation by selecting your objects and going 'edit>keys>bake simulation'.... as for the deformer.... I'm not sure.... blend-shapes would carry over to unity... so if it's possible for you to bake the deformer animation to a blend-shape somehow... ?
Hm, hard for me to troubleshoot without seeing... if you dont see "take" animation in your fbx with Unity, then the export is the culprit.
In Unity, there's a little 'preview' viewport at the bottom of the inspector when you check your fbx, the viewport could be hidden, you may have to click a grey bar at the bottom of the inspector to reveal it.
While you're in the animation tab, you should check in the inspector that your fbx file has animation that you can preview , if not, something is odd with the export.
If you can see animation in the previewer, then a couple things to check...
- Your fbx has been dragged into the scene as a game object.
- that your game object has an Animator component applied
- that the Animator component has a runtime controller in it
- that the runtime controller's graph (when you double click the runtime controller) has your animation dragged in to it, and that said-animation has been right-clicked and set to default (should appear orange)
off the top of my head, those are all the things i can think might need addressing. Hard to tell with seeing it first hand myself though.
Thank you! it's working!
WOULD SOMEONE PLEASE SAY HOW TO OPEN THAT LIST OF ITEMS FROM THE LEFT? all the tutorials have it open already and i dont have it and there's like a billion buttons to try before i find it.
nevermind i found it
wops, sorry, didn't check my emails, you're referring to the tool settings I think. this is a bit different in Maya 2017, but accessed the same way. It's the icon at top-right in maya that has a hammer or something on it.
yeah it's okay, i'm just that bad/new at maya. But i guess you and every other tutorial out there can't explain what every button does in every single tutorial. It was very helpful nonetheless. I managed to animate my model on unity and switch between two animations
great, but in my project folder, the animation "take" did not show up, I ended up finding it and trying to apply it to my object - but with limited success.
Any tips to point me in the right direction?
cried for help too quickly, repeating the same step a 5th time worked I think...
Update - just keep finding how watching the same 10 seconds over and over for 10 minutes really helps
It could be that you needed 'animation' to be checked during the export process, check around 2m40s. Hard to tell without seeing it for myself.
I came back for a quick reminder on how to do it, this video is SO helpful, thank you so much for making it!
hi guys
every maya to unity tutorial i see here in youtube skipping the linking animation part in Unity ie doesnt seem to show about step by step of how to create 'animation controller then linking it to rig in unity. iam just struggling to attach or link animation(FBXfile1: only skeletons with animation information) to rig (FBX file2: skinned character model without animation) in unity.... ! anyone please help me
ok i finally have some time to specifically answer your question tho i suspect you've found your answer by now.
Basically you have a character with mesh and skeleton yeah? Well you export this without any animation. We will call this your base character.
Now say you have this referenced into other files and you need to export many smaller fbx files. Well, assuming skeleton and mesh share the same parent, just grab that parent and export as usual, you may like to unload your mesh reference, it's not needed and will waste file size.
When you import this to unity, each FBX will have it's own animations you can extract, and those animation clips will appear when you expand the FBX file in your project view. Drag/Drop your base character in to the scene and give him an AnimatorController. You can drag/drop those animation clips into your Animator Graph.
That's pretty much all there is to using multiple files with animation for one base character.
I still have to do videos for this stuff at some point but I really don't have a decent amount of time lately.
Thanks Regan Music for solution. i did the same way as you have told here.
now the issue is iam not able to play the facial blendshape animation (which is with base character.fbx. ie mesh and bones with facial animtn in bind pose) ) and body animation (which is bodyanimation.fbx. ie bones with body animation without mesh) in unity. seems two different 'Take001' cannot be attached and played at the same time. if you can send me your email id i can share with you. thanx again.