Adding Animations - Creating E-Learning Games with Unity - page 204

Exploring the Mechanim animation

system

The Mechanim animation system allows the Unity3D user to integrate animations into
complex state machines in an intuitive and visual way! It also has advanced fea-
tures that allow the user to fine-tune the motion of their characters, right from the use
of blend trees to mix, combine, and switch between animations as well as Inverse
Kinematics ( IK ) to adjust the hands and feet of the character after animating. To de-
velop an FSM for our main player, we need to consider the gameplay, moves, and
features that the player represents in the game.

Choosing appropriate animations

In level one, our character needs to be able to walk around the world collecting flags
and returning them to the flag monument. Let's go back to www.mixamo.com , click
on Animations , and download the free Idle , Gangnam Style , and Zombie Running
animations, as shown in the following screenshot:

Building a simple character animation FSM

Let's build an FSM that the main character will use. To start, let's develop the locomo-
tion system.

1. Import the downloaded animations to a new folder named anims , in
Chapter8 . If you downloaded the animations attached to a skin, don't worry.