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

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

1.1 Welcome to the course

1.2 Core concepts: animation data

1.3 Core concepts: animation blending

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

4.1 Introduction to general animation scripting

4.2 Introduction to Humanoid-specific animation scripting

Introduction to 3D Animation Systems Assets

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

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 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

What is animation blending?

How does blending work?

Which features use blending?

Blending in practice

Summary

Explore what animation blending is and how it works.

Identify when blending is used when animating with Unity.

VR Curricular Framework Resources

In this tutorial, you’ll be looking at the basics of animation blending and how it is used in several different ways.

This tutorial builds on the core concepts tutorials — if you haven’t completed those, you might want to do that before starting. 

You do not need to use the Unity project for Introduction to 3D Animation Systems to complete this tutorial.   

Sometimes when a GameObject is playing an animation, you’ll want to change which animation is playing or play another animation at the same time. When multiple animations are played at the same time and through the same GameObject hierarchy, the animations are doing what is called blending. 

The most common blending is when two or more animations want to change the value of a single binding. The result is that the values for each animation are combined and the binding is changed to the combined value.

There are several different complex algorithms used to blend animations together, most of which you won’t be covering in this tutorial series. 

However, what you do need to know is that all the algorithms follow the same overall process: 

Each animation is given a weight. This weight represents how much the animation affects the result of the blend. 

Higher weights mean the animation will have more of an effect and lower weights mean the animation will have less of an effect. 

Typically, weights are normalized. This means that the sum of the weights for all the animations being blended equals one.


The most simple algorithm for animation blending is a Weighted Sum. This works by going through each binding and multiplying its value at the current time by the Animation Clip’s weight. Unity then adds all the weighted values together and sets the binding to the result.

Animation A sets a Light component’s Intensity to 5 at a particular time.

Animation B sets the same Light component’s Intensity to 10 at the same time.

The blending of these two animations causes the Light component’s Intensity to be:

The three most common features that use blending are:

Let’s explore each of these in a little more detail.

The most common occurrence of blending animations is in Transitions. When a Transition starts, the animation of the second state starts playing. As the Transition continues, the weight of it increases, while the weight of the previous state decreases.

Blend Trees are used in place of a single Animation Clip in a state. They blend the multiple Animation Clips they contain. 

Blending in Layers works slightly differently than with Transitions and Blend Trees. All the animation in a Layer is completely evaluated before it’s then blended with the next Layer. The result of this blend is then evaluated before it is blended with subsequent Layers, and so on.

These features can be used in isolation, but it’s not always that simple. What about Transitions between two Blend Trees, for example? 

The answer is that animation blending can be nested. Weighting happens multiplicatively, so each Animation Clip has its weight calculated before the final result is calculated. 

One of the most important things to remember when working with animation features is that while they’re all used to play and blend animations, each feature does it differently. The key to getting a good animation result is understanding what tools you should use to blend animations to achieve the result you want.

In this tutorial, you’ve started to explore animation blending. You’ve learned:

3.2 Introduction to animation blending

1. Overview

2. Before you begin

3. What is animation blending?

4. How does blending work?

5. Which features use blending?

6. Blending in practice

7. Summary

Complete this tutorial