Retarget Humanoid animations

One of the most powerful features of Mecanim is the ability to retarget humanoid animations. This means that you can apply the same set of animations to different character models. Retargeting is only possible for humanoid models with a configured Avatar. A configured avatar provides the ability to correspondence between the models’ bone structure.

Recommended Hierarchy structure

When working with Mecanim animations, you can expect your scene to contain the following elements:

• The Imported character model, which has an Avatar on it.
• The Animator Component, referencing an Animator Controller asset.
• A set of animation clips, referenced from the Animator Controller.
• Scripts for the character.
• Character-related components, such as the Character Controller.

Your project should also contain another character model with a valid Avatar.

To retarget between character models, follow these steps:

1. Create a GameObject in the Hierarchy that contains Character-related components.

   

2. Put the model as a child of the GameObject, together with the Animator component.

   

3. Make sure scripts referencing the Animator are looking for the animator in the children instead of the root. To do this, use GetComponentInChildren<Animator>() instead of GetComponent<Animator>().

   

Then, to reuse the same animations on another model, do the following:

1. Disable the original model.

2. Drop in the desired model as another child of GameObject.

   

3. Make sure the Animator Controller property for the new model is referencing the same controller asset.

   

4. Tweak the character controller, the transform, and other properties on the top-level GameObject to make sure that the animations work smoothly with the new model.