Best Blender to Godot workflow for FPS viewmodel with multiple weapons?

Help
, , ,
1

Hi everyone,

I’m looking for advice on the technical “industry standard” setup for FPS animations. I can easily animate a single weapon with arms, but I’m struggling to scale this for a multi-weapon system (COD style).

My specific technical questions are:

  1. Rigging Structure: Should I use one “Master Arm Rig” and parent the weapon to a specific bone (Socket) using constraints? How do you handle the weapon’s own moving parts (like the magazine or slide) within the arm’s Action Editor?

  2. Constraint Management: When animating a reload, I often need the left hand to follow the magazine, then go back to the handguard. In Blender, do you use “Child Of” influence switching, and does that export correctly to Godot 4?

  3. Action Organization: Is it better to have one massive Blender file with every weapon and every animation, or should I have one file per weapon that links to a proxy Arm Rig?

  4. Godot Implementation: Once in Godot, how do you handle the “linking” between the Arm rig and the Weapon rig so they stay perfectly synced during a reload animation?

I’m more interested in the configuration and workflow (how to set up the bones and constraints) than the artistic side of animating.

Thanks for your insights!

2

Hey there, wanted to know if you’ve found some answers to this in the last couple months. Sorry I can’t offer much in return, but I’m running into a similar predicament and mulling over the options here as well.

If you happened to have any revelations I would love to hear them!

3
  1. The weapon attached to the hand bone using a BoneAttachment3D, reparent stuff as required.
  2. I wouldnt get the hand to follow the magazine, the hand puts a magazine in, the magazine doesn’t pull the hand
  3. Its better to instantiate them when needed then queue free (de instantiate) when not needed.
  4. Play the animations at the same time, the weapon being a child of a bone attachment should ensure that it stays stuck to the hand.