Animaton: Scriptable Finite Automaton for Animation Design in Unity3D Game Engine

In this paper, we propose a novel technical approach for animation design in the Unity3D game engine using the scriptable finite automaton called Animaton that specifies the transitions between positions, rotations, and animation clips for each animated virtual character. In our animation design interface, the animation designer can write easy-to-use C-like scripts to define the animation logic, drag and drop each state label in the virtual scene, and then can use different input strings to simulate different animation sequences. We conduct a series of numerical experiments to demonstrate how is our proposed approach applied to the animation design process and how potentially it can improve the animation design efficiency.