Unity 5.x Animation Cookbook

Unity 5.x Animation Cookbook

By : Maciej Szczesnik

Buy this Book

Unity 5.x Animation Cookbook

By: Maciej Szczesnik

Buy this Book

Overview of this book

This recipe-based practical guide will show you how to unleash the power of animation in Unity 5.x and make your games visually impeccable. Our primary focus is on showing you tools and techniques to animate not only humanoid biped characters, but also other elements. This includes non-humanoid character animation, game world creation, UI element animation, and other key features such as opening doors, changing lights, transitioning to different scenes, using physics, setting up ragdolls, creating destructible objects and more. While discussing these topics, the book will focus on mecanim, the Unity 3D animation tool, and how you can use it to perform all these tasks efficiently and quickly. It contains a downloadable Unity project with interactive examples for all the recipes. By the end of this book, you will be confident and self-sufficient in animating your Unity 3D games efficiently.

Title Page

Credits

About the Author

About the Reviewer

www.PacktPub.com

Preface

Free Chapter

Working with Animations

Introduction

Importing skeletal animations

Configuring generic and humanoid rigs

Creating and assigning an Animator Controller

Creating animation transitions in Animator Controller

Using parameters to control the animation flow

Using animations from multiple assets

Looping, mirroring and offsetting the animations

Adjusting the playback speed of animations

Using override animator controllers to animate different types of characters

Importing object animation from a 3D package

Working with the Animation View

Introduction

Using the Animation View to create a flickering light

Blending light colors with the Animation View and the Animator Controller

Animating an object's world position - creating a moving platform

Animating object's local position - creating automatic doors

Using the Hierarchy to animate local rotation - creating an orbiting planet

Animating triggers - creating a death trap

Creating an elevator triggered by player input

2D and User Interface Animation

Introduction

Exporting a 2D sprite animation from a 3D package

Creating a frame-by-frame sprite animation with the Animation View

Creating a 2D sprite doll animation with the Animation View

Using the Animator Controller to play sprite animations

Creating a fade out - fade in transition with the Animation View

Creating a swipe transition with the Animation View

Using filled images for creating animated progress bars

Using Mecanim states for animating UI button states

Character Movement

Introduction

Using Blend Trees to blend walk and run animations

Using root motion to drive Rigid Body characters' movement with animations

Using root motion to steer a character

Using animations for better looking transitions

Using root motion for a 180 degrees turn

Making a character jump with 3-phase animation

Using root motion to drive a NavMesh Agents' movement with animations

Using triggers to grab an edge while jumping

Changing the character's collision while crouching

Adding animation to off-mesh links

Using root motion for climbing

Using root motion to create flying characters

Character Actions and Expressions

Introduction

Creating an appear or a disappear animation

Creating background characters and critters with animation-driven behavior

Using Blend Trees to create randomized actions

Using Quaternion.LookRotation() and Animator.SetLookAtPosition() methods to make characters follow an object with their gaze

Action Points - performing an action in a specified spot

Synchronizing an animation with objects in the scene

Using IK for interacting with scene objects

Animating facial expressions with Blend Shapes

Handling Combat

Introduction

Using Sub-State Machines in Animator Controller

Using Animation Events to trigger script functions

Using transitions from Any State to play hit reactions

Using root motion to create a dodge move

Checking what Animator state is currently active to disable or enable player actions

Using Animation Events to draw a weapon

Using Avatar Masks and animator controller layers to walk and aim

Using the LookAt() method to aim

Using Blend Trees to aim

Detecting the hit location on a character

Special Effects

Introduction

Using Animation Events to trigger sound and visual effects

Creating camera shakes with the Animation View and the Animator Controller

Using the Animation View to animate public script variables

Using additive Mecanim layers to add extra motion to a character

Using Blend Shapes to morph an object into another one

Using wind emitters to create motion for foliage and particle systems

Using sprite sheets to animate particles

Animating properties of a particle system with the Animation View

Using waveform of a sound clip to animate objects in the scene

Creating a day and night cycle with the Animation View

Animating Cutscenes

Introduction

Using the Animation View to animate the camera

Changing cameras with animation

Synchronizing animation of multiple objects

Importing a whole cutscene from a 3D package

Synchronizing subtitles

Using root motion to play cutscenes in gameplay

Physics and Animations

Introduction

Using cloth

Using rigid body joints

Destructible objects

Creating a humanoid ragdoll with the ragdoll wizard

Creating a generic ragdoll with character joints

Applying force to a ragdoll

Dismemberment

Getting up from a ragdoll

Miscellaneous

Introduction

Using math to animate an object

Using the Lerp() function to animate an object

Using the Rotate() function to animate an object

Preparing motion capture files for humanoid characters

Adding behaviors to Mecanim states

Index

Customer Reviews

5 star

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Creating and assigning an Animator Controller

