Animation, rigging & IK
Character and object animation covers the Animator, state machines, blend trees, Animation Rigging, inverse kinematics and procedural animation. These guides show how to make movement feel good and how to drive it from code. Start with state machines, then move to procedural techniques. 48 hand-picked Unity guides, tutorials, videos and repos, kept current.
- Giving a simple fighter personality with procedural animation in Unity
Breakdown of procedural animation that gives a legless, faceless fighter character and weight.
jettelly.com · Oct 2026 - Self-balancing active ragdoll in Unity
Active ragdoll combining physics, IK and procedural animation, with a breakdown of the upcoming tool.
jettelly.com · Jul 2026 - A procedural spider walk in Unity
Spider legs driven by IK, raycasts and stepping rules, with no baked animation.
jettelly.com · Jun 2026 - How to make a flapping text effect in Unity
Recreates an airport-board flip text effect in Unity using the Text Animator asset.
blog.febucci.com · Apr 2026 - Data-Oriented Next Fest - The Hot Path Show Ep. 56
Last year I did a livestream with Nitzan Wilnai who is writing a book on data-oriented design in Unity. Nitzan's upcoming game: Cardwheel is in Steam Next Fest right now!
youtube.com · Feb 2026 - How to make a 2D game: art, animation, and lighting for artists (Unity 6.3 LTS edition)
Unity 6.3 LTS guide to 2D: project setup, sprite workflows, tilemaps, animation and lighting.
unity.com · Feb 2026 - Bringing My Talking Tom Friends 2 to Life with Animation and Physics
Optimizing across devices, building a scalable animation system and managing content complexity in a mobile pet game.
unity.com · Nov 2025 - Vault Door Animation in Unity for Beginners
Beginner guide to animating a vault door in Unity.
youtube.com · Oct 2025 - Balancing animation fluidity with player inputs in Bye Sweet Carole
Balancing hand-drawn animation fluidity against responsive player input in a 2.5D horror game.
unity.com · Oct 2025 - Exploring procedural design in Rain World: The Watcher
Procedural animation and emergent enemy behaviors that drive Rain World's living ecosystem.
unity.com · Sep 2025 - Beginner's Guide to Importing Characters into Unity
Beginner guide to importing characters into Unity.
youtube.com · Aug 2025 - Unity Workshop: Easily Set up Your Character Model
Workshop on setting up a character model in Unity.
youtube.com · Jun 2025 - Unity Workshop: Animating Lever to Open a Door
Workshop on animating a lever that opens a door.
youtube.com · Jun 2025 - Unity Animation: Gunshot Flare
Animates a gunshot muzzle flare in Unity.
youtube.com · May 2025 - The High Heel Problem
Game art investigation into the high heel problem in character models.
simonschreibt.de · Mar 2025 - Definitive guide to animation with Unity 2022 LTS
Unity's animation tools and techniques: importing, humanoid rigs, animation controllers and more.
unity.com · Jun 2024 - Lerp smoothing is broken
Explains why the common lerp smoothing pattern is frame-rate dependent and how to fix it.
youtube.com · May 2024 - Framerate-independent lerp smoothing
Post working out framerate-independent lerp smoothing.
mastodon.social · Feb 2024 - Easing functions: linear, smoothstep, smootherstep and elevator-style curves
Post comparing easing functions like linear, smoothstep, smootherstep and elevator-style curves.
mastodon.social · Jan 2024 - UI Toolkit Primer - Build UIs like a Programmer
Building interfaces is now effortlessly simple with the powerful new UI Toolkit. I'll guide you through how I, as a programmer, construct these interfaces and walk you through the essential fundamenta
youtube.com · Aug 2023 - GitHub - annulusgames/TweenPlayables: Tween Animation Library for Unity Timeline
Repo: tween animation library for Unity Timeline.
github.com · Mar 2023 - Building a Video Scrubber to Match Unity Animations
Creating custom editor tools to sync video references with animation timelines. Bridge the gap between concept art and implementation.
