Speaker A
Introducing Unity's new starter assets, a set of lightweight character controllers now available for free on the Unity Asset Store.
Overview of Unity's free starter assets for first and third-person character controllers, including setup, customization, and usage tips.
Key Takeaways
- Unity starter assets simplify adding first and third-person controllers to projects with modular, customizable prefabs.
- Supports multiple input types including keyboard, mouse, gamepad, and touchscreen controls out of the box.
- Compatible with standard, universal, and HD render pipelines on Unity 2020.3 LTS, ensuring broad usability.
- Easy to swap character models in the third-person controller by replacing the armature and updating the animator.
- Starter assets come with tools to manage dependencies and reset controllers, streamlining setup and integration.
Summary
- Unity's starter assets provide lightweight, modular character controllers for first and third-person games.
- Assets are free on the Unity Asset Store and compatible with Unity 2020.3 LTS and multiple render pipelines.
- Includes two packages: first-person and third-person controllers, with dependencies on Cinemachine and the input system.
- Setup involves importing assets via the Unity package manager and using tools to reset or add controllers to scenes.
- First-person controller uses prefabs for main camera, player follow camera, and player capsule with customizable settings.
- Third-person controller includes a rigged player armature prefab and follow camera, supporting easy character model swapping.
- Mobile input support is included with virtual joysticks and touch zones prefabs, configurable for touchscreen devices.
- Instructions provided for updating materials for different render pipelines and integrating controllers into custom environments.
- Customization options cover player movement speed, jump height, ground detection, and input configurations.
- Additional resources include a Unity blog post and community support via the official Unity Discord server.
Full Transcript — Download SRT & Markdown
Speaker A
In this overview video, we'll show you how to import, customize, and use these assets to kick off your first and third-person games.
Speaker A
By the end of this video, you'll learn how to deploy the controllers in your environments and how to customize their settings, and with that said, let's jump right in.
Speaker A
The Unity starter assets provide game creators with foundational character controllers that cover a majority of use cases for first and third-person games.
Speaker A
These controllers are fully compatible with the standard, universal, and HD render pipelines for Unity versions 2020.3 LTS, plus they're modular, so you can customize them to fit your project needs.
Speaker A
The starter assets consist of two different packages on the Unity Asset Store, you can find them on the store through the search function or use the links in this video's description.
Speaker A
Click on add to my assets so you can access them via the Unity package manager.
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Back in the editor, download and import the assets into your project by going into window, package manager, and then my assets.
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There are also two Unity packages required for the starter assets, Cinemachine and the input system, they'll both be automatically installed when you import either of the starter assets into your project.
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You can also use the tool script included with the starter assets to ensure you have the packages you need.
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You can access them via the tools option within the editor menu bar, from there, you'll find a few options for the starter assets you've imported.
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Reinstall dependencies will verify if the starter assets package was successfully imported into your project and that all required features are ready and installed, if not, it will automatically re-trigger installation of dependency packages.
Speaker A
Reset first-person controller automatically adds the first-person controller setup to your scene or resets the required elements.
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Reset third-person controller armature will automatically add the third-person controller setup to your scene and use a humanoid armature to represent the player.
Speaker A
Reset third-person controller capsule will set up a third-person controller in your scene but using a default capsule primitive instead of the humanoid model.
Speaker A
For this walkthrough, we'll be setting up the starter assets using the Unity 2020.3 LTS version and the standard render pipeline, plus an asset from the asset store called Dreamscape Nature Meadows environment from Polyart Studio.
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If your project is using the Universal Render Pipeline or HD Render Pipeline, you can easily update the starter assets material to work with your project by going into edit, render pipeline, and then update project materials, more details about this step are listed in the video description.
Speaker A
Let's start by taking a look at the first-person controller, we can test it out by opening its demo scene found inside the project window via starter assets, first-person controller, scenes, and playground scene.
Speaker A
In play mode, we can move around the environment using WASD, arrow keys, or the left joystick if we have a gamepad connected, we can look around by moving the mouse cursor or a gamepad's right joystick, we can also press shift to sprint and space to jump.
Speaker A
You'll notice that there's also a set of mobile controls in the scene that are disabled by default unless you need them, that's because we've included input support for touchscreens in addition to keyboard, mouse, and gamepad, we'll review how to set these up for your project in a bit.
Speaker A
Now, it's worth noting the three prefab game objects that bring the first-person controller to life, main camera, player follow camera, and player capsule.
Speaker A
Main camera contains the Cinemachine brain component that will be used by our player's follow camera, the player follow camera contains the Cinemachine virtual camera that moves and rotates based on the player's position and look direction.
Speaker A
Lastly, player capsule contains the input actions we're using with the input system along with the first-person controller scripts, which let you fine-tune the controller's behaviors, you can change settings like the player's move or sprint speed, jump height, ground detection, object push abilities, and more.
Speaker A
Going back to where we want to add our first-person controller, let's remove our scene's current main camera and select tools, starter assets, reset first-person controller, you could also use the project window and navigate to starter assets, first-person controller, prefabs, select the player capsule, player follow camera, and the main camera and drag them into the hierarchy.
Speaker A
Set the player capsule's position to where you want it to start in your scene, lastly, verify if the player follow camera's Cinemachine virtual camera component has its follow target set to the player camera root object within the player capsule prefab.
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You're now ready to explore your scene's environment in first-person mode, head into play mode to try it out.
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Now let's check out the third-person controller, we can find its playground scene under starter assets, third-person controller, scenes, and playground scene, and test it out in play mode.
Speaker A
Just like the first-person version, this controller is made up of a main camera prefab, a prefab for the player, player armature, and a prefab for the follow camera called player follow camera, the player armature prefab includes the third-person controller scripts that you can customize along with the rigged model to represent the player, we'll show you how to swap this out with your own character later in this video.
Speaker A
As with the other starter asset, there's also a set of controls available for mobile devices, let's bring this controller into our meadow environment to review the setup process.
Speaker A
We can go into tools, starter assets, and reset third-person armature, we can now jump into play mode and move our character around with the keyboard and mouse or gamepad.
Speaker A
If you want a controller that works for touchscreen devices, regardless if you're using the first or third-person asset, just add the UI event system and the UI canvas joysticks or touch zones prefab to your scene, once the input prefab is in your scene, drag and drop the player prefab into the starter assets inputs field on the UI canvas controller component.
Speaker A
You can get them from the starter assets, mobile, prefabs folder, the joystick prefab will let you use virtual joysticks to move your character around your scene, while the touch zones prefab will move your character towards the area of the screen that you're pressing.
Speaker A
With the starter assets third-person controller, swapping in your own character is as easy as replacing the armature geometry and updating the controller's animator, to start, make sure your custom model's rig is set to humanoid.
Speaker A
Next, use the hierarchy to unpack the player armature prefab and look for the controller's default mesh under player armature, geometry, and armature underline mesh, delete it and replace it with the FBX prefab of the model you want to use, lastly, select the parent player object and change the avatar in its animator component to be the avatar that came with your custom character.
Speaker A
You are now ready to try out the Unity starter assets, we're excited to see what the controllers help you create, you can learn more about the assets in the Unity blog post linked below, and you can also show off your creation with it over on the official Unity Discord server.
Speaker A
Thanks for watching.
Topics:Unitystarter assetscharacter controllerfirst-person controllerthird-person controllerCinemachineinput systemgame developmentUnity Asset Storemobile controls
