Scripting Root Motion
Posted: August 18, 2014 Filed under: 3D Animation | Tags: animation, c#, character animation, csharp, game dev, humanoid, mecanim, mecwarriors, tutorial, unity3D 9 CommentsHey, Warriors! It’s Adam here again, and today I’m going to show you how to set up a root motion animation system in your code.
In previous posts where I’ve gone over the fundamentals of setting up humanoid animation systems, I focused on creating character motion using both the standard Third Person Controller script and the root motion option in the Animator component.
As you may have discovered in those posts, these systems definitely have a few flaws that make them a little hard to work with at times. The TPC script is quite old and isn’t really meant to work with Mecanim which causes various headaches, and relying on root motion to determine your character’s movement means including unnecessary animation work early on in your development schedules. You can’t truly test a root motion-based movement system without some animations set up to make it work, and this means focusing on animation during your prototyping phases, which may not be a good option.
But fear not, Warriors! There is yet another way to control the awesome power that is Mecanim, and by the end of this post you’ll be using your home-brewed character controllers to control some of the more negative aspects that come with using a root motion system to move your characters around. Grab the example package, and let’s get on our way!
[Scripting_RootMotion]
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MecNews 8-15-2014
Posted: August 15, 2014 Filed under: News/Updates | Tags: game dev, mecanim, mecnews, mecwarriors, news, tutorial, unity3D Leave a commentHello wonderful Warriors! It’s been a while since we’ve had any new content on the site, and I wanted to give you all an update on how things are going for The MecWarriors. So go ahead and enjoy this nice big bundle of news, because a brand new tutorial will be available on Monday for some good learnin’. 🙂
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Guest Post: Brian Block, Rigging a Character for Audio with Mecanim
Posted: April 15, 2014 Filed under: 3D Animation, Audio, Guest Posts, Videos | Tags: audio, c#, game dev, game sound, mecanim, mecwarriors, sound design, unity3D, video, video tutorial 1 CommentHi Warriors! It’s time to learn about sound! Today I have a special guest post from sound designer Brian Block on how to set up audio cues in your animations using Mecanim. Brian has made a fantastic hands-on video for you all, so be sure to download the package below if you want to follow along. Have fun!
Guest_BrianBlock_RiggingForAudio
Brian Block is a sound designer and composer living in Chicago, IL. While proficient in audio production, Brian’s specialty is video game audio implementation. He works with middleware tools like Wwise and FMOD to incorporate game audio in unique and interactive ways. Previously, Brian served as the Audio Lead for the Undertakers game project (related: MecWarriors @ GDC). More of his work can be found here: http://www.brianalanblock.com
MecWarriors @ GDC – Vault Video
Posted: April 8, 2014 Filed under: News/Updates, Videos | Tags: game dev, game developers conference, gdc, gdc 2014, mecwarriors, unity3D, video 1 CommentAlright, the GDC Vault videos are up! Which means that our recorded session is now available to watch online. If you’d like to see our talk from GDC just click the link below and enjoy.
Our talk was a postmortem on our use of Mecanim when it first came out. We were in the middle of developing Undertakers, a Wild West multiplayer shooter, and we decided to upgrade our animation system from Legacy to Mecanim. This was our first experience with Mecanim, and in our presentation we discuss the challenges of using the brand new tool in our work.
Interested in having us speak at a public or private event? Let us know on our Contact Page.
2D Animation, Part 4 – Code Explanation
Posted: April 2, 2014 Filed under: 2D Animation, Guest Posts | Tags: 2d animation, animation, c#, character animation, code, csharp, game dev, mecanim, scripting, unity2d Leave a commentPreviously on the site we hosted a guest series on 2D animation in Mecanim written by game artist Jonathan Ferriter. In Part 3 of the series, Jon showed us how take our 2D animations and implement them in the Unity engine using the two scripts provided in the post and titled Jump.cs and Move.cs.
In that third video, Jon sort of skims through the makeup of these scripts and doesn’t take the time to explain how they actually work, so I wanted to write this post in order to discuss them further. While writing this post I’ve gone through both scripts, learned how they work, and written comments in them so you might better understand their systems. You can download the updated scripts from this link.
