Book Image

Unity Character Animation with Mecanim

By : Jamie Dean
Book Image

Unity Character Animation with Mecanim

By: Jamie Dean

Overview of this book

Game animation for independent developers has taken a giant leap forward with Unity 5's Mecanim toolset, which streamlines the import/export, retargeting, and many other aspects of the character animation workflow. Unity Character Animation with Mecanim is a great primer for getting to know the nuts and bolts of Mecanim and other character animation related tools in Unity 5. It offers you step-by-step instructions for preparing and exporting rigged models and animation sequences from commonly used 3D packages, such as Maya, 3ds Max and Blender. This book explores the new set of animation tools introduced with Mecanim in Unity 5. Approaching its subject matter through a typical genre–a zombie action game, character animation techniques are explored using real examples of player input and interaction, enemy behavior, and other aspects of game dynamics. As the book progresses, the reader will understand how these elements fit together in a small game development workflow. We will begin with a demonstration of the process of getting a rigged character into Unity 5 and setting it up to use provided animation sequences. We will also consider a few industry standard 3D packages and how these can be used to rig a humanoid character for use in Unity 5. We will demonstrate the retargeting capabilities of Mecanim’s Humanoid Animation type by adjusting motion sequences to fit disparate character types in our game. After this, we will look at Ragdoll physics and the implementation of this commonly used technique in a Mecanim workflow. The book culminates with a thorough dissection of the enemy character AI script incorporating the Mecanim elements detailed in the previous chapters. Unity Character Animation with Mecanim will provide you with a detailed exploration of the interaction between game development and character animation, and will broaden your understanding of the rich animation toolset within Unity 5
Table of Contents (16 chapters)
Unity Character Animation with Mecanim
Credits
About the Author
About the Reviewers
www.PacktPub.com
Preface
Free Chapter
1
The Zombie Attacks!
Index

Chapter 3. Interacting with the Environment

In this chapter we will explore several different kinds of interaction within Unity.

When we focus on the player and environment, interaction is based on a visual response to the player's input, and in a game, this usually takes the form of animation.

In this case, our game is played from a first-person perspective—we will not see the full character on screen, so what the player experiences, needs to concisely convey the state of the game.

Some first-person games display a weapon or just a crosshair. Our game will involve more than just shooting, so we will see the character's hands and arms—this will allow us to demonstrate different kinds of animation within Unity.

Mecanim will allow us to trigger animations according to player input and other conditions—try to think beyond the simple playing of an animation sequence when a button is pushed—Mecanim is capable of more than this and can bring about a richer user experience.

The interactive aspect of...