bartouv.github.io · Jan 2023 - The Rain World Animation Process
Explains how Rain World's animation is produced procedurally.
youtube.com · Dec 2022 - Add Motion to Concept Art | Simon Trümpler | EXP Expo 2022
Talk on adding motion to concept art.
youtube.com · Oct 2022 - Sine Waves Visualized
Learn how to use sin and cos waves. I use unity here but, but the math is agnostic
youtube.com · May 2022 - Reddit: Explaining procedural animation
Reddit post explaining procedural animation.
reddit.com · ~Aug 2021 - Recreating Batman Arkham's Freeflow Combat | Mix and Jam
Recreates Batman Arkham-style freeflow combat in Unity.
youtube.com · Jul 2021 - Texture Animation Techniques
Explains baking animations into textures for vertex-shader playback (Vertex Animation Textures).
medium.com · ~Sep 2020 - Shader animation in Unity
Explains shader-driven respawn animation and effects for a game character.
torchinsky.me · ~Jun 2020 - https://weaverdev.io/projects/bonehead-procedural-animation/
Weaverdev project write-up on procedural animation for a Bonehead character.
weaverdev.io · ~Mar 2020 - Tower Defense: Animation
Tower defense tutorial animating enemy movement, intro, outro and death.
catlikecoding.com · Sep 2019 - Recreating Pokemon Let's GO's Capture Animation | Mix and Jam
Recreates the Pokemon Let's GO capture animation in Unity.
youtube.com · Feb 2019 - Shader Showcase Saturday #10: Fortnite Procedural Animations
Recreates Fortnite-style procedural animation effects with shaders.
alanzucconi.com · Sep 2018 - Easing Functions for Game Animations: Visual Guide
Visual guide to easing functions like ease-in, ease-out and bounce for game animation.
blog.febucci.com · Aug 2018 - Game Math: Deriving the Slerp Formula
Derives the slerp formula for spherical interpolation.
allenchou.net · May 2018 - Game Math: Swing-Twist Interpolation (…Sterp?)
Explains swing-twist interpolation for rotations, with source on GitHub.
allenchou.net · May 2018 - Hex Map 19: Animating Movement
Hex Map part 19: animating unit movement.
catlikecoding.com · Jul 2017 - An Introduction to Procedural Animations
Introduces procedural animation concepts and how to use them in games.
alanzucconi.com · Apr 2017 - Inverse Kinematics for Robotic Arms
Moves robotic arms in Unity with inverse kinematics and procedural animation in C#.
alanzucconi.com · Apr 2017 - An Introduction to Gradient Descent
Introduces gradient descent as a way to solve inverse kinematics for procedural animation.
alanzucconi.com · Apr 2017 - Implementing Forward Kinematics
Implements forward kinematics in Unity with code, as part of an IK series.
alanzucconi.com · Apr 2017 - The Mathematics of Forward Kinematics
Explains the mathematics of forward kinematics behind procedural animation and IK.
alanzucconi.com · Apr 2017 - The Challenges of Quadrupedal Characters
Blog post on challenges of animating quadrupedal characters in games.
theovermare.com · Sep 2016 - Fallout 4 – Wasteland Eyes
Looks at the shader behind eye movement in Fallout 4 wasteland characters.
simonschreibt.de · Nov 2015 - Game Math: Interpolating Quaternions with Circular Blending
Interpolates quaternions with circular blending for skeletal animation data.
allenchou.net · Apr 2014 - Tomb Raider – Laras Hot Secrets
Looks at Tomb Raider visuals and character secrets.
simonschreibt.de · Jan 2014 - World of Warcraft – Balloon
Looks at the animated balloon asset in World of Warcraft and how it is built.
simonschreibt.de · Jan 2013 - Introducing the New Animation Rigging Features (Presented by Unity Technologies)
GDC session on Unity's new Animation Rigging features for procedural animation control.
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