The Animation View - Unity Official Tutorials

The animation view allows you to create and

modify animation clips directly inside Unity.

It is designed to act as a powerful

and straightforward alternative to external

3D animation programmes.

For instance, if we wanted to have

a camera fly around a scene to give

a player an overview of a level

we can create that animation for it in Unity.

Here we have a scene with a camera

in the corner.

We would like to create an animation

for that camera which will allow it to move

from one side of the scene to the other.

Since we want to make an animation for the

camera we will want to ensure

that it is selected in the Hierarchy view.

We can then open the Animation view

by clicking Window - Animation.

Like any other view this is moveable

resizable and dockable.

There are many different buttons and options

visible when you first open the Animation view.

First and foremost is the animation drop-down.

Here is where we can select our different

animations to edit.

Since we don't currently have any animations

this drop-down is blank except for the

ability to create a new animation.

When you create a new animation you will

be prompted for a name and a location

to save the animation file.

We will create an animation called

CameraFlyThu and place it

in the Animations folder.

The Add Curve button allows us to choose

which components of our object,

or any child objects, we wish to modify

with our animation.

Each component can be expanded

to view more options.

To add a curve click the + sign next

to the item you wish to add.

Since we want our camera to fly around the scene

we will add the transform's position and rotation.

The timeline is where you will be able to

establish the timing of your animation.

The timeline is measured in frames and seconds.

The red scrubber allows you to choose what

frame you wish to modify.

Next is the Record and Play buttons.

When the record button is pressed

changes made to the chosen object

in the Scene view will be added automatically

to the animation at the currently selected frame.

The play button will allow you to preview

your animation.

The left and right arrows allow you to

navigate through the keyframes of the animation.

Next are the buttons which allow you to

add keyframes and events to the

currently selected frame.

The Sample property determines how many

frames make up one second of animation.

Reducing this number makes our animations slower.

At the bottom are two buttons that allow

you to transition between dope sheet mode,

which we are currently on,

and curve view mode.

With the record button pressed

it can be very easy to rough out the animation

that we want.

Simply select the frame we want to modify

and then set the desired camera position

and rotation in the scene view.

You will notice that a keyframe has been added

to the timeline with the appropriate values.

Properties that are currently being animated

are highlighted in red in the Inspector.

We can continue doing this for the various phases

of our fly through animation.

To preview the animation click the

play icon next to the record icon

in the animator view.

If we were satisfied with our animation

we could be done now.

If we wanted to fine tune our animation however

we would want to look at the curves mode.

To enter the curves mode select the Curves button

at the bottom of the animation view.

Here we can see the various curves of our

animation by selecting the corresponding

component on the left.

Again we can select a frame using the red

red scrubber on the timeline.

To modify a value on a curve

click and drag a keyframe to the new

desired value.

To create a new keyframe click the

Create Keyframe button,

or double click on the curve.

Right-clicking on a keyframe will pull up

some of it's options.

the most notable of these options is the ability

to choose Free Smooth.

This will create two handles are the keyframe

which you can use to smooth the curve

to your liking.

Another way to control our curves is to

choose the Broken option.

This allows you to control each side of the

keyframe indecently.

In this example we will want to add

a little variance to the exposition

of the transform.

Doing so will give us more of a weightless feel

to our animation.

Again we can do so by creating keyframes

on the exposition curve and changing

our values manually.

The animations created in Unity have the same

Inspector settings as animations made

in external programmes.

We can see these by selecting our clip

in the Project view.

Since we want our camera to fly across the

screen only once, we best uncheck

are Loop Time property.

It is interesting to note that an animator

is in charge of animation playback for generic

objects the same as it is for humanoids.

Unity has automatically added the

animator to our camera and created an

animator controller, a state machine

and added it to this component

The clip we just created is added to the

state machine as the default clip

that would be played at runtime.

This means we can go on to record

other clips and use the animator

to decide when to play them.

In this manner, once our animation clip

is completed we can run our scene

to see it in action.