Character Animations in Timeline

Using Timeline in Unity is a great way to put together some cinematic cuts using character animations. In this article, I will use assets from GameDevHQ’s Filebase asset library, as well as animations from Mixamo.

Each of these Prefabs have a corresponding Animation inside. Default Mixamo animations can’t be edited, so duplicate (ctrl + D) a new animation for customization.

Select the Animation and look at the Inspector. Make sure the Animation Type of the Rig is set to Humanoid. This is a critical setting for character animations.

Create a parent empty object for the Timeline Director component. The female sci-fi hero from Filebase is brought into the scene as a child to the Director object.

Here she is in this outdoor environment.

Here is the Playable Director on the Character Controller object.

With the Director object selected in the Hierarchy, drag the hero prefab into the Timeline editor and make an Animation Track.

The first Animation to use will be the idle animation. The preview window shows the selected animation.

Drag the animation into the timeline and position it at the beginning.

Head to the beginning of the animation and press play to see it in action.

Here is the hero in her battle ready idle animation.

With the idle animation selected in the timeline, I set it’s playback option to Loop.

Now if the original animation gets dragged out to be longer, it will Loop until the next animation clip plays.

Drag in a punch animation and place it next to the idle animation clip.

Notice that the animation jumps position when transitioning from idle to punch.

If you drag one animation over the other to create an ease in and out effect, Unity will interpolate between the animations, making for a smooth transition.

Here is the same clip after dragging the animations over each other.

Another animation to turn right is added at the end of the sequence.

Here is the animation again with the turn clip added in.

Mixamo

The next animation is a walking back animation. If you have ever used animations from Mixamo before, some of them have an In Place option. For this demo, I am not using this option. Let’s see why below…

With In Place disabled, the animation moves backwards in world space.

With In Place enabled, the animation plays, but the character doesn’t change position in the world.

Make sure FBX for Unity is selected under Format when saving your animation.

Back in Unity, I add a walking backwards animation that does move backwards in the world.

Right now the walking back animation is disregarding the rotation from the previous turn right clip, and snapping back to the original rotation of the character. To fix this, right-click the walking back animation clip and select, Match Offsets to Previous Clips.

Now the walking back happens in the proper rotation after turning.

Here is the entire animation clip going from idle, to punch, rotate and step backwards.

Thanks for reading!