Legacy Documentation: Version 5.0
Animation from External Sources
Creating the Avatar

Working with humanoid animations

Suggest a change

Success!

Thank you for helping us improve the quality of Unity Documentation. Although we cannot accept all submissions, we do read each suggested change from our users and will make updates where applicable.

Close

Sumbission failed

For some reason your suggested change could not be submitted. Please try again in a few minutes. And thank you for taking the time to help us improve the quality of Unity Documentation.

Close

Cancel

The Mecanim Animation System is particularly well suited for working with animations for humanoid skeletons. Since humanoid skeletons are used extensively in games, Unity provides a specialized workflow, and an extended tool set for humanoid animations.

Because of the similarity in bone structure, it is possible to map animations from one humanoid skeleton to another, allowing retargeting and inverse kinematics. With rare exceptions, humanoid models can be expected to have the same basic structure, representing the major articulate parts of the body, head and limbs. The Mecanim system makes good use of this idea to simplify the rigging and control of animations. A fundamental step in creating a animation is to set up a mapping between the simplified humanoid bone structure understood by Mecanim and the actual bones present in the skeleton; in Mecanim terminology, this mapping is called an Avatar. The pages in this section explain how to create an Avatar for your model.

Animation from External Sources
Creating the Avatar