How to Configure Weapon Animations?

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Deckard_89

Member
So I'm enduring a few headaches setting up animations on my third person character in relation to weapons, mainly that they look different in Unity compared to my animation program (3DS Max), and I'm wondering if the different animator layers are effecting the animation.

Is there a difference, on pistol for example, between "Pistol Aim" and "Pistol Attack Idle"? They seem to me like the same animation, unless there is some subtlety I'm not noticing.
 
Coming back to this, there's something else I'd like cleared up; What is the difference in Shotgun Fire and Shotgun Fire Complete animations? "Complete" is longer and has two animation events, but apart from that I'm not sure how to go about replacing these animations. Is one firing one shot, and the other is when all shots have been fired and there are no shells left (at a guess)?
 
Hi @Deckard_89 - it's most likely related to animation layers.

For the pistol animations - they are the same pose but the "Pistol Attack Idle" is just one frame where the "Pistol Aim" is two frames. The "Pistol Attack Idle" is created from the "Pistol Fire" animation and I used it instead of "Pistol Aim" to avoid confusion in the animator just in terms of naming convention. But they are the same animation technically.

For the shotgun - this one is a matter of using the additive layer. The "Shotgun Fire Complete" animation plays the entire shotgun fire animation which includes the reload at the end of every shot like a regular shotgun. The "Shotgun Fire" animation only includes the recoil part of the fire animation since it lives on the additive layer and I want it to only effect the character's chest rotation for that part. So they play simultaneously but one ends after the fire and one continues through the reload. The "Shotgun Fire" animation is just a shorter version of the "Shotgun Fire Complete" so they are based on the same animation.

Let me know if that doesn't make sense!
 
Thanks Sarah, I think I get it now. I have a little more work to do to get the "pump" motion on the shotgun fire complete animation (I'm using a similar type of shotgun), then I can replace the old ones.

Another thing though, is that my character's fingers' positions are different in Unity than in my animation software, so they pass through the model - even though they don't in the animation software. I guess that's more of a Unity thing, but I don't know how you got your animations to line up so perfectly with the weapon models in Unity.
 
Glad that made sense! Let me know if you run into any issues when you do get your shotgun fire complete animation in.

For the finger positions - one thing I always check is under the rig for the model, go into configure and make sure all the fingers are assigned correctly. Then I go under pose and click "reset" and then "enforce T-pose". Sometimes the fingers don't map automatically for whatever reason. Hopefully that helps! If you are animating and using the same weapon model then it should appear the same in Unity.
 
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