Introducing @MecWarriors!
Posted: November 25, 2014 Filed under: News/Updates | Tags: animation, game dev, mecanim, mecwarriors, twitter, unity3D Leave a comment
The MecWarriors have a twitter account now! I guess it’s been around for about a month, but I never officially announced it on the site so I thought I should. In a nutshell, we now officially use the handle @MecWarriors for all of the site-related hijinks we can imagine. All post releases, event plans, and general announcements will come from this account.
So you should follow us on Twitter! @MecWarriors
But I want @MecWarriors to be so much more than a simple news feed. I’ve set it up so that it automatically retweets any tweet with #mecanim or #mecwarriors, so if you ever want to share your Mecanim work on Twitter we’ve got you covered. And if you ever have any questions for us or need any help with your Mecanim projects, we’ll totally work with you directly through Twitter! Just tweet us your problems, and we’ll help you get back on your feet A.S.A.P.
I truly hope that through @MecWarriors we can grow to become an awesome community of developers that talk, share, and connect with each other about Mecanim and game development, and I want you to be a part of it. Won’t you join us on Twitter?
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.
Me when I think I know something cool.
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. 🙂
Dan Hernbrott, BEARCOWBOY
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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Quick Tips on using animations within the Animation Tree
Posted: December 18, 2013 Filed under: Tool Tips | Tags: animation, animation tree, animator controller, game design, game dev, mecanim, mecwarriors Leave a commentAlthough apart of the MecWarriors is to demonstrate Mecanims features and how to use them, I like to occasionally like to write some short tips on the features of Mecanim. This particular feature is to show you some quick shortcuts on using animation within the Animation Tree.
Generic Rig Setting
Posted: November 29, 2013 Filed under: 3D Animation | Tags: animation, animation rigs, game design, game dev, generic rig setting, mecanim, unity, unity3D Leave a commentSo far, we’ve set up our characters with a humanoid rig setting, which is convenient because our characters have been human. But more than likely, you’ll create a non-humanoid creature for a scene or game. In previous posts I mentioned a few of the features in the Humanoid setting differs from the Generic Setting. In this post, I’m briefly going to discuss setting up a character using the Generic Rig Setting. And I’ve conveniently found a pretty nice dog rig which can be found here.
(Creative Crash offers various other rigs to choose from if you ever want to animate something but aren’t that savvy with character modeling.)
The MecWarriors 