Official Say hello to the new Starter Asset packages

Great to see work being done on character controllers!
If you don't mind me asking, how does this compare to:

• The built in PhysX character controller
• Your previous open source controller on Github

The one on Github seemed to be going into the right direction, but seems like it was abandoned.

In particular I am wondering:

• What's the motivation behind this new one, over say incrementally improving the previous attempt from Github?
• Is there anything fundamentally wrong with the one from Github? There must have been a reason to abandon that one.
• What about the built in PhysX controller? Why is this one better?
  
• What's nice about the PhysX controller is that we have one that's battle tested, made by some of the greatest in the field working on Nvidia. The only problem is that sliding down slopes is not available in the Unity one, even though it's built into the original one in PhysX. Is there any chance you guys could enable just that one missing feature? There is a lot of value in the PhysX controller, it was probably used by thousands of games already. Lack of sliding makes this unusable though.
• What's the long term plan with your new controller? Is someone going to maintain this over a long period, and how is this different than the last attempt from Github? What's the lessons learned / issues / changes?

A new 95% finished character controller every two years is useful.
A 100% finished controller that is maintained by some physics PhD over a decade to be used in thousands of projects and millions of players would be extremely useful

 

On the plus side it's finally good to see an actual character controller using the new input system and cinemachine..

I haven't tried it out so i can't comment on much else.. other than I hope these can be combined to have a switchable first & third person controller all in one.. if not disappointed.

Now to see if there will any addons or user made improvements coming and more support by other addons like mirror, vehicle assets, animancer etc

 

If that is so it would be great for Unity to bring such an asset in-house, as a free starter package, rather than a pay-for asset store item (which you never really are sure on quality-wise), but wishful thinking perhaps...

 

How to block camera movement on the FPS Controller?
One of the most important things is to hop in and out of the game, looking at different inspectors while the game is playing. It became a common thing for us, to use the middle-mouse-button to either lock or free the mouse (Cursor.Visibility and Cursor.lockState) combined with the camera movement.
The Cursor-Lock didn't change but how to freeze the Camera in Cinemachine, so that when you jump back in, it doesn't turn the Camera around?
Disabling the Virtual Camera Component or the Cinemachine Brain Component will turn the camera when jumping back in (re-enabling the component).

 

That doesn't sound like a roadmap though, guessing there is none for these assets.. so may never happen.

The number of demo scenes on the asset store that don't even bother to get that basic Cursor.Visibility and Cursor.lockState stuff implemented so that you can press esc to move the mouse over inspector without the ingame viewport moving around is unbelievable retarded shame on every asset store dev who doesn't get that done properly, how assets are even approved for the store without get that basic stuff right is pretty bad.

 

Will try ^^

 

This is finally an essential tool to have.

Out of the box works fine but after replacing the third person robot with my character it doesn't work correctly.

Once I hit the jump button it starts jumping and repeats this animation flying up to the sky.

I've carefully checked that the robot setup is the same as my character, my character walks, run, camera works, all good, except the jump. It never manages to play the JumpLand animation till the end (around 40% if we look at the animator why the game is running) then it loops trough JumpStart and InAir forever

 

The virtual joystick is constantly stuck on the smartphone
and here: UI_Canvas_StarterAssetsInputs_TouchZones
and here : UI_Canvas_StarterAssetsInputs_Joysticks

 

Ok I've got it working here was the issue.

The unity version is 2021.1.11f1

How the asset works as downloaded

New project with both the fps and third character imported from the assets store, with the cinemachine and the new input system set up correctly.

The third person controller works correctly because the "PlayerArmature" object does not have a layer selected in the Inspector.

The attached "Third Person controller" script for "PlayerArmature" have the option "Ground layers" set to Mixed... but when selecting the drop down menu we see only the "Default" selected. Normally if we see mixed we should see at least two layers selected.

With this out of the box setup all works fine because "PlayerArmature" doesn't appear to have a layer selected (or at least is different that Default)

How the asset behaves if you add your character

Now the custom part that breaks everything

You add to the scene your fbx that is a humanoid character. You add the exact components from the "PlayerArmature" paying attention to have the same settings, no root motion, input configured correctly, you create a "PlayerCameraRoot" object and you feed it to "Cinemachine Camera Target" in "Third Person controller" script.

All works except when jumping the character will fly in the air and jump continuously

Why this happens

you character will have the Default layer applied and you can't remove it not like the "PlayerArmature" which appear to have the layer option empty in the inspector.

since in the script "Third Person controller" the option "Ground layers" is set to Mixed/Default the script code will also take in consideration your character, which is set to the "Default" layer. This breaks the code and your character will start flying.

How to fix it

I've created a new layer called Player

I've applied this layer to my character, from Default to Player

done, this should fix the issue

How to fix the camera to follow your character

Don't forget to change the Follow field in the component "CinemachineVirtualCamera" that is attached to the object "Player Follow Camera",

this needs to point to your "PlayerCameraRoot" object attached to your character so the camera can follow along.

 

Question: Should CinemachineVirtualCamera be parented to the character or be an independent GameObject that only points to target?

 

Looks good.

What about Starter Asset packages 2D?

