How to use Character Animation From Mixamo Website in Unity 2019.4

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Are you looking for a free 3D character for your game?

Are you searching for a cool 3D character animation for free?

Have you ever heard about Mixamo?

Most game developers struggle with 3D assets like 3D characters. Either you have to purchase them or you have to create them in a 3D Modeling Software (e.g. Blender). But what about those who try to learn unity game development and don’t want to invest time into learning how to use Blender, or 3D Modelling in general?

Well, we have something awesome for you. Mixamo!!!

What is Mixamo??

Mixamo is a 3D computer graphics technology company. Based in San Francisco, the company develops and sells web-based services for 3D character animation. Mixamo’s technologies use machine learning methods to automate the steps of the character animation process, including 3D modeling to rigging and 3D animation.

Open the Mixamo website

https://www.mixamo.com/

You need an adobe account to access the Mixamo features.

Create an Account or login

Either you create a new account or log in with Google or Facebook.

After the login, you will see the home page of the Mixamo website. As per your requirements click on either of the two buttons

Click on the Characters Button

Remy in the T-Pose on Mixamo

On the website, you will see a list of characters on the left side and the character display panel on the right side.

Download a 3D character from the Mixamo website

If you want to download only the 3D character (without any animation) just click on the Download Button.

Here you have to select the format & pose of the character.

Mixamo provides the file in the FBX file format for the famous game engine – unity for more stability.

“The Autodesk FBX file format is a popular 3D data interchange format utilized between 3D editors and game engines. It was originally created as the native file format for Kaydara’s Filmbox motion capture tool. The FBX format name and extension is derived from the application name FilmBox.”

Select the T POSE for your character.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/T-pose

Now click on the download button.

Download Unity 2019.4 or newer

https://unity3d.com/get-unity/download/archive?_ga=2.28208380.1946435242.1592192111-400033870.1591534108

Open a Unity project and add this fbx file.[I am using Unity 2019.4 with URP Template]
Create a new scene and rename it to “Character Demo”.

The character is working in the scene but the character material is not found.

Import Character & Set Material of Character

Extract the materials from the character model.
Click on Model FBX file open Model Settings

Click on Materials Tab.

Now Extracts Materials and Textures in the specific folder in Assets.

you got all the textures of the character model.

Character Textures of our Mixamo 3D Character

If you got this popup about normal map settings then click the “Fix Now” Button.
It will set a normal map property of Materials.

Now mark all materials in the model file. – As you can see the character consists of many parts and dreg them onto the player

Final Output of the character model.

The Mixamo 3D Character in our Unity 3D Project

Download Character Animation

Now you need an animation file for this character model. so open Mixamo.com again.

Go to Animations. You can see the default position is the T- Pose. Change that by clicking on one of the animations.

Select any animation clip from the list.

Test the different animations, e.g. the Boxing Animation on Mixamo

Now you see that a boxing animation clip assigned to the 3D Model.

you can change the settings in for the animation clip which are available on right side. [no need to change].

Check out the Animation on Mixamo

You can zoom in/out, rotate, reset the animation clip using these controls.

Download this boxing animation for the current character.
Click the Download Button.

Download Settings on Mixamo, when downloading a 3D Character Animation

In the download settings.

Format – [Type of Object file]

Skin – [animation file including 3D model or not]

we already downloaded the character fbx file so select “Without Skin”.

Frames per Second [animation frames counter ]

Key frame Reduction [apply animation optimization technique or not]

Key

Here the animation file was downloaded in the FBX format.
Save the file and add it to the Unity project.

Save the 3D Character for your Unity 3D Game on the PC.

Import the animation File to your Unity Project

In Assets, create a new folder with the name ” Mixamo Character”.
Add a character fbx file, character Texture folder, and the animation file in the “Mixamo Character” folder.

Open the animation and the animator window.
Create an animator controller for the character.

An Animator Controller allows you to arrange and maintain a set of Animation Clips and associated Animation Transitions
for a character or object.

Animator Component

Add animator component to the character.

Assign an animator controller in the controller field.
Add the character’s avatar in the Avatar field.
If you couldn’t find any avatar in the character model then create a new avatar for the character.
- Select the character model file and open settings.

Click on the the Rig Tab.

Set the Avatar Definition and the Root node then click on the apply button.

you can see the avatar in the character’s model file.

The Mixamo Character now has an Avatar

Assign the Character’s Avatar in the Avatar Property of the Animator Component as shown in the image below.

Add the remyAvatar to the Avatar property of the Animator

Open animator window, and drag the animation clip to the animator window.

Drag the animation to your Animator

Run game project,

Play animation

Great, character and its animations work perfectly.

Summary

As you can see, Mixamo is giving us amazing 3D Models and Animations for free. We can use them for our projects, without having to learn how to create our own 3D models or animations. This saves a lot of time and makes developing games with Unity 3D an ever smoother experience.
Which animations do you like most? Are you planning on using Mixamo in your projects? Let us know in the comments.

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