Using Humanoid Characters

In order to take full advantage of Mecanim’s humanoid animation system and retargeting, you need to
have a rigged and skinned humanoid type mesh.

1. A character model is generally made up of polygons in a 3D package or converted to polygon or

triangulated mesh, from a more complex mesh type before export.

2. A joint hierarchy or skeleton which defines the bones inside the mesh and their movement in
relation to one another, must be created to control the movement of the character. The process
for creating the joint hierarchy is known as rigging.

3. The mesh or skin must then be connected to the joint hierarchy in order to define which parts of
the character mesh move when a given joint is animated. The process of connecting the skeleton
to the mesh is known as skinning.

Stages for
preparing a character (modeling, rigging, and skinning)

How to obtain humanoid models

There are three main ways to obtain humanoid models for with the Mecanim Animation system:

1. Use a procedural character system or character generator such

as Poser, Makehuman or Mixamo. Some of these systems will rig and skin your mesh (eg,
Mixamo) while others will not. Furthermore, these methods may require that you reduce the
number of polygons in your original mesh to make it suitable for use in Unity.

2. Purchase demo examples and character content from the Unity Asset Store.

3. Also, you can of course prepare your own character from scratch.

Export & Verify

Unity imports a number of different generic and native 3D file formats. The format we recommend for
exporting and verifying your model is FBX 2012 since it will allow you to:

 Export the mesh with the skeleton hierarchy, normals, textures and animation

 Re-import into your 3D package to verify your animated model has exported as you expected
  Export animations without meshes

Preparing your own character

There are three main steps in creating an animated humanoid character from
scratch: modelling, rigging and skinning.

Modelling

This is the process of creating your own humanoid mesh in a 3D modelling package - 3DSMax, Maya,
Blender, etc. Although this is a whole subject in its own right, there are a few guidelines you can follow
to ensure a model works well with animation in a Unity project.

 Observe a sensible topology. The exact nature of a “sensible” structure for your mesh is rather
subtle but generally, you should bear in mind how the vertices and triangles of the model will be
distorted as it is animated. A poor topology will not allow the model to move without unsightly
distortion of the mesh. A lot can be learned by studying existing 3D character meshes to see how
the topology is arranged and why.

 Be mindful of the scale of your mesh. Do a test import and compare the size of your imported
model with a “meter cube” (the standard Unity cube primitive has a side length of one unit, so it
can be taken as a 1m cube for most purposes). Check the units your 3D package is using and
adjust the export settings so that the size of the model is in correct proportion to the cube.
Unless you are careful, it is easy to create models without any notion of their scale and
consequently end up with a set of objects that are disproportionate in size when they are
imported into Unity.

 Arrange the mesh so that the character’s feet are standing on the local origin or “anchor point”
of the model. Since a character typically walks upright on a floor, it is much easier to handle if its
anchor point (ie, its transform position) is directly on that floor.

 Model in a T-pose if you can. This will help allow space to refine polygon detail where you need
it (e.g. underarms). This will also make it easier to position your rig inside the mesh.

 Clean up your model. Where possible, cap holes, weld verts and remove hidden faces, this will
help with skinning, especially automated skinning processes.
 Skin Mesh, textured and triangulated

Rigging

This is the process of creating a skeleton of joints to control the movements of your model.

3D packages provide a number of ways to create joints for your humanoid rig. These range from ready-
made biped skeletons that you can scale to fit your mesh, right through to tools for individual bone
creation and parenting to create your own bone structure. To work with Mecanim, the hips should be
the root element of the bone hierarchy. A minimum of fifteen bones are required in the skeleton.

The joint/bone hierachy should follow a natural structure for the character you are creating. Given that
arms and legs come in pairs, you should use a consistent convention for naming them (eg, “arm_L” for
the left arm, “arm_R” for the right arm, etc). Possible structures for the hierarchy might be:-

* HIPS - spine - chest - shoulders - arm - forearm - hand

* HIPS - spine - chest - neck - head

* HIPS - UpLeg - Leg - foot - toe - toe_end

Biped Skeleton, positioned in T-pose

Skinning

This is the process of attaching the mesh to the skeleton.