 

Almost a 10/10, but for one major problem:

Change everything "Private" to "Protected" and make functions virtual so that people can write derived classes (keeping base asset code the same) without any problems!

 

Another thing I noticed, this is expensive.

Code (CSharp):

1. protected virtual void Update()
2. {
3.     _hasAnimator = TryGetComponent(out _animator);
4. }

Why not wrap that in if(animator == null) ?

 

Great stuff, really appreciate the work done here and hope it will evolve further.

I don't see any reason why would one remove the Animator at runtime. Disabling it when enabling ragdoll - yes, but removing?
I assume that the beginner user won't be able to figure out whether to remove the Animator at runtime or disable the check in Update so I'd rather remove that line

 

Very nice work! I am trying to learn the use of the new input system from your code. I have been learning from several youtube videos about the input system. However, I am confused by lots of things you did in the code, which is very different from what I have seen. So I really appreciate it if you could explain the following questions:

1). I noticed that you have a StarterAssetsInputs.cs, which looks like your own version of the StarterAssets.cs, typically generated by using Generate C# Class on StarterAssets.inputactions. However, your code is neat but very different.
2). I couldn't find any use of Void OnEnable() {StartAssest.Enabled} and Void OnDisable() as well.
3). I couldn't find any use of [ActionMap].[Action].performed += content => do something.

Thanks!

 

@bronsonzgeb filled the survey!!
Also this part always bother me, and this thing sadly exist in almost unity games if they use builtin CharacterController component. Character should be able to step up into this ramp height. Might want to improve this part either improve the ground collider or adding ground height check

 

i am facing some issue in fps kit while increasing the sprint value to 15 the capsule body is being visible

 

You can change the step offset value

 

Thanks for the replay.

I try to migrate my half-finished game to the Unity new input system and Cinemachine.

I am working on a multiplayer game build with Mirror.

I am wondering where the character's aim IK target should be attached?

In a normal Unity camera, aim IK is the camera child object.

In cinemachine aim IK target can't be a child of the virtual camera.
It doesn't sync position correctly.
I checked this. Aim IK target is in completely weird places.

I attached the aim IK target to the main camera (cinemachine brain) and it worked correctly, but the problem is that the main camera is not a child object of the camera. I need the aim IK target to be a child object of the character prefab. That's the requirement of Multiplayer architecture.

What is the correct way to approach this?

Thanks!

 

I've noticed it kind of turns in increments/stutters when rotating the camera around the character?

 

Disappointed that more of this wasn't a UPM package. I was rather enjoying not having my Assets directly full of 3rd party code.

Would anyone be interested in a repackaged version as a UPM git repo? It would still make sense to keep anything the user would want to edit in the Assets dir but this could be handled the same way other Unity UPM packages do - via a "Samples" button that launches a .unitypackage

 

does this to me also.

you need to maximize the game window. then click in the game window to hide the mouse cursor. works as intended this way.

 

Do not select anything when in play mode, i think the stutter because of unity editor also need to update any properties visible in the inspector.

 

Any word on root motion support?

 

Character Right and Left Bones direction are flipped is this intended?

 

Hi, I'm not sure if I have missed something but the mobile input or the virtual joystick is not working. I can move the joystick in the game window but in on my phone.

 

Because these 2 character controllers are "official from Unity", I think that they could also be a useful learning experience for a beginner like me
So I started to study and compare the "ThirdPersonController.cs" and "FirstPersonController.cs" scripts.
I think that most big differences are:
a) the presence of Animator component in Third Person Controller and relative code to manage its animations
b) the "CameraRotation" method
c) in the "Move" method, in line with "_controller.Move", it's passed a different input
I don't fully understand the differences in b and c so I'll need to study the code more but if someone could explain me the logic behind them, I'll really appreciate it
I already have some other issue/questions that I'd like someone could explain to me:
1) In "FirstPersonController.cs" script, the private field "_mainCamera" is set in "Awake" but not used nowhere else: why?
2) why all configuration properties are "public" instead of "private" with a [SerializeField] attribute? Maybe to be accessible from other scripts (for example a damage dealing script that decrease character speed when wounded?)
3) public filed "GroundedRadius": its tooltip says "Should match the radius of the CharacterController": why not use that radius directly?
4) In "FirstPersonController.cs" script, the comment "Note: animations are called via the controller for both the character and capsule using animator null checks": why is it there if the animator is not used?
5) what does "#if ENABLE_INPUT_SYSTEM && STARTER_ASSETS_PACKAGES_CHECKED" at the start of both files mean? And why is it necessary?

Thanks!

 

When using the gamepad on the PC the look up and down works great. Once I build it to an Android Samsung tablet and run it if I just barley press the up or down right stick the camera is moved all the way up to the 90 view clamp instead of only going up a little. Please help!

 

Hey, great job on these!
Is there any way to get them working on 2019.4.0 ? And if so, any instructions I could look at?
Thank you!

 

Is there a version with normal Unity camera?

 

Hey!

I have a few questions for you before being able to solve this:
- What is the exact android device you are using?
- Which gamepad are you using on PC?
- Are you using the Virtual Joysticks or TouchZones?