Dude your videos are a gold mine. I'm trying my best to understand the code as I watch all these different tutorials so I can expand and fix, but you take your time to talk about why things work etc, and it's really helpful!
Btw, I though your name looked familiar. I'm a big fan of your content. Hit me up on discord if you ever need dev help or want to chat about the craft. :)
As a programmer, I am also a fan of your content, Video Game Animation Study! You taught me a lot and that makes working with the artists on our project easier!
I don't think I've posted a comment in nearly a decade but I had to for this. My main character has 114 animations (thank heck he's nearly finished) and HAD over 2500 transitions between them all (and I was originally planning to add more conditions to each transition to iron out any hidden glitches). It took me a few hours to adapt your solution to my extreme example of animator hell, but it actually WORKED. Now I won't have to worry about all those transitions/conditions/glitches in the main character and all future characters I make! You've probably saved me literal weeks of work once it all adds up. I can't thank you enough. Time to finally relax with some Super Metroid
For those who are using 3D, I find using State Machines and layers and then create logic in code that blends between layers for more complicated animation systems. Pro-tip you can use an empty state on a higher up layer as a means to turn that layer on and off as well. For example a layer dedicated to climbing and an empty state within it for when you're not climbing, this way you can use the transition to blend from your base layer to the climbing animations without having to do it through code.
Like another commenter mentioned you are quickly getting into an if/else nightmare. I would highly suggest people watch UnityLearn's - Finite State Machines by Marc Gilbert which specifically uses a similar animation example starting with your approach before changing into a Finite State Machine. Obviously in your example things are still a manageable but with a few more mechanics it could quickly get to become a nightmare, which I've personally experienced before.
Another thing I like to do is to create Animation Behaviours for similar clips. Then, instead of having one state per clip, I just manage all of the more complicated logic inside the animation behaviour.
This is an intro..... believe it or not.... and you should know this as a “teacher” but you start as simple as you possibly can when teaching..... and for experienced developers who are seeing this and don’t understand this trick yet. Well. They might have the knowledge to know how to clean this up. He’s simply showing how to actually do 2d animations. There is no sense in going over other topics and making it complicated
Finally!!!!!! I always wanted a more code oriented youtuber for learning Unity. It is funny how I can find videos saying "Make games without coding" but no videos saying "Unity but only coding". Also, I always preferred co-routines, but with this approach, I may try the animator, and things may become better. Thank you for the video. :)
Oh... Whyyyyy am I using the Animator for animation states when this method exists...? 😅 I had the idea of doing it this way a few weeks ago, but thought it might create a bigger mess. Which is also the reason I thought everyone teaches you to use the Animator. But seeing how the setup looks so clean and simple, I can't see why it would not be an improvement over using the Animator. Pros: - Removing the Animator removes the middle man. - You need to talk to the Animator in your code anyways... - You feel more in control I could imagine. Cons: - Can't help but feel there is a reason everyone teaches through using the Animator... Is there a downside I'm not seeing..? Either way, I much prefer to do this where I activate the animations directly, rather than my code talking to the Animator, just for it to do a task that could be done a step before. Thank you so much for this. 🙂
Hey mate, glad this approach has helped. As for the question 'why Is it not taught': one reason is accessibility; to give beginners a more accessible framework-centric approach. The newer input system is another example of this. But while these drag and drop visual approaches might be more accessible for non-coders, those of us who like to build our own management systems can feel their clunkiness. I do think these systems are very powerful for the right users, but for me at least, they cause more trouble.
@@LostRelicGames Thanks a lot for the reply! I figured it might have been related to the learning experience of newer Unity devs. 🙂 Love your videos btw, they give a lot of insight and inspires. 😊
@@maarten9222 Hello can you tell quickly what kind of benefits you loose from animator? i'm a beginer dev and i don't realy like the animator system... but i don't want to be blocked for my game top down 2D with lot anim for lot charachter thx :)
I really like the idea of introducing finite state machines to help control actions/states exclusively, it gets better in the long run than the tangle of ifs.
Making a 2D game with frame animations for the first time, struggling with the animator state machine. The approach mentioned in the video is basically making a state machine in code while taking the advantage of the animator (so we can create states and assign animation in the editor directly), which makes the animator and code cleaner. Inspiring and informative video! Thank you.
I haven't been in the "Game" long, so my projects never required excessive animations. Now that I'm moving up in the world, this tutorial is a godsend. You spoke directly to my soul when you showed me how to escape Animator OCD and spider webs. Thank you for everything that you do. Anxiously awaiting the release of Blood and Mead!
From the bottom of my heart thank you! i spent about 5 days trying to get multiple gameobjects with their own animator controllers to sync animations based on which direction the character was moving and this is what solved it! as soon as i seen that you could use a state to control the animation being played i knew this is what i needed! Thank you so much!
This video is invaluable. I struggled with "Mechanim" throughout my development of Cataclysm, and the complications it caused (due to me using it incorrectly) had a real influence on whether or not I'd go forward with some experimental idea related to animation. It often just wasn't work the risk of messing up the precarious mess that I had. Right towards the end of development, when I was making some simple animations for the tutorial pages, I decided to just roll my own animation script using coroutines. It has its own limitations, and possibly problems that I have yet to encounter, but it works and (more importantly) I understand it. If I had your video a few years ago, I could have saved myself the trouble. I sincerely hope that no other noob developer has to deal with the Mechanim cobweb with this video as a guide.
This actually helps me quite a bit. I was having trouble with cases that the animator didn't cleanly cover, so it's nice to know I can actually just do it myself.
@@cptant7610 finite state machine. Or simply putting behaviours in separated files, managing states by enableing or disableing them. Or separating the behaviours to the functions, then checking playerstate inside functions for readibility.
@@bahtiyarozdere9303 I agree, all in all, the animator controller is like a Finite state machine in itself, but it's not ideal if it starts looking like a mess...
@@cptant7610 Honestly the messy code got me as well so thought about it a little bit.. and honestly it comes down to situation. Like for example, when he showed his massive web it looked like he had some animations based on what the player was wearing (based on the "naked" keyword) and it got me thinking that he could break it down into trees for each outfit type or scenario by using scripts to change the animator controller rather than the animation. So for example if the player is naked base, the player starts in the PlayerNaked controller. If they put on an outfit it goes to the PlayerClothed controller Basically one of the standard rules of programming. If you can break something into smaller pieces each with distinct roles, you probably should.
Dude thank you so much. The number of other tutorials and even answers online that say just to use blend trees and transitions and access the variables via player states or what have you is actually infuriating.