Skinning involves binding vertices in your mesh to bones, either directly (rigid bind) or with blended
influence to a number of bones (soft bind). Different software packages use different methods, eg,
assigning individual vertices and painting the weighting of influence per bone onto the mesh. The initial
setup is typically automated, say by finding the nearest influence or using “heatmaps”. Skinning usually
requires a fair amount of work and testing with animations in order to ensure satisfactory results for the
skin deformation. Some general guidelines for this process include:

 Using an automated process initially to set up some of the skinning (see relevant tutorials on
3DMax, Maya, etc).

 Creating a simple animation for your rig or importing some animation data to act as a test for the
skinning. This should give you a quick way to evaluate whether or not the skinning looks good in
motion.

 Incrementally editing and refining your skinning solution.

 Sticking to a maximum of four influences when using a soft bind, since this is the maximum
number that Unity will handle. If more than four influences affect part of the mesh then at least
some information will be lost when playing the animation in Unity.

Interactive Skin Bind, one of many skinning methods

Non-humanoid Animations

The full power of Unity’s Animation system is most evident when you are working with humanoid
Animations. However, non-humanoid animations are also supported although without the avatar system
and other humanoid-specific features. Non-humanoid animations are referred to as Generic Animations.

To start working with a generic skeleton, go to the Rig tab in the FBX importer and choose Generic from
the Animation Type menu.
Root node in generic animations

When working wth humanoid animations, Unity can determine the center of mass and orientation of the
rig. When working with Generic animations, the skeleton can be arbitrary, so you must specify which
bone is the Root node. The Root node allows Unity to establish consistency between Animation clips for
a generic model, and blend properly between Animations that have not been authored “in place” (that
is, where the whole model moves its world position while animating).

Specifying the root node also allows Unity to determine between movement of the bones relative to
each other, and motion of the Root node in the world (controlled from OnAnimatorMove).

Splitting Animations

An animated character typically has a number of different movements that are activated in the game in
different circumstances. These movements are called Animation Clips. For example, we might have
separate animation clips for walking, running, jumping, throwing, dying, etc. Depending on the way the
model was animated, these separate movements might be imported as distinct animation clips or as one
single clip where each movement simply follows on from the previous one. In cases where there is only a
single clip, the clip must be split into its component animation clips within Unity, which will involve some
extra steps in your workflow.

Working with models that have pre-split animations

The simplest types of models to work with are those that contain pre-split animations. If you have an
animation like that, the Animations tab in the Animation Importer Inspector will look like this:
You will see a list available clips which you can preview by pressing Play in the Preview Window (lower
down in the inspector). The frame ranges of the clips can be edited, if needed.

Working with models that have unsplit animations

For models where the clips are supplied as one continuous animation, the Animation tab in
the Animation Importer Inspector will look like this:
In cases like this, you can define the frame ranges that correspond to each of the separate animation
sequences (walking, jumping, etc). You can create a new animation clip by pressing (+) and selecting the
range of frames that are included in it.

For example:

 walk animation during frames 1 - 33

 run animation during frames 41 - 57

 kick animation during frames 81 - 97

 The Import Settings Options for Animation

In the Import Settings, the Split Animations table is where you tell Unity which frames in your asset file
make up which Animation Clip. The names you specify here are used to activate them in your game.

For further information about the animation inspector, see the Animation Clip component reference
page.

Animating objects and properties in Unity using Mecanim

You can create animation clips which animate any object or component property using Unity’s animation
window. These animation clips can then be arranged into a state machine in exactly the same way as
external animation clips such as character animations. For example, you could animate the motion of
a camera, the colour of a light, the individual frames of a sprite animation, or a public property of
a script.

To set up a Character or other GameObject for animation, you need to follow this process:

 Create a New Animator Controller

 Open the Animator Window to edit the Animator Controller

 Drag the desired animation clip into the Animator Controller Window
  Drag the model asset into the Hierarchy.

 Add the animator controller to the Animator component of the asset.

