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Motion Path Animation with 3ds Max and Unity - Unity 2018.4

Discussion in 'General Discussion' started by JamesArndt, May 11, 2020.

  1. JamesArndt

    JamesArndt

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    In this video tutorial I demonstrate the steps to creating procedural animation inside of 3ds Max that can be exported and used within the Unity engine. You can download a source Unity package file from the video description. As always, feedback is welcome and I hope some folks find this technique useful.

     
  2. unit_dev123

    unit_dev123

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    Thank you really useful my friend use 3dmax, can you say is there any difference in other video using translation over armature or rigged meshes?
     
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  3. JamesArndt

    JamesArndt

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    No difference in the end result. Either method you choose to use will end up as keyframes in Unity. I'd say the difference comes in the workflow and that choice. Would you rather animate on a spline or use armature or joints?
     
  4. unit_dev123

    unit_dev123

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    I see. My friend thought that for every animation it must contain armature to be used in unity. It is good to see this is not the case. Last question is there any benefit use this over say 'unity's inbuilt animation timeline?'
     
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  5. JamesArndt

    JamesArndt

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    Animation can be done a couple of ways in Unity. One of them is of course using armature/bones/joints, another is using shader animation on the vertex (no bones needed, think ocean simulation/animation), another is using cached animation of a mesh's vertices (no bones needed either, think of a waving flag). There are a few options. This spline technique is going to be a bit less intensive to use because it's simply a set of keyframes in Unity's animation window. A bone-based animation will be a set of keyframes, with a soft-bound geometry mesh, with quite a few objects that are deforming/affecting this mesh (at varying intensities). It's just more a complex series of procedures to be processed.

    That's a great question too. You could use Unity's timeline, but you won't have the "procedural" nature of using the 3ds Max spline approach. With a spline you can visualize exactly where your camera is going to travel, you can point your camera in any direction (intuitively), you can bank the camera and you can create an infinite amount of twists and turns. If you were to simply place a camera in a Unity scene and open the animation window, and to start setting keyframes it wouldn't be nearly this intuitive. You'd see no path of travel for the camera, you'd have to manually set keyframes for each change in direction or banking. Just a ton more manual labor to do by taking that approach and more labor, means more time.
     
  6. unit_dev123

    unit_dev123

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    thank you, is it similar to this then?
    https://assetstore.unity.com/packages/tools/camera/camera-path-creator-84074
     
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  7. JamesArndt

    JamesArndt

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    Yes that pretty much replicates the whole thing directly in the Unity editor. However I'd try to do as much as you can in your external 3D application and only rely on Unity for the rendering of your project. I give this warning because your projects then become dependent on a 3rd party developer and their support of this asset. And secondly, because Unity is undergoing major changes every so many months. Things are changing so fast within Unity's editor now, that plenty of Asset Store assets become broken in both large and small ways. Sometimes fixing these assets is simple, sometimes it's impossible without moving to a new version.