Thanks so much from Germany for this! The only thing I was missing was how to smoothly transition from one animation to another (using animator.CrossFade) in an equally smart way like you determined the delay time for the next animation
You are a literal HERO! I just finished my first, small Unity 2D game and everything was working perfectly and smoothly except for mothereffing animations! This is exactly what I’ve been looking for, thank you!
Just wanna say a big thank you after watching how to navigate through the animator with so many animations! Great content. One suggestion for those who are still interested in further cleaning the code, you may refer to an enum, or more elegantly, state classes for each state with private fields kept (like previous states, animation length, etc). I first found a detailed description of this pattern in Nystrom's "Game Programming Patterns" and the idea came to me that I could really use this Megaman example to practice it.
Bro, you literally saved me, I am making a platformer beat 'em up, easily over 40+ animations just for the player. And yes I am a pro at the animation rearrangement game. I will not miss that at all.
Thank you for this excellent video. Two things "jump" out at me (hehe): 1) Definitely check out Animancer. It is a toolkit that very much follows this philosophy not separating the animation logic and the game logic (which mecanim forces you to do). I'm still learning it. 2) This is an aside, but you're not syncing your inputs between update and fixed update. This will give you heck if you try to implement a double jump for instance. I know that's not the point of this tutorial, but it cost me countless hours as a new Unity developer.
@@hypedoncoffee2884 Hey, I don't know if you've figured it out by now, but check this youtube video. It explains it nicely and has a tutorial on player jump. watch?v=MfIsp28TYAQ
I know the problem, that animations override each other, too, even when doing sceleton animations. Why is the default a smooth transition? In most cases, that's not what I want, because the next animation starts, where the current animation ends. So I basically only want smooth transitions when an animation is stopped in the middle, for example when being attacked. And in this case, noone would care, if there is no smooth transition. It might even be a better style because it gets clearer, that the flow has been broken.
First I must say that I loved your explanation, it really takes the whole problem of what to do and how to do it for the lines of code only, this is very good. Solves many logic problems, between script and animator. But I want to make an addendum, if I may! As explained, it is excellent for 2D games, but for 3D games, there is a small problem in the transition from one animation to another, as it passes at once, without interpolation between them. This caused a strange aspect, although it was very functional. In research, I found a function that solves this problem, "CrossFade". In place of animator.Play, animator.CrossFade ("NameAnimation", time) is used This resolves my problem, I hope I helped!
@@adryelgainza1530 According to the Unity documentation that argument is supposed to be length of the fade, so how long it takes to fade. You can just put a constant there
Sooo much better, I thought I was crazy for preferring to code over using the tools, they always felt more complicated than just making the game do what I want directly, especially with unity 😂😂😂 all tutorials you see try to minimize coding but its honestly my favorite part, its like you said, its so much easier to tell whats wrong when you're using your own code to manage everything instead of buggy anim nets. Edit: also, that animator.GetCurrentAnimatorStateInfo bit is genuinely life altering, I really wish I knew about that ages ago, I would have been doing it like this from the start
i feel like maybe i'm missing something since everyone is saying how this is so simple and changed their lives, but when you have dozens of different animation states for your character, won't your method require huge if else chains and wouldn't that be just as complicated and ineficient as using the animator component?
I am still a novice at programming in unity but I think you can solve that complication by using enums right? To keep it more organized. Having enums for attack or running animations.
If you have enough animations that that's realistically a concern, you would probably also be considering using a state machine for, say, differentiating between when a character is running, jumping, crouching, and interacting with objects/npcs. If you have a state for jumping, then you only need to check your jumping sprites instead of having a single if/else chain that checks through every possible animation each character needs. That way, if you later add a TakingDamage state or something, you don't need to juggle it within an existing if/else chain, it can have its own, like whether your character is facing left or right and whether or not they're grounded when they take damage.
The upside is this method is way more scalable. When using the animator normally, you need to have a transition between every animation, because otherwise, you may get stuck on an animation. When using this method, you don't have that problem. Yes, you may need to write some code, but the logic is required whether it is in the animator or in a script, and the structure is far clearer when using a script.
This method is simple for also a simple game. but for complex interaction game, huge if statements will tangle your head. that's why most of game developers use state machine mecanim.
Super nice! This is sooo much better than trying to use conditions and transitions and all that. To recap my current impressions - A game object has an Animator component. An Animator component has a reference to an AnimationController. An AnimationController can be opened, which opens the Animator Window. The Animator Window contains a number of Animation States, which are displayed as boxes. An AnimationState (other than the default states, like "any state" and "entry") contain a "motion" reference, which can reference an Animation. An Animation, when double clicked, opens the Animation window, which has the timeline with events and key frames, and a pane with the list of Component Attributes the animation animates. So when you GetComponent(), and tell it to Play(StateName), the name you're referencing is the title of the state box in the Animator Window, I guess? Which you can set in the Inspector when you click on it.. I think in these videos you mention somewhere.. - ..how to delete or repoint that default entry transition, so it doesn't cause an animation to play on awake. - ..how to stop it from looping; just double clicking the state to get to the Animation, then unchecking the Loop Time checkbox in the Inspector doesn't seem to do the trick. Bonus: - what are these animation layers and what can/should you do with them? - More importantly: What is a good way to synchronize between a streamed audio clip, like a cinematic/trailer audio clip, and one ore more animations? Do you just repeatedly poll the time field of the audio source? Or is there a way to schedule animation events so that Unity triggers them when an audio source reaches a particular time? This can be ignored, I'm just writing out my thoughts, here, and trying to help promote the RUclips channel. This evening or this weekend I hope to sit down and subscribe on Patreon and join the Discord channel, and ask my questions there. Double Bonus: So if you have a few thousand Patreon supporters, that's a fair sized chunk of change headed your way. Are you afraid that if you release Blood and Mead, your support base will fall off after that? But you can just start a new game project, right? Are you afraid your support base will not be as interested in the new project? QUIT THAT FEAR STUFF! I WANT TO PLAY BLOOD AND MEAD! ;-) "No! I'm just not finished with it yet!" Really. Well, I'm almost 40 years into Zone Assault, lol. And I'm not as far along as you are, so. Color this glass pot black.
For anyone wondering, this works in 3D games too, you just can't use blend trees, meaning the start and end for ALL your animation clips must be the same pose for it to look natural.
When you say "you just can't use blend trees," can you be more specific? I aske, because that's where I am right now. I have a 3D, 8-way control blend tree set up, and I'm trying to add extra clips when, say, you hit a trigger or something. But I'm getting stuck in the clip and I'm having difficulty getting back to the blend tree.
