The Character component is simply a utility component that can optionally be attached to an actor gameobject and is only required by some very specific clips, (“Character Look At” and “Character Expression”), which are specialized for characters. The Character component helps you to manage some of the settings used in these clips so that whenever and wherever these clips are used, the settings remain centralized on the actual character. There are two sections and functionalities related to the Character Component, those being the character Look At transforms and the character Expressions list.

Head Look At

The first part of the character component inspector is related to the Character Look At clip, which is a very easy and simple way to make the character look at a target location or object.

Neck and Head transforms are the transforms of the character neck and head respectively. Up Vector is the vector considered to be up which by default us (0, 1, 0), but your character may require a different up vector (example: 3Ds Max up vector is Z). Rotation Offset is here in case you want to make some fine adjustments.

Expressions

The second part, Expressions, is where you can create your character expressions using its blend shapes and is related to the Character Expression clip, which makes use of the settings set here to animate the character’s expression.

Each Expression is defined by a number of different blend shapes and weights chosen among any of the character’s SkinnedMeshRenderers within its whole hierarchy and of course a name for the expression itself as a whole, e.g. “Happy”. You can also preview the expression while creating it in this inspector by setting the expression’s Debug Weight to the desired value above 0. You can have as many expressions and as many blend shape targets within an expression as you wish.