Creating and Implementing Spritesheet Animations in Unity
Workflow for creating and implementing 2D spritesheet animations using Adobe Fuse , Mixamo, Cinema4D, and Unity.
Spritesheets are a common way to animate characters in Unity games, but generating those animations is not always easy. Since I didn't specialize in character animation, I wanted a way to get the basic body mechanics for my 2D character's motions like running, jumping, walking, etc.
I started by trying to rotoscope over spritesheets I found on the internet, using their body positions and creating my own character styles in Illustrator. The process was slow and inconsistent. Luckily I found that Adobe had recently included a program called Fuse in the Creative Cloud membership, which makes it easy to model a character and give it common animations (via Mixamo).
The problem was that I didn't want my character to have that polished 3D look - I wanted it to be cartoony. It was also a side-scroller, so it didn't need to be 3D - I just needed the body mechanics. Luckily, with the help of my friend Peter and some internet tutorials, I was able to bring the character into Cinema4D, apply a few shaders to simplify the look of the character, and output an image sequence from a side view for use in spritesheet animation in Unity.
The video below walks you through that workflow. It's not perfect, and Id love to streamline it, so if you happen to know how to make things more efficient, get in touch. If you're stuck like I was, hopefully this will be helpful.
Links in this video:
Stitches - Spritesheet Creator
Mixamo - Character Animationfrom Fuse Models