Setting Up 3D Character in Unity with Mixamo

This article will show how to set up a 3D character model, using Mixamo to rig it and add animations using the Humanoid Animation Type in Unity.

There is a free tool you can use to rig your character that works pretty well for most humanoid models. The tool is called Mixamo. It was bought out by Adobe a few years back and is free to use. You can use it by going to https://www.mixamo.com and create or sign in to your Adobe account.

Mixamo will allow you to upload your model, set where your main joints are for the Auto Rigger tool and the number of bones in the skeleton. When you have everything where you want it you can hit the Next button and it will start the rigging process.

Once the model is rigged you can select animations from the Mixamo Library and see how it looks on your model. When you have the animation(s) selected you can then click Download and export it as .FBX for Unity.

Now you can open your Unity Project and import the .FBX you just created. Once the model is imported select it in the Project window and change the Animation Type to Humanoid in the Rig tab.

Now you can drag the character in the scene, create an Animation Controller for it, assign it to the Animator component and then drag in the animation to the Animator. If you enter Play Mode the animation will now play on the model.

In the following article, we will look at adding more animations and setting them to trigger through scripts.