Creating and Animating Characters - Lumberyard User Guide

Creating and Animating Characters

Most game projects require an animated character to move around in the environment. This may be a character that the player controls, or an AI-driven entity that interacts with the level.

Use the EMotion FX Animation Editor to animate characters in Amazon Lumberyard. To build a character, you associate one or more skinned models with an animation skeleton (built in a digital content creation tool like Maya). You then import the character into the Animation Editor and specify the animations that you want your character to have.

You can then blend animations, so that your character transitions from one animation to another, and specify the conditions when an animation occurs for a character. For example, you can specify that your character starts in an idle position. After several seconds, the character starts to walk, run, and then slow down again until the character returns to an idle position.

In the Animation Editor, you can preview the animations and blends between the animations for your characters.

Lumberyard has the FBX Settings tool that converts static .fbx meshes, skeletons, skins, animations, and materials into Lumberyard assets. For more information, see Working with the FBX Settings Tool.

Note

If you are using Lumberyard 1.10 or earlier, you can use the legacy animation system (Geppetto and Mannequin) to accomplish these tasks. For more information, see Animation System in the Amazon Lumberyard Legacy Reference.

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