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The Beginner's Guide to Animation (Unity 5 to 2020+) (Udemy.com)

Your ultimate guide to Unity's Mecanim covering keyframes, curves, inverse kinematics, strafe sets, blending and more.

4.6
2,052 reviews

Created by: Penny de Byl

Last updated February 2025

Our take

Based on the ratings of 2,052 students and a sample of their written reviews. No course pays to be reviewed.

This is a Mecanim course, not a Unity-from-scratch course, though it spends real time on both. Penny de Byl walks students through keyframes, curves, animation blending, state machines and inverse kinematics using models she provides, so nobody needs to model or animate anything in an outside tool. The projects build up from a simple bouncing ball to a character climbing a wall, and a little C# gets introduced along the way to trigger animations at runtime.

Reviewers consistently call the pace easy to follow and de Byl engaging to listen to, and several say this course finally made Mecanim click after YouTube tutorials failed them. The recurring complaint is that early sections cover basic Unity concepts, like what a semicolon is, that have nothing to do with animation, which annoys students who already know their way around the editor. A couple of one-star reviews wanted more advanced animation technique and found the mocap examples rough looking.

At 11.3 hours for a beginner topic, it is not a quick watch, and the course leans on redundant explanation more than sharp editing. Reviewers who stuck with it past the early basics tended to come away with animations working in their own games, which is the real test for a course like this. Anyone comfortable with Unity's interface can skip ahead through the first chapters. Everyone else gets a genuinely thorough introduction to a part of Unity that trips up a lot of self-taught developers.

Best forUnity users with zero animation background who want follow-along projects, not theory.
Skip it ifYou already know Unity's interface well and just want advanced mocap or IK tricks.

Pros

  • Covers Mecanim end to end: curves, IK, animation blending, strafe sets, state machines
  • All models and animations are supplied, so no external modeling skill needed
  • Instructor is a 25-year games and graphics educator, praised as clear and engaging
  • Updated with newer Unity versions and added challenges, projects and curve work

Cons

  • Early lectures explain basic Unity and coding concepts unrelated to animation
  • At over 11 hours, some reviewers say the pace and repetition drag
  • One reviewer found the mocap example animations rough looking
Really well-paced teaching style, no arduous learning curves here. If you have been enjoying Unity, but are confused about animation like I was, definitely give this course a shot.
Taysseer Kadri, a student

Best for true animation beginners in Unity; those who already know the editor may find the intro slow.

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What you will learn

  • create animations from scratch using the Unity Mecanim system and place them onto game objects.
  • import third party animated assets into Unity and set up animation controllers.
  • write C# code to dynamically control animations through user interaction.
  • explore the use of inverse kinematics in humanoid rigs.
  • create complex animation sequences and blends dynamically controlled by the user at runtime.

How it compares

Against the other 183 rated Udemy courses in Unity on CourseDuck:

  • Rating4.6 out of 5higher than 63% of them
  • Reviews2,052#19 of 184 by number of reviews
  • Length11.3 hourslonger than 53% of them
  • Last updatedFebruary 2025more recently than 79% of them

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Quality Score

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Overall Score : 92 / 100

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Course Description

The Beginner's Guide to Animation in Unity with Mecanim is for animators and Unity practitioners who want to bring their characters to life in a game environment and want to learn the ins and outs of the mecanim system. You don't need to be able to model or animate in external packages as all models and animations are provided. All aspects of animation in Unity are covered from physics, key framing, curves, forward and inverse kinematics, animation state machines and working with third party assets. Students will be introduced to elementary code, in C#, that is essential for making dynamic animations and triggers to control character behaviour at run time. 

In this course, Penny teaches all the invaluable skills you will require to begin animating your own game characters in Unity using her internationally acclaimed teaching style and knowledge from over 25 years working with games and computer graphics.

Updated to cover Unity Versions 5 to 2020 the course now contains 5 hours of extra content with:

  • new challenges and projects

  • blending animations to create strafe sets

  • adjusting curves

  • designing a character and the placing of motion capture with free third-party tools


Learn how to animate and work with:

  • the mecanim timeline

  • curve and keyframe editors

  • animation events that trigger code

  • root motion

  • imported animations created in third party packages

  • animation state machines


Contents and Overview

The course begins with the very basics of the Unity interface and progresses to an in-depth examination of all the mecanim components (including the Animation, Animator, DopeSheet and Curve windows). The majority of lectures are follow-along, hands-on workshops in which the student will explore a variety of animation techniques from creating a simple bouncing ball, through to a complex animation for a wall climbing character. Animated models and starter projects are included for students who are not confident in creating their own. By the end of this course, the student will have thoroughly explored the functionality of the mecanim system, under the instruction of an internationally-recognised professor, and be well on their way to developing snippets of code to control all aspects of 3d game animation.
Read More Beginner Beginner Level product length iconTime: 11.3h

