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What's an avatar?
I've read about how to create an avatar or how to do this and that on an avatar, but I can't find a definition for what is an avatar?
The "unity" tag is pretty obvious, but when I tried to add the "avatar" tag I couldn't due to insufficient reputation, and there's no other good tag for this question than "avatar".
Avatar - An icon or figure representing a particular person in computer games, Internet forums, etc.
Well if you have read everything in the DOCU$$anonymous$$ENTATION, you should understand what you are working with, what it is. Why would I troll so I can lose reputation here, is that a serious question? Learn to show some appreciation for someone taking even a second to answer such a vague question.
The definition I posted reads "Representing a particular person in computer games". Unity - Game Engine. $$anonymous$$ecanim uses avatars to REPRESENT your character so you are able to rig and animate that particular "person" in your CO$$anonymous$$PUTER GA$$anonymous$$$$anonymous$$
No worries man. I really don't take things personally here, I just don't want people to start thinking that I come here to pick on questions, to make fun of them, because I come here to troubleshoot, and to give the best answer I can give by what research I can do from the available resources. I can't find a direct definition on Avatar for Unity, but the definition is what it is, a representation, or shell of your character that allows you to piece together a "skeleton" that manipulates the verts of your model in order to animate it. This is the best explanation I can come up with, since the actual "definition" isn't documented very well in Unity resources, maybe this in intentional, maybe they gave it the name "Avatar" and assumed the name itself would be definition enough. I agree they maybe need to do some better documenting on specific things.
Avatar: An interface for retargeting animation from one rig to another. Because of the similarity in bone structure, it is possible to map animations from one humanoid skeleton to another, allowing retargeting and inverse kinematics. With rare exceptions, humanoid models can be expected to have the same basic structure, representing the major articulate parts of the body, head and limbs. The Mecanim system makes good use of this idea to simplify the rigging and control of animations. A fundamental step in creating a animation is to set up a mapping between the simplified humanoid bone structure understood by Mecanim and the actual bones present in the skeleton; in Mecanim terminology, this mapping is called an Avatar.
Answer by perchik · Aug 29, 2013 at 06:08 PM
Which documentation are you referring to? As Cluck said, an avatar is just some thing that represents a person. It could be a fully rigged model character, it could be a square, but if it represents a person, it's an avatar
It's whatever the heck you want to do with it. Avatar doesn't mean a whole lot on it's own. It's just a thing that represents a person.
It's a representation of your character. There's really not more to it... Whether it be a human, mech, goblin, whatever you want to animate, the avatar is the graphical part of the rigging process, so you don't have to do it all with nothing but code. Avatar just sounds better than something like "Human shaped graphical frame for character rigs."
Well, I'll disagree. An avatar doesn't even have to be related to a rig. In terms of rigging, the avatar is the model that you are animating, but in game development in general (and in Unity in general) an avatar can be just a flashing dot or a circle that has a person behind it.
Say I had a game where you play a circle, trying to herd cats into a box. The circle moving around is my avatar, regardless if it's rigged or not. That's why I asked about which documentation 'avatar' appeared in, because it is sorta context senstive
Then you must have seen the animation glossary which is the top link on that page and referenced in that pages text? The animation glossary that defines avatar and all it's related terms?
@Perchik - Bravo, sir, bravo :D
Avatar - An interface for retargeting one skeleton to another.
@$$anonymous$$desmomo - You should mark $$anonymous$$r. Perchik's answer as accepted, since he linked you to a direct UNITY definition of Avatar.
+1