How to Animate Characters in Unity 3D | Two Dimensional Blend Trees Explained 

Watched the whole series and it is really well explained! Probably one of the best unity tutorials and always straight on point. Subscribed =)

The fact you timestamped every little piece of this video shows next-level dedication to making the information accessible.

If you're having trouble making the animations blend and play correctly make sure you have the animations looped as he explained in previous videos. He didn't explain it this time and I had trouble figuring out what I was doing wrong.

Its been 3 years already from the upload and its still one of the best (if not the BEST) animation tutorial you can find. Tysm for this tutorial

If anyone is having issues with the animations, make sure they are set to loop and exit time has been disabled on the transitions into the blend tree

Dude this is one of the best tutorials I've ever seen I've been looking for something like this for so long. Thank you for this so much

This is a "Must Watch Tutorial Series" for any beginner using Unity Animation Tools. If you watch his entire series for Unity Animation you will be far better off in the long run. Thank you soooo much for this upload !HeartGameDev.

If making tutorials is something you enjoy, I beg you to keep going. You have the 'x' factor for it (i.e. voice, cadence, attention to detail, etc.)--see the rate of people saying likewise in the other comments. This series is exceptionally done. For me, the main detail that I have enjoyed is how you explain EVERY menu-item found in the unity UI when covering the topic. It is extremely common to see tutorials that: only cover a very primitive overview of what they are implementing, never explain how their 'solution' scales to other implementations, never touch on the details of other features, never explain why you would use their idea (vs. some other concept), etc. Based on that, I think it is essentially guaranteed that you can grow your channel to an arbitrary amount of subscribers/likes/views. I would not be surprised to check back later and see you have 100k+ subs. Best of luck, and again, well done.

I really like that he doesn't treat us as "beginners". Great tutorials for intermediate to advanced level learners!

I didnt even notice there was an ad at the beginning of the video because you make us so excited to see the tutorial asap. Wonderful work!

Damn all this time learning unity felt like i was just copying someone elses work, and to be honest it was just that, simply because every explanation didn't actually learn me to develop features myself. This is probably the first video that not only taught me something, but gave me ideas on how to implement stuff myself. I'm now thinking about making a blend tree system that merges different aim animations through camera rotation. Man, thank you. For real. You are amazing!

Here you are almost a year later and your videos are still helping aspiring game devs learn essential concepts to create. Thanks for what you do man!

Wonderful tutorial. Clear, concise, and extremely informative. I've yet to see any tutorial go through such lengths to explain these features. THANK YOU!!

not just learned about unity animation system but i also learned how to write clean code perfect this is what i call pure gold thanks a lot bro

You have a natural gift for teaching and breaking thing's down to bite size chucks. Great work on all your video's. Thanks for making them available for everyone to watch.

Thank you for the video! For anyone wanting a shorter way, this is what I've done: Vector2 inputVelocity; -------> Using Input System (new) I get a Vector2 instead of a single float from the Input Manager (old) Vector2 currentVelocity; -------> As I get a Vector2, instead of storing inputs in single floats, I use a single Vector2 float maxVelocityX; -------> Max allowed velocity in X float maxVelocityY; -------> Max allowed velocity in Y (Z axis in the video) private void Update() { LateralMovement(); ForwardMovement(); animator.SetFloat(VelocityYHashCode, currentVelocity.y); animator.SetFloat(VelocityXHashCode, currentVelocity.x); } private void LateralMovement() { maxVelocityX = runPressed ? maxRunVelocity : maxWalkVelocity; maxVelocityX *= MathF.Sign(inputVelocity.x); -------> be sure to use MathF (capital F) instad of Mathf, the later is a Unity library and behaves differently from MathF (c# library) currentVelocity.x = Mathf.MoveTowards(currentVelocity.x, maxVelocityX, Time.deltaTime * changeRate); } private void ForwardMovement() { maxVelocityY = runPressed ? maxRunVelocity : maxWalkVelocity; maxVelocityY *= MathF.Sign(inputVelocity.y); -------> be sure to use MathF (capital F) instad of Mathf, the later is a Unity library and behaves differently from MathF (c# library) currentVelocity.y = Mathf.MoveTowards(currentVelocity.y, maxVelocityY, Time.deltaTime * changeRate); } public void OnMove(InputAction.CallbackContext context) -------> Input System Events { inputVelocity = context.ReadValue(); } public void OnRun(InputAction.CallbackContext context) -------> Input System Events { if (context.started) { runPressed = true; } else if (context.canceled) { runPressed = false; } }

