Introduction to Blender Animation

Starting with Blender

• Learn how to navigate, the use of each window and the keyboard shortcuts of Blender (which you can find in the following link: https://www.makeuseof.com/blender-3-keyboard-shortcuts/).

• Get comfortable with your interface, change the windows to your liking to quickly access the tools you want.

• Once you're ready to start, open your RIG.

Getting to know the RIG

• Hide/show the differents controlers of your RIG with the animation layers.

• Try to make pose, play with the controlers and test the limites of it with short animations, you’ll rapidly know what is possible to do and what is not.

Getting to know our humanoid rig

• This is based on Blender’s Rigify system.

  • Two good starting points for learning the controls:

  • Generated Rig Features - Blender Manual

• The current humanoid we use for animation is from Ready Player Me. We use one character to create all animations, even for very different characters (generic guy, zombie, teddy bear, school girl, …).

• Note that the animation rig and the deform rig are completely separate game objects.

Guidelines for new animations (actions)

• Whenever possible (99% of cases), start a new animation by copying an existing one that’s fully keyframed in the action editor.

• Use the poses of the library for the first and last frame (for smoother transition).

• Don’t forget to activate the Autokey when starting to animate.

• To move a character horizontally (on the XY-plane), use the root transform, not the body transform. The body transform (loc., rot., scale) at start/end must correspond exactly to the one in the pose library. This is not true for the root, which can be moved or rotated.

• You can copy an action from a file by doing: File-Append-Select the file and go to the Action folder, then select the Action you want to copy.

• When creating a new action, don’t forget to check the Fake-User button to save it.

• To delete an action, uncheck Fake-used and Shift+Click on the Unlink-Action buttton

Understanding the Blender→Unity export pipeline

• Check if your export path is correct (in the “Scripting” panel).

• Desactivate the “Autokey” and “Mesh inactive” buttons.

• Select the RIG’s Mesh THEN select any bone controler.

• Click on the “Export current” button.

• Done ! Your animation should be in the unity project.