Unity, Mixamo Announce Integration For Animation

Mixamo says it will integrate its online animation service with Unity's Asset Store digital content marketplace. This will make Mixamo's animation database available immediately to Unity developers through a free plug-in. Mixamo offers a library of hundreds of customizable canned 3D animations, and enables developers to apply stock movements to their character models. Mixamo also supports Blender 3D models and the DAZ Studio modeling program. The integration with Unity aims to offer developers an "in-editor means to browse, customize and purchase character animation," the company says. The joint services are also designed to offer developers more flexibility at lower cost; animation dynamics are customizable via a slider control system. Unity CEO David Helgason says that Unity developers can now animate characters rapidly without the need for specialist animators: "It's a real shift in the whole process – developers are getting custom character animation at a dramatically lower price than conventional means, and they don't have to wait. In so boldly democratizing creation Mixamo feels like family," he says. Mixamo co-founder and CEO Stefano Corazza says that the extensibility of the Unity editor helped them implement the time-saving solution. "We want to make the process of creating animations for game characters as simple and quick as possible while still giving to the developers freedom and interactivity," he says. Unity launched the asset store at its Unite 10 conference last November. Unity CEO David Helgason recently told Gamasutra that the company is "close to having people -- I'm expecting in the next quarter or two -- who make a living from the store."