Guest_JonFerriter_2DAnimation
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Q & A: BEARCOWBOY – Charlotte Seeker
Posted: February 23, 2014 Filed under: Dev Q & A | Tags: 2d animation, animation, game design, game dev, interview, mecanim, mecwarriors, q&a, unity2d, unity3D Leave a commentHi Warriors! I have a treat for you today! I was talking to a few of my friends who are using Mecanim in their current game project, and I thought it would be really cool to share their work with everyone in a new Q & A format. I hope you enjoy this little interview, and if you’d like to see more content like this coming from active developers be sure to let us know in the comments. 🙂
And now let me introduce BEARCOWBOY, an LLC made up of talented developers Dan Hernbrott (@hernbot) and Joseph Hogwood (@JRPGKing). They are currently working on their game Charlotte Seeker, which I encourage you to support via their Charlotte Seeker Kickstarter. (Hurry! It’s nearly over!) I spoke with Dan about their work, and here’s what he had to say.
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Guest Post: Jon Ferriter, 2D Animation – Part 3
Posted: February 3, 2014 Filed under: 2D Animation, Guest Posts, Videos | Tags: 2d animation, animation, mecanim, mecwarriors, robots, unity2d, unity3D, video 2 CommentsHooray! We’ve made it! It’s the last video in Jon Ferriter‘s series on 2D animation with Mecanim. This time Jon’s going to show us how to take all of the animations we made in Part 1 and Part 2 and put them into Unity. By the end you’ll be able to move your animated robot around in a 2D game scene, and you can begin building your very own 2D game. 🙂
Note: There’s a lot of scripting in this video that Jon kind of skims over. To help understand what he’s doing, I’ll be writing a 4th post that explains the code in more detail.
Guest_JonFerriter_2DAnimation
Blend Trees: 1-D Blending
Posted: January 29, 2014 Filed under: 3D Animation | Tags: animator controller, blend, blend tree, c#, code, humanoid, mecanim, mecwarriors, scripting, unity3D 4 Comments“A common task in game animation is to blend between two or more similar motions. Perhaps the best known example is the blending of walking and running animation according to the character’s speed.”
— Unity Docs
What Is A Blend Tree?
A blend tree is a special type of animation node in Mecanim that allows multiple different animation clips to be played at the same time so that an animated object can shift between different motions. It allows us to maintain a smoothed state of motion in situations where a quick animation swap would otherwise appear jerky and visually inconsistent.
This smoothed motion is created when a blend tree takes a percentage of each animation involved in the blend and combines them into a single unique motion. The percentage of each animation that a blend tree uses in a blend is controlled by one or more parameters set in our Animator Controller. As the values of these parameters change, the percentage of each animation used in a blend is adjusted in real time.
In this post I want to show you how to set up a few basic blend trees of your own and discuss some situations where blend trees can really help out in your Mecanim development. Let’s go, Warriors!
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Guest Post: Jon Ferriter, 2D Animation – Part 2
Posted: January 27, 2014 Filed under: 2D Animation, Guest Posts, Videos | Tags: 2d animation, animation, mecanim, mecwarriors, robots, unity2d, unity3D, video tutorial 3 CommentsHappy Monday! Today, I have for you the second part in Jon Ferriter‘s tutorial on 2D animation with Mecanim. In this week’s segment, Jon shows you how to set up a jump and a walk animation for your robot character. Because the video was so long, I asked Jon to split it up for us. Hopfeully this gives you a good break point between videos if you need it.
If you missed last week’s video on setting up an idle animation, you can check it out here: [Guest Post: Jon Ferriter, 2D Animation – Part 1]. Be sure to download the assets package below if you missed it in the last post. Enjoy!
Guest_JonFerriter_2DAnimation
Guest Post: Jon Ferriter, 2D Animation – Part 1
Posted: January 20, 2014 Filed under: 2D Animation, Guest Posts, Videos | Tags: 2d animation, animation, mecanim, mecwarriors, robots, unity2d, unity3D, video tutorial 3 CommentsWelcome back, Warriors! As promised, I have an awesome video series on 2D animation in Mecanim for you from the wonderful Jonathan Ferriter.
This first video will show you how to take a 2D drawing and give it an idle animation in Photoshop. Be sure to download the tutorial package for assets to work with for the next few posts.
Guest_JonFerriter_2DAnimation
Have fun!
[Read on to learn more about this series and its author.]