Question for you. I’ve got a character that I’ve modeled / rigged and I’ve also got five or six weapons that I’ve created. I’ll be doing animations for various attacks and am trying to figure out the best way to create these animations.
Is it best to create the animation for the character independently and try to line up the animation of the weapon to match the character? Or should I import the .fbx of each weapon, animate the character with that weapon and have dozens of different animations based on weapon combinations? Or is the answer somewhere in Unity (the engine I’m using)?
I’ve only been modeling for a few months, and this is my first foray into trying to choreograph the animation of a character and several different weapons.
this can be done using copy location and copy rotation constraints, and keyframing their influence, but before I explain any further I need to refresh myself on what the optimal setup is…
(edit) here is a good explanation by chipmasque:
A common method of doing this is to put a special bone in the hand used just for attachments. Then link your sword, or whatever object is being carried, to that bone. The link can be a Parent/Bone relationship, a Child Of constraint, a Copy Location constraint, Copy Transforms, etc., depending on the type of object and how it should move with the hand. Parenting is the most limiting choice as it cannot be animated. Constraints are more often used because their influence can be animated, and they have other options that are useful when setting up the constraint.
The paint bucket in my showreel (https://vimeo.com/41438498)was constrained in this manner so the character could fling it away. It also allowed me to animate the swinging of the bucket as she moves about the area.