Thanks a lot for this series, I have been struggling to correctly understand animations and this is a lifesaver Really concise and straight to the point tutorials, each one self-contained yet better paired together, I ended up following the entire series to make sure I didn't miss anything and ended up learning really useful details on top on what I already knew and I also didn't feel bored or overwhelmed Each one of your tutorials is god tier quality and really thorough, not just being a "follow along" but also allowing me to get a deeper understanding of what we're doing in a simple way This is just amazing

Nicky, this is an outstanding series. As an educator myself I really appreciate your level of detail in explaining all of the different options so people can make use of those in the future. What might help though, is a video on what to do if something goes wrong. Maybe a "how to troubleshoot" animation problems video. Speaking from experience, I go through these step-by-step and my results don't always work out. Then it is really difficult being new to the content to figure out what happened. Sometimes the comments section provides a solution, but not always.

Outstanding quality! Instant sub. I like how much effort you put into the explanation! And even timecodes, wow. Please keep making Unity tutorials like these :)

As always Concise and brilliant explanation! I love these timestamps that you add. Can't Thank you Enough! Definitely Gonnna hit the notification bell.

So helpful even after 3 years! Thank you

For anyone who's forward animations are working but the strafing ones are not unless you press forward first: Make sure that the blend tree is your default animation If you want to have another one as your default animation, make sure you make one transition that checks if velocityZ is greater than 0 and a sepparate one that checks if velocityX is greater than 0

No doubt, Nikky should be awarded. Subscription is a duty^^

Great Series Man ! It will be helpful for if u put a episode number in each episode's thumbnail of the series. Otherwise we always want to check the playlist to get to know which video we wanna see next when we have finished an episode.

Great tutorial! I love how well separated and organized it is, on the video player and on the side bar.

mate you are one of the best out there in terms of tutorial. Your channel will definitely blow up.

I love the way you explained blend tree and I really understand very well thanku so much ❤️❤️

Bro your video are so well edited and jam pack with useful infos that a beginner need to understand.

Great content! I have been working with this and it is the best mixamo and animation videos out there. Very easy step by step and it is keeping me motivated!

Wow, congrats ! clear, cool, complete. Really an awesome tutorial

It's saying the video is from Manhattan, but I'm seeing a really sizable area behind you! But you know what, you're one of the few people that deserve it. You're incredible. I appreciate this more than you know, and it kinda blows my mind that Unity can combine animations. The idea that animations can be combined in the first place is just whack.

Really Amazing video, helped me a lot♥

Never worked with unity or blender and I simply decided to create a character for Risk of Rain 2, and without these videos I'd given up a long time ago, still i have to learn so much...

you are a great instructor. and your explanations are PERFECT. thank you so much for all of these videos. youre the best!

Everything you do is magic.

These videos are exactly what I was looking for

LOVE IT! Well done as usual!!

This is awesome :) love the clear explanations, as always

Maybe it's just on the patreon project files but at 19:28 when you are scrolling through the code, I didn't see mention of locking left and right, just locking forward. That's cool and all just thought it was a weird jump in logic and made me go back and forth a couple of times to catch it.

What a journey!!! Amazing work!!! 👏

Fun stuff Always check the small things, always the thing that trips you up I realise now

This is actually really useful content. Found you from reddit. Thanks for sharing

Best tutorial ever!!

