In the tenth week we were tasked to rig a 2d character model from within Unity. This was a fun little exercise to teach us how to animate without the need of extra frames, redrawing the characters over and over like traditional pixel art.
When importing a photoshop file with the .PSB it automatically splits it up in separate pieces in the editor but when viewed it is all together. This way you can see all the components.
In the sprite editor you can then go to the Skinning Editor. This is where you go to add the bones and the weight groups.
Weight in bones controls how much a bone affects the body.
Using the Auto geometry you get a highlight of the mesh that encapsulates the entire sprite. This dictates where the weights go to the bones.
This is what auto geometry looks like when done
Using this model I rigged it with bones using unity’s in built rigging system.
i put bones where ever I felt like it should move on a joint. Not having enough bones makes the sprite feel stiff, but having too many makes it too complex for people to animate with.
Now using the auto weight system that is in the sprite editor we can assign the weights of the sprite to the bones. If the bones were correctly positioned it should all work out well, as the ai that automatically does the weights is decent at figuring out what to do.
It should now somewhat look colourful like this image.
We can now start editing with the animation window by simply grabbing any bone from the character and moving it around.
This is the final result of my animation work, I creates a walk/jog, Sprint and an idle animation. I think it came well. everything is perfectly looped and looks half decent! Having 3 animations allows me to at least have some cool movement in my game if I were to use this character.
Conclusion
I felt as if I missed a step, and I did with the IK rigs, however that didn’t stop me from making something pretty good. Next time I do this I will learn and I will include them into my rigs. This exercise did teach me that I could animate pretty well with 2d characters as I was only familiar with rigging 3d models until now.