I know this may be asked over and over, but I am a beginner that got assigned as 3d team leader of a video game at my unversity. I really only had worked with nendo (old school, I know).
I have a simple question. I have modeled and envelope rigged my simple model for a sample for the team. But I can only seem to save the animation along with the model. Is there a way to save just the animation of the armature so that multiple animations can be applied to a base model in the game engine?
better to ask this in GE forum, using something closer to Blender terminology. In general, each pose is an animation of an armature, and is applied to a base or starting position of that armature. Some armatures have hundreds of animations (at ease, sit, blink, run, breathe, swim, walk, say ahhhhh, bohica, wave, etc) in addition to the zdefault arms out skinning/rigging pose.
Animation applied to a base model means Shape keys where the mesh is deformed. Again, many shape keys can be applied to a model, but Shape keys are totally different than armatures.
Well whether you save the file with just the animation or not, you can append from that file later, choosing only the animations (Actions).
Use the file Append operation, and open the “library” file, then navigate to the Action section of the file, and just load the action(s) that you want to use.
Are you trying to setup a “library” file of actions?
If you just want to save a file with only actions in it, you can create the animations / actions, then delete everything and save the “empty” file and the Actions will be saved.
You can see this using the Data Brower (SH-F4).
Usually wihen IPO’s, materials are “disconnected” (with the X buton), the ‘user count’ goes to 0, but it seems with Actions, a Fake user is automatically created, meaning that even without an Object attached to the action they get saved with the file.