Maya animation for parts

[Blue]

It's been a long time since I attempted creating a custom game asset, and never before have I tried making an animated object-- with moving parts, or blendshapes. I use Maya 2011.

Right now I'm seriously considering making a solar panel, which would probably not work very well if it was separate polygons animated in the same scene. It would work best using Blend Shapes, like in facial animation.

I was just wondering if this method would still be viable for a part.

[nli2work]

no official answer honestly.

Unity does support blendshapes with skinned mesh component; the mesh needs to be skinned to a joint I think. I don't know if blendshapes will work in KSP, but I'm pretty sure skinned mesh will. Haven't had the time experiment myself.

[Blue]

I am not sure I can rig my model to joints or bones.

I am planning on making a fordable part not unlike origami, not just moving parts.

Collapsible tessellation doesn't exactly lend itself to joints without some terrifying skin deformation.

[nli2work]

by skinning to a joint I meant a single joint that the mesh is linked to, this because blendshapes in Unity is part of the Skinned Mesh renderer, which I believe requires a joint as root. The root joint doesn't need to be animated. all the actual animation is done with blendshapes. similar to how you might do the head, single joint moves the entire head, while blendshapes drive the expressions.

Raidernick was doing something like this recently, not sure how that worked out.