Before moving on here, let me take the time to thank Professor. Altman in providing me with the solution to solving this animation situation.

So, an issue that I was having earlier this week was trying to export the horse I’ve created for my Cadence Crusaders game properly from Maya and importing it to Unity, the game’s engine, with all of its animations that I’ve painstakingly created for it in the previous week.  Turns out that the way I managed to organize the animations, that being saving the walking, trotting, and galloping animations into their own separate scenes, isn’t the correct method.  As far as I’ve been told, unless you’re a masochist trying to make more work for yourself down the road, it’s best to have all the different animations you’ve made in just one scene and all on the same timeline so when importing to Unity, it’d be much easier to tell it where the frames for the animations are when the time to use them comes up.  When it came to applying this new information however, I’ve constantly hit roadblocks.  Protip for those of you that’ll come upon the same dilemma: DON’T go to scene “y” where animation “y” is, select all the controls from the outliner to then head over to the graph editor to copy the graphs displayed, and finally paste them in the graph editor in scene “x” containing the end of animation “x”!  Your model will turn into a janky Frankenstein of a monster!

Instead of pulling your hair out, do what did: the right thing!  In the scene containing your first animation, open up the Trax Editor found in Window>Animation Editors>Trax Editor.  After selecting all your controls from the Outliner, select Create>Animation Clip from the Trax Editor.  Once successful in creating a clip, it’s time to export it by selecting File>Export Animation Clip.  Name it something fitting and save it ’cause you’ll be coming back to it later.  Repeat the above until all of your clips are exported then open your scene that the first clip was created from then return to the Trax Editor to import your clips via File>Import Animation Clip to Characters.  An error message along the lines of “You must select a character first” may appear; by character they mean the first clip you created earlier.  You might not see it in the Trax Editor at the moment but it’s there; just highlight the object “multiCh” in your Outliner then press the Load Clip button in the Trax Editor to make the clip appear.  Highlight the clip and finally Import Animation Clip to place them wherever you need it on the timeline.  Make adjustments to the clips to whatever suits you best as its going to be exported for Unity purposes later.  Speaking of, do just that right now: File>Export All/Export Selection (if you have a lot of junk you don’t want exported, use the latter option), and save it as an FBX file.  Import it from Unity and presto, your model is ready to come to life!

Please don’t keep this knowledge to yourself my fellow ITGM majors.  Feel free to pass this info along to that one student on the cusp of punching his (or her) monitor and stomping on the keyboard from frustration.  As always, keep gaming!

Although I’m still a Junior, my adviser recommended that I take Senior Studio for the Fall quarter this year.  I knew what to expect before the first day of the course but damn, I didn’t think I would’ve been dealt the hand that I received!  Long story short, instead of being put on a team to create a game like, ya know, what a majority of the other students who completed the course did, I ended up being a one man army (or Marine in my case – see biography info if confused); I’m flying solo through this ordeal!  There are two other students that are in the same boat though so ironically I’m not alone here.  Kinda wished that the three of us formed some sort of brotherhood called “Deserted Developers” or something like that, but I digress.  Anyways, the game I’m creating is called “Cadence Crusaders”, a rhythm-based action game for the PC and iOS devices.  You’re a barbarian on horseback on a quest to rescue 8 damsels within 8 days.  It’s an automatic-scrolling game similar to “Jet Pack Joyride” with the only actions required from the player is jumping, attacking, and blocking; each successful action triggering a music cue.  There are other elements of the game to mention but why type it out when I can just provide you with the same presentation I used in class?  It’s progressing quite a bit I believe and I recently gained some valuable animation experience during the process, but I still have a ways to go to get this game in alpha status before the quarter’s finished.  Looks like me being busy for the next five weeks is more than guaranteed!  Keep gaming!