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

Implementing the turn animation


In this case, there is a single animation sequence that will be played when the zombie is turning to the right or left.

The FBX file containing the animation has already been imported. The next step is to add the resulting motion clip to the animator controller in its own state.

Adding the turning state

The turn animation is a single looping sequence used for a left or right turn:

  1. Make sure that the Animator panel is visible and the base layer is active.

  2. In the Project panel, locate the PACKT_Animations folder and click on it once to view its contents in the Assets panel.

  3. Locate the zombie_turn asset and expand its hierarchy by clicking on the arrow next to its name.

  4. Drag the zombie_turn animation into a blank area of the Animator panel to create a new state containing the clip.

  5. In the Inspector panel, rename the state Turn:

Next, we will set up an appropriate parameter and create transitions to and from our existing states.

Setting up the IsTurning parameter

We want...