Several animation clips per object

Support Animation and Rigging
#1

So I just switched to Blender from 3DS max, and for the most part the transition’s not as hard as I thought it’d be. I tried my hand at editing an animated model (no bones or skin, just solid objects), though, and I’m experiencing some problems.

I imported my model into Unity, and when I looked at the animation clips, there were about 50 of them.
I looked through them, and each one seemed to only involve the movement of only one piece of my model, and sometimes only even movement along one axis. My scene in blender only has about 16 objects at most, and all of their movements happen at the same in blender.
I also tried importing my animation into Sketchfab to see if it was an issue with Unity, and Sketchfab had a similar problem.
So it looks like my animation is being split up into many different parts on export.

Does anyone know what’s going on here, and how can I fix it?

1 Like
#2

In Blender, animation data is stored in actions. Each object in Blender has it’s own action. Most other software stores animation data by what is in the scene.

The only object in Blender that allows you to store multiple pieces of animation data in a single object is an armature.

An armature is made up of sub-objects called bones. Bones are null objects with a few benefits over empties.

To fix your issue, create a rig for your objects with an armature, then you can use a single action for all objects.

Here is a tutorial on rigs with armatures vs rigs created with objects and/or empties that may shed some light on the subject.

Good luck!

3 Likes
#3

dang, I was hoping to avoid bones. Ah well, if that’s necessary in blender, I’ll just have to suck it up. Thanks, I’ll try that now!

#4

I think that a lot of it simply has to do with the “Objects / ObData” data-structures that run throughout all of Blender. “An Action,” say, is "a thing," and it can be referenced (“linked to”) almost anywhere, both in this file and/or in another one. That’s probably why exporting is being done in this way.

#5

Looking through this video tutorial, but I can’t really figure out how to animate multiple objects in the same animation that move independently from one another. The tutorial seems to connect the moving parts with an IK controller, and that works because of the nature of the machinery, but the model I’m animating has objects that are possessed by a ghost that float and arrange themselves in midair.

#6

Any idea for what I can do about this? All the tutorials I’m finding only seem to show objects with motions that are dependent on one another.

#7

Hey, can you post a file

#8

Sure thing.
https://drive.google.com/open?id=1g6iNx7QGD5VNq3wus5cdNxSzf5nR3Dpt

#9

Hey, I had a look at your file. First my disclosure - I know very little about gaming stuff or importing/exporting stuff to those platforms. As far as exporting and the number of animations is due to the amount of objects with animation data, why there would be 50 is puzzling. There is (1) for the gun, (2) for each of the 6 bullets and child objects so that is 13 so far and 2 other objects that have no anim data.
I have created a rig for your duplicated parts and removed the animation from them - you will have to redo it with the armatures bones ( I would have re-used the anim data but it was too exaggerated on the new set-up ). Layer 10 has all objects joined together - rig on layer 20. Layer 6 has the objects still separated - rig on layer 16. Hope this helps some, post back.

gun_rigged.blend
https://drive.google.com/open?id=1zd2Iajahmro8e1xwAXRcr0pDi1UNs5xK

1 Like
#10

Interesting, how did you get the separate bones to be part of the same armature? Because the only way I could figure out how to add bones was to extrude or to create a new armature.

#11

In ‘Object’ mode = Shift A > armature > single bone.

In ‘Edit’ mode = Shift A , creates new bone @ 3D cursor or Shift D any existing bone. Also if you extrude a bone and want it to be separate, ‘Y’ will separate it and remove parent or un-check “Connected” in the bones ‘Relations’ panel will separate it but keep parent.

1 Like
#12

Ooh, ok, thanks! I’ll give that a try

#13

So I tried animating your rig, and I just have a simple animation for the base bone. It just tilts up, basically- I haven’t bothered with animating the rings just yet.
So I imported the animation into Unity to check it out, and there are 8 different animation clips resulting from this one information.

[edit]
Well, it looks like the first animation clip is what I want, at least. I think I’m just going to ignore the others. As long as I have one functional clip, that works for me. Thanks for the help!

#14

Well I wish I could be more help, but I just don’t know much about that gaming stuff. There is a game section on this forum - it may be of more help. Check out this add-on =