Low Poly Character Rigged and Animated Unity

Low Poly Character Rigged and Animated Unity

You lot've modeled your grapheme in Blender, and now yous are looking to export your graphic symbol into Unity, this is the article for you! This article will be much easier to digest if you are already familiar with Blender.

There are many different ways to export your grapheme into Unity merely we focus on exporting a character that has been modeled and rigged in Blender and with simple animation sequences for a mobile game.

The entire process can be broken down into the following iv steps:

i.  Making the graphic symbol game ready.

Low poly! the horror!

I know.. I know if you are used to making clean models with as many subdivisions as your device tin perchance handle, making something depression poly sounds a lowkey nightmare.

Mobile games have to be lightweight and since the model is going to appear on a smaller calibration, having a super loftier-poly mesh is just going to make the game experience wearisome when all the details are not fifty-fifty going to be visible on the screen.

The best manner to approach making game characters is to beginning as low-poly as possible. Information technology is all-time practice to keep the vertex count beneath 10k for mobile games.

Quick tip:

Y'all tin use Decimate modifier to undo your subdivisions. If y'all take modeled your character in high-poly or you have applied your Subdivision modifier, this is a really cool modifier to use.

ii.  Rigging your character

Rigging your graphic symbol can seem very daunting at first, but you'll learn by doing it multiple times and experimenting with exactly what type of rig you demand for your model. Don't be afraid to mess things upwards and get-go over! It's always faster and easier the second time around.

If you are planning to rig your character with Unity'south default humanoid graphic symbol rig so check the os requirements and make you have matching bones in your own rig likewise. Unity's default humanoid rig needs the following bones:

The dotted circle bones are optional i.e. not necessary to exist nowadays in the model.

Quick tip:

It'south better to have all the different parts of your graphic symbol joined as a single object. If you don't want to do that and then you need to brand sure that all the unlike parts are parented to the rig.

A simple manner to do that is to parent your object to empty objects (which is parented to the rig) instead of parenting them to a bone.

For instance, here I am parenting the eye to an empty object, which is parented to the head bone.

First, brand sure, the empty object holds your object, you lot can do that by making sure the 3D cursor is in the centre of your object by pressing:

Shift+S > Cursor to Active

So, Shift+A > Empty> Cube

2nd, we parent the empty object to your rig.

With the rig selected in pose mode, you can parent the empty object to the rig as os.

Ctrl+P> Os

This way, the empty object moves along with the rig.

Tertiary, we parent the center to the empty cube.

This manner, your heart is continued to the rig, without any extra bones. This way, you can besides be sure that all the parts of your graphic symbol appear attached when exported into unity.

Quick tip:

The parenting lodge is as follows:

1. Parent Empty Object (holder) to Bone
2. Parent Target Object to Empty Object

If y'all cannot select the empty object and the rig at the aforementioned time, it is because Blender has selection restricted to the currently active object by default.

You lot tin change this past going over to the Edit tab and unchecking the Lock Object Modes choice.

iii. Turning your animations into NLA strips

When y'all are exporting your graphic symbol as an .fbx object you can as well consign different animation sequences. This tin can be done by arranging your animation sequences into non-linear animation (NLA) strips.

Instead of using Dope Canvas , you can tab into Activeness Editor :

And so, you can create different animation sets as actions, by pressing +New

After you have key-framed your heart out, you need to put the action equally an animation strip over on the Nonlinear Animation tab.

In the NLA tab, click the Push Down Activity button, to create the animation strip.

Quick tip:

Y'all can delete the extra animations that are non needed to reduce the export size.

Make sure all the necessary animations are ticked on during export, or they won't be exported.

four. FBX export settings

Finally, it is time to export your graphic symbol as an .fbx object. All the hard work is near to pay off!

Start things first, to lucifer the axis info to unity, to need to brand sure that your character is facing Y-axis.

Second, all the transformations on your character need to be applied.

You can do that by:

Ctrl+A > All transforms

You can check the transform values chop-chop by pressing N on the 3D viewport. The location and rotation values should all be zeroes, and the scale should be 1.

On to the export!

File > Export > fbx

Y'all tin make the following changes:

1. You can limit your export to the active collection.
2. Change the calibration from local to FBX Units Scale.
3. Change the forwards axis from Z Frontwards to Y Forrard.

Over on the Broil Animation section, make sure NLA Strips is selected, which is on by default and you tin can uncheck All Actions , to reduce unnecessary action exports.

If you have completed these steps successfully, then over on Unity, you will get your character with animation clips as follows:

The key points tin be summarized as follows:

1. Information technology is best do to keep the vertex count below 10k for mobile game characters. So low-poly for the win! (and cleaner geometry!)
2. Make sure the rig is working well, and all the different parts of your character are either joined every bit one object or parented to the rig.
3. The animation sequences are on NLA strips and active.
4. Your character is facing Y-centrality and all the transformations (location, transformation, scale) are applied.
5. On .fbx export settings, the calibration should exist FBX units calibration, the forward axis should be prepare to Y-axis, and only the necessary animations should exist set for export.

This article doesn't swoop deep into the entire character creation and rigging process. Information technology is intended for people with an intermediate agreement of Blender and character creation, to sympathise the unlike things to consider before exporting the character into Unity.

Thank you for reading. Feedbacks and comments are appreciated.

Low Poly Character Rigged and Animated Unity

Source: https://blog.yarsalabs.com/exporting-character-from-blender-to-unity/