@@christopherromano3210 It might actually work with Blend Trees. I was having problems getting it to work when there were transitions (connections) in the animator. When you create a new "state" in the Unity Animator tab you will have to choose between ""Empty" or "From New Blend Tree." It works with the "empty" clip when there are no transitions specified, because you can do the method he shows at 4:30, "animator.Play(newState);" ...the question is, does that method work on a Blend Tree? I don't really know. can you Play(BlendTree)?
@@bluebananalab786 : I got as far as starting default on the blend tree for 8 way movement, then getting a dance clip to play, then getting back to 8 way movement. Which was great. But after the return to 8 way, I can't get that dance clip (or any other clip) to play a second time. I feel like the Play(blend tree) might put us in a different state since starting the game with the blend tree isn't a play command by default. If that makes sense.
Just found your channel and it's impressive what you did so far on game development. I rarely comment on any video, but I must at least try to help out on this. The problem with if/else hell is that it will increase your "Cyclomatic Complexity", just a fancy word for how many different logic decisions your code can execute. This metric is usually measured automatically during big projects and if you get a number > 10 your code gets automatically denied (some big companies loves doing this). I suck at unity, but from what I can see the "Animator tab" is actually a State Machine (or Finite State Machine or FSM). The purpose of FSM it to provide a way for you to input the state (isThrowing, isGrounded, isThrowAllowed, etc) and this state will navigate through the nodes and give you an output (the Node "Player_jumpUp" for example). The problem with the if/else approach is that each if/else change can affect multiple logic branches and it's humanly impossible to remember all of them during development (in your case it's 11 different stattes, so 2^11 = 2018 different combinations) Usually when doing software development you must write unit tests exactly to avoid missing these branches, so you have a safety net to make changes in the future without introducing bugs. Not sure if that is possible in unity. BTW Visually representing big state machines is always messy, but going back to ifs is not a viable solution in the long run.
While this approach makes the animator look much more organised, it can still get pretty chaotic inside the script. I guess, this can't really be prevented when there are lots of different animations, however I personally think that using sub-statemachines might be a better approach in the long run. I'm still trying to figure out the best solution though.
did you figure something out? rn im using similar to his solution but im worried about future increasing complexity. i have a feeling its a choice between visual hell vs code hell. I'm more used to code hell so i feel safer there.
@@arjunmehta2853 I'm currently using sub-statemachines to make the animator more clear. For me it works like a charm now, even though it is somewhat chaotic - but much less than before. I ran into issues with the workflow using code, because the animations sometimes didn't really transition nicely and it also was quite convoluted. If you're more comfortable using code for stuff like that, it'll probably be the right solution for you, though. However, I do believe that playing around with some different solutions can't hurt. (:
@@NicTheThicc I tried that. They help a little. Currently I found a okayish solution. So basically I redid my code with only the mechanics first. Then using only the existing created bools of the logic, I synced it with the animator and ran with that. So there is only a small codeblock syncing the booleans between the code and animator. And the actual animation logic is taken care through the animator. It makes my code more readable. And animator hell is slightly better
@@arjunmehta2853 Incase animations are still getting out of hand, here is what I did which greatly helped. I learnt how to use layers (I am doing 2d spritesheet dev so this might not be helpful). I use layers for different core actions (movement/combat/death/etc). I have my movement layer as my base and others as overrides as when I need them. So, when I need the player to fight, the combat layer overrides the movement layer so only the combat animation displays. Hope this helps!
Loved this! I think its really important for new developers to realize there are options in how to handle your systems. You don't always have to depend on the pre-built Unity tools. Also - Player_piss_small 😏
Absolutely, game dev is very much about thinking outside the box and carving a path that suites ones own style,. Always good to know the different options before getting neck deep in proprietary systems. Also.. legacy animation.... ;) well spotted
Thats the best in the whole world animation setup for small not complicated animation transitions i believe. HUGE thanks for it. I promoted this video in my tutorial this must be shared everywhere. Power of deathmetal!
Finally, a nice way to manage it all efficiently But Sir, how to have full control over the animation transitions? Like how to make transitions more responsive? Normally, in the animator tab, we can click on the transition and tweak values like "Transition Duration".Is there a way to do the same through code?
I don't remember exactly where I read this on the Unity documentation site: "You should check/set Animator in LateUpdate that occurs after the internal animation update in each loop." Here you are setting the animator state inside Update() method. May this cause some problems? for instance, a shake or lag in the animation or something...
This is excellent! I didn't even realize Unity allowed you to handle animations like this. I'm making a retro-styled game, so things don't have to look smoothly blended like more modern-looking games. This is much cleaner and easier to understand than all the confusing GUI elements in the animation editor. It's also easy to genericize one animation controller for multiple characters as long as you name the states in their animator controllers the same thing. Thank you so much!
Please please🙏 make a tutorial on 3d Character Movement and Animation. I want to make a 3d game and I am stuck here. 😢 I have seen many tutorials but I didn't get it.
If you descending to HELL with states - it is basically means that it's time to use sub-state machines and make better composition of states. Advised solution works perfectly for simple cases such as IDLE -> JUMP || RUN -> IDLE. But what if you want to support a bit more complex and fluid transitions between states? How will you program this: IDLE -> PRE_JUMP -> JUM || RUN -> SLOW_DOWN -> IDLE? Excuse me, but all I can see here is how to ascend from animator HELL to spaghettis-code HELL. Kind reminder: it's always better to leave state machine management for artists and animators :)
Those examples aren't very complicated, but regardless those transitions would be far easier to maintain in code rather than in a node graph. Let your artists focus on making pretty art assets, let your coders focus on implementing maintainable presentation logic.
Awesome tutorial! I like your approach, instead of trying to use Unity for everything u know that just codding the damn thing is much simpler and will give better results.
So I've been using Unity for almost 6 years now. I make mainly 2D games (usually with frame based animations) and I haven't opened an animation/animator tab in 4 years. I just coded my own animation solution and haven't had issues since 🤷
@@r1pfake521 man i just change the sprite of the sprite renderers/images using code - its not a complicated system I just drag and drop the sprites into a scriptable object and set the framerate/intervals there
@@edfarage570 Oh I see, that makes sense for sprites, I was thinking about 3d animations and im not sure if there is a easy way to play these without the animatior
4:40 OMG, i googled for several days try to find hot to "Not play animation if it already play". And find huge and overhelming or just circumcised metods. And here you are- simple, laconic. Thanx
That said, it's gonna happen one way or another. We just have to bite the bullet and learn to code. Sharp Accent did this effectively, with booleans and a couple floats to inform anim state switching
It boils down on how you approach the problem. For me the Mecanim is way too complex for a frame based animation (e.g you only have 4 animations but you need to create a state machine for it) . It is very helpful if you have complex state control scheme or more than 6 or 8 animations clip. But with 40-ish clips with each has its own state? Hell naw... The webbing happens since finite state machine explodes exponentially if you add more and more states which in this case more clips. It is arguable tho, whether you should create your own state machine, since you could just create a composite state (state machine inside state machine) , for example creating a state called attack which then handles all the attack animation (Unity has support for this btw). But nonetheless, i can finally escape the obligatory state machine if i have simple frame to frame animations to handle.
