What happens to Blender IK bones in Mecanim?

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As the title says, i wanna know what happens to bones that do not deform the mesh (like IK bones) when imported into unity and used in Mecanim. I am a complete newbie in terms of animations in Unity so i really wanna know how this works so i can prepare my character in blender before animating/importing it.

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Answer by LukaKotar · Dec 07, 2013 at 10:00 PM

You don't need to worry about that. If the bones do not deform the mesh in Blender, they will not do so in Unity either. They will stay, but they won't do anything. They won't affect the model or its animation in any way, you will just have some extra bones in the rig.

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M1k4 · Dec 07, 2013 at 10:16 PM 0

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I was worried that all my animations would turn into a soup of arms and legs...

meat5000 ♦ · Dec 07, 2013 at 10:20 PM 0

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I almost agree. You shouldn't worry but you can get strange deformations when the I$$anonymous$$ is stripped out. These are, however, easily remedied, normally.

Answer 2

Answer by meat5000 · Dec 07, 2013 at 10:19 PM

Adding this in for the info.

IK is only supported by Unity Pro. Placing an IK rig into free version will strip out the IK and will use FK (Forward Kinematics) to derive the movements instead.

Most other fangled stuff in Blender is unsupported by Unity as of yet.

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LukaKotar · Dec 07, 2013 at 10:30 PM 1

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Correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't the I$$anonymous$$ in Unity a completely different thing from the I$$anonymous$$ in Blender? Unity's I$$anonymous$$ is meant to correct bone positions (place feet on the ground, move a hand to a specific point in the world, etc...), and Blender's I$$anonymous$$ is meant to help with animating (grab a bone to pull the entire arm, for example). I am not an expert tho, this is just how I imagine it.

meat5000 ♦ · Dec 07, 2013 at 11:48 PM 0

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I$$anonymous$$ is simply giving Child bones the ability to influence a parent bone, and the I$$anonymous$$ count is how far up the chain the effect is apparent. This is same across the board.

Re-placing feet and hands etc is $$anonymous$$ecanim Retargetting.

Unity I$$anonymous$$

The thing is that I$$anonymous$$ is not really necessary in Blender as by process we $$anonymous$$eyframe all our animations anyway. I$$anonymous$$ is only really useful when there is a dynamic element to the anim, like $$anonymous$$ecanim applies. This is why Blender I$$anonymous$$ is stripped out and (if you have pro) replaced by Unity I$$anonymous$$, or F$$anonymous$$ otherwise.

What happens to Blender IK bones in Mecanim?

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