Game Character Animation in Maya and Unity
By Mark Masters
Course info
Course info
Description
In this course, Game Character Animation in Maya and Unity, you will learn the foundations of creating great game animation inside of Maya. First, you will learn the importance of breaking down and understanding a character rig. After that, you'll dive into the animation process, by creating a walk cycle, an important staple in nearly all games. Through the process of establishing and defining the key poses of the walk cycle, you will take that same skillset into creating a run cycle. Finally, you'll learn how to animate an idle, utilizing a more straight-ahead or layered approach. With all the animations created you'll wrap up the course by exporting and implementing the animations into Unity. By the end of this course, you'll have the skills and confidence to create your own game animations in Maya and Unity.
About the author
Mark started out with an interest for animation at a young age, and it eventually transformed into a passion for the subject. Mark made an impact on the industry quickly, working for Pluralsight (Digital-Tutors) as an Animation and Rigging Instructor. He currently works at Steelehouse Productions as a 3D Animator.
More from the author
Section Introduction Transcripts
Course Overview
Hi everyone. My name is Mark Masters, and I'm a lead animator working in the games industry, and I'd like to welcome you to my course, Game Character Animation in Maya and Unity. The goal of this course is to teach you the steps for creating believable and appealing animation for use in games. We'll begin with the basics by taking a look at the dwarf rig we'll be using throughout the course, and then we'll jump into creating a walk cycle. Through the process, you will learn about the main poses of a walk and how to quickly block any walk cycle inside of Maya. After the walk, we'll then jump into the next locomotion animation that you would find in just about any video game, and that would be the run cycle. We'll cover the fundamentals of crafting a believable run cycle by first establishing the main key poses that will give us a strong foundation to build upon. The final animation that we'll be creating is the idle, and for the idle, we'll be covering another approach and workflow for our animation, and that is the more straight ahead or layered method. We'll start by animating just the character's root motion and then slowly build upon it more and more detail until we are happy with the result. Finally, with all the animations completed, we'll then cover the basics of exporting animations out of Maya to implement inside of Unity. So with that, let's go ahead and get started in the first module and take a look at our dwarf rig.