when I import a new animation+same used

[weak plume]

Are the animations + rig in a separate import file to the mesh?

[lofty prairie]

yes! I don't quite know how to import additional animations without re-importing original mesh, so I've imported from blender new animation + rig only without touching old one asset

[weak plume]

I'm not really sure about this one myself, hopefully someone else can weigh in.

You mentioned the rig setup/bone names are identical in both rigs so your setup of copying the avatar should work. I remember having similar struggles before myself but haven't had the time/motivation to properly work on it and just went the route of having the mesh + rig + all anims in the one file. Maybe if someone else has gotten this working they can give some insight 🤞

[lofty prairie]

I hope so, because I don't want to re-import original mesh all the time (if it's possible ofc)
but maybe I've missed something while exporting from blender? like, I've just selected the armature in blender and animations, that's all I've exported into unity. maybe I need to export the mesh too with it? idk

I only do it that way, because in godot it done like that, lol. and I read that generic rigs are ass for retargeting in unity, so maybe it's the problem too, dunno

[weak plume]

Okay I actually got curious and did some testing on my own build

My setup originally has a single blend file with my player mesh, rig, and all animations.

What I just tried now is to duplicate that blender file and I stripped out the mesh leaving just the rig and I made a new test animation with it. So then this test file only had the rig and a single new animation and I copied the avatar generated from my original Player blend.

When I put the new anim on my player it worked fine. I am using humanoid rigs tho.

Maybe you can try some similar testing and see what happens

Although that's probably similar to what you originally did. You could also try unticking the Optimize Game Objects button on the original rig import, maybe that is creating some confusion with the bone remap, I'd be surprised if this is the case but you never know

[lofty prairie]

I've ended up just replacing from explorer my fbx file outside of unity, so I don't loose any meta data with the settings, lol.
kinda what I wanted to avoid, but I suppose it's least resistance path, so maybe I will get used to just replace assets, heh.

anyways, thanks for trying to help!

btw, any downsides for using blend file directly in unity? I always export stuff in fbx and import into the engine, but it's kinda tedious, heh

I always afraid that I will lose my files from outside, so maybe blend files directly kinda neat with git/git analogues

[weak plume]

No problem, thanks for the prompt to play around with and learn a little more about my own setup!

If it keeps you unstuck for now then it's good, can always reassess down the line

Using the blend file directly in unity is an interesting topic haha
So there's no technical downside, when Unity sees a blend file in the project folder it actually calls a python script in the background from within the unity install folders and uses that to export the .blend as .fbx, it still shows as .blend in the project view but for all intents and purposes it's an fbx

Now where that gets annoying is the default export settings for the background python script are kinda ass in my experience but you can modify it which is what I've done, you can change the export settings in it based on the blender fbx export api and it'll work the same as doing it in Blender UI

That's what I've done so when I have a .blend in my project view it has all the same export settings I used to use when exporting fbx from blender, things like FBX Units scale, Apply Transform, Only exporting deform bones on armatures, not adding leaf bones etc. are all done automatically by that background python script

[lofty prairie]

oh, cool stuff. thanks for detailed reply! will try to tinker with that thingy a bit

[weak plume]

Here's a nifty old thread I was in about it that goes into more details

https://discord.com/channels/489222168727519232/1417722882888564787

[lofty prairie]

thank so much! will check it asap