Creating rigged characters

For characters to animate properly in Unity, they must first be rigged inside 3D modeling software, such as 3ds Max, Maya, or Blender. Rigged means that an underlying skeleton or humanoid bone structure is added to the model by the artist, and each bone (such as the arm bone, leg bone, and so on) is specifically weighted (magnetized) to the vertices of the mesh. The purpose of the bones is to define the extent to which vertices in the character mesh should move and deform to conform to the skeleton.

This makes character animation easier because instead of animating a high-resolution character model and all its vertices, the animator can simply animate the skeleton (bones) and have the character deform automatically to match that skeleton.

A rigged character

The full details of character rigging and the rigging process are software-specific and beyond the scope of this book. This book assumes you already have a rigged character to import. However, you can generate...