Guidelines for Rigging Game Characters in Harmony
The following are guidelines to follow when creating a character rig in Harmony if you plan to export it for use in Unity.
Resources Usage |
When rigging and animating game sprites, you need to keep in mind the size of the exported sprite sheets as well as the resources required to play out their animations. If you are working on a console or PC game, you have a lot of leeway for both, as they often have high performance video cards and a lot of storage space. If you are working on a mobile game, you might need to take measures to ensure your animation and sprite sheets are lightweight, as mobile devices have slower rendering hardware and more limited storage space. Also, some users may want to download your game over a mobile data network with costly data charges. |
Hierarchy |
When creating your character rig's structure, you should use a simple peg-layer hierarchy, which means:
Body parts that are meant to move together with other body parts (i.e.: the head with the neck, the forearm with the arm, etc.) can be rigged together in either one of these ways:
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z-Axis Positioning |
Nudging layers on the z-Axis to change the order in which they appear is supported and its effect will be visible in Unity. However, you should not attempt to put layers at significant distances from each other on the z-Axis in Harmony, as they will not be rendered in perspective in Unity.
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Animation functions |
By default, pegs use 3D Path functions to record their position. It is recommended, but not required, to configure your pegs to use Separate position functions instead, as 3D Path functions are a bit heavier on performance. You can make a peg use separate functions by opening its Layer properties, then selecting Separate under the Position section.
NOTEConverting a peg or layer's function type to Separate will discard any existing animation on that peg or layer.
How to make a peg's position functions separate
Also, you should only animate using Bezier type functions. This is the default type of function that Harmony creates when you animate a peg or a layer. However, some animators or rig artists may have the habit of manually configuring their layers and pegs to use Ease functions instead. Exporting animation that uses Ease type functions to Unity is not supported, so you should not do that when creating a game asset.
How to make sure peg's position functions are Bezier functions
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Effects |
Aside from the Cutter, you should not use any effect, as no other effect supported by Harmony can be exported to Unity. NOTES
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Bitmap | |
Symbols | The use of symbols is not supported. |
Art Layers |
Only the artwork in the Line Art and Colour Art layers will be exported to Unity. By default, those are the only two art layers available. However, if you enabled the Support Overlay and Underlay Arts preferences, which is available in the Advanced tab of the Preferences dialog, you can use the Overlay and Underlay Art layers as reference or sketch layers. They will be visible in Harmony, but they will not be exported in your sprite sheets. |