Create a Third-Person Player Character Controller

Learn Mixamo and Unity's Mecanim system for constructing and programming your own third-person game character.

4.15 (368 reviews)

Udemy

platform

English

language

Game Development

What you will learn

How to rig and animate a 3D character from a pre-existing library of high quality, motion captured animations.

How to create a state machine of character animations that are controlled via user input.

How to implement the Unity Input System.

How to use Cinemachine to create a character following camera.

How to program from scratch a third-person player character controller for a game environment.

Why take this course?

Any self-respecting game developer knows that getting their third-person player character right is one of the fundamental keys to a great gaming experience. Not only this but the controller, once developed, can be transferred from one game to another, making the code reusable and scalable. In this course, you will learn how to put together your own third-person character from scratch using freely available 3D models and animations, which you will learn how to control with C# in Unity. The idea behind this course is to take students through a series of workshops with the necessary tools to help them make a character, animate a character and program a character without the need of being able to model or animate and gain an understanding of the third-person character controller pipeline.

This course uses Unity 2020.1 or 2020.2, Input System 1.0, and Cinemachine 2.6.3

Learn how to program and work with:

3D Characters and Rigs
Humanoid Avatars
The Mecanim System
Avatar Masks
Animation Blend Trees
Unity's new Input System Package
Unity's Cinemachine Package for 'Character Following' Cameras
Adobe's Mixamo Service for Rigging and Animating 3D Characters
Third-Person Character Controllers
Mixing Root Motion with Physics Controls

What people are saying about Penny's courses:

Dr. Penny is a wonderful person and a true expert. All of her courses I've taken have been top notch and in my opinion there is no better teacher out there.
Allow me to say how hugely important this is for a person who is interested in certain types of game design. Creating games where you can create AI behaviors that support emergent situations.
I honestly love Holistic's teaching approach and I've never learned so much within a few hours about coding effectively with such detailed explanations!

This course focuses on the building of typical third-person character functionality including jumping, falling, weapon handling, shooting, and taking damage. By the end of this course, you will have a great third-person character controller that you can use in your own games or adapt for customized situations.

Screenshots

Create a Third-Person Player Character Controller - Screenshot_01

Create a Third-Person Player Character Controller - Screenshot_02

Create a Third-Person Player Character Controller - Screenshot_03

Create a Third-Person Player Character Controller - Screenshot_04

Reviews

Ruedi

July 11, 2023

sympathische Präsentation, verständlich, hilfreich, gutes Tempo, angenehme Sequenzen, logisch aufgebaut, spannender Inhalt

Philip

July 1, 2023

I needed to create a character controller for a project and this really did more than just deliver on that. I think the teaching style is top notch, repetition over and over until it clicked for me and I was able to extrapolate what I learned here into my own melee fight system. I believe I may have found a new passion inside the field of game development and it's thanks to you Penny. Thank you very much!

Alex

June 30, 2023

Course should have more content. Crouching and Strafe are basic movement states in most games of this type.

Christopher

May 2, 2023

Mostly a good course but some of the code doesn't work even in the videos, such as the Mathf code in the jumpEffort method during Section 4 "Jumping with Gusto". Didn't even work for the teacher to clamp the value and she just moved on as if it has worked. But again, for the most part there are some good things I've learned in this.

Richard

March 27, 2023

Great so far, it was a good idea to put updated resources to help if someone missed something. I added in the ability to walk or run with a shift button push for changing walk to run speed. I am use to the old input system so this was great help in learning the new input system.

Lucas

March 22, 2023

This is my first course with Dr. Penny and I loved it, straight to the point and with a lot of learning. I will definitely take the other courses, especially the artificial intelligence ones.

Sam

March 13, 2023

I forgot which course this is, but I'm excited to really delve into the idea of a character controller. Master it, and then write an article online about everything I have learned for developing a character controller in Unity!

Marc

January 10, 2023

Monkey see, Monkey do, approach to teaching. I've not gained any insight so far, just a fast way to attach a movement script, no depth to what/why is being written, "just copy what I'm writing and hope you don't make a mistake". But they're some useful things for animations, where explanations are a little more thought out. Explaining what you could change here and there, you could do this instead of this. I wanted more in-depth on the scripting side :S What is a CallbackContext or Mathf.Approximately? What is the purpose in these? No mention on their behaviour.

Armando

January 5, 2023

The course was excellent and I learned everything necessary about a Third Person Controller. But I didn't like that the course doesn't include how to achieve <<3rd Person Camera Rotation>>, just like most Third Person Controller-type games do today. For the rest it was a great experience and the instructor always managed to surprise me with all the solutions to the problems. Thanks. El curso estuvo excelente y aprendí todo lo necesario sobre un Third Person Controller. Pero no me gusto que en el curso no viene integrado como lograr la <<rotación de la cámara en tercera persona>>, justo como lo hacen la mayoría los juegos en la actualidad que son del tipo Third Person Controller. Por lo demas fue una gran experiencia y la instructora siempre lograba sorprenderme con todas las soluciones a los problemas. Gracias.

Roy

December 27, 2022

Ich habe viele Tutorials zum Thema 3. Person-Charaktercontroller versucht, aber dieser Kurs ist das Beste, was ich bisher zu diesem Thema gesehen habe. Gerade als Anfänger kann man diesem Kurs sehr gut folgen und es ist sehr gut erklärt. Ich habe hier sehr viel gelernt und möchte gerade Anfängern diesen Kurs empfehlen.

Edward

October 24, 2022

"Fixing other Humanoid Animation Mishaps" should have been covered much earlier! I fixed it myself but it cost me a great deal of time that I could have spent learning other things. In addition, using the same animation clips to move the character backwards caused additional serious issues such as the character begins to sink through the ground and/or float above it if you muck with the transition points too much. I am not sure that you appreciate the grief issues such as this causes some people who are just learning and respectfully, I think with your credentials these kinds of issues should not be ignored or glossed over.

Dimitri

October 13, 2022

Great course to start with animation of your character! It shows you step by step how you can add and modify animations by triggering some events/ buttons and so on. I enjoyed very much the whole time and would like to see more about. Especial fine adjustment of transition between animations, reducing complexity of the code and how/where to search for methods you need to use. As a beginner is it hard to know which method to find and use to do something. But for me this was a great journey and i would recommend to get it! Big thanks an Penny! :)

Amin

October 1, 2022

Amazing course and explains every single detail needed from the roots, and can catch very quickly, specially the new input system part was soo easy to understand in compare to other videos I saw on Youtube or someone else explaining that particular topic.

José

August 30, 2022

The course is highly recommended, especially after the "Beginner's Guide to Animation" course. However, it requires more attention to the code!! (clean code, single responsibility).

Nigel

August 20, 2022

Very good so far, had a problem with running Vis studio 2017 with Unity 2020 as it failed to recognise unity as project; it then it suddenly started recognising the unity format and I honestly cant tell you why. Very frustrating and perplexing. nearly a showstopper. Launching community 2020 made no difference. It would appear this is quite common judging by the forums. Its working now but a few wise words as to addressing this problem may be of help in the future. Learning a great deal but jumping is proving more complex than i imagined. Excellent as always. Thanks.

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