Man, I had really hope this would solve my issues but besides having unique problems in my own project (animation playing too fast, Grounded never being true), I have already found three bugs in the Mega Man one you provided: 1. Press Space at any time in the air and you will jump as soon as you hit the ground, showing the idle animation. Doing this while walking, shows the walking animation in the air. 2. Pressing attack during walking still moves you. 3. Pressing attack right before you land, keeps you in the "attack in the air" animation for few seconds. Maybe I should start a career in QA because no one else seems to mention these things...
getting out of the animation hell and entering the if-else nesting hell :( I mean there are layers in the animator, can't that be used to replicate the same thing?
Yes, and whether that is necessary--as well as the best way to go about it--depends on the specific needs of the project you are working on. And if you code it yourself, you have the control to make those decisions.
It's less about the layers and more about offloading conditional logic to a proprietary closed system. Developers have been successfully writing games with condition logic for for 30+ years. You cannot write a piece of software without it (animation management being just a small part of a larger game system). Some key advantages of a code approach are; you can Debug.Log your conditions, it's centralized for convenience, and more easily portable to other engines if ever needed.
Actually you can use the state pattern if your update is getting bigger. It's more readable and actually you can decouple the states and make your own "decisions" classes
I remember this guy named DevDuck had a similar situation to where he just coded the animations. I always was quite confused on how to work with it but this was a good explanation of how does the frame system works
Dude, this helps me so much, just got into programming and coding, trying to learn how to make my own games. I followed a tutorial which actually made such a mess of the animator system that I lost sight of an error within the animator system, taking me hours to find out what that error was. Thanks man!
After trying out this approach I don't believe it's a healthy way to deal with animation states. When you have like dozens of animation clips to different contexts, force playing a state through code might create every sort of misbehaviour in the animator specially with animation states overlapping each other. And considering that you'll have multiple scripts accessing your animator after implementing your features, it should be painful to track the origin of an undesired state. In the end you'd be just moving from a messed up animator to a messed up code. Code monkey just released an awesome tutorial about handling multiple animation conditions with Blend Trees, which I believe is a way better approach: ruclips.net/video/W2z1BvnT0-o/видео.html
You know its crazy to me how ultra simple and code-focussed this method is that none of the other tutorials ever mention this is a valid approach. Still 4 years later.
I found this video while looking for something completely unrelated, and you have just derailed my entire afternoon by forcing me to redo my sprite animation system. Thanks.
Your youtube channel is the best unity tutorial channel. You teach us how it works while other people just show some code and tell just to memorize it. Also pls use the dark theme of unity as it is free now.
This has proven extremely valuable. My use case is a Visual Novel System where character portraits animate so expression changes are interpreted from string inputs. I think I’ll make a utility class whose sole responsibility is to interpret those string inputs into enums which I’ll tie to hash values. Those hash values will be used to switch the Animator state.
Mate, great video. As a full time software engineer just getting into unity and c#, it’s these kind of tips that I’m looking for, and intro courses only tend to give the basics. Keep em coming!
Thank you so much for this. I am a Software Developer as my profession and only recently started to try learning Unity and a tutorial led me down the path of animation transitions. It was good for learning the basics of unity, but I quickly saw how unmanageable it could become. Seeing that it can (and should) be done through my own coding logic makes sense, but due to my inexperience with Unity and game development it didn’t immediately cross my mind.
It's taken me days to watch through this video but even ten minutes in this has revolutionized my animation code in my project. Fantastic video, thanks a lot!
This is a basic example of a finite state machine. You can also create enums that hold animation name. If you need something more complex you can write a state class, this is useful if your state holds any data.
After doing some digging into the Unity documentation, this common issue seems more an issue of understanding state machines in Unity. If you learn to use sub-state machines WITH blend trees and proper parameters powered by a script, you can easily avoid the nightmare web. For instance, Entry > Idle sub-state > Idle Blend > Walking or Running Sub-State > Walking or Running Blend > Back to Idle Sub-State if not walking or running. This covers Idle, Walking, Running, and back. This method is about as clean as coding it, but with much less effort once you 'get it.'
I can see the pros of this method, that it basically allows complete control on the animation transitioning. However the cons is that there is no visual footprint of the transitions and someone joining in with development (or you coming back to the code after half a year) will have to delve into the code and mentally (or physically) draw a state machine to understand the animation transition network. With that said, if you work alone on a game and don't see yourself coming back and tweaking the code after a long period of time, then go for it!
Wow! I just did this on my little sandbox game and it worked. Thanks so much, this is a fantastic approach to animations, I wish you great success on Blood & Mead.
Thanks for making this video because I was about to give up on animating my games for the reason explained in the video. Now I can animate without wasting a bunch of time.
I love you, I have been thinking that there has to be an easier way of using animations other than just a wall of bools and you have truly made my unity experience so much better in 3 minutes, I am in tears thank you.
Thank you so much! I haven't done Animation's ever before. As an experienced programmer, when I discovered the animator, I instantly saw what was coming. So I looked for an alternative. Gladly I found your video, so I don't actually need any alternative.
You know you did a good job on a video when someone finishes your video & goes back to the youtube home page, but remember they forgot to like and subscribe, and backed up and did that.
In a 2d game with basic animations, yes you can use that method. But if you're developing a 3d game, you've to set animation transitions. But if you manage substates correctly, believe me that'll look really clean and readable.
I am really like him, fully code oriented and wanted someone to do such a video. He is literally a life saver(my animator tab looked the way he showed at the start)
Personally, I find that most of the extreme webbed examples are because people aren't using sub-state machines, layers, and overrides appropriately. Animator overrides can be loaded seamlessly at runtime, so it makes sense to use them for different base character states that have a lot of unique animations associated with them that follow the same basic logic of press x to attack, y to jump, and joystick to move or what-have-you (gun equipped, sword equipped, unarmed, etc.) You're right though, if you're using sprite-sheets to animate basically none of the built-in machinery in the animator is worthwhile. It's just better to play your animations when you want. I do kind of like the style of 2D rigging though, and you can get some great results using layers and masks to combine animations alongside the typical transition blending process. A megaman run and shoot, for example, can simply combine upper-body animations for shooting with lower body animations for running. You can even have some overlap and use weights to determine how the blended parts act. I find it makes everything feel a lot more organic. It's definitely not a style for every game though, and I typically work in 3D so I'm a bit biased toward workflows that are compatible across both domains.
