Loads of games use “fake” animations for their 3P meshes (most noticeable with reload animations where the magazines aren’t actually removed). In those games only the character is animated, the weapon is a “solid” mesh that’ just attached to the hand.
For the FP view the arms and weapon seem to usually be one merged skeletal mesh so that you can animate all of it in one go.
For the 3P view that path is not viable though as you can’t just switch out skeletons/meshes whenever equipping a new weapon. Any ideas on what would be a good and effective way to have more “interactive” animations for 3P?
I could imagine something like having generic bones like “magazine”, “item1”, “item2” in the 3P skeleton that just are animated differently for every weapon (if used at all). Or maybe attaching/detaching the magazine to the weapon/hands?
i believe this is the case because of optimization, less bones less work for the engine, you can still do 3rd person anims for your weapons that match with the 3rd person anims of the character, there’s no “laws” against it.
Amount of work for the engine and the developers are likely the reasons yes.
Do you mean you would animate the 2 (character and weapon) together in the animation software, then export both of them separately?
I’m just trying to get a few more ideas before I commit to anything.
We have not heard back from you in a few days, so we are marking this post as Resolved for tracking purposes. If you are still experiencing the issue you reported, please respond to this message with additional information and we will offer further assistance.