Using Skinning Animation with Animator

So far, we have used what are called static meshes, which are solid three-dimensional models that are not supposed to bend or animate in any way (aside from moving separately, like the doors of a car).

We also have another kind of mesh, called skinned meshes, which are meshes that have the ability to bend based on a skeleton, so they can emulate the muscle movements of the human body. We are going to explore how to integrate animated humanoid characters into our project to create enemy and player movements.

In this section, we will examine the following skeletal mesh concepts:

• Understanding skinning
• Importing skinned meshes
• Integration using Animator Controllers
• Using Avatar Masks

We are going to explore the concept of skinning and how it allows you to animate characters. Then, we are going to bring animated meshes into our project to finally apply animations to them. Let’s start by discussing...