Unity Playmaker - 3rd Person Adding Jump and Jump Animation

In this Unity Playmaker tutorial, I'll be showing how to add a jump animation and setting up the Animator and playmaker jump triggers as well as the player input jump action to this 3rd Person controller. ► Download Playmaker at https://bit.ly/3dV8JzC ► Download Unity at https://unity.com Chapter

This tutorial adds jumping to the third person controller, covering the whole chain: sourcing a jump animation from Mixamo, wiring it into the Animator with triggers, binding a jump button in the new Input System, and driving both the physical jump and the animation from Playmaker.

Grab the animation from Mixamo

Search jump on Mixamo with your character loaded, pick one you like, and download it as FBX for Unity, without skin — the character's mesh already lives in the project with the other movement animations. In Unity, drop the file into the character folder, extract the jump clip from the model, and rename the copy so it isn't confused with the one embedded in the FBX.

Set up the animator transitions

The animator already has an idle-walk-run setup. Drag the jump clip in, then make a transition from Any State to jump — that way you can jump from anything you add later, not just idle — and a transition from jump back to idle walk run. Add two trigger parameters, jump and landed. Condition the Any State transition on the jump trigger and uncheck Can Transition To Self, otherwise the jump animation can retrigger itself mid-air. Condition the return transition on landed.

Bind the jump button

Open the player input actions asset and add a jump action to the player action map with the action type set to Button. Bind it twice using listen mode: spacebar for keyboard, and the controller's A button (Button South) for gamepad. Autosave takes care of the rest.

Drive it from Playmaker

In the player's movement FSM, add a Player Input Button Events action, point it at the inputs component, and choose the new player jump action. Use the is-pressed event to send a jump event, add the transition, and Ctrl-drag off to a new Jump state. There, add Controller Jump: set jump height to 1, use world space, and leave the multipliers alone. Turn on move-while-jumping and feed it the same move variable the input Vector2 is already stored in, with an in-air speed range from about 1 to 3 — that keeps air control consistent whether the player was walking or running at takeoff. Add a landed event that transitions back to the Player Move state when the controller detects ground.

Trigger the animations

Controller Jump moves the capsule but not the animation, so in the Jump state add Set Animator Trigger on the character model and pick jump from the trigger list. Copy that action into the landed destination and switch it to the landed trigger, which sends the animator back to idle walk run. Test it: jump from standing, jump from a run — the physical arc and the animation now fire together.