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Unity 5.x Animation Cookbook

By : Szczesnik

4 (4)

Unity 5.x Animation Cookbook

4 (4)

By: Szczesnik

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.

Preface

Preface

What this book covers

What you need for this book

Who this book is for

Sections

Conventions

Reader feedback

Customer support

Free Chapter

Working with Animations

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Importing object animation from a 3D package

In Unity, you can import not only skeletal animation but also object transform animation. It can be useful for creating complex movements, for instance, an object following a path.

Getting ready

You have to animate an object's translation, rotation, or scale in a 3D package, then export the object as FBX file. You can also download the provided example Unity project and go to the Chapter 01 Working with animations\Recipe 10 Importing object animation from a 3D package directory. There is a scene called Example.unity there. This object has a follow path animation created in Blender and exported to FBX file. It has a normal Animator Controller with that animation as default state (looped). You can run the game to see the object animate.

How to do it...

To import object animation, follow these steps:

Animate an object in a 3D package (translation, rotation, and scale animations are supported).
Import the object into Unity and select the Generic rig type.
You can adjust animation settings normally (loop an animation for instance).
Create an Animator Controller and drag and drop one of the imported animations into the Animator window to create a default animation state.
Place your animated object into a scene and assign the controller to the Animator component of the object.
If you run the game, the object will be animated.

How it works...

Unity imports translation, rotation, and scale animation of 3D objects from a 3D package. It makes it easy to create complex animations and use advanced features of a chosen 3D software. Make sure to bake your animations into frames before importing them to Unity (Blender bakes the exported animations to frames by default). Importing mesh animation (vertices movement) is not supported (you have to use Blend Shapes instead; we will discuss them in detail in the Animating facial expressions with Blend Shapes recipe in Chapter 5, Character Actions and Expressions).

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