Mixamo integrated into Unity engine

Character animation company Mixamo has announced the integration of their online animation library into the Unity Asset Store.

The move will apparently make it quicker and cheaper for developers to animate characters when building Unity engine powered games, by allowing them to access motion capture data and a repository of animation from within the development platform - all via a free plug-in.

"With Mixamo's service integrated into the Unity Asset Store, game designers can get their characters animated incredibly quickly and without access to specialist animators," said David Helgason, CEO of Unity Technologies.

"It's a real shift in the whole process – developers are getting custom character animation at a dramatically lower price than conventional means, and they don't have to wait. In so boldly democratising creation Mixamo feels like family."

Mixamo Co-founder and CEO, Stefano Corazza, added: "We want to make the process of creating animations for game characters as simple and quick as possible while still giving to the developers freedom and interactivity. The unprecedented extendibility of the Unity editor allowed us to convert what is usually a long process into a real-time fun experience."

Last month Unity, whose 3D rendering game engine boasts in excess of 400,000 registered users, announced a partnership with streaming technology company GameString in order to form a new, cloud-based gaming service.