Turning an avatar into a 3rd person character - animation

Question

I just learned how easy it is to simply drag a 3rd person character controller prefab (from Unity's standard assets package) and drop it into the hierarchy.
Using the WSAD and Space keys feels pretty natural, so I wondered if I could apply the same character controller to a customized avatar.
Using the free AutoDesk Character Generator (https://charactergenerator.autodesk.com/) I created one (fbx file) and imported it into Unity, so now I have my own character prefab.
I, then, searched for the steps to animate it just like a a 3rd person character controller, with the following article coming up first, but I wonder if I always have to do all the steps?
http://blogs.unity3d.com/2014/04/14/turn-your-character-into-a-player/
Once you have a customized character in the form of a Unity prefab, should do still go through all these steps, or is there a simpler way of animating your avatar; e.g. adding the basic necessary scripts?

Answer 1

That article gives a good overview of what is required.
However, you can essentially skip almost all those steps when using autodesk character generator.
Here is a quick way:
Set your FBX to be a mecanim humanoid
Drag an mecanim animator controller onto it
Write your code to set the animator states (eg: speed, jumping, etc)
To do that:
Export from Autodesk as "Unity FBX" format to get YourCharacter_Unity.fbx
Drag the FBX into the unity project files
Click on the YourCharacter_Unity FBX in project (blue cube), select "RIG" tab in inspector, and change Animation type to "Humanoid" (which maps it to the Mecanim system).
Drag the FBX from the project into the scene.
Go to the Asset Store and import "Mecanim Locomotion Starter Kit" (which has a basic locomotion controller and a set of animations)
Drag the "Locomotion Setup/Locomotion/Locomotion.controller" onto the "controller" variable on your character's Animator component.
Untick "apply root motion"
Now, if you hit run you will see your character standing there with idle motions. If you double click on the animator controller on your character it will open up the Mecanim Animtor window and you can manually set the animation state. Try changing the speed to 1.0 and you will see him walk/run.
Note: In your character's Animator component if you checkmark "Apply root motion", then the feet animation will cause your avatar to automatically move when his speed > 0.
You say you are using a CharacterController, so here is a very simple script that references the character controller to get the current speed, and then set the speed on the Animator:
using UnityEngine;
using System.Collections;
public class CharacterAnimator : MonoBehaviour {
public CharacterController controller;
public Animator animator;
private int speedid;
void Start () {
animator = GetComponentInChildren<Animator>();
controller = GetComponent<CharacterController>();
speedid = Animator.StringToHash("Speed");
}
void Update () {
float speed = controller.velocity.magnitude;
animator.SetFloat(speedid, speed);
}
}