Animation

Introduction

Animation is a crucial element in creating immersive and engaging games in Unity. With Unity’s powerful animation tools, we can bring characters, objects, and environments to life by adding movement, expression, and personality.

In this lesson, we’ll explore what animation is in Unity, how it works, and the step-by-step process of creating animations for our game.

What is animation in Unity?

Animations refer to baking motions into our game’s objects and environments. With Unity’s animation tools, we can create animations for almost any aspect of our game, such as camera angles, particle effects, character animations, props, and landscape.

We can animate objects by changing their position, rotation, and scale over time. In Unity, we can create animations by either animating the properties of a GameObject directly or by creating an Animator Controller. Animator Controller is a powerful tool that enables us to create complex animations that react to user input, physics, and other game events.

Unity’s animation system is based on a concept called keyframingKeyframing in Unity animation involves defining specific frames (keyframes) where we set the properties of an object or character to create animation sequences. It’s a fundamental technique for creating precise and controlled animations by specifying key moments and their properties, allowing smooth transitions and lifelike movements in Unity scenes.. It's the process of setting keyframes at specific points in time to define the position, rotation, and scale of an object.

In Unity, we can set keyframes manually by adjusting the object’s properties in the “Inspector” window, or by using the “Animation” window to create and edit animations using a timeline-based interface.

Creating animations in Unity

To create an animation in Unity, follow the steps given below:

1. Getting started with a new scene:

• Create a new scene.

• Add a cube to the new scene by selecting “GameObject” > “3D Object” > “Cube” from the top menu.

2. Crafting our first animation clip:

• With the cube selected, open the “Animation” window (“Window” > “Animation” > “Animation”).