Importing Animations using multiple model files

Another way to import animations is to follow a naming scheme that Unity allows for the animation files.
You create separate model files and name them with the convention ‘[email protected]’.
For example, for a model called “goober”, you could import separate idle, walk, jump and walljump
animations using files named “[email protected]”, “[email protected]”, “[email protected]” and
“[email protected]”. Only the animation data from these files will be used, even if the original files
are exported with mesh data.

An example of four animation files for an animated character

(note that the .fbx suffix is not shown within Unity)

Unity automatically imports all four files and collects all animations to the file without the @ sign in. In
the example above, the goober.mb file will be set up to reference idle, jump, walk and wallJump
automatically.

For FBX files, simply export a model file with no animation ticked (eg, goober.fbx) and the 4 clips as
goober@_animname_.fbx by exporting the desired keyframes for each (enable animation in the FBX
dialog).

Looping animation clips

A common operation for people working with animations is to make sure they loop properly. It is
important, for example, that the animation clip representing the walk cycle, begins and ends in a similar
pose (e.g. left foot on the ground), to ensure there is no foot sliding, or strange jerky motions. Mecanim
provides convenient tools for this. Animation clips can loop based on pose, rotation, and position.

If you drag the Start or End points of the animation clip, you will see the Looping fitness curves for all of
the paramers based on which it is possible to loop. If you place the Start / End marker in a place where
the curve for the property is green, it is more likely that the clip can loop properly. The loop
match indicator will show how good the looping is for the selected ranges.
 Clip ranges with bad match for Loop Pose

Clip ranges with good match for Loop Pose

Once the loop match indicator is green, Enabling Loop Pose (for example) will make sure the looping of
the pose is artifact-free.
For more details on animation clip options, see Animation Clip reference.

Masking Imported Clips

Masking allows you to discard some of the animation data within a clip, allowing the clip to animate only
parts of the object or character rather than the entire thing. A good example of this would be a character
with a throwing animation. If you wanted to be able to use the throwing animation in conjunction with
various other body movements such as running, crouching and jumping, you could create a mask for the
throwing animation limiting it to just the right arm, upper body and head. This portion of the animation
can then be played in a layer over the top of the base running or jumping animations.

Masking can be applied to animation clips either during import time, or at runtime. Masking during
import time is preferable, because it allows the discarded animation data to be omitted from your build,
making filesize and memory footprint smaller. It also makes for faster processing speed because there is
less animation data to be blended at runtime. In some cases, import masking may not be suitable for
your purposes, in which case you can apply a mask at runtime by using the layer settings of the Animator
Controller. This page relates to masking in the import settings.

To apply a mask to an imported animation clip, first select the imported animation file in your project
view, then in the import settings in the inspector, select the Animations button.

View the Animations section of the

Import Settings for your animation file

Then scroll all the way to the bottom of the inspector to find the Mask heading, among the four fold-out
headings as shown:

The Motion fold-out heading, along with the Curves, Events

and Motion headings

Expand the Mask heading to reveal the Mask options. When you open the menu, you’ll see three
options: Definition, Humanoid and Transform.
 The Mask
Definition, Humanoid and Transform options

Definition

Allows you to specify whether you want to create a one-off mask in the inspector specially for this clip,
or whether you want to use an existing mask asset from your project.

If you want to create a one-off mask just for this clip, choose / Create From This Model /.

If you are going to set up multiple clips with the same mask, you should select / Copy From Other Mask /
and use a mask asset. This allows you to re-use a single mask definition for many clips.

When Copy From Other Mask is selected, the Humanoid and Transform options are unavailable, since
these relate to creating a one-off mask within the inspector for this clip.

Here, the
Copy From Other option is selected, and a Mask asset has been assigned

Humanoid

The Humanoid option gives you a quick way of defining a mask by selecting or deselecting the body parts
of a human diagram. These can be used if the animation has been marked as humanoid and has a valid
avatar.
 The
Humanoid mask selection option

Transform

This option allows you to specify a mask based on the individual bones or moving parts of the animation.
This gives you finer control over the exact mask definition, and also allows you to apply masks to non-
humanoid animation clips.
The Humanoid mask selection option

Animation Curves on Imported Clips

Animation curves can be attached to imported animation clips in the Animations tab of the Animation
Import Settings.

