Prop Animations In-Engine
polycounter lvl 3
Yo.
I'm looking for sweet tips/tricks on rigging and animation when it comes to prop animations for in-game characters in Maya, and how they translate to Unreal 4 and Unity. I understand all the basics, parent constraints, etc., but my latest question pretty much has to do with dropping an item and the rigging/engine stuff associated with that.
For example, a character dies and drops his sword in-game. My initial instinct was to parent the sword to the wrist, which would work fine until he needed to drop it--it'll follow the wrist, and I want the sword to have its own animation independent of the character's death animation. Then I thought about a parent constraint, but it's my understanding that Maya constraints don't translate to game engines.
To help further illustrate the point, another example is a character with a boomerang. If the boomerang is parented to the wrist, any wrist movement once the 'rang has been thrown will magnify the movement of the weapon itself. How do riggers and game animators commonly solve for this when parent constraints don't translate to game engines?
I rig some of the characters I animate, and I'm not sure if the answer needs to be handled by myself or if it's handled in-engine, or both.
Thanks for taking the time to read this!
I'm looking for sweet tips/tricks on rigging and animation when it comes to prop animations for in-game characters in Maya, and how they translate to Unreal 4 and Unity. I understand all the basics, parent constraints, etc., but my latest question pretty much has to do with dropping an item and the rigging/engine stuff associated with that.
For example, a character dies and drops his sword in-game. My initial instinct was to parent the sword to the wrist, which would work fine until he needed to drop it--it'll follow the wrist, and I want the sword to have its own animation independent of the character's death animation. Then I thought about a parent constraint, but it's my understanding that Maya constraints don't translate to game engines.
To help further illustrate the point, another example is a character with a boomerang. If the boomerang is parented to the wrist, any wrist movement once the 'rang has been thrown will magnify the movement of the weapon itself. How do riggers and game animators commonly solve for this when parent constraints don't translate to game engines?
I rig some of the characters I animate, and I'm not sure if the answer needs to be handled by myself or if it's handled in-engine, or both.
Thanks for taking the time to read this!
Replies
I figured we'd have to make use of sockets in Unreal 4 at some point, but I had assumed the bulk issue was something I'd have to do on my end with rigging before it got put into the engine.