Uggh, days of going back and forth between blend trees and rolling my own animation manager than I found your video. It hit every single point I was having issues with! Thank you!
Awesome video! I'd like to add a little thing: If the animation is less of a "state" and rather a clip that's playing until it is finished, and you want to Play() that same clip twice, you need a transition (arrow) from your state back to the idle state.
I barely know unity (just learned animations and transitions how you said is wrong 20 minutes ago in an online class) and I completely understood how this works. Great tutorial, and perfect timing for me :)
Not all heroes wear capes...sometimes they just have a super clean animator tab. Thanks for the tip!
@ZETRO MGL Savage
They might be wearing a cap though.
unity tools are making people worse.
I'm still using this tip it is excellent imho. But... what if you have two animation layers in the animator?
Even this videos thumbnail is this guy wearing a cape... Wdym
Dude your videos are a gold mine. I'm trying my best to understand the code as I watch all these different tutorials so I can expand and fix, but you take your time to talk about why things work etc, and it's really helpful!
Thanks mate, I'm glad to hear the videos have been helpful to you, wishing you all the best.
Btw, I though your name looked familiar. I'm a big fan of your content. Hit me up on discord if you ever need dev help or want to chat about the craft. :)
As a programmer, I am also a fan of your content, Video Game Animation Study! You taught me a lot and that makes working with the artists on our project easier!
5_😢 I 😮
I don't think I've posted a comment in nearly a decade but I had to for this. My main character has 114 animations (thank heck he's nearly finished) and HAD over 2500 transitions between them all (and I was originally planning to add more conditions to each transition to iron out any hidden glitches). It took me a few hours to adapt your solution to my extreme example of animator hell, but it actually WORKED. Now I won't have to worry about all those transitions/conditions/glitches in the main character and all future characters I make! You've probably saved me literal weeks of work once it all adds up. I can't thank you enough. Time to finally relax with some Super Metroid
Super Metroid - Ahh, I see you are also a man of culture. Tried the Varia randomizer yet?
@@iDerp69 I'm watching this vid to make a Super Metroid themed demo.
+1 Varia randomizer
For those who are using 3D, I find using State Machines and layers and then create logic in code that blends between layers for more complicated animation systems.
Pro-tip you can use an empty state on a higher up layer as a means to turn that layer on and off as well. For example a layer dedicated to climbing and an empty state within it for when you're not climbing, this way you can use the transition to blend from your base layer to the climbing animations without having to do it through code.
Like another commenter mentioned you are quickly getting into an if/else nightmare. I would highly suggest people watch UnityLearn's - Finite State Machines by Marc Gilbert which specifically uses a similar animation example starting with your approach before changing into a Finite State Machine. Obviously in your example things are still a manageable but with a few more mechanics it could quickly get to become a nightmare, which I've personally experienced before.
LangLearn Korean pls give link!!!!!!!
@@iamcheezeYT learn.unity. com/project/finite-state-machines
Another thing I like to do is to create Animation Behaviours for similar clips. Then, instead of having one state per clip, I just manage all of the more complicated logic inside the animation behaviour.
This is an intro..... believe it or not.... and you should know this as a “teacher” but you start as simple as you possibly can when teaching..... and for experienced developers who are seeing this and don’t understand this trick yet. Well. They might have the knowledge to know how to clean this up.
He’s simply showing how to actually do 2d animations. There is no sense in going over other topics and making it complicated
thanks for the recommendation, upvoted both the video and this comment, very helpful 👍
Finally!!!!!! I always wanted a more code oriented youtuber for learning Unity. It is funny how I can find videos saying "Make games without coding" but no videos saying "Unity but only coding". Also, I always preferred co-routines, but with this approach, I may try the animator, and things may become better. Thank you for the video. :)
@Astrah Cat have you tried buildbox that is where visual scripting in Javascript is done right.
Oh...
Whyyyyy am I using the Animator for animation states when this method exists...? 😅
I had the idea of doing it this way a few weeks ago, but thought it might create a bigger mess. Which is also the reason I thought everyone teaches you to use the Animator. But seeing how the setup looks so clean and simple, I can't see why it would not be an improvement over using the Animator.
Pros:
- Removing the Animator removes the middle man.
- You need to talk to the Animator in your code anyways...
- You feel more in control I could imagine.
Cons:
- Can't help but feel there is a reason everyone teaches through using the Animator... Is there a downside I'm not seeing..?
Either way, I much prefer to do this where I activate the animations directly, rather than my code talking to the Animator, just for it to do a task that could be done a step before. Thank you so much for this. 🙂
Hey mate, glad this approach has helped. As for the question 'why Is it not taught': one reason is accessibility; to give beginners a more accessible framework-centric approach. The newer input system is another example of this. But while these drag and drop visual approaches might be more accessible for non-coders, those of us who like to build our own management systems can feel their clunkiness. I do think these systems are very powerful for the right users, but for me at least, they cause more trouble.
@@LostRelicGames Thanks a lot for the reply! I figured it might have been related to the learning experience of newer Unity devs. 🙂 Love your videos btw, they give a lot of insight and inspires. 😊
The downside is that you loose all the benefits the animator provides
@@maarten9222 Hello can you tell quickly what kind of benefits you loose from animator? i'm a beginer dev and i don't realy like the animator system... but i don't want to be blocked for my game top down 2D with lot anim for lot charachter thx :)
This video is 3 years old but saved my rookie ass today. Thanks a ton!
I really like the idea of introducing finite state machines to help control actions/states exclusively, it gets better in the long run than the tangle of ifs.
Making a 2D game with frame animations for the first time, struggling with the animator state machine. The approach mentioned in the video is basically making a state machine in code while taking the advantage of the animator (so we can create states and assign animation in the editor directly), which makes the animator and code cleaner. Inspiring and informative video! Thank you.
I haven't been in the "Game" long, so my projects never required excessive animations. Now that I'm moving up in the world, this tutorial is a godsend. You spoke directly to my soul when you showed me how to escape Animator OCD and spider webs.
Thank you for everything that you do. Anxiously awaiting the release of Blood and Mead!
From the bottom of my heart thank you!
i spent about 5 days trying to get multiple gameobjects with their own animator controllers to sync animations based on which direction the character was moving and this is what solved it!
as soon as i seen that you could use a state to control the animation being played i knew this is what i needed!
Thank you so much!
I'll just casually and quietly change my entire mentally about animations in unity. Thank you.
