1.1 Welcome to the course

1.2 Core concepts: animation data

1.3 Core concepts: animation blending

Review the core concepts underlying Unity's 3D animation systems, and explore practical examples provided in the course Unity project.

Course overview and core concepts

2.1 The Animation window: features and settings

2.2 Editing Animation Clips

2.3 Model-specific animation import settings

2.4 Cutting imported Animation Clips

2.5 Setting the Root Motion of imported Animation Clips

2.6 Finishing an Animation Clip: additional settings

2.7 Creating and configuring Animation Events

2.8 Configuring Generic Rigs

2.9 Configuring Humanoid Rigs

3.1 Introduction to the Animator component

3.2 Introduction to animation blending

3.3 Creating and configuring Animator States

3.4 Creating and configuring Blend Trees

3.5 Creating and configuring Transitions

3.6 Creating a State Machine

3.7 Creating and configuring Animator Layers

4.1 Introduction to general animation scripting

4.2 Introduction to Humanoid-specific animation scripting

Introduction to 3D Animation Systems Assets

In this learning project, you'll explore how to work with Assets as you create animations using the Unity Animation systems.

Working with Assets

In this learning project, you'll get to know the Animator as you explore animation blending, State Machines and Animation Layers. 

By the end of the project, you'll have completed a comprehensive overview of Unity's 3D Animation Systems

The Animator

In this final learning project, you'll review the basics of general and Humanoid-specific animation scripting.

Introduction to animation scripting

In this course, you'll explore the fundamentals of Unity’s 3D animation systems. You will:

Review the core concepts for the animation systems in Unity

Connect those core concepts to the functionality of the Unity Editor

Apply your learning through creating and modifying simple animations

Review key principles of scripting for animation


By the end of this course, you'll be able to:

Confidently use Unity's 3D animation systems to create basic in-game (or in-app) animations for your own projects

Begin to create custom animation scripts, if you have relevant C# scripting experience for Unity.


This course is for intermediate and confident beginner users of Unity. It will help you develop your understanding of the animation systems in Unity, but will be of limited use to learners who want to create cinematic animations for media experiences or game cutscenes. 

To get the most out of the course, you’ll need basic coding experience in Unity. This will help inform your understanding of the complexity of different animations scripting scenarios.

Introduction to 3D Animation Systems

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Overview

Before you begin

Introduction to animation data and Animation Clips

The two parts of animation data on an Animation Clip

Open an Example Animation Clip

Explore the animation data and Animation Curves

Review how animation data changes

Summary

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Review the core concepts for 3D animation systems in Unity

Explore and configure a simple animation in Unity Editor

When you’ve finished, you’ll be ready to complete the rest of the Beginner 3D Animation course.

VR Curricular Framework Resources

AR Curricular Framework Resources 

Game Design Curricular Framework Resources  

Architecture, Engineering and Construction Curricular Framework Resources

In this introductory learning project, you’ll explore the two core concepts for creating an animation in Unity: animation data and animation blending. This tutorial, you will begin with animation data.

When you understand both core concepts, you’ll be able to apply your knowledge to all of Unity’s different animation features and explore them in more detail in the rest of the Introduction to 3D Animation Systems course.

This tutorial uses the Introduction to 3D Animation Systems Unity project. If you haven't already done so, download this before continuing.

2.  In the Project window, go to Assets > 1.2 - Core Concepts Animation Data. 

All the assets you need for this tutorial are located in this folder. 

Animation data is stored as an asset called an Animation Clip. An Animation Clip can store any GameObject animation. This could be something relatively simple like a character jump or a flickering light, as well as more complex animations like a cutscene animation in a game.

Animation Clips are the fundamental building blocks of Unity’s animation systems. You’ll use them to make anything more complex than a very basic animation. 

The data stored on an Animation Clip is made up of two parts: values and bindings.

