Unity Tech

Getting Nettles to work in Unity

First Swimming Test in Unity using Mixamo Rig

First Climbing Test in Unity using Auto Rig Pro rig

Swimming and Climbing

It is important for Nettles to be able to swim and climb so I have been experimenting with different character controllers by Invector. I’ve also made two different versions for each character controller using the Mixamo rig and the Auto Rig Pro that I set up in Blender. They both have some strengths and weaknesses.

  • Mixamo is a good simplistic rig that is good for basic movement. Although Adobe has a website to rig your humanoid characters, Nettles has a tail, so I had to manually add the bones to the Mixamo rig for his tail in Blender.

  • Auto Rig Pro offers more detailed control over all of Nettle’s movement, and I added custom bones in his tail and in his leaves. This will be the best option for my own custom animations.

Default human T-pose in Unity with tail

Tail movement in Unity

Tail Animation

Both Mixamo and Auto Rig Pro versions of Nettles have an animation type set to humanoid in Unity and the avatar definition does not have a tail. So by default his tail does nothing, but with Tail Animator 2 attached to my controller as a component, I am able to define the tail bones chain and it gives my tail some fluid motions with some adjustments. It works well blending with the animations. More custom animations for the tail will probably be handled by Auto Rig Pro in Blender.

Progress

I rigged the character again with Auto Rig Pro, and this time around, the rig mapped very well to Unity’s Avatar system. The hands now grab when climbing and the overall movement of limbs have improved. I also combined the head with the body so there would be no separation during certain animations. I deactivated the jaw bone for now because the mouth hangs open with it activated. In the future, I can make facial animations to accommodate the jawbone, and also have blinking.

Although I previously experimented with Mixamo, I have now committed to using Auto Rig Pro moving forward.