Unity Character Animation with Mecanim

Unity Character Animation with Mecanim

By : Jamie Dean

Buy this Book

Unity Character Animation with Mecanim

By: Jamie Dean

Buy this Book

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

Unity Character Animation with Mecanim

Credits

About the Author

About the Reviewers

www.PacktPub.com

Preface

Free Chapter

The Zombie Attacks!

Setting up the project

Summary

Rigging Characters for Unity in 3ds Max and Maya

Understanding the need for rigging

Minimum requirements

Sourcing models

Modeling for animation

Rigging in 3ds Max

Rigging in Maya

Summary

Interacting with the Environment

Importing the project assets package

Adding and implementing collectable objects

Summary

Working with Motion Capture Data

Introduction to motion capture sequences and their characteristics

Using a motion capture sequence with a pre-rigged model

Summary

Retargeting Animation

Loading the scene

Creating five walk variations from two walk cycles

Adding more Avatar masks

Summary

Talking Heads

Adding the snarl face animation to the female zombie character

Adding code to the zombie_ready script

Updating the animator controller to include the face animation

Implementing the turn animation

Driving a blendshape animation with the animator controller

Summary

Controlling Player Animation with Blend Trees

Adding a Blend Tree to the player's existing animator controller

Varying the pickup animation with a Blend Tree

Summary

Implementing Ragdoll Physics

Introduction to joints in Unity

Creating the ragdoll object

Summary

Controlling Enemy Animation with AI and Triggers

Implementing range detection

Pathfinding and obstacle detection with navMesh

Timing out the zombie's pursuit

Summary

Index

Customer Reviews

5 star

4 star

3 star

2 star

1 star

Adding code to the zombie_ready script

The script currently attached to the female zombie, adequately handles its current states: Idle and Walk. We need to add a few lines of code to the script to trigger the face animation:

In the Project panel, scroll down until the PACKT_Scripts folder is visible.
Double-click on it to make its contents visible in the Assets panel.
Locate zombie_ready and double-click on it to open the script in MonoDevelop.

We will start by adding a few variables. At the top of the script, add the following lines of code:

var target : Transform;
var alerted : boolean = false;
var snarlSound : AudioClip;
var soundReady : boolean = true;

The target variable will store the player character's position. The next variable, alerted is a boolean. It is basically an on/off switch that will allow the zombie to go into a new routine.

The next two variables deal with the sound that we will be using to make it clear that the zombie has been alerted.

The snarlSound variable is an audio clip...

Unity Character Animation with Mecanim

By : Jamie Dean

Unity Character Animation with Mecanim

By: Jamie Dean

Overview of this book

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Unity Character Animation with Mecanim

Adding code to the zombie_ready script