How to Make a Skateboard Game with Unity and Playmaker - Part 1 - Import Mixamo Character and Set up

In this little mini tutorial series, we will look at building out the basics of a Skateboard game with 3 lanes to move the character in. We will use Unity and Playmaker, then also import character and animations from Mixamo and then also a few assets from Kenney.nl Part 1: Importing Mixamo Charact

This is Part 1 of a mini series building a three-lane skateboard game in Unity with Playmaker. The plan is a character who can slide between a far-left, middle, and right lane. In this opening part the focus is gathering assets, free models from Kenney.nl and a rigged character with animations from Mixamo, importing them, and roughing out a simple city scene for the skateboarder to ride through.

Grab environment assets from Kenney.nl

Head to Kenney.nl, a great source of free game assets. Under Assets, download a couple of kits to get started, a City Road kit and a modular Buildings kit. These give you a head start on the environment, though in this part the scene is actually blocked out with simple primitives rather than the kits.

Download a character and animations from Mixamo

On Mixamo (by Adobe), pick a character, here a little backpack character, that comes already rigged. Apply animations to it and export. Download a jump animation as FBX for Unity, With Skin, at 30 frames per second, since this is your first clip and needs the mesh. Then search "skateboard," choose the on-board (non-kicking) animation, enable In Place so the clip does not move the character, and download it Without Skin at 30 fps because you already have the skin from the jump clip.

Import everything into Unity

From your Downloads folder you should have the city road kit, the modular buildings kit, and the two FBX files (the skateboarder and the jumper). Create a new folder named models and bring the two character FBX files into it so they import. Drag the skateboarder into the scene to confirm it looks right; the jumper is set aside for a later part.

Block out the street and city

Find the main camera and build the scene to suit its view; nudge the camera up a bit. Add a 3D Plane for the ground and scale it large, roughly 20 wide and 100 on the Z axis so the road runs into the distance. Create a materials folder, make a gray "street" material, and apply it to the plane. Set the directional light to white. For the city, add an empty game object named buildings to act as a container, then create 10x10x10 cubes with a building material, raise them to ground level, and duplicate them down both sides into rough blocks, labeling groups buildings on the right and buildings on the left. Lower the light intensity to soften harsh shadows, then select the cubes and vary their height so the skyline has some variety. That wraps Part 1; the next part starts on the player.