Question Trying to create animated CUAs from scratch, hoping for pointers / guides...

[Harbinger98]

Total Noob... I've learned a fair amount, but so much more to be learned. I'm trying to design and animate Custom Unity Assets from scratch. I've gone through the guides I could find on Blender and Unity but now I'm stuck. As a first step, I'm trying to make just a simple cylinder (in Blender), add animation (having it get longer or shorter while maintaining constant diameter), import it into Unity editor, then move it into VAM as a CUA. I guess the first question is: do I animate it in Blender and then transfer into Unity, or just move the cylinder into Unity and add animation within Unity?
Thanks for any suggestions!

 

[Matt_]

Total Noob... I've learned a fair amount, but so much more to be learned. I'm trying to design and animate Custom Unity Assets from scratch. I've gone through the guides I could find on Blender and Unity but now I'm stuck. As a first step, I'm trying to make just a simple cylinder (in Blender), add animation (having it get longer or shorter while maintaining constant diameter), import it into Unity editor, then move it into VAM as a CUA. I guess the first question is: do I animate it in Blender and then transfer into Unity, or just move the cylinder into Unity and add animation within Unity?
Thanks for any suggestions!

You can animate either way , Blender or Unity.

 

[Harbinger98]

You can animate either way , Blender or Unity.

Matt,
Thank you for the response! Do you know of a beginning guide for doing this, either way? I've gotten somewhat comfortable using timeline in VAM, with keyframes and such. Is animating in Unity or Blender similar? I'll dive in and see how far I can get, but any further suggestions would be most appreciated. Thank you again!

 

[Harbinger98]

You can animate either way , Blender or Unity.

I've given up on finding the "perfect guide" for creating animated CUAs, and I've started going through a book (something like Practical Game Design with Unity and Blender). The book recommends doing the animations in Blender, then importing it into Unity, so I guess I'll try that approach. I made the simple "cylinder lengthening" animation (2 keyframes) in Blender but when I loaded it into Unity, the animation didn't transfer... at least it is some progress.
Thank you again for your response, any suggestions are most welcome.

 

[Matt_]

Save it as a fbx from blenderr the in unity expand out the imported item and the animation should be there. I can do a tutorial tonight

 

[AWWalker]

View attachment 346735

what happens in vegas stays in vegas ...

 

[Harbinger98]

Save it as a fbx from blenderr the in unity expand out the imported item and the animation should be there. I can do a tutorial tonight

Sorry for being gone for awhile... it is a drag when "Real life" gets in the way of wonderful exciting hobbies. Anyways, I was able to export the cylinder animation file from Blender as a fbx. I was able to add it into the project sources in unity, but I can't access it through the unity animator. Kinda feels like I'm just flailing randomly...If you could make a tutorial, that would be so very very helpful for me (and I imagine others). A little surprising that a guide doesn't already exist, since this would be very helpful in developing props / toys... Thank you so much!

 

[Matt_]

 

[Harbinger98]

Matt,
Thank you once again for doing the tutorial!!! I was able to work through it (I think) and get the animation set up in Unity. I tried to export from unity, but it came out as *.unitypackage which VAM doesn't seem to recognize. I remember seeing a tutorial by MacGruber on bringing unity assets into VAM, so I'm going to try following that. I just wanted to thank you, and give you an update. Any further suggestions? Is there a different tutorial that I should be looking at?

 

[Matt_]

You still make a assetbunble to get it in Vam, either make a prefab or move the entire project into the assetbundle builder

 

[Harbinger98]

I tried to make an assetbundle from the cylinder prefab, following the MacGruber tutorial. I was able to add the animated cylinder to VAM, but the person in the scene turned into a solid white silhouette. If I move the person, I can see her hair respond to the movement and I can add pose presents to the person, so it seems the person is still "functional", but still a solid white silhouette. I'm guessing I managed to mess up textures somehow...

I tried adding a second person to the VAM scene, between the first person and the animated cylinder, to see if the textures would work on the second person. The second person was again a solid white silhouette, but some texture / color returned to the first person, almost like the second person was blocking an intense light coming from the cylinder... Maybe it's a lighting effect.

Any suggestions would be much appreciated.

 

[Harbinger98]

Wow! I fixed it (I think). I added a texture map (from the ottoman in MacGruber's tutorial) and unchecked the "light" section of the cylinder. Now it imports into VAM, animates, and doesn't turn other objects into solid silhouettes. I clearly have a lot to learn, but I think I'm making some progress which is exciting! Thank you again for all your help! I think I'm going to try and understand more about materials for CUAs. Any suggestions where I should start looking?

 

[Matt_]

Wow! I fixed it (I think). I added a texture map (from the ottoman in MacGruber's tutorial) and unchecked the "light" section of the cylinder. Now it imports into VAM, animates, and doesn't turn other objects into solid silhouettes. I clearly have a lot to learn, but I think I'm making some progress which is exciting! Thank you again for all your help! I think I'm going to try and understand more about materials for CUAs. Any suggestions where I should start looking?

View attachment 358883

What software did you make the cylinder in? You may want to also check which colliders was selected in unity, try and use meshed colliders vs sphere

 

[Matt_]

Im self taught on unity so I don't really have any suggestions but YouTube.

 

[Harbinger98]

I made the cylinder in blender and just added material from the ottoman in Unity. I didn't mean to add any colliders, but I can check.

Do you know how to set up a CUA so that you can control an aspect in VAM, such as a cylinder that you could change the z-scale through timeline? This seems simpler than trying to control the animation of the CUA through plugins and timeline. The Physics Object tab in VAM can control scale, but not scale in a single axis.

 

[hazmhox]

Animating from Unity is cool. But you need to have a base code knowledge, or get some help. You can't drive a set of animations from Unity without a script.

For simple stuffs as animating a cylinder, I wouldn't even do it in blender. The animation system in Unity is good enough. For Skeletal/Skinned Meshes this is when you want to use blender.

And for CUA size, you need to have a script too since, as you said indeed, you can't control the scale freely.

 

[Matt_]

You could make a animation controller in unity and animate the z-scale at 0 and 100 or something then use unity_animator as a plugin in VAM to control it. Its a dependent of my treadmill if you need it. Think that may work.