These curves allow you to add additional animated data to an imported clip, which can allow you to
animate the timings of other items based on the the state of an animator. For example, in a game set in
icy conditions, an extra animation curve could be used to control the emission rate of a particle system
to show the player’s condensing breath in the cold air.

To add a curve to an imported animation, first select the imported animation file in your project view,
then in the import settings in the inspector, select the Animations button.
 View the Animations section of the
Import Settings for your animation file

Then scroll all the way to the bottom of the inspector to find the Curves heading, among the four fold-
out headings as shown:

The curves fold-out heading, along with the Masks, Events

and Motion headings

Expand the curves heading, and click the plus icon to add a new curve to the current animation clip. If
your imported animation file is split into multiple animation clips, each clip can have its own custom
curves.

The curves on an imported animation clip

The curve’s X-axis represents normalized time and always ranges between 0.0 and 1.0 (corresponding to
the beginning and the end of the animation clip respectively, regardless of its duration).
 Unity Curve Editor

Double-clicking an animation curve will bring up the standard Unity curve editor (see Editing Value
Properties for further details) which you can use to add keys to the curve. Keys are points along the
curve’s timeline where it has a value explicitly set by the animator rather than just using an interpolated
value. Keys are very useful for marking important points along the timeline of the animation. For
example, with a walking animation, you might use keys to mark the points where the left foot is on the
ground, then both feet on the ground, right foot on the ground, etc. Once the keys are set up, you can
move conveniently between key frames by pressing the Previous/Next Key Frame buttons. This will
move the vertical red line and show the normalized time at the keyframe; the value you enter in the text
box will then set the value of the curve at that time.

Animation Curves and Animator Controller parameters

If you have a curve with the same name as one of the parameters in the Animator Controller, then that
parameter will take its value from the value of the curve at each point in the timeline. For example, if
you make a call to GetFloat from a script, the returned value will be equal to the value of the curve at the
time the call is made. Note that at any given point in time, there might be multiple animation clips
attempting to set the same parameter from the same controller. In that case, the curve values from the
multiple animation clips are blended. If an animation has no curve for a particular parameter then the
blending will be done with the default value for that parameter.

Animation events on imported clips

Animation events can be attached to imported animation clips in the Animations tab of the Animation
Import Settings.

These events allow you to add additional data to an imported clip which determines when certain
actions should occur in time with the animation. For example, for an animated character you might want
to add events to walk and run cycles indicating when the footstep sounds should play.

To add an event to an imported animation, first select the imported animation file in your project view,
then in the import settings in the inspector, select the Animations button.
 View the Animations section of the
Import Settings for your animation file

Then scroll all the way to the bottom of the inspector to find the Events heading, among the four fold-
out headings as shown:

The Events fold-out heading, along with the Curves, Masks,

and Motion headings

Expand the events heading to reveal the events timeline for the current imported animation clip.

The Events timeline,

before any events have been added

To move the playback head to a different point in the timeline, use the timeline in the preview pane of
the window:
 Clicking in the
preview pane timeline allows you to control where your new event will be created in the event timeline

Position the playback head at the point where you want to add an event, then click Add Event. A new
event is created, indicated by a small white marker on the timeline. In the Function field, fill in the name
of the function to call when the event is reached.

Make sure that any GameObject which uses this animation in its animator has a corresponding script
attached that contains a function with a matching event name.

The example below demonstrates an event set up to call the Footstep function in a script attached to the
Player GameObject. This could be used in combination with an AudioSource to play a footstep sound
synchronised with the animation.
 An event which calls the
function “Footstep”

You can also choose to specify a parameter, which is sent to the function called by the event. There are
four different parameter types: Float, Int, String or Object.

By filling out a value in one of these fields, and implementing your function to accept a parameter of that
type, you can have the value specified in the event passed through to your function in the script.

For example, you might want to pass a float value to specify how loud the footstep should be during
different actions, such as quiet footstep events on a walking loop and loud footstep events on a running
loop. You could also pass a reference to an effect Prefab, allowing your script to instantiate different
effects at certain points during your animation.

Selecting a Root Motion Node

When root motion is contained within an imported animation clip, that motion will be used to drive the
movement and rotation of the GameObject that is playing the animation. Sometimes however it may be
necessary to manually select a different specific node within the hierarchy of your animation file to act
as the root motion node.

