Getting Staretd with 3D Animation in Unity (Book)

Mastering game programming and creating a game that is both fun and challenging, and that players will love, can be very difficult, regardless of your experience in game programming or with Unity.

This is because a player often needs to be constantly challenged, yet not frustrated with your game. This is a very challenging balance to reach; however, by including artificial intelligence to your Unity game, and some very simple principles, you can manage to make the game fun, and the Non-Player Characters (NPC) more realistic, by making sure that the behave in a way that will challenge the user.

Regardless of your background, you will always need to use some of these techniques, because good AI can really make a difference between a boring game and an exciting game that the players will want to play for hours.

Thankfully, you can easily overcome these issues and start to implement interesting AI with a step-by-step approach that gets you to progressively develop your knowledge and mastery of Artificial Intelligence with Unity. This is the approach that I have used successfully over the past years to help students create 3D games that are both challenging and addictive, thanks to a well-designed Artificial Intelligence using Unity and C#.

By following the techniques and suggestions described in this book, I can promise you that you will manage to create some very challenging games with NPCs that are smart, believable, and more importantly, challenging to the player.

Content and structure of this book
In this book, the first in the series called "Unity from Proficiency to Mastery", you will learn and apply several AI techniques for 3D games, and make it possible for NPCs to:

Navigate the scene (e.g., using a random or set path).
Sense the world around them (e.g, hear, smell, or see).
Take smart decisions based on their senses or current state (e.g., look for ammunition or health when these run low).
React to the players' moves (e.g., set an ambush, follow and attack the player, or flee).

Along the way you will also learn other useful skills and concepts such as:

Finite-State Machines in Unity,
Animator Controllers,
3D character animation,
Navigation costs and areas
State Behaviors,
Group movement,
Melee combat, and much more...

The main idea behind this book is to help you to apply common AI techniques with Unity and C# to make your game more challenging and fun to play.

The content of each chapter is as follows:

Chapter 1 shows you how to create a simple AI for your 3D games with no coding involved;
Chapter 2 shows you how to create different types of navigation for your NPCs, including set paths, random paths, and wandering aimlessly.
Chapter 3 shows you how to add senses to the NPC so that they can detect targets and take decisions accordingly.
Chapter 4 shows how to make it possible for the NPCs to take more sensible decisions based on the environment and their own state.
Chapter 5 shows how to implement group behaviors for NPCs. You will learn how to create a group of NPCs that follow the order of the player (e.g., follow the leader, attack targets or withdraw from the battle) and to create a team of NPCs led by the computer;
Chapter 6 provides answers to frequently-asked questions.

If you want to start creating fun and challenging 3D games using a tried-and-tested method: download this book now!

Your Instructor

Patrick

Patrick Felicia is a lecturer and researcher at Waterford Institute of Technology, where he teaches and supervise undergraduate and postgraduate students. He obtained his MSc in Multimedia Technology in 2003 and PhD in Computer Science in 2009 from University College Cork, Ireland. He has published several books and articles on the use of video games for educational purposes, including the Handbook of Research on Improving Learning and Motivation through Educational Games: Multidisciplinary Approaches (published by IGI), and Digital Games in Schools: a Handbook for Teachers, published by European Schoolnet. Patrick is also the Editor-in-chief of the International Journal of Game-Based Learning (IJGBL), and the Conference Director of the Irish Symposium on Game-Based Learning, a popular conference on games and learning organized throughout Ireland.

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Getting Started with 3D Animation and Unity. Coupon Discount

Animate your 3D Characters in Unity

Getting Started with 3D Animation in Unity can sometimes be tedious and difficult if you don’t have an approach that is both simple and detailed.

In the past, I have seen how a simple yet detailed approach to teaching 3D Animation in Unity can make a real difference to student’s ability to animate their characters. There is no magic bullet to achieve this, other than a clear understanding of students’ needs and of what may impact significantly on their progress and confidence. So, everything has been included in this book to make the journey enjoyable and to guarantee your success:

This book, unlike many other books on the topic, assumes that you will, as beginners, make mistakes, and it explains how to either avoid them or how to deal with them when they occur. Because this is what happens in real life, we all make mistakes and learn from them.
This book also assumes that you can’t be expected to learn everything at once; this is why all the skills will be built incrementally.
This book makes sure that you keep motivated by providing you with the right amount of information and challenge in each chapter; we all know that it’s hard to keep motivated when learning a new skill, so this book always contextualizes the knowledge with an example (so that you feel it’s relevant), and also makes sure that you get to challenge yourself if you need to.
You will have the opportunity to learn 3D animation in Unity at your own pace and to become comfortable with many of the features offered by Unity, even if you have no previous 3D animation experience. This is because every single new concept introduced will be explained.
You will create your own animations.
Every step and all the code is explained in great details so that you never feel lost.
The solutions to the code and challenges presented in the book are available so that you can compare/check your own code.
All the concepts are introduced progressively so that you don’t feel overwhelmed.
All chapters include step-by-step instructions with code examples that you can use straight-away
A quiz is available at the end of each chapter (with solutions) so that you can test your knowledge.
Optional challenges are added at the end of each chapter.

So Getting Started with 3D Animation in Unity should really help you to animate your 3D characters and make them more believable, and to also enjoy the journey.

It includes three chapters that painlessly guide you through the necessary skills to animate and control your 3D characters and master some very useful features for your NPCs.

Chapter 1, Creating Your Character, explains how you can create, animate and import your 3D character so that it can be used in Unity.
Chapter Using Finite State Machines, provides step-by-step instructions so that you can start to create control your 3D character through a Finite-State Machine and C#. You will learn how to create states with their corresponding animations, and how to transition between states using parameters and by controlling these from a C# script.
Chapter 3, Using 1-Dimensional Blend Trees, provides an introduction to blend trees, whereby you can blend animations based on a single parameter to make these transitions smoother.
Chapter 4, Using 2D Blend Trees, further explains and illustrates the concept of blend trees but this time with two parameters. Using this chapter, you will be able to smoothly switch between animations for your 3D character, based on the speed and the direction of the 3D character.
Chapter 5, Polishing-Up the Character and Adding Animations, explains how you can fix common issues linked to 3D character import, and it also shows you how to make your character jump, or how to reuse the same animator controller for different character, and save you a lot of time in the process.
Chapter 6 provides answers to Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs) related to the topics covered in this book.
Chapter 7 summarizes the topics covered in this book and provides you with more information on the next steps to follow.

Getting Started with 3D Animation (Book)

Animate your 3D Characters in Unity

Your Instructor

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Getting Started with 3D Animation and Unity. Coupon Discount