Unity 3D + Playmaker - Creating Animations in Unity

This is part 3 of a recording of my mini game jam I'm focusing on the animations that are the sequence of the rockets launch, flight, flip, and landing. In part 4 I'll cover triggering the animations using Playmaker in Unity. But first I need to set up the sequence of animations. These videos are

This part three of the rocket game jam creates the rocket's animation clips in Unity for each phase of flight: an idle, a launch, a sideways flip, a straightening land, and a landing with rotating engines. It is a hands-on look at recording transforms in the Animation window, controlling child particle systems through animation events, and setting loop behavior per clip.

Plan the phases and make idle

The ship needs distinct phases: straight-up launch, a sideways flip, a flip back, and landing. In the Animation window create an Idle clip in a SpaceX folder at a 12 frames-per-second sample rate, doing nothing but holding the pose, and set it to loop. Authoring particle control inside these clips, rather than on start and stop, gives finer timing over when exhaust appears.

Launch and flip

Create a Launched clip where, over about two seconds, the rocket rotates very slightly on Z and activates the rocket-smoke child object so the exhaust turns on, with looping off so it holds at the curved angle. Then a Flip Sideways clip deactivates the smoke, rotates the ship into a sideways view, repositions and raises it on screen, and rotates the fins; keep it unlooped so it settles into the pose.

Land and straighten

Build a Land clip that starts from the sideways frames and straightens the ship back upright over a second, copying transform values from the idle pose for accuracy. Add downward-firing landing engine particle systems, several small cones with random orange-and-black colors, emission around 200 to 500, short lifetimes, and a size-over-lifetime curve that shrinks them as they fall, and activate them at the start of the landing clip.

Add a looping sideways hold and engine wiggle

Since the flip should pause sideways, create a separate Sideways clip from the end frames of the flip and let it loop. Finally, make a Landing clip where the three engines rotate slightly and differently from one another for life, with the engine particles on throughout. Setting each clip's loop flag correctly, holds loop, one-shots do not, is what makes the sequence read properly. Part four wires these clips to triggers and the launch-land sequence.