Set up your project with Unity AI

Use Assistant to set up your scene

Using AI-generated assets responsibly

Use Animation Generator to bring your character to life

Use Material and Texture Generators to make the environment

Use Sprite Generator to make an avatar icon

Use Sound Generator for background audio

Finalize and share your project

Using AI-generated assets responsibly 

In this course, you’ll get hands-on experience with Unity’s built-in AI tools to accelerate your game development workflows. While building a character customization screen, you’ll use the Unity AI Assistant to solve problems, perform actions in the Editor, and write scripts. You’ll also learn how to generate and refine assets — like textures, materials, sprites, animations, and sound effects — using natural language prompts. Each tutorial focuses on a specific AI capability, giving you practical skills you can apply to any Unity project.

Prototype a scene with Unity AI

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Overview

What can the Animation Generator do?

Best practices for writing animation prompts

Generate an animation for your character

3.5 - Apply the looping animation to your character

Add multiple animations for one character

Organize your animation assets

Next steps

3.2 - What can the Animation Generator do_ .mp4

3.4 - Generate an animation for your character .mp4

3.5 - Apply the looping animation to your character.mp4

3.6 - Add multiple animations for one character.mp4

UnityAI-Video-to-Motion-SidebySide-PV2025.mp4

3.1 - Overview.mp4

Gaming

In this tutorial, you’ll learn how to use the Unity Animation Generator to quickly bring your characters to life using AI-generated animations. 

You’ll start by writing an animation prompt to generate a looping animation (like idle or dance), and apply it to your character in the scene. Then, you’ll create additional animations and configure your Animator Controller component so the character cycles through them automatically — efficiently adding personality to your prototype.

The Animation Generator lets you create animations from scratch using just a text prompt — or even a video reference. Whether you're building a game prototype or experimenting with visual ideas, it can be a fast and powerful way to bring your characters to life.

To get the best results with the Animation Generator, it's important to write clear, descriptive prompts. Keep your prompts concise but specific — mention the type of motion, pace, and specific movement requirements. For example:

“Slow idle animation while swaying side to side”

“Confident dance loop with energetic arm movements”

Now you'll use the Animation Generator to create your first animation.

Open the AI dropdown from the top toolbar and select Generate New > Animation.

When prompted, name your animation clip appropriately, depending on your goals (for example, “Idle anim”, “Dance anim”, etc)

In the Generator window, in the Prompt box, enter a prompt to describe the animation; for example:

Standing still, gently breathing and swaying

Use this prompt or write your own based on how you want your character to move.

Set the Duration slider to control how long the animation lasts.

Leave Custom Seed disabled for now. This allows you to create consistent results across multiple generations. To learn more, check out the documentation on custom seeds. 

Select Generate to generate an animation clip.

Hover over each generated animation in the Generations panel to preview them.

When you find one you like, right-click it and select Promote to current asset to save it in your Assets folder.

With an animation clip selected, select the Trim (or Edit) tab to further refine your animation. This tab helps you ensure that your character is facing the correct direction, stays in the same place, and loops smoothly.

Hover over the various properties in this tab to understand what they do, but we recommend leaving Root motion disabled to keep your character in one spot and Best loop enabled to ensure a smooth loop.

Select Trim, then right-click on the new trimmed clip and select Promote to current asset to overwrite your previously selected one.

When you select Trim, the character will also be reoriented to face its local forward direction. 

Your new animation clip will now appear in the Assets folder and is ready to use.

Trim window open for an animation clip with Root Motion disabled and Best Loop enabled. 

After generating the animation, you need to apply it so the character performs it during Play mode.

Drag the animation clip from the Project window onto your character in the Hierarchy window.

Unity will automatically create an Animator Controller and assign it to the character’s Animator component, with your new animation clip as the default animation.

Select the animation clip in the Project window.

In the Inspector window, enable the Loop Time and Loop Pose properties to make the animation loop smoothly.

Enter Play mode to see your animated character.

Note: You can always adjust the animation clip’s rotation if needed, just select the animation clip, go to the Inspector window, and modify the Offset under Root Transform Rotation.

In this step, you’ll create even more animations and set up a looping sequence between those animations using Unity’s Animator Controller asset.

In the Project window, double-click the Animator Controller asset that was created earlier. This opens the Animator window.

Generate and promote new animations (for example, idle, wave, dance) as you did earlier.

In the Animator window, drag these new clips into any empty space. This will add the animation clips as new States. 

Right-click the first animation and select Make Transition, then connect it to the second animation.

Repeat for each animation to create a cycle, then connect the last one back to the first.

Note:  If you’re interested, you can also use the Video to Motion feature in the Animation Generator to animate your character. You could record yourself performing a movement or import an existing video of a favorite dance move into the project. Check out the video below to see this tool in action. 

Now when you enter Play mode, your character should cycle through a series of animations, creating a loop like idle → wave → dance → idle.

Animator window open and showing three animations transitioning between each other in a loop. 

By default, generated assets are saved in the folder you have selected when you initially generate the file — often the root Assets folder. Let’s organize your animation files now to keep things tidy as your project grows.

Right-click in the Assets folder and select Create > Folder.

2. Move your animation assets into the new folder:

Drag all of your generated animation clips and the Animator Controller into the Animations folder.

You’ve now organized your project’s animation assets into a dedicated folder—ready for reuse, updates, or expansion.

After completing this tutorial, your character is now animated and can loop through multiple poses or actions without any manual scripting. 

To learn more about animation workflows and generator features, check out the Animation Generator documentation.

In the next tutorial, you'll generate textures and materials to give your environment a distinct look.

Use Animation Generator to bring your character to life

1. Overview

2. What can the Animation Generator do?

3. Best practices for writing animation prompts

4. Generate an animation for your character

5. 3.5 - Apply the looping animation to your character

6. Add multiple animations for one character

7. Organize your animation assets

8. Next steps

Complete this tutorial