Moving a player in your Unity 3D game
Step 1: Create Your Player Character
The first step in creating a moving player is to create your character model. This can be done using any 3D modeling software, or by importing a pre-made character asset from the Unity Asset Store.
Once you have your character model, drag it into your Unity scene and position it where you want it to start.
Next, we need to add some basic components to our player character to give it movement capabilities. To do this, right-click in the Hierarchy view and select “3D Object” > “Rigidbody”. This will add a Rigidbody component to your player character, which will control its movement based on physics calculations.
Next, we need to add a “CharacterController2D” component, which is specifically designed for 2D game development. To do this, right-click in the Hierarchy view and select “2D” > “Character Controller 2D”. This will add a CharacterController2D component to your player character, which will allow it to move around using keyboard or controller inputs.
Step 2: Set Up Movement Inputs
Now that we have our player character set up with the necessary components, we need to set up movement inputs so that it can actually move around the scene. To do this, we’ll use Unity’s built-in input system.
In the Unity Editor, go to Edit > Project Settings and select Input from the menu on the left-hand side. Here, you can set up input mappings for your game, such as which keys or controller buttons correspond to movement in different directions.
For example, you might map the WASD keys to movement up, down, left, and right, respectively. You can also map other inputs, such as jump or attack, to specific buttons on a controller. Once you’ve set up your input mappings, you can test them out by moving your player character around the scene using the keyboard or controller.
Step 3: Add Animation to Your Player Character
Moving your player character around the scene is all well and good, but it doesn’t look very realistic unless it’s animated. To add animation to your player character, we’ll use Unity’s built-in Animator component.
First, create a new Animator controller by going to Window > Animation > Create > Animator Controller. This will open up the Animator window, where you can create and edit your animations.
Next, we need to create some basic animations for our player character. For example, we might create an animation for walking, running, jumping, and attacking. To do this, we’ll create new layers in our Animator controller and add keyframes to each layer to define the movement of our player character at different points in time.
Once we have our animations set up, we need to assign them to our player character using the Animator component. To do this, drag the Animator controller onto your player character in the Hierarchy view, and then select the appropriate animation layers for each movement action.
Step 4: Add Collisions to Your Player Character
Finally, we need to add collisions to our player character so that it can interact with the environment around it. To do this, we’ll use Unity’s built-in BoxCollider2D and CircleCollider2D components.