Unity NavMesh Tutorial - Animated Character Video Lecture | Build a Game: Unity Tutorial (English) - Game Development

in the previous video we learned how to
make our navmesh change at runtime in
this video we'll learn how to use links
to connect together multiple navmesh
surfaces
we'll also finish things off by
implementing an animated character to
replace our cylinder also this video is
sponsored by unity so let's jump right
into it so as you can see here I have a
simple scene with two ground
elements both of these are just simple
cube x' and I've gone ahead and named
one ground one and the other one ground
two and if I go to my nav mesh here I
can hit bake and you can see that both
surfaces are walkable to our agent but
there's of course a gap between them so
if we were to select our player now we
can see that we have the nav mesh agent
and I've gone ahead and added to play a
controller that we created in the last
video and if we play we can move around
one of the ground planes but there's no
way for us to go to the other one to
change this we can use a nav mesh link
to connect them together we'll go to our
hierarchy right click and hit create
empty we'll reset the transform and
let's rename it to link let's also add a
new component and we want to add a nav
mesh link and if we now assume in we can
see this illustration of two arrows
connecting two points we can of course
control where we want these points to be
I'm just gonna take the entire object
and hold down control while rotating to
make it span from one surface to the
other I'm also going to go ahead and
move it up so that these rings here are
placed right on top of the surface and
this is pretty crazy but that's pretty
much all we need to do if we now go into
our game and hit play we can now click
on the opposing surface and our nav mesh
will use this link to transition from
one to the other you will notice that if
we click over here our agent has to go
through the link in order to reach that
position if you look closely you can see
that the agent speeds up when using the
link this is the agent exhibiting jump
like behavior when creating a nav mesh
link we aren't creating a surface
instead think of it more like a
teleporter where when we meet the start
of the link it will simply quickly move
the agent to the other side of the link
there also some different properties
that we can modify on
michl Inc most importantly we have the
width this allows us to make our link
wider so that our player can use it over
a greater area if for example we wanted
to make pretty much this entire gap into
a link we would just increase the width
in order to do that and if I now hit
play and tell a player to move you can
see that he just uses the shortest path
there we can also choose whether or not
we want the link to be bi-directional if
we disable this our player will only be
able to use the link one way in our case
we'll be able to walk across here but we
won't be able to transition back and
then as with the other nav mesh
components we can also choose a area
type for this link but right now we're
just using a link to connect between two
parts of the same nav mesh we can
actually use things to connect between
multiple nav mesh surfaces an instance
of where this is particularly useful is
if you are loading in your level in
chunks and you want each part of your
level to have a separate nav mesh well
then every time you load in a new part
of your level you can simply connect it
together with the old one using links
and everything should work just fine so
if we go ahead and select our nav mesh
here we can actually duplicate it I'm
gonna name the first one nav mesh one
and the second one I'm going to drag to
the top and named nav mesh two and then
gonna select my first ground here and
add it to a layer this one is going to
be ground one and I'm also going to add
another layer which is ground two then
if we go to our ground one we need to
assign ground one here and for ground
two will assign ground two if we then
select our first nav mesh we can make
sure to not include ground - and we'll
hit bake so now this only includes the
first ground and for our second nav mesh
we can make sure to not include ground
one and hit big on this as well and now
this only includes our second ground so
if I disable one of these we can see
that they are now on two different nav
mesh surfaces and if we hit play you'll
see that our link still works just fine
between them so that just opens up a
whole another world of possibilities and
now that we have a great amount of
control over our nav mesh it's time to
replace this boring looking character
with a coal animated one to do that I'm
going to open up example 5
here in here I just have a simple level
I'm gonna select my navmesh and hit bake
and on this level I have the
player-character with pretty much all
the same settings as before as well as
the player controller and we of course
want to get rid of this boring cylinder
to do that we'll go to the top here and
we'll right-click and remove the mesh
renderer we'll also remove the capsule
Collider as well as the mesh filter so
now our player is pretty much invisible
instead we want to add in a character
called Loman as always if you want to
get these example scenes as well as the
character that we're going to be using
visit the link in the description so if
we go under example 5 Loman there's a
folder here called Loman in here we have
some different folders for our character
we're gonna go under models and we're
gonna select lilo body now if we select
it we can see our simple low poly
character try this to our player we'll
simply drag it under all player object
and right away we're gonna see it in our
scene we won't be applying any animation
just yet so I'm gonna right click on the
animator and remove it and now if we go
into our scene view and hit F to focus
on him we can make sure to position all
player correctly I'm just gonna reset
the transform so that he's completely
centered on our object and then gonna go
under all player and I'm gonna go to our
nav mesh agent and remove the base
offset so I'm gonna set that to zero and
that should snap our Collider right in
place and then we can go ahead and place
him on the ground here I also want to
make our graphics a tiny bit bigger so
I'm gonna select little body change to
the scaling tool by hitting R and just
kill him up a tad I'm also going to go
and do the materials and assign the low
body material to him so now if we go and
he'll play we will be able to move him
around our scene just as before but of
course it's very boring when he doesn't
have any animation applied so how do we
go about this well so far we've been
using some simple graphics to illustrate
our player and whenever we've moved the
player in a given direction we haven't
been changing those graphics at all and
that's just fine when using a simple
shape but now that we're using a
character we want him to animate as he
moves forward and more importantly with
one
this animation to line up with the way
that he's moving in order for this sort
of animation to the natural we wanted to
look like the characters feet are the
one that is driving forward the motion
in other words we have to always make
sure to synch up our animation with the
actual movement in most cases there are
two ways to go about this the first one
is moving the character using the nav
mesh agent this is not far from what
we've been doing so far we have our nav
