If this has already been asked somewhere else, sorry. I export my rigged animations from blender into unity, however am creating an rts game and every character having a full rig seems heavy. Is there a way to bring the character and its animations into unity without the entire rig and bones, or is the rig absolutely necessary to play the animations and deform the character in unity?
Every object that uses animations will need a rig (called an Avatar in Unity’s Mecanim system). However, you can choose to not import animations on a model, or you can tell a model to use another model’s avatar (and thus, use its animations).
To not import animations, simply go to the “Animations” tab of the model import and uncheck the “Import Animation” box.
To have a model use another model’s Avatar, go to the “Rig” tab, use “Generic” Animation Type, and choose "Copy From Other Avatar
for Avatar Definition, and browse to another Avatar. This will limit you to using Mecanim instead of Legacy. (AFAIK, each model must have its own rig and animations in Legacy). Keep in mind that this will only work properly if the two models have identical rigs.
For example: what I usually do is have all my human characters be mapped onto identical skeletons in their separate files. I create all the animations I’ll need in just one of the .blend files. Often I use a separate file called “Animations.blend” or something like that, which won’t be seen in the game but contains all the animations. I set up the animations in that one file’s import, then on all the others I copy the avatar definition and do not import their animations. Create a single Animator Controller and use that on all the characters.
Hope that makes sense.
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That does make sense and is very helpful. Thank you. I was just trying to find a way to optimize my models and thought that if every copy of a model could just “remember” the animations without having to be deformed by a rig it could save on processing power. All good though, importing only one animation could help. Much appreciated!