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Instructor Details

Penny de Byl

Hi, I'm Dr Penny de Byl.  I'm a full stack developer of most things computer sciency and academic with a true passion for teaching.  I've been teaching others about games development, programming, computer graphics, animation and web design for over 25 years in universities in Australia and Europe at the full professor level. I've also consulted for Unity, SAE, the Australian Institute of Entertainment and Wikitude. My best selling textbooks including Holistic Game Development with Unity are used in over 100 institutions world-wide.  My graduates work at companies like Apple, Ubisoft, LinkedIn and Deloitte Digital.

I have an honours degree in computer graphics and a Ph.D. in artificial intelligence for games characters.  Over the course of my career I've won numerous awards for teaching excellence at the state, national and international levels including the Australian Learning and Teaching Council's Excellence in Teaching Award and the Unity Mobile Game Curriculum Competition. My approach to teaching computer science and related fields is project-based giving you hands-on workshops you can immediately get your teeth into.

I want you to leave my virtual classroom fully armed with a toolkit of skills for life-long learning.  I'm excited to now be focussing my efforts full-time on Udemy to bring my years of knowledge and experience to those eager to learn about technology.


Read More

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Reviews

4.6

2,052 ratings on Udemy

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By Pierce F. Krouse on 11/17/2021

This course covers the subject very well for beginners. The material is complete, and Penny's lectures are very clear. I learned quite a lot. Note that this course was created a while back, but Penny has done a good job of keeping it updated. Given the fast pace of software product development, it is not surprising that some of the information toward the end of this course is a little out of sync (Adobe Fuse), but it was easy enough to sort out. In short, if you are considering this course, keep an eye out for Makehuman community edition, and mixamo.com. Between them, you can create humanoid characters, rig them, and get existing animations for them, allowing you to work effectively on this course. They are all free/open source, so you won't have to buy anything extra. Again, good course, glad I took it, and I am *much* further along now.

By Rhett Haynes on 12/30/2020

I really enjoyed taking this course as a beginner in animations. Penny made it easy to follow along, but what I loved the most was the insight she gave using the Mecanim system, as well as using code to make the animations come together. She did a great job discussing the little things that you will come across in animating your characters that might become a headache for a beginner. Finishing this course has given me new confidence in trying different animations in my game. I definitely recommend this course for beginners in Unity.

By Nikhil Vijayakumar on 11/21/2020

Very Good and informative

By Francisco V. Diaz on 11/14/2020

Perfect for learning Unity Animation System.

By parth parikh on 11/1/2020

Course is great for a absolute beginner only. It is in the title of the course only.
Only disappointment for me is that, I hope IK and Blend Shapes would have been covered in more depth. Also Basic of Procedural Animation if possible.
Overall great course.

By Ferdi Viljoen on 10/25/2020

I learned some new things about animation in Unity and really enjoyed this course. Thank you.

By Nico Raftis on 10/16/2020

So far a great class, I got a degree in digital animation so I knew most of this and wanted to learn the ins and outs of managing the animation system in unity specifically so there's quite a bit I already knew but I am getting to the good stuff. If anything, I feel the exercises thus far are kind of redundant.. like I just did a ball squash and stretch along side you, watching it again with a cube seems superfluous.

By Nic B on 10/14/2020

Loved it! Just what I needed for my beginner/intermediate game dev journey. Much appreciated!

By Brian Lazarz on 10/10/2020

This course is excellent. I've taken many courses on Udemy, and Penny is by far the best instructor I've had. She presents the topics very clearly and thoroughly. I've purchased a couple more of her courses as a result. Money well spent.

By Sebastian Krieg on 10/7/2020

Super fr Einsteiger...gut zur Wiederholung fr Fortgeschrittene. Auf alle wichtigen Konstellationen von Animationstypen wird eingegangen.

By MR. MAMADIMO MELVIN MAMABOLO on 9/25/2020

wooow! am blown, I've got no words to describe this but excellent tutorials

By James McCarthy on 9/25/2020

Yes-good match. I want to drive into more advanced courses, but I realize that I need to acquire the basic Unity skills first.

Showing 12 of 413 reviews

The Beginner's Guide to Animation (Unity 5 to 2020+)
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  • Video Duration: icon 11.3h
  • Price: $13.99
  • Provider: icon Udemy
  • Updated: icon February 2025
  • Level: Beginner Beginner
  • Language: icon English
  • Certificate: icon Yes
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