How to Setup animator for an AI agent?

[Jim the Hermit]

I got a zombie model and made a new character with the AI agent set. I tried using an animator I made but all the NPC does is the walking animations without going anywhere. It also can die when shot.

 

[Justin]

You can use the same animator as your player controlled characters use - from the AI's perspective this aspect does not change.

 

[Jim the Hermit]

You can use the same animator as your player controlled characters use - from the AI's perspective this aspect does not change.

Is there a night school I can go to learn how to modify it?

 

[FMWFiremage]

Have you gone through the documentation and example video that Justin has created, I found these really helpful when creating a new animator controller. I prefer to build one from scratch as there is a lot going on in the demo controller.

https://opsive.com/support/document...oller/animation/animator/animator-controller/

 

[Jim the Hermit]

Have you gone through the documentation and example video that Justin has created, I found these really helpful when creating a new animator controller. I prefer to build one from scratch as there is a lot going on in the demo controller.

I watched it many times.

 

[Justin]

That's the goto video for modifying the animator. That video only goes over the character controller specific portions, so for general animator controller knowledge take a look at some of the links on this page: https://opsive.com/support/document...ller/animation/animator/replacing-animations/

 

[Jim the Hermit]

Parameter 'AbilityIndex' does not exist.
UnityEngine.Animator:SetInteger(String, Int32)

Parameter 'AbilityIntData' does not exist.
UnityEngine.Animator:SetInteger(String, Int32)

Parameter 'AbilityChange' does not exist.
UnityEngine.Animator:SetTrigger(String)

My attempt to make it walk failed and I'm out of ideas.

All I really need is a script I can add to an NPC that detects the amount of damage from each UCC weapon. I can't get ImpactCallback or ReactingObjects to work without a collider and that makes the NPC flip around randomly for some reason.

 

[FMWFiremage]

From those errors you've not setup the required controller parameters. See 2 minutes 11 seconds in on the video I linked to above.

 

[Jim the Hermit]

I made a copy of Demo and removed what I didn't need, replaced the animations with zombie animations and tried to make it walk using this:

    private void GoWalk()
    {
        anim.SetInteger("AbilityIndex", 6);
        anim.SetInteger("AbilityIntData", 0);
        anim.SetTrigger("AbilityChange");
    }

And I got those errors. What the video at 2:11 shows is how to make a new animation controller.
What do I do to make it do the walk thing?

 

[Andrew]

What errors did you get?

Setting animator parameters manually like that is not the recommended way to change an agent's animation state. A better way would be to use Abilities. I would recommend reading this page and/or watching the video it contains to get an idea for how to create a simple custom ability that you can use to trigger animations.

However if what you're trying to achieve is the damage callback as you mentioned in a previous post, that's exactly what the impact callbacks are for - so you should look into why your collider "makes the NPC flip around randomly".

 

[Jim the Hermit]

OK, I made a blank animator controller and recreated my controller in it. I used my parameters to start animations and ignored all of Opsive's stuff. I got it to work, but the NPC doesn't turn toward the target. It just walks in a straight line. Something in the UCC is preventing this code form working.

    private void FaceTarget()
    {
        Vector3 direction = (target.position - transform.position).normalized;
        Quaternion lookRotation = Quaternion.LookRotation(new Vector3(direction.x, 0, direction.z));
        transform.rotation = Quaternion.Slerp(transform.rotation, lookRotation, Time.deltaTime * turnSpeed);
    }

Any ideas?

 

[Andrew]

Manually setting the character's rotation like this is not how to work within UCC. You'll want to create a new custom ability within which you can override CharacterLocomotion.UpdateRotation to set the rotation manually that way.

 

[Jim the Hermit]

How would I not stop an NPC from rotating? And please don't point to a page of how to make a new animation for the player when it enters a trigger.

 

[Justin]

In order to rotate the character a custom direction you will need to create a new ability and override UpdateRotation. Take a look at the MoveTowards ability for an example. This ability rotates to a direction specified by the target rotation.

The page/video that Andrew linked to is a great resource for how to get started on creating a custom ability.