Most efficient way to rig inorganic objects for game-engines

Hi BA users

I would like to rig objects for export to Unity.
The objects are ‘hard’/ inorganic and individually should not deform.
I have watched quite a few tutorials and there seems to be a wealth of different ways of rigging. It would be great if you could start me off in the right direction.


I have some very simple objects I’d like to rig, starting for instance with these 2 objects.

I need to be able to rotate the bottom object around point A, and the top object around point B.
Once I understand how to do this I’ll need to add some new objects to rotate around the bottom object.

What would be the most efficient way to approach this? I’ve seen tutorials using empties but I’m not sure if these will get baked into the animation for Unity export.

Thanks in advance.
A

Attachments


For unity you would rig these essentially the same way as organic characters, only set the weight painting so that each bone mesh has 100% weight to exactly one armature bone. The easiest way to do that is to parent with empty groups rather than automatic weighting (it’s one of the options when you Ctrl-P to parent the mesh to the rig) then assign weights in edit mode. Select a single connected mesh by hitting the L key with the mouse over it in edit mode, then assign it to the correct vertex group in the vertex group menu in the properties window.

Thanks KH,

I read about this method in another thread. I’m struggling to do this though. Under which context menu do you assign the correct vertex group?

So far I’ve
a) joined the 2 objects into a single mesh
b) created 2 new individual bones
c) selected the single mesh, & shift selected the 2 individual bones
d) ctrl-P with empty weights

When I go into edit more and select the connected mesh with ‘L’ (cool shortcut), I can’t see under which context menu I can select the relevant bone (named ‘scapula’). I’ve attached my .blend if that’s of use.

Thanks again

Attachments

eg.blend (781 KB)