Hello world, I am very unfamiliar with the whole visual side of things. I do have some experience with sprites. I’ve messed around with 3d modeling and rigging in Blender, with some success. I know how to rig a character in Blender but i am wondering if I can rig it in Unity, more specifically mecanim. I have looked around for this answer but it’s all a little confusing to say the least. In the ragdoll wizard page it says characters need to be rigged in an outside program, and that an instance of that character needs to be created to apply ragdoll effects since the original is unusable. Then I’m reading the mecanim page and it appears I can send an unrigged 3D model and rig it via mecanim. In the physics component drop down list there’s a joint called “character joint” which apparently has constraints to allow accurate elbow and knee rotations, which is what I was worried about. Could I use character joints and mecanim bones to rig my characters? Does mecanim even have bones? Any help will be greatly appreciated.
You need a properly rigged model to work in mecanim as well. There are some auto rigging software out there, I know Mixamo Fuse allows 1 free rigged character per week but it is an up front cost. Although not a massive cost and on offer at the moment on the asset store.
If you can rig in Blender then you should be OK doing it yourself but AFAIK mecanim needs a rig on the humanoid you import. It can then strip out the animations and put them on any other humanoid which I think is where you’re getting mixed up. It auto selects the joint points so you can retarget animations to any humanoid.
Not used ragdoll yet but intend to and you need it properly rigged if it works in mecanim then it’ll work in ragdoll but if you have a non-rigged model you’re stuck with both.
See this for ideas rigging
So best I can advise is Mixamo Fuse at the moment. There may be others out there too.
Mecanim is what’s used for animations in Unity, and I think you’re just looking for the Ragdoll Wizard (as you’ve posted).
The Ragdoll Wizard isn’t any more than to make your life easier. It just uses code and some fancy math to create a ragdoll based off of your character. With that being said, you don’t even need the ragdoll wizard. But it saves time and the headache (like the Character Controller! You don’t have to make it yourself). In the Ragdoll wizard, you need to have the joints from your character:
Because you need to tell Unity where your character’s joints are AND how it moves the mesh, you need to have a rigged character. You can’t just slap down a mesh and expect it to work, it needs a rig.
When it says an instance, it simply means just drag your character into the game from your Assets, open the Ragdoll Wizard, and drag in the bones (the rig’s joints) which corresponds to the names in the wizard (place the left foot joint in the “Left Foot” blank, etc.). After that, you can simply click create and it will just place those Character Joints on your character to make it move around like a ragdoll.
If you need any more help, there are some tutorials on YouTube, such as:
You can also post a comment if you need help or are still confused.