How to Make a Talking Animation With ActorCore and Unity 3D for Free in 3 Hours

In this tutorial, you will learn how to download animated characters for free from ActorCore, and how to use them in Unity 3D to create a talking animation.

What You’ll Need

On ActorCore, you can find animation-ready and fully-textured 3D models with a wide selection of styles, including photorealistic people, sci-fi, fantasy, historical, and toon figures. Simply choose the ones that you like and import them into your project.

Here’s the rest of what you need:

To follow along with this tutorial, you will need your own version of Unity. You will also need an account for Reallusion to access ActorCore.
For your Unity scene, you can use your own project or use a free scene from the Unity Asset Store. For this tutorial, we will use the free tutorial scene from Unity.
And lastly, you will need the Auto Setup for Unity from Reallusion. This can be downloaded for free from the ActorCore website.

1. How to Download Characters From ActorCore

Step 1

Once you have created an account and signed in to Reallusion, enter the ActorCore website, which can be found in the Products tab under Cloud Service.

Step 2

On the top menu bar, click on either the Actor or Motion buttons to browse through everything that ActorCore has to offer. Let’s start with downloading a 3D character by clicking on the Actor button.

Step 3

By default, you will see all the items available. To narrow this down, you can select a particular category by using the menu on the left. To download the free characters, click on the Free button.

Step 4

Now that only the free characters are displayed, it should be easier for you to choose which one you want to use for your project. Add the characters that you like to your inventory by clicking on the Add to Cart button.

2. How to Download Free Animations

Step 1

You can download animations on ActorCore by following the same steps as you used for the 3D characters. Select the Motion button from the top menu.

Step 2

Here you can see a thumbnail preview of all the animations available to choose from. To select the free animations, click on the Free button on the left.

Step 3

Now that only the free animations are displayed, it should be easier to choose which one you want to use for your character. If you select a particular animation, you can even preview what it would look like on your chosen character in the preview window.

For this tutorial, we will be using Stand Talk. Add the animation to your inventory by clicking on the Add to Cart button.

3. Download Characters and Animations From ActorCore

Step 1

Select the Stand Talk motion and click on the Download (Motion) button.

Step 2

This will take you to the Download Settings window, where you can select a character. Click on a character from the selection and then click the Next button.

Step 3

Make sure that the correct character has been selected on the left and that the target application has been set to Unity, and make sure that Facial Blend Shapes is checked. Then hit the Download button to download the animation.

4. Download and Install Auto Setup for Unity

Step 1

In order to import our characters and animations, we need to download and install Auto Setup for Unity. To do this, go to the top of the ActorCore main page and select the Learn button, and then click Supported Software.

Step 2

This will take you to a page that contains download links to various software. Select Unity at the top and then click on the green Download button.

Step 3

Download Source Code for the latest Auto Setup file.

Step 4

Download the Auto-Setup-for-Unity-main.zip file on GitHub.

5. Import Your Characters and Animations to Unity

Step 1

Create a new project in Unity by clicking on the New Project button.

Step 2

Select the 3D Core project and name it Talk Animation.

Step 3

Unzip the Auto-Setup-for-Unity-main.zip file, and drag the CC_Resource, Editor, and Resource folders into the Project Assets library for your project.

Step 4

Once the files have been successfully imported, the CC_Assets folder will be generated in the Assets folder.

Step 5

Click and drag the downloaded character assets into the CC_Assets folder of the Unity project.

Step 6

Once everything is imported, you can then click and drag the prefab into the viewport or your scene to see how it looks within your project.

6. How to Animate Your Character in Unity

Step 1

Open the Animation Controller for your stand-talk animation from the Motion folder.

Step 2

If you want to loop the animation, right-click on the stand-talk animation and select Make Transition, and then click on the animation again to loop it into itself.

Step 3

In the Inspector panel, make sure to enable Foot IK.

Step 4

Click and drag the controller into the character’s controller field.

Step 5

Click the Play button to see the animation in action.

7. How to Animate the Face

Step 1

With the character model selected, you can see a list of all the Blend Shapes in the Inspector panel. By adjusting the values of each of these, you will be able to see how they affect the character.

Step 2

To create an animation, right-click on the Project section and select Create > Animation.

Step 3

For our animation example, let’s name it Blink. Then open up the Controller and create a new layer for our face called Face Layer.

Step 4

Click and drag the Blink animation into the controller, and then loop it by using the same Right-Click > Make Transition workflow that we used earlier in Section 6, Step 2.

Step 5

Adjust the weight from 0 to 1.

Step 6

In the Animation panel, select the Blink Track so that we can edit the blend shape keys in the timeline.

Step 7

Click the Record Button to enable keyframe recording. Then change the value of the blend shape for Eye_Blink at random intervals along the timeline to create some blinking animations.

You can then repeat the process to animate the other blend shapes for the character.

Awesome, You Just Made an Animation!

Congratulations! And that’s how you can create a talking animation using ActorCore and Unity. Try out other characters or animations available in ActorCore to make more. I hope you’ve found this tutorial useful, and I’ll see you next time on Envato Tuts+!