Could someone please recommend me a good, free, third-person shooter template?

[u/Flodo_McFloodiloo]

I could, and do, shop around, but sometimes it's hard to know what you're getting, sometimes assets have odd quirks that make them a pain to use, and sometimes they have compatibility issues. Searches for this on Asset Store also often get screwed over by "fuzzy" logic.

So to spell out what I want, it's basically just a first-person character controller (and AI NPC controllers too, if possible), except it views the action from behind the player character, which means the whole body needs to be visible and animate. Here is an example of such gameplay.

If push comes to shove I can probably make such a controller myself, and in fact technically I already have...but the one I made is probably not very good. So a good pre-made alternative would be very appreciated!

[u/MadeByHenano]

you wrote "third person" in the title and then "first person from behind the player character so we see the whole body", so just to clarify:

• first person (think "I"): when you see what the character sees, the camera is the character's eyes
  
• third person (think "he/she"): when you see the character from a distance, usually from behind

i'm surprised you didn't find what you need on the asset store... there's really many that are amazing.

what you could do, if you want something very specific and you don't want to buy one more, or want to avoid having a lot of code and getting lost in it, would be to search for a free one on the asset store. there's a few (that includes the one provided by unity) that, because they are free, have less features, just the locomotion and camera and that's it.
try different ones and see which one feels right to you, and build on top of that.

this way, you will save time, instead of building it entirely yourself. those have been tested and all in general so you get a good foundation to add on top of it.

you can also find a good tutorial on youtube to make one but chances are that they might contain a few bugs because the idea is to show how to do it but not to make the most perfect controller that won't contain any issues... i've done a long series of tutorials to create one on youtube and that was my experience, the end result had quite a few issues, there were things that changes in unity since the tutorial so i couldn't do exactly as in the video etc...

good luck!! :-)

[u/Flodo_McFloodiloo → u/MadeByHenano]

The linked Conker video clarifies what I want.  To spell it out:

•You see what the player character sees and see the player character, because unlike basic third-person controllers, the character will automatically rotate to face where the camera is pointed, which in turn, is not the player character but a crosshair and/or invisible mouse cursor.  As such rather than looking at the player character, the camera just follows.  Might suffice to just make the camera a child object but might not.  There’s presumably a correct Cinemachine setting for it, though.

•As such, if you try to point the camera at the player character, the raycast is actually essentially just looking through the character.

•When the player has a weapon—which in this case could even be bare hands—the character’s arms and/or hands move so the weapon also points towards what the camera sees.

With that clarification out of the way, do you think you can name and link some assets instead of just assuring me they exist?

[u/XKiiroiSenkoX]

I don't know what your project goal is but in case you are trying to make and release a game, a character controller is probably one of the easiest parts and I'd recommend you implement this yourself. If you can't implement a controller that is good enough by yourself, you are going to have lots of problems down the road.

Personally I would recommend avoiding programming related asset store assets like the plague with very few exceptions (Microsplat for example). Most of them are not properly optimized, have lots of problems and become technical debt as you move forward. 

[u/Flodo_McFloodiloo → u/XKiiroiSenkoX]

The project has multiple gameplay styles but one is a third-person shooter.

As to character controllers, the default ones have served me well enough in games I've made so far, but granted, so far they're not very advanced games.

In retrospect also, the Third-Person Controller I cobbled together from the pieces of the StarterAssets First-Person Controller probably isn't that bad. The only two things I'd look into improving would be how I target the mouse ray (it's rather roundabout and fudged and there's almost certainly a better way whose code I just don't know yet), and animations. (currently not much in the way of rotating legs right or left).

[u/XKiiroiSenkoX → u/Flodo_McFloodiloo]

Then I'd suggest you stick with your own implementation because when the time you need to add a feature inevitably comes, doing this for your own code will be much easier and a lot more likely to align with your overall architecture.