Animator Controllers are state machines (graphs) responsible for controlling the flow of animations of any animated object in the game. The same Animator Controller asset can be used by multiple objects or characters. Unity will create an independent runtime copy of the asset for each animated object it is assigned to.

Getting ready

As always, you should have a rigged and animated character ready before we start. Import it into Unity, choose the proper rig type, and put it into a scene. You can download the example Unity project and go to the Chapter 01 Working with animations\Recipe 03 Creating and assigning an animator controller directory. There is a scene called Example.unity there. If you open it, you'll find a Sheep character in the Hierarchy. It has an Animator Controller already created and assigned. You can also use the Quadruped.fbx file from the Chapter 01 Working with animations\Recipe 03 Creating and assigning an animator controller\Rigs directory to follow the recipe step by step.

How to do it...

To create and assign an Animator Controller, follow these steps:

Navigate to the Project View (any directory in the Assets folder) and press the right mouse button.
Choose Create | Animator Controller from the menu. A controller asset will be created. You can name it as you wish.
Double-click on the created controller. An Animator tab will appear. It will show the current selected Animator Controller.

Here you can add the first animation. Navigate to your imported character in the Project View. Unfold it and drag and drop one of the imported animations into the Animator window. A new state will be created and will be colored orange, showing that this is the default animation state—the state from which your graph starts.

Navigate to your character on the scene and select it.
Find the Animator component in the Inspector tab. All animated objects have an Animator component added automatically.
Find the Controller slot in the Animator component inspector.
Drag and drop your Animator Controller asset into the Controller slot of the Animator component.
Run the game to see your character play the default state animation of your Animator Controller. If the animation is not looped, it will be played just once and then the character will freeze.
You can also select your character in runtime and navigate to the Animator tab to see what animation state the character is currently in. Current animation state will have a blue progress bar displayed.

How it works...

Every animated object in Unity uses an Animator component and an Animator Controller asset. The component is responsible for playing animations in runtime. It has a number of parameters that we have to set or we can use to tweak the component's functionality:

Controller: This is the field we have to attach the Animator Controller asset to. It determines which animation graph the Animator component will use.

Avatar: In Unity, Avatars are rig definitions. For instance, if we have multiple files containing animations with the same Generic rig, we should use the same Avatar for all of them. You can find more information about it in the Using animations from multiple assets recipe.
Apply Root Motion: With this checkbox, we can turn the root motion on and off. It can be useful when we have animations with root motion but don't want to use the root motion definition for a given character.
Update Mode: This parameter tells Unity in which update the animations should be evaluated. The Normal option makes the animations synchronized with the normal Update() call, the Animate Physics option synchronizes animations with the physics FixedUpdate() call, and the Unscaled Time option synchronizes the animation with the normal Update() call, but disables animation time scaling (the animation is played with 100 percent speed regardless of the Time.timeScale variable value).
Culling Mode: This parameter tells Unity when to turn off the animation playback on a given Animator. The Always Animate option makes the Animator always play animations (event when off-screen), the Cull Update Transforms option culls Retarget and IK Transforms when the Animator is not visible on screen, and the Cull Completely option disables the animation completely when the Animator is not visible on screen.

The Animator Controller asset stores a graph of animations (animation states) and defines the rules of switching between them, blending them, and so on. The controller (asset) is attached to the component's Controller field (the component is attached to a character prefab or a character placed in the scene). Many objects or characters can share the same Animator Controller if they use the same animations (have the same rigs or are humanoid characters).

Unity 5.x Animation Cookbook

By : Maciej Szczesnik

Unity 5.x Animation Cookbook

By: Maciej Szczesnik

Overview of this book

Related Content you might be interested in

Current Title:

Unity 5.x Animation Cookbook

Creating and assigning an Animator Controller

Getting ready

How to do it...

How it works...

See also