Question Can I edit an .anim file in Blender?

I have a bunch of .anim files that I want to edit in Blender. Is that possible?

I looked at this, but I can't get that to work: https://docs.unity3d.com/Packages/com.unity.formats.fbx@2.0/manual/exporting.html

All the animations become completely messed up in the animation preview in Unity (just spinning the character wildly around without animating any bones) and Blender actually refuses to open the file stating:

I have no idea what model was used to create these animation files originally so I'm guessing the reason it doesn't work is because these animations are humanoid and I've retargeted them to work with my character.

Maybe this would work if it wasn't for that.

But in that case is there any other options available to me?

Also, is it possible to edit .anim files inside Unity by rotating and moving bones or do you just have to tweak values and curves? If this was possible maybe I wouldn't need to use Blender.

I'm trying to tweak a couple animations, mainly line up poses in different animations with each other and this is a pain to accomplish using just the dopesheet and curves window.

This project is honestly my first serious dive into using animations in Unity so I may be clueless here. I'm also too lazy to make my own animations so I'm just trying to mash together various free animations I find, but I'm also picky and still want them to look good and work well with each other.

 

if that .anim files are humanoid, you can export them out with skele to .dae animations and those you can probably edit in Blender.

it's possible to edit .anim in Unity, meaning you get a character animated in editor (which you can record)
take a look at this for example
https://forum.unity.com/threads/renegade-project-drivern-shooter-system.486589/page-6#post-6349311

or maybe even inside unity's animation window (but that would mean hard modifying keyframes of the curves of the animation)

 

Thanks for the reply, but not sure I get what you're saying.

How do I do this? And what's skele? The rig?

Not sure what you're linking to here.

Yeah, that's currently how I do it, but it's a pain. The animation window is very limited and I feel like it's lacking many features that would make this easier to do.

 

existing animations can be modified in Unity in LateUpdate, OnAnimationIK etc

you can record these as .anim with SceneMotionCapture, EasyMotionRecorder (haven't tried this one)

Skele is an animation tool which has a .dae exporter, that can take .anims created with a character
and when exported out, can be imported back into Unity and set to humanoid

 

Ahh, I understand.

Thanks for trying, but I'm not going through the trouble of fiddling with experimental third party workflows to try and solve it though. I was hoping there was some built-in way of doing it.

To be honest I have no idea what's stored in an .anim file, but it seems to be a one-way bake of what was in the .fbx file to begin with. Knowing this I'll make sure to avoid using them myself and instead just use the .fbx file. I can't stand losing the ability to make changes down the road.