I saw the tutorial on the unreal youtube channel about importing assets, this guy had a separate fbx file for each animation. That method seems too troublesome, to export a seperate fbx file for each animation, I’d rather have 1 fbx file containing all the animations. So once I’ve imported my character all rigged and animated how do I define the animations?
so would we all, but some programs don’t support multiple anim track per fbx
you could put multiple anims in one file but then you would have to still import one at a time, changing the name and start/finish frame
so I have to rename, drag and drop the same fbx file for each animation, isnt there a faster way or an alternative to separate animations?
This is something I have pondered. I currently have my animations in one work file, all consecutively one after the other in the timeline; walk, run, jump, attack etc. It makes it easier to access keys/poses and also to see how the animations flow. When it comes to exporting, I specify the frame range in the 3D application for a particular animation. Some might argue that it would be better to just export the entire range of animations in one FBX file and specify in the engine which frame range is to be used for which movement. A problem with this is if you need to add or extend an animation in the middle of your 3D application’s timeline which would then throw out the frame range allocation in the engine. Consequently you would need to go through and edit the frame ranges specified for each movement action in the engine.
For this reason I think exporting individual FBX files for each animation is a better approach. But I would love to hear other people’s opinions.
The power tool of choice for doing single file animations is Motion Builder.
With Motion Builder you can create separate takes based on a copy of the primary motion and once done as a set each take can be exported to a single file based on the name of the take.
The other option is to check if you weapon of choice supports animations layers but as Polyx stated individual files is the best way to go as far as as a workable source chain goes as anyone can added animations and corrections using the base source and the addition or fix re-imported from the asset pool.
Also working from one big file can add key frame ripple that is difficult to find once introduced and you don’t catch it until things turn funky in game.