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2D animation options

Discussion in 'Animation' started by Architekt, Sep 8, 2014.

  1. Architekt

    Architekt

    Joined:
    Jul 6, 2014
    Posts:
    7
    At my last company we used After Effects or Flash to create 2D animations which we then made a plugin to export to our own internal engine format to render them. It was great because we didn't have to use per-frame sprite animation and instead just created the individual components (arms, legs, head, torso, etc) and animated all the movement in After Effects. This obviously greatly reduces memory usage (you're not making large sprite sheets per animation sequence) and also lets you make much more complex and interesting animations. If I wanted to do similar 2D animation, what would be the best way to do that? Does Unity have its own internal tools that an artist could use to import the individual assets and then make animation sequences for, or does it have support for importing from other tools like Flash/AE/something else? I suppose I'd be OK with buying a plugin, but my concern there is support and relying on it for production quality work. I'm open to any suggestions that don't involve just making a big ol' linear sequence of pre rendered sprite frames like all the examples I've seen so far.
     
  2. Mecanim-Dev

    Mecanim-Dev

    Joined:
    Nov 26, 2012
    Posts:
    1,675
    You can create your own Transform hierarchy and attach each body part sprite and then animate the transform hierarchy with standard forward kinematic animation inside unity.

    Or you can do the same thing in any other 3d package, create your hierarchy, animate, import your rig in Unity and attach your body part sprite and create a prefab.

    Best regards,