Also, I think I figured out why Nicky chose the value 2.0f to be the max float value for the animation blend. I'm guessing later when we actually have the character moving in world space that's gonna also be a handy factor for scaling the movement speed with the animation. :-)

I would like you to improve this tutorials adding JUMP animations and it's scripts. Your Knowledge about blendtrees is deep and the edition of your videos is professional. I dont know how many hours you spend producing and editing your videos, but we appreciate it.

hey Nicky could you please do a video to blend jump animation to the walk and run animation

Fantastic, please do another video adding an upper body layer (wave, aim etc.) I can't seem to find a way to transition cleanly from one layer to the other

your tutorials are one of the best - pretty clean and relativly short.

You have a wonderful channel compared to other unity users! Great work 👏🏾

These are very useful and well explained. Thank you for this videos.

hi :) and thanks for the awesome tutorials

Great explanation. Learned a lot in animations You could use use horizontal axis or vertical axis for key inputs It will make code and if statement less

Awesome tutorial, thanks for making it so well!

Genuinely excellent tutorials.

i was using unity starter assets , can you make a short video on how to achieve that , only 2D simple directional is working

There's much more refactor to do in that code btw, it can be simplified and condensed.

Great tutorial! I am having issues with the Animations not moving (transform) my character at all though.

Man, you're amazing, I learned so many new things today because of your channel, keep the great work, Thank you very much! Cheers from Brazil

10:15 I manage to get it all but only failed to setup reset velocity for X axis to 0 when the animation is finished (after acceleration and deceleration)

Short version: void Update() { bool forwardPressed = Input.GetKey(KeyCode.W); bool leftPressed = Input.GetKey(KeyCode.A); bool rightPressed = Input.GetKey(KeyCode.D); bool shiftPressed = Input.GetKey(KeyCode.LeftShift); // FORWARD if (forwardPressed) { if ((!shiftPressed && velocityZ < 0.5) || shiftPressed && velocityZ < 2) velocityZ += Time.deltaTime * acceleration; if (!shiftPressed && velocityZ > 0.5) velocityZ -= Time.deltaTime * acceleration; } if (!forwardPressed && velocityZ > 0) velocityZ -= Time.deltaTime * deceleration; // LEFT if (leftPressed) { if ((!shiftPressed && velocityX > -0.5) || shiftPressed && velocityX > -2) velocityX -= Time.deltaTime * acceleration; if (!shiftPressed && velocityX < -0.5) velocityX += Time.deltaTime * acceleration; } if (!leftPressed && velocityX < 0) velocityX += Time.deltaTime * deceleration; // RIGHT if (rightPressed) { if ((!shiftPressed && velocityX < 0.5) || shiftPressed && velocityX < 2) velocityX += Time.deltaTime * acceleration; if (!shiftPressed && velocityX > 0.5) velocityX -= Time.deltaTime * acceleration; } if (!rightPressed && velocityX > 0) velocityX -= Time.deltaTime * deceleration; animator.SetFloat("Velocity Z", velocityZ); animator.SetFloat("Velocity X", velocityX); }

Excellent tutorials after watching your entire series to date. Thank you! Other tutorials (including paid) for Unity only told me to do things, but didn't explain why or what the difference between was. I really appreciate the time you take to do this. I also learnt something entirely new with the ? Variable1:Variable2 code. Never saw that before. Always used if statements. Really looking forward to the next part as that's what I'm must stuck on currently. When's it coming out please? :)

Thank you so much for the videos. It is such a great help.

Very easy to follow video! Subbed

I am having a problem that, when I press the A and D keys, the character doesn't go left and right in the game view, but, it updates in the animator and it also shows working in the little area in the blend tree where you can see the character animate, I don't know why it doesn't work, it only works when I press the W key with the A or D key, otherwise, only the W key works, my code is also running fine, there are no errors and it is an exact copy, please send help.

The code in this part is more complex and it's really hard to follow the explanations and write the code at same time. Had to watch the whole thing again a second time to understand what I was actually doing. Nonetheless I very much appreciate your work, these tutorials are fantastic and you are a great teacher.

when the run button or "shift" isn't held down and the character is running right or left they continue running at walking speed. any fix to blend the left strafe run back into the walking animation for left strafe when the key isn't held down?

My character's walking forward would not increase, it's setting to 0.5 instead. It accordingly increases if I press left or right button.

