Is it possible to animate without rig and import into Unity?

[Jake_See]

I am trying to make some low poly cartoon style robots to be imported into Unity, and I do not need any mesh deforms. Just some simple translation and rotation will do.

I see that objects can be individually key frame animated, however, they each get a different animation sequence.

For example, I have the robot eyes, hands, body, leg and head all as separate objects. For “Idle” animation, the body, head and hands will be bobbing up and down independently. When I key-frame the body, Blender automatically assigns a “bodyAction”; whereas, the head gets “headAction” and so on. In the end, is there anyway to group them together in Blender to say “Idle” animation = “bodyAction” + “headAction” + … ?

OR, must I use an Armature still?

Thanks.

[FedPete]

The best is to use an armature (bones) still because they can be related to each other!
Like move the robot bone and the head, arms, and legs will move too. All parts are lose objects (not one mesh)

• You can connect a mesh (without any deformation) to an object, head, arm, leg …
• To do things like move leg 5 times, then move arm while switching head. All single motions. It would help if you used the Blender NLA editor. It’s not much discussed in GameDev courses.
  But it’s the way to go for connecting, merging, and timing different animations (of individual parts). Use YouTube Blender NLA

[Jake_See]

Thanks @FedPete, I end up using armature as you suggested. I read up on NLA, looks like the animation window in Unity itself. At this point, I am not sure how to animate in NLA and export to Unity as named Animations. I will have to read more.