This video is invaluable. I struggled with "Mechanim" throughout my development of Cataclysm, and the complications it caused (due to me using it incorrectly) had a real influence on whether or not I'd go forward with some experimental idea related to animation. It often just wasn't work the risk of messing up the precarious mess that I had.
Right towards the end of development, when I was making some simple animations for the tutorial pages, I decided to just roll my own animation script using coroutines. It has its own limitations, and possibly problems that I have yet to encounter, but it works and (more importantly) I understand it.
If I had your video a few years ago, I could have saved myself the trouble. I sincerely hope that no other noob developer has to deal with the Mechanim cobweb with this video as a guide.
It took me years to escape Animator hell on my own, THIS VIDEO IS A GOD SEND, I wish it was out years ago.
This actually helps me quite a bit. I was having trouble with cases that the animator didn't cleanly cover, so it's nice to know I can actually just do it myself.
Managing from code is awesome. Managing with "if else" is impossible.
What do you suggest?
@@cptant7610 finite state machine. Or simply putting behaviours in separated files, managing states by enableing or disableing them. Or separating the behaviours to the functions, then checking playerstate inside functions for readibility.
@@bahtiyarozdere9303 I agree, all in all, the animator controller is like a Finite state machine in itself, but it's not ideal if it starts looking like a mess...
@@cptant7610 Honestly the messy code got me as well so thought about it a little bit.. and honestly it comes down to situation. Like for example, when he showed his massive web it looked like he had some animations based on what the player was wearing (based on the "naked" keyword) and it got me thinking that he could break it down into trees for each outfit type or scenario by using scripts to change the animator controller rather than the animation.
So for example if the player is naked base, the player starts in the PlayerNaked controller. If they put on an outfit it goes to the PlayerClothed controller
Basically one of the standard rules of programming. If you can break something into smaller pieces each with distinct roles, you probably should.
@@KuariThunderclaw Or just use layers with Sync. I've done it before and it worked well.
Dude thank you so much. The number of other tutorials and even answers online that say just to use blend trees and transitions and access the variables via player states or what have you is actually infuriating.
Thanks so much from Germany for this! The only thing I was missing was how to smoothly transition from one animation to another (using animator.CrossFade) in an equally smart way like you determined the delay time for the next animation
You are a literal HERO! I just finished my first, small Unity 2D game and everything was working perfectly and smoothly except for mothereffing animations! This is exactly what I’ve been looking for, thank you!
Just wanna say a big thank you after watching how to navigate through the animator with so many animations! Great content. One suggestion for those who are still interested in further cleaning the code, you may refer to an enum, or more elegantly, state classes for each state with private fields kept (like previous states, animation length, etc). I first found a detailed description of this pattern in Nystrom's "Game Programming Patterns" and the idea came to me that I could really use this Megaman example to practice it.
Bro, you literally saved me, I am making a platformer beat 'em up, easily over 40+ animations just for the player. And yes I am a pro at the animation rearrangement game. I will not miss that at all.
Thank you for this excellent video. Two things "jump" out at me (hehe):
1) Definitely check out Animancer. It is a toolkit that very much follows this philosophy not separating the animation logic and the game logic (which mecanim forces you to do). I'm still learning it.
2) This is an aside, but you're not syncing your inputs between update and fixed update. This will give you heck if you try to implement a double jump for instance. I know that's not the point of this tutorial, but it cost me countless hours as a new Unity developer.
Can you elaborate on point 2?
@@hypedoncoffee2884 Hey, I don't know if you've figured it out by now, but check this youtube video. It explains it nicely and has a tutorial on player jump.
watch?v=MfIsp28TYAQ
you've openned up my world man. The one thing that felt like it was limiting me because I hate art UI is now fixed because I can use code. Thank you.
I know the problem, that animations override each other, too, even when doing sceleton animations.
Why is the default a smooth transition? In most cases, that's not what I want, because the next animation starts, where the current animation ends.
So I basically only want smooth transitions when an animation is stopped in the middle, for example when being attacked.
And in this case, noone would care, if there is no smooth transition. It might even be a better style because it gets clearer, that the flow has been broken.
This is working, what is awesome after watching too many bad tutorials :) Thank you very very much :D
First I must say that I loved your explanation, it really takes the whole problem of what to do and how to do it for the lines of code only, this is very good. Solves many logic problems, between script and animator.
But I want to make an addendum, if I may!
As explained, it is excellent for 2D games, but for 3D games, there is a small problem in the transition from one animation to another, as it passes at once, without interpolation between them. This caused a strange aspect, although it was very functional.
In research, I found a function that solves this problem, "CrossFade".
In place of animator.Play, animator.CrossFade ("NameAnimation", time) is used
This resolves my problem, I hope I helped!
Thanks, fixed my problem!
By time, is that supposed to be time.deltatime?
@@adryelgainza1530 According to the Unity documentation that argument is supposed to be length of the fade, so how long it takes to fade. You can just put a constant there
thank you!
@@adryelgainza1530 exactly
Sooo much better, I thought I was crazy for preferring to code over using the tools, they always felt more complicated than just making the game do what I want directly, especially with unity 😂😂😂 all tutorials you see try to minimize coding but its honestly my favorite part, its like you said, its so much easier to tell whats wrong when you're using your own code to manage everything instead of buggy anim nets.
Edit: also, that animator.GetCurrentAnimatorStateInfo bit is genuinely life altering, I really wish I knew about that ages ago, I would have been doing it like this from the start
i feel like maybe i'm missing something since everyone is saying how this is so simple and changed their lives, but when you have dozens of different animation states for your character, won't your method require huge if else chains and wouldn't that be just as complicated and ineficient as using the animator component?
I am still a novice at programming in unity but I think you can solve that complication by using enums right? To keep it more organized. Having enums for attack or running animations.
If you have enough animations that that's realistically a concern, you would probably also be considering using a state machine for, say, differentiating between when a character is running, jumping, crouching, and interacting with objects/npcs. If you have a state for jumping, then you only need to check your jumping sprites instead of having a single if/else chain that checks through every possible animation each character needs. That way, if you later add a TakingDamage state or something, you don't need to juggle it within an existing if/else chain, it can have its own, like whether your character is facing left or right and whether or not they're grounded when they take damage.
The upside is this method is way more scalable. When using the animator normally, you need to have a transition between every animation, because otherwise, you may get stuck on an animation. When using this method, you don't have that problem. Yes, you may need to write some code, but the logic is required whether it is in the animator or in a script, and the structure is far clearer when using a script.
This method is simple for also a simple game. but for complex interaction game, huge if statements will tangle your head. that's why most of game developers use state machine mecanim.
Super nice! This is sooo much better than trying to use conditions and transitions and all that.
