Can I use the same animation model on multiple 3D characters in Unity3D?

Question

I am creating a game in Unity3D.

My character animation is in the form of stickman animation files but can be either Maya or Cinema4D.

Is it possible to have multiple 3D characters and swap between them in game - however, use the same stickman animation as their movement underneath?

Would the characters need to have the exact same skeleton?

Answer 1

Basically you can use the same animation for more than one model according to the book Creating 3D Game Art for the Iphone with Unity by Wes McDermott (some excerpts available at Google Books.

Citing page 143: Another aspect worth mentioning is that you can reuse animations on different characters as long as their hierarchies are the same based on how the Animation Component references objects.

I tested it some time ago with a 2nd rig being synchronised in parallel and it worked.

So the skeleton should be identical at least the bone names need to be present. Swapping characters is possible and mainly used for death animations. In this situation you have a kinematic rigidbody whose physics components are then transformed into ragdoll. I see no problem to extend this to the whole character.