Weapon Reload animations with First Person model

Hello all,

My project consists of using an FPS model (arms) and appropriate UMotion project/rigs.

I came across the problem of animating the gun as well. It seems that to animate the gun, with UMotion, along with the FPS model, it needs to be part of the hierarchy, and this leads to issue with design, as not all weapons are attached to the FPS model (hierarchy) at a time. Here are my considerations so far:

1. I suppose I could make it all one big model, and just enable the active weapon and disable all non-active weapons. That way the weapons would always be children in the hierarchy and could be simultaneously animated in Umotion.

2. I could also make a seperate FPS arm model with its own weapon, and that way I could animate it as one object, but again this would require multiple arm models, and isn't exactly modular in the way i'd like.

3. And the other way would be to sync the FPS arm animations with the gun animations. It would be more modular, but add complexity, as I would need a separate animator and clips, one for the arms, and one each for each weapon. I believe the Sync feature would allow me to do this? For instance, if i was creating a weapon reload animation, then i could move the arms down, then go to Unity animation editor and then move the gun clip, and such and such?

Could anyone that has experience with this issue give me a sense of how they did it, or support, could you shed light on which would be more ideal? I still have yet to explore the Sync feature, but that may be the way to go if i indeed want to sync one object's animations with the other.

I think I would like #3, because it is a bit more modular, and i'm thinking for the long run.

Either way this is something i need to figure out soon soon because i'd have to change everything if i change this system of how the arms and guns are put together.