To recap my current impressions -
A game object has an Animator component.
An Animator component has a reference to an AnimationController.
An AnimationController can be opened, which opens the Animator Window.
The Animator Window contains a number of Animation States, which are displayed as boxes.
An AnimationState (other than the default states, like "any state" and "entry") contain a "motion" reference, which can reference an Animation.
An Animation, when double clicked, opens the Animation window, which has the timeline with events and key frames, and a pane with the list of Component Attributes the animation animates.
So when you GetComponent(), and tell it to Play(StateName), the name you're referencing is the title of the state box in the Animator Window, I guess? Which you can set in the Inspector when you click on it..
I think in these videos you mention somewhere..
- ..how to delete or repoint that default entry transition, so it doesn't cause an animation to play on awake.
- ..how to stop it from looping; just double clicking the state to get to the Animation, then unchecking the Loop Time checkbox in the Inspector doesn't seem to do the trick.
Bonus:
- what are these animation layers and what can/should you do with them?
- More importantly: What is a good way to synchronize between a streamed audio clip, like a cinematic/trailer audio clip, and one ore more animations? Do you just repeatedly poll the time field of the audio source? Or is there a way to schedule animation events so that Unity triggers them when an audio source reaches a particular time?
This can be ignored, I'm just writing out my thoughts, here, and trying to help promote the RUclips channel. This evening or this weekend I hope to sit down and subscribe on Patreon and join the Discord channel, and ask my questions there.
Double Bonus:
So if you have a few thousand Patreon supporters, that's a fair sized chunk of change headed your way. Are you afraid that if you release Blood and Mead, your support base will fall off after that? But you can just start a new game project, right? Are you afraid your support base will not be as interested in the new project? QUIT THAT FEAR STUFF! I WANT TO PLAY BLOOD AND MEAD! ;-) "No! I'm just not finished with it yet!" Really. Well, I'm almost 40 years into Zone Assault, lol. And I'm not as far along as you are, so. Color this glass pot black.
For anyone wondering, this works in 3D games too, you just can't use blend trees, meaning the start and end for ALL your animation clips must be the same pose for it to look natural.
When you say "you just can't use blend trees," can you be more specific? I aske, because that's where I am right now. I have a 3D, 8-way control blend tree set up, and I'm trying to add extra clips when, say, you hit a trigger or something. But I'm getting stuck in the clip and I'm having difficulty getting back to the blend tree.
@@christopherromano3210 It might actually work with Blend Trees. I was having problems getting it to work when there were transitions (connections) in the animator. When you create a new "state" in the Unity Animator tab you will have to choose between ""Empty" or "From New Blend Tree." It works with the "empty" clip when there are no transitions specified, because you can do the method he shows at 4:30, "animator.Play(newState);" ...the question is, does that method work on a Blend Tree? I don't really know. can you Play(BlendTree)?
@@bluebananalab786 : I got as far as starting default on the blend tree for 8 way movement, then getting a dance clip to play, then getting back to 8 way movement. Which was great. But after the return to 8 way, I can't get that dance clip (or any other clip) to play a second time. I feel like the Play(blend tree) might put us in a different state since starting the game with the blend tree isn't a play command by default. If that makes sense.
@@christopherromano3210ik I'm very very late but in the change animation state function you can use animator.crossfade at the end of it
Just found your channel and it's impressive what you did so far on game development.
I rarely comment on any video, but I must at least try to help out on this.
The problem with if/else hell is that it will increase your "Cyclomatic Complexity", just a fancy word for how many different logic decisions your code can execute.
This metric is usually measured automatically during big projects and if you get a number > 10 your code gets automatically denied (some big companies loves doing this).
I suck at unity, but from what I can see the "Animator tab" is actually a State Machine (or Finite State Machine or FSM).
The purpose of FSM it to provide a way for you to input the state (isThrowing, isGrounded, isThrowAllowed, etc) and this state will navigate through the nodes and give you an output (the Node "Player_jumpUp" for example).
The problem with the if/else approach is that each if/else change can affect multiple logic branches and it's humanly impossible to remember all of them during development (in your case it's 11 different stattes, so 2^11 = 2018 different combinations)
Usually when doing software development you must write unit tests exactly to avoid missing these branches, so you have a safety net to make changes in the future without introducing bugs. Not sure if that is possible in unity.
BTW Visually representing big state machines is always messy, but going back to ifs is not a viable solution in the long run.
While this approach makes the animator look much more organised, it can still get pretty chaotic inside the script. I guess, this can't really be prevented when there are lots of different animations, however I personally think that using sub-statemachines might be a better approach in the long run.
I'm still trying to figure out the best solution though.
did you figure something out? rn im using similar to his solution but im worried about future increasing complexity. i have a feeling its a choice between visual hell vs code hell. I'm more used to code hell so i feel safer there.
@@arjunmehta2853 I'm currently using sub-statemachines to make the animator more clear. For me it works like a charm now, even though it is somewhat chaotic - but much less than before.
I ran into issues with the workflow using code, because the animations sometimes didn't really transition nicely and it also was quite convoluted. If you're more comfortable using code for stuff like that, it'll probably be the right solution for you, though. However, I do believe that playing around with some different solutions can't hurt. (:
@@NicTheThicc I tried that. They help a little. Currently I found a okayish solution. So basically I redid my code with only the mechanics first. Then using only the existing created bools of the logic, I synced it with the animator and ran with that. So there is only a small codeblock syncing the booleans between the code and animator. And the actual animation logic is taken care through the animator. It makes my code more readable. And animator hell is slightly better
@@arjunmehta2853 Incase animations are still getting out of hand, here is what I did which greatly helped. I learnt how to use layers (I am doing 2d spritesheet dev so this might not be helpful). I use layers for different core actions (movement/combat/death/etc). I have my movement layer as my base and others as overrides as when I need them. So, when I need the player to fight, the combat layer overrides the movement layer so only the combat animation displays. Hope this helps!
@@ohfacts that may be a smart option, thanks for the input!
I am seriously redoing my entire game now, all animations THANK YOU!!! this is going to be way better.
Loved this!
I think its really important for new developers to realize there are options in how to handle your systems. You don't always have to depend on the pre-built Unity tools.
Also - Player_piss_small 😏
Absolutely, game dev is very much about thinking outside the box and carving a path that suites ones own style,. Always good to know the different options before getting neck deep in proprietary systems.
Also.. legacy animation.... ;) well spotted
@@LostRelicGames can this be used in bone based animations as well?
Omg BMo! U were the first channel that helped me become a game dev! Thank you
Thats the best in the whole world animation setup for small not complicated animation transitions i believe. HUGE thanks for it. I promoted this video in my tutorial this must be shared everywhere. Power of deathmetal!
