Creating a function to use as an event in an animation?

Questions & Answers
1

Hello, i am relatively new to animating in unity and i am trying to create an animation where my characters picks up a sword and i am trying to create an event so when he grabs the sword, it binds to his hand so when i move his hand, the sword will move with it. how exactly would i go about doing this? sorry, i’m still learning

2

You need to have these things:

  • A trigger that will detect the sword on the ground/closet
  • A bone/empty object parented to the palm, this will serve as the parent of the sword, you need to orientate this bone/object so that when the sword is held, the sword has the correct orientation

Steps

  1. Detect for sword
  2. If pick-up key is pressed, and sword is detected, Go to step 3; else go back to Step 1
  3. Play pick-up animation; Time step 4 and 5 correctly using animation event
  4. Copy the orientation of the sword-parent to the sword itself
  5. Parent the sword to the sword-parent

Example script

public class PickUp : MonoBehaviour {
   public Transform swordParent;
   private Transform sword;

   void Update() {
      if( Input.GetKeyDown( KeyCode.C ) && sword != null ) {
         animation.Play("Pickup");
      }
   }

   void OnTriggerEnter( Collider other ) {
      if( other.gameObject.CompareTag("Sword") ) {
         sword = other.gameObject.Transform ; 
      }
   }

   void OnTriggerExit( Collider other ) {
      if( other.gameObject.Transform == sword ) {
         sword = null; 
      }
   }

   void PickUpSword() {
      sword.parent = swordParent;

      sword.localLocation = Vector3.zero;
      sword.localRotation = Quaternion.identity;
      sword.localScale = Vector3.one;
   }
}

You will insert an animation-event in the Pickup animation clip to call the PickUpSword(). Please note that this is an example, you will have to do the integration yourself as I do not know how you structure/write your script.

You can even split the detecting function to another script, for example: SwordDetectArea.cs; so in your animation-controller script, you will do something like this:

if( Input.GetKeyDown( KeyCode.C ) && swordDetectArea.sword != null ) {
   ...
}