Question What is the best way to make fps animations, with arms, for a unity FPS game?

What is the best way to make fps animations for unity with arms while taking into count gun and arms animations, double handed guns, reloading animations, etc. I know single sapling games has a really good tutorial on fps arms, but the way he animates them (using 2 different animators for the gun and the arms) and the way he animates them in blender (animating the gun then animating arms which takes a lot of time when you mess up a tiny part of the gun animation) isn't what I want. I want some easy way, perferablly using one animation controller, that I can manage and make gun animations (reload, equip, unequip, ads, etc.) export them to unity (if being made in another program). Thanks.

 

I've hacked together something idiotic in Unity a while back for a similar thing, but it worked rather well.

I used a normal humanoid Blender rig and just made meshes for the arms. In fact, I used some model from somewhere and deleted all the vertexes except those of the arms. You then end up with something that takes a Humanoid animation controller. I believe I also edited the model a bit to create a bit more space between the arms, whatever was needed to make them render nicely. I also added a Camera to layer the arms on top of the rest, so they can never clip into something else.

That way you can use Animation Rigging. Now I am not sure if you want your animations to include fingers and such, but I found that package to be very helpful animating the elbow and wrist. You can add a Two Bone Constrant to animate the arms using minimal keyframes. If you have hands with fingers, you can create a seperate Animation Layer for them.

Disclaimer: this is not the BEST way. This is just ONE way, that might save you some time.