Blender Naming and Unity Animations

[noonespecial]

In Blender, object must have unique names. In this case suspensionParent, suspensionParent.001, suspensionParent.002, and suspensionParent.003. Why four suspensionParents? Because the lander I'm working on has 4 legs.

Javascript is disabled. View full album

Now, my issues (which you've probably already guessed), AFAIK you can only specify a single suspensionParent under KSP's ModuleLandingLeg. Unity does allow transforms with identical names. However, remaining the different suspensionParents breaks the animation. Even though I've made the animation readable, I can find no way to edit the information within the Unity Animation Window.

Animating the lander solely within Unity, though possible, is not desirable because Unity does not respect the track constraints applied in Blender to keep the hydraulics lined up properly.

Any ideas for a possible solution?

FYI, the animation works perfectly in KSP with the exception of suspension (and the occasional falling through the floor, but I think I have that latter issue solved).

[CaptainKipard]

The obvious workaround is to make the legs one separate part and give it stack nodes for accurate placement.

Edited October 3, 2014 by Cpt. Kipard

[noonespecial]

The obvious workaround is to make the legs one separate part and give it stack nodes for accurate placement.

That is an obvious workaround. But not what I'm looking to do. For this particular part, I'd rather go without the suspension than make it an additional part.

[nli2work]

you can't rename them in Unity. best you can do is use AnimateGeneric to run all 4 legs at the same time, you wont' get suspension and use of "G" key. if you want to use ModuleLanderLeg, you have to split the lander leg into a part.

the other option is redo the animation in Unity after you've rearranged the hierarchy to include 4 identical suspension parents and wheelcolliders. don't know how ModuleLanderLeg will behave, I don't think it makes a list of suspension parents and wheel colliders.

you can try hacking the animation clip by forcing it to text mode and editing the suspension parent names in the animation curves to be identical. The curves are referenced from the root transform with period separating each level in the heirarchy tree, that's why when you rename something or insert another object in the original hierarchy tree the animation no longer works. I've never tried and can't say if it'll work or break anything in KSP.

Edited October 3, 2014 by nli2work

[noonespecial]

I animated all four of them in Blender as a single animation, so ModuleLanderLeg doesn't have any issues. I guess I'll just have to go without the suspension. I'll see if I can get anywhere "hacking" it, but we'll see.