All content in this course uses:

1.2 Core concepts: animation data

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.

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 

Overview

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

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

Before you begin

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. 

Introduction to animation data and Animation Clips

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:

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

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.

The two parts of animation data on an Animation Clip

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 

. Take care when selecting this; the Animation window is not the same as the 

 header, then drag and drop the Animation window next to the 

tab in the Scene view window header to dock it. 

 Animation Clip to open it in the Animation window. 

Open an Example Animation Clip

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:




 (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.

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

in more detail in the Animation window tutorials. 

Explore the animation data and Animation Curves

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.

 (40 frames into the first second), the value for 


This means that when the Animation Clip has been playing for half a second, the 

 value of the GameObject it is played through will be set to 

Review how animation data changes

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.

Unity Version 2019.4