Book description
A recipe-based guide to give you practical information on Unity 5.x animation techniques and tools
About This Book
A straightforward and easy-to-follow format.
A selection of the most important tasks and problems.
Carefully organized instructions to solve problems efficiently.
Clear explanations of what you did.
Solutions that can be applied to solve real-world problems.
Who This Book Is For
This book is for Unity developers who have some exposure to Unity game development who want to learn the nuances of animation in Unity. Previous knowledge of animation techniques and mecanim is not necessary.
What You Will Learn
Importing animations to Unity
Work with different animation assets and components
Create, visualize, and edit animated creatures
Animating game cut scenes
Design character actions and expressions
Create gameplay by animating characters and environments
Use animations to drive in-game logic
In Detail
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.
Style and approach
This practical no-nonsense guide is recipe-based with real-world examples of almost all the techniques mentioned.
Table of contents
- Title Page
- Copyright
- Credits
- About the Author
- About the Reviewer
- www.PacktPub.com
- Preface
-
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
- Physics and Animations
- Miscellaneous
Product information
- Title: Unity 5.x Animation Cookbook
- Author(s):
- Release date: May 2016
- Publisher(s): Packt Publishing
- ISBN: 9781785883910
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