Game character animation pipeline

riklopes

Hey guys,
what would be the best workflow for having an animated character ready to import into a game engine?

Currently i have different 3dsmax scenes each one with a single animation, and now i am trying to import them all into a single file so i can have something like this walk[1-10],jump[20-30].... etc..

I was wondering how you guys usually work... if you only have a single file for all the animations from the beggining to end..

Thanks

slipsius

What engine are you planning on using?

At work, with Unity, I use seperate files. I create the rig and save it as the model name, for example, "ENEMY1.fbx", then each animation I do, I save it as "ENEMY1@WALK.fbx" "ENEMY1@RUN.fbx".

I find it easier than importing all anims into 1 scene. Though, if anyone else has a reason why it would be better to do it the other way, Im open for suggestions.

Butthair

If this is for Unity. My workflow is to make "like" animations. Like if it were walks and runs i'd probably keep it all together in one file and call it locomotino or something.

Then, in Unity, start breaking these animations up and setting their keyframes in the animation tab of the model. Hit the plus sign and you'll add another animation take to the asset so each can be used in mechanim.

This can be tedious if you need to rework animations and adjust their time lengths. Which is way exporting "like" animation types has been a happy balance for me. Not too much back and forth (moving keys around isn't hard to make more space).

Working with animations in separate files can become tedious and numerous quite fast, opening new scene, re-open previous scenes, adjusting bones, copy/paste poses (very helpful for parts like arms or legs or full body).

In general I would go this route if it weren't Unity, at least from 3d package workflow. If the product doesn't work with multiple animations in a file then I'll export out each, but everything is still nice and orderly.

And remember to export out the actual skeletal mesh separately. Skinning is tedious but can really be done in only one dedicated pass. Iterating is common though.