Can you animate a rigged character in Unity?

The only tutorials I can find on animation in Unity are either showing how to transform/rotate an object and then to set key frames or to apply already existing animations to a rigged character.

I would like a tutorial on how I can control the skeleton of a rigged character and then set key frames to make my own custom animation for them. Can this be done in Unity or is this only possible in other programs (maybe Blender?)

Thanks for your help!

  • Bartosz Piłat(krajca) replied

    You can animate with unity. I think you have to recreate armature with empty objects with names that was used in armature then animate using animations and key frames (not sure if i'm right here). It's hard and not at all useful but certainly you can. Rather than that it's easier and faster to do it in blender.

  • Jonathan Gonzalez(jgonzalez) replied

    Technically you can animate rigged characters in Unity but it's a huge pain and far more time extensive than necessary. For most animations I'd recommend using an external program like Blender, especially for rigged characters. The only exception would be for very simple "looking" or "grabbing" motions, for that you could use IK in Unity. An example of this would be having your player look in a specific direction, or if you wanted to reach out and grab something, again you could use IK. Those are more procedural types of movements and are best used in the game engine as you can't really animate those. Here are some rigging and animation courses that can help you out: https://cgcookie.com/lesson/armature-properties and https://cgcookie.com/course/fundamentals-of-rigged-animations