Do bones need to be scaled to 1 in Unity?

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I found out the hard way that objects being animated need to have their scale reset to 100 in Max/1 in Unity, otherwise Unity has to calculate the scale on every frame. My question is, do bones need to be reset to 100 in max as well, since they are technically not geometry?

My main problem is that Max will not allow me to draw a bone at the scale that I am working at. So I need to draw the bones larger, and then uniformly scale them down. These are not bones as part of a Biped. These are just standard bones, so there is no reset bone button outside of the biped function, at least not that I know of.

To be more specific, any object needing a collider needed to have a scale of 1 in Unity. Since bones do not need to be visible or have collisions, do they still need to be at 1 in unity?

Answer 1

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Answer by Matt 5 · Jan 25, 2012 at 08:20 PM

No it shouldn't affect anything

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Monkey_of_Doom · Jan 25, 2012 at 08:26 PM 0

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Ok thanks.

Answer 2

Answer by Matt 5 · Jan 25, 2012 at 08:00 PM

The bones should scale up with the rest of the model so if you scale your model to 1 the bones will follow.

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Monkey_of_Doom · Jan 25, 2012 at 08:15 PM 0

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Thanks for the response, but scaling the model isn't really the issue. $$anonymous$$aybe I didn't explain it clearly. I have a helicopter that is scaled so that 1m = 1cm. I am animating wires that disconnect from components using bones with F$$anonymous$$ to animate the wires. $$anonymous$$ax doesn't seem to allow me to draw bones that small, and they default to a much larger size. So I draw out the bones that I want and then scale them down to the size of my wire using the uniform scale option in $$anonymous$$ax. I reset my wire to be 100 in $$anonymous$$ax, which equates to 1 in Unity. $$anonymous$$y bones are now at say, 12.63. I should say, my root bone is at 12.63 and it's children are all at 100. Outside of biped, there is no way to reset the root bone to 100. Does this affect the performance of Unity the same way that having a collider not scaled to 1 does? I wouldn't think it does because the bones are not being rendered or calculated for collisions, but I really am not sure.

Answer 3

Answer by Emericanized · May 09, 2012 at 08:00 PM

did you try Hierarchy tab>reset transforms(or scale only)?

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Answer 4

Answer by Piflik · May 09, 2012 at 08:06 PM

I know this is not really Unity related, but when you edit Bones in Max, always use Animation > Bone Tools (enable Bone Edit Mode and you can move bones around, affecting the length of the parent bone). Never use the Scale Tool.

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Monkey_of_Doom · May 14, 2012 at 12:52 PM 0

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Thanks for the response, but you can scale bones. As long as you use the uniform scale option, they scale fine. It causes no problems with animations or anything else, so far as I can tell. The Bone Tools option does not allow you to change the actual scale of the bones, only the height and width of the bone, but not the length.

I now just change my bone size before drawing so that the bones are small enough for the scale I am working at.

Piflik · May 14, 2012 at 12:57 PM 0

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You might not notice the problems on first glance, but they are there. To edit the length of a bone, activate Bone Edit $$anonymous$$ode. If you move around a bone, the parent bone will get longer or shorter.

Do bones need to be scaled to 1 in Unity?

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