Hey there,
for a few years now I have been dreaming about making an own 2.5d side-scroller packed with action like in the old days (or the new versions of it in cases like Bionic Commando etc.).
To cut a long story short: Since I first saw Unity I knew this would be the engine I should try to some day reach my goal. I took the first steps successfully and tried some of the tutorials with fun. But:
Where do you / where does one get animated charakter or weapon models (working in Unity) from, if one isn’t able to create them by himself? I tried to search unityanswers and the forums, but I’m still stuck with it. In the moment it’s all about testing the engine and trying some further tutorials, so I don’t need this special 1000 $ ultimate-pack 
I just don’t know where to search and find some basic (if possible free) things like a player, an enemie and a gun, you know?
Thanks in advance for any useful hints and tips,
Best wishes,
Carnivore
You could always try finding an artist, finding stuff that’s already animated isn’t likely going to happen, but there are (some) free models on sites like turbosquid.
Animating a model takes time, effort and is usually specific to your project. There are some free models out there ready for bones and animation though, but even then you’re going to need to get your hands dirty in some 3d IDE like Maya or Cinema4D.
As for the animation, there are shortcuts you can take like using Animeeple (free to download, and has several free animations to attach to your rigged characters) to produce basic animations (jump, run, walk, fall, etc) with little to no effort.
I recommend following the official 2D sidescroller tutorial from the unity resources section… it will sort-of give you an idea of what type of animations you’ll need for this perspective.
Sorry bro either you pay out for a custom job or buy a premade asset. The alternative is going to be to try and hoodwink some artist into working with you,.
http://www.3drt.com/3dm/3d_characters.htm
http://www.dexsoft-games.com/models/characters.html
I don’t know what everyone is talking about, haha. There’s no need to buy things if you’re doing something for a non-commercial project and just testing. If you simply want a FPS character and a gun for testing, look at turbosquid.com. They have simple, and also complex models. The simple ones are generally free, and the complex ones…well, they’re pricey. You’d probably even be able to find a “crappy” animated person for free, as well.
Download what you want, get blender, export it as a .FBX and you’re good to go!
yep blender is another great program… the only real reason why i use Maya instead is because I spent a lot of money on a copy of it and spent most of my time learning it lol. Blender however is a great program, especially for the price!
Hey,
thanks for you fast answers! So I guess I’ll have to check out blender and the 2d-tutorial as well and see how far I can get. I’m sure somewhere on that way I’ll have to get back on you anyways
Cheers and best wishes,
Carnivore
Truebones is great, I was going to suggest it but someone beat me to it! LoL.
Incredibly large amount of animations for such an incredibly cheap price. Best deal around, guaranteed. It’s true, lol.
A more expensive alternative for far less animation, but very smooth (but quite expensive) would be a subscription to Mixamo. A subscription is cheaper than buying an individual product. So if you go Mixamo, then go Subscription. It’s basically like you’re forced to buy 4-5 animations, or else you have to pay a ridiculous price for 1-3 individually.
But like I said, Truebones comes with over 4000 for $200.
Mixamo is like $6-$12 ($30+ for some animations) for just a SINGLE animation.
Truebones is hands down the better deal. Mixamo is really smooth though, so it depends, but IMO truebones wins hands down.
Either way, you’re gonna pay $30-$50 for just a few animations (Mixamo) or $200 for over 4000, or $12-$24 for one or two.
So if you just want to “test” you’ll get screwed over at Mixamo buying 1 or 2. If you only want 5, you’ll get less screwed over. But 4000 for $200 is like…I mean come on, that’s A LOT of animations, for an EXTREMELY cheap price. The more you spend- the more you get, by a very, very, VERY large margin. At Mixamo, $200 is 15-30 animations (or less, 2-4 animations if it’s the expensive ones) vs 4000+ truebones.
15 vs 4000…hmm…
If it wasn’t for truebones, I’d be doing most animations myself, and would only buy from Mixamo about 5 basic animations to jump start my game. But that would be “Walk” “Run” and “Sword” lol…that’s about it.
I haven’t tried out the truebones yet, but I did try out the demo files, and Juggling is so awesome! Something Maximo doesn’t even have in their very small catalogue.
But with Truebones, I will barely have to animate, because among the 4000 I’m sure the majority of what I need is in there.
Even cooler- with different types of the same animation, I can make different animations for different races, so the races don’t all seem to have the exact same animations! 
mixamo.com is a wonderful website for getting some animations, some are free, some are a couple dollars. You can get characters/import them and edit the animations. It is pretty amazing.
When you purchase an animation from Mixamo, can you go in at ANY time to edit the animation?
Or do you edit it once and purchase it, getting a single edited animation. And if you want that same animation edited differently, you have to buy it again?
If it is the former, and you get infinite access to an animation after you buy it-- okay, not bad. Not bad at all.
If it is the latter, and you have to pay multiple times for the same animation— LOL, they can go straight to Hell. Forever. ***holes.
So it really depends on what you’re actually buying, especially to justify the higher price.