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

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Using override animator controllers to animate different types of characters

If you have multiple types of character in your game, most probably you would like to be able to share the animation states logic between them and just replace the animation clips. Imagine that you have several types of enemies, and their combat logic is the same (they have attacks, movement, hit reactions, and so on) but they use different animation clips. For such situations, Override Animator Controllers come in handy.

Getting ready

You should have at least two characters with different animation clips ready and imported into Unity. You can also download the provided example Unity project and go to the Chapter 01 Working with animations\Recipe 09 Using override animator controllers to animate different types of characters directory. There is a scene called Example.unity there. If you open it, you'll find Warrior and Spider game objects in the Hierarchy. They have Override Animator Controllers attached, and you can examine them. If you run the game, the characters will play attack animations. The underlying logic is defined in the HumanCombat controller (found in the Animator Controllers directory). The Warrior game object uses the HumanCombat controller without overriding it, the Spider game object uses a SpiderCombat override controller.

How to do it...

To use Override Animator Controllers, follow these steps:

Create a normal Animator Controller that will be used as the reference controller containing the logic of animation states. In the provided example, it is the HumanCombat controller, created with Warrior animations.
You can attach this controller to your first character (its Animator component) and use it as previously.
Create an Override Animator Controller by right-clicking on the Project View and choosing Create | Override Animator Controller.
Select the newly created override controller and go to the Inspector tab.
Drag and drop your original/reference Animator Controller to the Controller field of the newly created override controller.
You will see all your original animation clips listed on the left and fields for overriding those animation clips.

Drag and drop the animation clips from your second character to the override fields corresponding with original animation clips of your first character. In the provided example, Human animations are replaced with Spider animations.
Assign the Override Animator Controller to the Controller field of the Animator component of your second character.

How it works...

Override Animator Controller only replace animation clips from your original Animator Controller. The logic of the original controller stays the same (so you can also use the same scripts to set the same parameters and so on). It is extremely useful for creating NPC characters in your games. You create the Animator Controller once, you write the scripts driving the controller once and only change the animations.

Note

Your original Animator Controller has to have animation clips. You cannot override empty animation states.

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

Using override animator controllers to animate different types of characters

Getting ready

How to do it...

How it works...

Note