Animating multiple objects - workflow for weapon reload or animations, on FPS Arms

Hey all,

I am thinking about animating multiple objects, specifically the issue I am trying to tackle is doing weapon reload animations. I’ve realized that what UMotion animates needs to be on the GameObject select in the pose editor, and whatever is animated must be in that hierarchy. The object in question is my FPS Arms model, and guns are usually attached to it (ie. hand, or holder object). So I am left with a 3-4 options I believe, for workflow:

1. Keep all the guns on on the one object, like a big model game object. That way I can enable and disable what weapon is active and the animations will be easy because it’s all within the hierarchy of one GameObject.

2. Make separate copies of the FPS Arms, and permanently tie a specific weapon to that set of arms. This would be much less modular, and it would mean maintaining a separate set of arms in my project. That could cause complications in the future.

3. I suppose instead of having individual FPS Arms models, I could have distinct prefabs, each with the same FPS Arms models, and each with their respective weapon.

4. And finally, perhaps I can take advantage of this Sync feature I keep hearing about. This would mean having a separate animator and clips for the guns, and syncing them on the Unity timeline while using Umotion editor.

***. So far what I am doing is having FPS Arms rig/prefab, and attaching the guns when appropriate. This allows me to animate the gun as a child of FPS Arms and automatically in response to the location and rotation of the arm or holder. This is OK except for the fact that I have an issue with gun specific animations as mentioned above.

Also, one of my concerns is having to make a rig for each set of arms. It is time consuming to set up the IK and child-of constraints and such. *** So far, it has been easy. I simply duplicate the UMotion project, and use each for a different weapon animation set. I duplicated the original pistol Umotion project, then just deleted the clips and set it up easily for my Rifle animation set. All the constraints were re-usable. I’m concerned about that being an issue if I were to change my workflow.

I feel like these are important considerations and I wanted to ask for advice and how others have handled such issues. I’d like to consider my options and decide on which workflow “path” to take as it will be difficult to change once I am in one specific workflow. I may need to do all the animations and rig setup over again, for each weapon or animation set. Also I think it may be a good way for me to learn about the Sync feature which in general would be important for my continued use of this software and Unity’s animation features.

Thank you in advance.