I added a backwards walk animation and I cant get it to work to save my life. When I slide the vertical input down I can see the animation working, but I cant make it work with code. I thought I would do the same with "forwardPressed" but opposite. Any help?

Very good tutorial! I have one question though, maybe you can help.I have a 2D blend tree with 4 anim: forward, backward, left and right. If i try to blend between forward and left/right it works, but backward and left/right the character moves the legs in a strange kinda way, like he strafes in the opposite way

Couldn't you use Mathf.Clamp instead of using if's for the maximum and minimum values?

I only find a problem in this animation system and it is that when trying to incorporate the animation of walking backwards it is not possible, because of the blocking because it does not allow negative values.

Just... thanks dude =)

When refactoring for performance, I'd also suggest eliminating unnecessary method parameters like "forwardPressed", "rightPressed", etc in your changeVelocity(...) method. Instead, make those things fields that get updated by a _getInput() method. Why? Because that's more data that has to be pushed on and popped off of the call stack by the CPU. You need those values literally every single frame, so why not make them fields that go in RAM heap rather than data on the stack? Of course, I realize it literally doesn't make a bit of measurable difference in this example project because it's so small, but think about a game that begins to get very large and sophisticated. Yeah, I also realize that a bool is only one byte (8-bits) but I'm saying this should be a general practice in refactoring to keep as much data cached in RAM as possible instead of being pushed on the call stack. ;-)

Thanks I really appreciate this! Legend :)

Thank you so much.

i love this tutorials, Thanks Dude! ♥ from Germany

I had error "two or more of the positions are too close to each other" I have 5 anim idle,forward backward ,left ,right positions (0,0),(0,1),(0,-1),(-1,0),(1,0) and I tried increase these numbers but does not work and even freeform directional dosent blend correctly

so my bled tree works perfectly but how do i hook these up to my controls? my player movement scrip works perfect. can walk with {w,d,s,a} but my animations wont play when i move. only when i move the velocity peramiters on my bled tree in play mode

i got a problem here ... i used the freeroam and it doesnt bledn the running animation in , the others work fine but the running animation just stay stuck there

Hellow, after aplying humanoid on mixamo model, the option "filter by selection" on animator stops to work. Do you know how solve it?

Hi I try to blend crouching forward and crouching left, right animations with a variable from -2 to 2, my problem is the character play seem good when blend forward + right but forward + left is not (2 legs step together), what wrong with me, do I need a step to sync ?

where is the unity video or the master's thesis that you said would be linked in the description?

Thank you! On to the next video

Thank you so much 😁 but how about backward walk/run?

So I don’t have a peramitier for”!runpressed” how do I get this?

Great tutorials thanks I've learnt a lot. How about character movement and walking/running backwards?

I have a question, how it's posible to figure out all this code from yourself? I mean, i probably would never be able to create a code like this by my own🤷🏻‍♂️

Extremely helpful....but how to use idle to walk or walk to idle animations....

Really perfect video ! Currently my character doesn't move, like he does all the animations and changes direction but no travel... how can I do about the travel ? does anyone have a video that explains this part? thanks :)

Man, that background music has to go. I very repetitive and after a few minutes I found distracting. This is the first video of yours I watched and I was impressed bc you explained why 2d simple would not work before continuing.

Thanks again!

Valeu mano muito bom, aprendi bastante com esse vídeo

Great videos! thanks a lot.

If we press A and D together the animations get wierd i tried to fix it by if(rightPressed && left pressed) { VelocityX = 0.0f; } But I am not able to decelerate properly can anyone help me

12:54 you did not press the play button lol

Can you Do Jump and Run Jump animation in 3d. Thanks in advance

followed your tutorials, everything works well. how do you get this set up to move in the world (along the z and x axes)? Do I have to back track and use root motion or is there a character controller for this?

Your video is awesome and it really helped me a lot but i have one issue. Whenever i drag both velocity x and z values all tha way up to 2 the animations are not blended correctly. I downloaded them from mixamo as you showed in your previous videos. Any ideas on how to fix it? Nevermind it was probably a bug. I reimported the animation and it worked

The Best !!!

mine stopped working and i dont know how to fix it