mesh agent it wants to go in a certain
direction and so it goes ahead and moves
in that direction then for any given
point we could simply overlay some
animation on top of this movement and
then do our best to try and synchronize
the animation to the movement the way
that we'd probably do this is by asking
for each point what the current speed of
the agent is and then adjusting the
animation speed and what animation to
play depending on if the character is
moving quickly in which case we want to
run if he's moving slowly in which case
we want to walk and if he's not moving
at all in which case we just wanna go
and play some kind of idle animation and
this is fine for very simple animation
but things quickly become more complex
because our character is not only moving
forward
he's also turning to the sides and this
should be shown in the animation and it
also requires a lot of work to try and
synchronize the two perfectly the second
way to go about it is using animation to
move forward our character here we have
the agent running in the background so
for any given point we are still running
the nav mesh agent but instead of just
having it move forward our character for
each point we're asking where should we
go and we then play an animation that
moves us in that direction and so here
the animation itself is what drives the
player forward now this method also
requires some tweaking and quite a bit
of code but luckily unity recognizes
this and have created a script that does
exactly this the script I'm talking
about is the third person character
script it's part of the standard assets
and I've also included it in the example
scene if we go ahead and add this to our
player it's going to add a bunch of
different components but most of these
we can pretty much leave as is as for
the third person character script itself
I found that the
fault values for just fine so I'm just
gonna collapse that the same thing goes
for the rigidbody and as for the capsule
Collider we just need to make sure to
fit this to a character I'm gonna
increase the height to two and move it
up by one that's all we need to do here
now we can go to a nav mesh agent and
change the speed to one and we can
pretty much leave all the other settings
one thing that we do have to set up is
our animator and this is because we need
to specify what animation we want to use
as well as how this animation should be
applied to the bones first of all we
need to apply an animator controller if
we go under Lomond animation we can see
the humanoid controller right here
we'll go and drag that in and as for the
Avatar we want to be using the Loman
avatar so we'll go under little body
select the little body avatar and drag
that in as well and now a player is
actually set up to use animation if we
select him and open up our animated
window we can see how all the different
animations correspond to each other we
have a bunch of different animations in
here like a death animation you win
animation and animation when airborne
and when crouching and under the
locomotion we have a bunch of different
animations for movement in the left hand
corner we have some different parameters
and the cool thing is that our third
person character script will go ahead
and adjust all these animations
accordingly depending on the situation
so pretty much all we need to do is
start using our third person character
script to do that we'll open up our
player controller and here we want to
add a tiny bit of code the first thing
that we want is a reference to a third
person character and whenever we're
using something from the standard assets
we need to go to the top and say using
unity standard assets and in our case we
want to go under your characters and use
the third person character so now we can
create a new variable a public third
person character and we'll just call it
character then we also want to create a
start method so we'll go void start and
in here we simply want to tell our agent
not to update its rotation this is
because our rotation is handled by the
character so we go agent
daaad update rotation equals false and
now we're pretty much set up now we
simply need to move our character
through the third person character
script to do this we'll go to the bottom
of our update method and to move our
character will use character dot move
and this takes in a vector three that
defines where we want to move and
whether or not we want to crouch or jump
and as we talked about where we want to
move is determined by our agent and here
we can use a super handy parameter under
our agent called desired velocity as the
name suggests the side velocity is where
our agent would like to move at this
given point so we'll input agent dot
desired velocity and then we'll write
false because we don't want to crouch
and false because we don't want to jump
now of course there's no reason for us
to move if we've already reached the end
of our path so we're gonna put an if
statement here saying if agent dot
remaining distance and as we can see
here the remaining distance is the
distance between the agent's position
and the destination on the current path
so in the case that our remaining
distance is greater than agent dot
stopping distance and we set this to
point two inside of the inspector well
then we still want to move so in that
case we still want to call characters
move and if not meaning that our agent
has reached its final destination along
the path well then we want to stop our
character from moving and this is maybe
a tiny bit counterintuitive but in order
to stop our character we actually do
have to call move but instead of giving
it an actual movement we simply feed it
vector 3.0 and so we say stop moving and
again we want to input false and false
and that's pretty much all we need to do
in the case that we still want to move
and haven't reached our destination
we'll go ahead and move according to the
desired velocity of our agent and if we
then reach our destination we'll go
ahead and stop moving it's actually that
simple if we then save and go into unity
we now have an empty field for a third
person character we'll go ahead and drag
that right in and now when we hit
a we should see that right away our
character transitions to an idle
animation and if we start moving our
character will realistically animate to
the desired position
notice how when the character is not
moving very quickly he's only using a
walk animation if he's moving more
quickly he transitions to a run and
whenever he's running around corners he
will go ahead and tilt his body to show
this we can also take our animator and
move it to the right here and this will
actually allow us to see what animations
are currently playing so we can see how
we're transitioning our turn and forward
motion in order to play the correct
animation so from here it's just up to
you to have fun and get creative that's
pretty much it for this video and this
navmesh series if you want to learn more
about navmesh or if you have any
questions I suggest you check out the
documentation that will of course be a
link for that in the description now we
have plenty of more unity videos coming
so make sure to subscribe to get
notified once they out on that thanks
for watching and I will see you in the
next video thanks of the awesome patreon
supporters who donated in February and
especially thanks to encode We Trust
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