(example use case required here)

The Motion field within the Animation import settings allows you to use a hierarchical popup menu to
select any node (Transform) within the hierarchy of the imported animation and use it as the root
motion source. That object’s animated position and rotation will control the animated position and
rotation of the GameObject playing back the animation.

To select a root motion node for an animation, first select the imported animation file in your project
view, then in the import settings in the inspector, select the Animations button.

View the Animations section of the

Import Settings for your animation file
Then scroll all the way to the bottom of the inspector to find the Motion heading, among the four fold-
out headings as shown:

The Motion fold-out heading, along with the Mask, Curves,

and Events headings

Expand the motion heading to reveal the Root Motion Node menu. When you open the menu, you’ll see
the options * None , * Root Transform , and any objects that are in the root of the imported file’s
hierarchy. This may be your character’s mesh objects, as well as its root bone name, and a submenu for
each item that has child objects. Each submenu also contains the child object(s) itself, and further sub-
menus if / those / objects have child objects.

Traversing the hierarchy of objects to select a root motion node

Once the Root motion node has been selected, the object’s motion will now be driven by the animation
from that particular object.
Euler Curve Import

Rotations in 3D applications are usually represented in one of two ways, Quaternions or Euler angles. For
the most part, Unity uses Quaternions as its internal representation of rotations, however it’s important
to have a basic understanding of rotation and orientation in Unity.

When importing animation from external sources, these files usually contain keyframe animation in
Euler format. Unity’s default behavior is to resample these animations as Quaternion values and
generate a new Quaternion keyframe for every frame in the animation, in an attempt to minimise any
perceivable difference between the source animation and how it appears in Unity.

There are still some situations where - even with resampling - the quaternion representation of the
imported animation may not match the original closely enough, For this reason, in Unity 5.3 and
onwards there is the option to turn off animation resampling, so that you can instead use the original
Euler animation keyframes at runtime.

Using Euler Curve Support on Imported Animations

To enable support for using the original Euler Curve values in an animation file, you must turn *off the
“Resample Curves” option in the Animations Import Inspector:

The Resample Curves option in the Animations

Import Inspector

With this option enabled, rotations will be resampled to quaternions. This is the default behavior. When
disabled, rotation curves will not be resampled, and the rotation curve will be imported with its original
keyframes, in Euler or quaternion mode as appropriate for the curve type. Note: Any rotation curve on a
joint that has pre- or post-rotations will be automatically resampled by the FBX SDK, and will
automatically be imported as quaternion curves.

To support a maximum variety of imported files, and for maximum fidelity, Unity supports all normal
(non-repeating) euler rotation orders, and curves will be imported in their original rotation orders.

The primary reason for disabling rotation resampling and using the original euler curves is when the
default quaternion interpolation between frames gives faulty results, and causes issues.

The Results During Animation Playback

When using non-resampled rotations, there should be very little visual difference in the playback of
animations. Under the hood though, rotation curves that have been imported in Euler representation
will always be kept so, even at runtime.

Since the engine functions with quaternions, rotation values have to be converted to quaternion at some
point. Before Unity 5.3, this conversion always happened at import. In 5.3, when the Resample Curves
option is switched off in the Animation Import inspector, the rotation values are kept as euler values up
until they are applied to a Gameobject. This means that the end result should be as good as - or better
than - before.

Memory wise, for rotation curves that have not been baked in the authoring software, there should be a
net gain for rotation curves.

Non-Default Euler Orders in the Transform Inspector

The Euler angles used in Unity’s transform inspector are applied in the default order of Z,X,Y.

When playing back or editing imported animations that feature Euler curves with a rotation order
different from Unity’s default, an indication of the current rotation order will be shown next to the
rotation fields.

The inspector showing that a non-default

rotation order is being used for the rotation animation on this object

When editing multiple transforms with differing rotation orders, a warning will be shown to the users to
warn them that the same Euler rotation applied will give different results on curves with different
rotation orders.

The inspector showing that a mixture of rotation

orders are being used for the rotation animation on the selected group of objects