Best Animation Export Guidelines For Artists

Hi, in the interests of keeping memory use and file sizes to a minimum I was wondering what artists/animators can do from their end when creating & exporting .fbx animations into Unity? The amount of keyframes the artists are using within their software is irrelevant right? Because on export the animation is baked and every frame becomes a keyframe, and then when Unity imports it it uses compression settings to reduce unnecessary keyframes? Or do I have that all wrong. This is in regard to characters skinned to bone rigs.

 

No - more keyframes usually = larger filesize. Unless you are comparing a 30 frame (1 sec) animation with keyframes on all bones to a 30 frame (1 sec) animation with only one keyframe on one bone. Those animations will most likely be the same size. Really simple test to perform to confirm.

I've seen quite a bit of rigged characters with a bunch of useless data, IK goals, knee and elbow pointers, eye locators, twist bones, extra spine bones. This ads to the file size of the fbx. Best to only export what is needed which is bones, skin/mesh and anything related to morphs/blends, which in Max and Maya is only modify data within the mesh.

However - another great question to ask about is how does fbx file size effect final build size? I seem to remember Unity reps making reference to the fact Unity ignores unused data in final builds.
Another good test to perform.