The values of an Animation Clip are usually, but not always, represented by Animation Curves. Animation Curves contain information about the way the GameObject you’re animating changes. Animation Curves usually are a float value (a value that can be either an integer or a decimal) that can change over time.

The bindings of an Animation Clip are a way of connecting the values to a particular field of a GameObject or component. Bindings are made up of two things:

1.  The path through the Hierarchy to the GameObject’s Transform component

2.  The path from that Transform component to a particular field


Values and bindings have a one-to-one relationship. This means that each binding has a value, and each value has a binding. A single Animation Clip can (and usually does) have many binding-value pairs.

Now you understand the theory of an Animation Clip, it’s time to see what they look like in Unity. You can view and edit Animation Clips in the Animation window. 

To open an Animation Clip:

1.  In the top menu, go to Window > Animation > Animation. Take care when selecting this; the Animation window is not the same as the Animator window. 


2.  Click and hold the Animation window header, then drag and drop the Animation window next to the Asset Store tab in the Scene view window header to dock it. 


3.  In the Project window, go to Assets > 1.2 - Core Concepts Animation Data and select the Circle Animation Clip to open it in the Animation window. 

The Window menu is opened, then the Animation sub-menu is opened and the Animation option is selected.

The Animation window’s tab is clicked and dragged to the area next to the Asset Store tab.

The Project window with the 1.2 - Core Concepts Animation Data folder open and the Circle Animation Clip selected.

In the next tutorial, you’ll make some changes to animation data, to identify how these changes affect the resulting animation. Before you can do that, you need to understand the data that exists in an Animation Clip. In this course, all the example animations have data held in Animation Curves. 

To review the Animation Curves of the Circle animation:


1.  Select the Curves tab at the bottom of the Animation Window to enter Curves Mode.


2.  Press Ctrl + A (Windows) or Cmd + A (macOS) to select all the animation keyframes.

Animation Curves are made up of a collection of keyframes. Keyframes are, among other things, a value-time pair. Keyframes can have the same value, but they cannot have the same time. The variation in the value of the keyframes over time defines the Animation Curve.


3.  Press the F key to center the keyframes in the Curves section of the Animation window. 


4.  Select the foldout to the left of the Position property to see its Position.x and Position.y data. These are the bindings. 


5.  Select a binding to highlight its associated Animation Curve on the right of the Animation window. 


You can explore Curves Mode in more detail in the Animation window tutorials. 

The Curves tab at the bottom of the Animation Window is clicked.

The Animation window shows many loops of the curves. The keyframes from the initial loop are selected, and the view zooms in to show just those keyframes filling the window.

The Position property on the left of the window is expanded to show the Position.x, Position.y and Position.z properties. Position.z is highlighted in blue and has (Default Value) after its name, to show its status.

Both the Position.x and Position.y curves are visible. 

When an animation is playing, the current time for its Animation Clip changes. At any given time, the values for all the bindings are being checked and the fields that those bindings correspond to have their values set.

For example, consider the Circle Animation Clip:

When the time is 0:40 (40 frames into the first second), the value for Position.y is 3. 


This means that when the Animation Clip has been playing for half a second, the Position.y value of the GameObject it is played through will be set to 3.

The Animation window in Dopesheet mode. The playhead is at 0:40. The Position.x property shows a value of 0, the Position.y property shows a value of 3 and the Position.y property shows a value of 0.

In this tutorial, you’ve explored the basics of animation data. You have:

Considered the nature of animation data, and how it is stored on Animation Clips

Reviewed the data stored on an Animation Clip.

Identified how Animation Clip data relates to the resulting animation

In the next tutorial, you’ll build upon this as you learn about the second core concept for using Unity’s animation systems: animation blending.

1.2 Core concepts: animation data

1. Overview

2. Before you begin

3. Introduction to animation data and Animation Clips

4. The two parts of animation data on an Animation Clip

5. Open an Example Animation Clip

6. Explore the animation data and Animation Curves

7. Review how animation data changes

8. Summary

Complete this tutorial