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I am almost certain that what im about to explain is simply not possible using parented bones, im asking just to be fully sure.

Assume that i have a leg animated in my custom format, it consists of 3 transformations(The upper part of the leg is rotated, the knee is rotated and the foot is rotated) the rotations each have different values (eg the leg was rotated 30 degrees in the x axis for example, the knee was rotated 60 degrees in the z axis and so on)

I have exported the bones to blender and built a hierarchy so leg has a child knee which has a child foot (Leg -> Knee -> Foot)

Now i want to convert the animation as well but i believe this is not possible as in blender rotating the leg would affect knee and foot aswell which would make the animation look wrong so i believe my only option is to export them as single bones(unless theres a way to keep them parented but i highly doubt it)

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  • $\begingroup$ This isn't specific enough yet. Blender's bones all have unique rotations as well. In addition, what are the positions of the bones? In world space? And you may be running into issues with different rotation formats (there are, after all, 6 different kinds of Eulers) and mistaking those for issues with armature format. We need pictures, demonstrations, files. $\endgroup$
    – Nathan
    Commented Nov 25, 2021 at 22:57
  • $\begingroup$ The positions of the bones are in world space in my original format but when exporting them to blender as parented bones, then the position is relative to the parent As for rotations, i use zxy eulers in my original format and that's how i construct my rotation matrix as well (that i export to blender) Im not sure what pictures/files i can post that would help, would a gif of the animation in my custom format & engine that moves the leg help? I can also provide the exported blender file that has the mesh with an armature exported from the custom format if that helps $\endgroup$
    – Suic
    Commented Nov 25, 2021 at 23:04

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If the original animation data-- the data that you want to import into Blender and use to recreate those animations in Blender-- provides the world space location of each individual bone, for each individual bone, then it is very likely that you have a completely deconstructed armature: at rest, every single bone is at the world origin, pointing in world origin axes, and is unparented. If you were to enter edit mode on such an armature, it would look something like this:

enter image description here

That is, every single bone occupying the exact same position, with the exact same axes. All those bone names just sitting on top of each other.... And yes, again, none of the bones with any parenting relationships, all of them just at root level.

The animation was almost certainly not built on a rig that looked like that, but in order to improve game performance, the animation may have been baked onto a rig that looked like that.

I can't say this with total certainty without testing it out on some actual animation data and comparing to the in-game animation. But that's what I'd expect.

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  • $\begingroup$ Thank you for the reply, but i figured that i'd just export the existing animations with a mesh where every bone is unparented, the sole purpose of it would be to view those animations and not edit. And for any editing purposes i edit the parented armature instead. $\endgroup$
    – Suic
    Commented Nov 26, 2021 at 17:13

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