Unity Asset I made for easily making platformers: u3d.as/2eYe
Wishlist my game: store.steampowered.com/app/1081830/Blood_And_Mead/
Finally, a nice way to manage it all efficiently
But Sir, how to have full control over the animation transitions?
Like how to make transitions more responsive? Normally, in the animator tab, we can click on the transition and tweak values like "Transition Duration".Is there a way to do the same through code?
Jaw hit the floor moment here. maybe it’s a programmer thing but this is so much more elegant than the visual state driven thing.
Thank you sir 🫡
“In my case... fourth eight...”
Me: See’s all of the “naked” animations that he has
*Music stops*
Dear lord, i feel like a fool for not doing this. You are the best
I don't remember exactly where I read this on the Unity documentation site:
"You should check/set Animator in LateUpdate that occurs after the internal animation update in each loop."
Here you are setting the animator state inside Update() method.
May this cause some problems? for instance, a shake or lag in the animation or something...
This is excellent! I didn't even realize Unity allowed you to handle animations like this. I'm making a retro-styled game, so things don't have to look smoothly blended like more modern-looking games. This is much cleaner and easier to understand than all the confusing GUI elements in the animation editor. It's also easy to genericize one animation controller for multiple characters as long as you name the states in their animator controllers the same thing. Thank you so much!
Please please🙏 make a tutorial on 3d Character Movement and Animation. I want to make a 3d game and I am stuck here. 😢
I have seen many tutorials but I didn't get it.
I think starting with 2D is a lot easier, especially for new people.
Thank you! I have 216 basic player animation states. This helped a LOT. It turned from funnel web to neat array!
That's awesome man! All the best with the remainder of your project.
Escaping Inspector Panel Hell: ruclips.net/video/b7vY6id63OY/видео.html
lol 10 likes
After procrastinating for a month, I removed all transitions and parameters today and changed to using your method of animation. It works great.
@Drew Taylor I know almost nothing about 3d but I think you should use an animation controller for 3d games because it supports blend trees.
If you descending to HELL with states - it is basically means that it's time to use sub-state machines and make better composition of states.
Advised solution works perfectly for simple cases such as IDLE -> JUMP || RUN -> IDLE.
But what if you want to support a bit more complex and fluid transitions between states? How will you program this: IDLE -> PRE_JUMP -> JUM || RUN -> SLOW_DOWN -> IDLE?
Excuse me, but all I can see here is how to ascend from animator HELL to spaghettis-code HELL.
Kind reminder: it's always better to leave state machine management for artists and animators :)
Those examples aren't very complicated, but regardless those transitions would be far easier to maintain in code rather than in a node graph.
Let your artists focus on making pretty art assets, let your coders focus on implementing maintainable presentation logic.
Awesome tutorial!
I like your approach, instead of trying to use Unity for everything u know that just codding the damn thing is much simpler and will give better results.
Absolutely mate, because it's demonstrated by official Unity videos does not mean it's the best approach for our own games! :)
@@LostRelicGames I've been learning that lesson the hard way for a while now, lol...
This just gone to fix a current bugy animation behaviour in my current game's animator setup, thanks a lot!
So I've been using Unity for almost 6 years now. I make mainly 2D games (usually with frame based animations) and I haven't opened an animation/animator tab in 4 years. I just coded my own animation solution and haven't had issues since
🤷
Is your own animation solution based on the animator play method or does it use the "legacy" animation system?
@@r1pfake521 man i just change the sprite of the sprite renderers/images using code - its not a complicated system I just drag and drop the sprites into a scriptable object and set the framerate/intervals there
@@edfarage570 Oh I see, that makes sense for sprites, I was thinking about 3d animations and im not sure if there is a easy way to play these without the animatior
4:40
OMG, i googled for several days try to find hot to "Not play animation if it already play". And find huge and overhelming or just circumcised metods. And here you are- simple, laconic. Thanx
So, your solution to solve animation state machine webbing, is to write your own animation state machine?
lol make the threads invisible, what could go wrong?
@Piponazo And managing animator parameters isn't complexity in code?
That said, it's gonna happen one way or another. We just have to bite the bullet and learn to code. Sharp Accent did this effectively, with booleans and a couple floats to inform anim state switching
It boils down on how you approach the problem. For me the Mecanim is way too complex for a frame based animation (e.g you only have 4 animations but you need to create a state machine for it) . It is very helpful if you have complex state control scheme or more than 6 or 8 animations clip. But with 40-ish clips with each has its own state? Hell naw...
The webbing happens since finite state machine explodes exponentially if you add more and more states which in this case more clips.
It is arguable tho, whether you should create your own state machine, since you could just create a composite state (state machine inside state machine) , for example creating a state called attack which then handles all the attack animation (Unity has support for this btw).
But nonetheless, i can finally escape the obligatory state machine if i have simple frame to frame animations to handle.
To avoid black box and take over control by learning to code. Seems reasonable.
Man, I had really hope this would solve my issues but besides having unique problems in my own project (animation playing too fast, Grounded never being true), I have already found three bugs in the Mega Man one you provided:
1. Press Space at any time in the air and you will jump as soon as you hit the ground, showing the idle animation. Doing this while walking, shows the walking animation in the air.
2. Pressing attack during walking still moves you.
3. Pressing attack right before you land, keeps you in the "attack in the air" animation for few seconds.
Maybe I should start a career in QA because no one else seems to mention these things...
Nice tips. You can also use Animator.Crossfade() if u want a smoother transition between 3D anims.
THANK YOU!!
I just spend 5 hours on failing to animate, then followed your advice and done it all from the start in 15 min. THANK YOU.
getting out of the animation hell and entering the if-else nesting hell :( I mean there are layers in the animator, can't that be used to replicate the same thing?
Yes, and whether that is necessary--as well as the best way to go about it--depends on the specific needs of the project you are working on. And if you code it yourself, you have the control to make those decisions.
It's less about the layers and more about offloading conditional logic to a proprietary closed system. Developers have been successfully writing games with condition logic for for 30+ years. You cannot write a piece of software without it (animation management being just a small part of a larger game system). Some key advantages of a code approach are; you can Debug.Log your conditions, it's centralized for convenience, and more easily portable to other engines if ever needed.
Actually you can use the state pattern if your update is getting bigger. It's more readable and actually you can decouple the states and make your own "decisions" classes
I remember this guy named DevDuck had a similar situation to where he just coded the animations. I always was quite confused on how to work with it but this was a good explanation of how does the frame system works
Ah, I naively thought this was going to be a Godot advert.
Dude, this helps me so much, just got into programming and coding, trying to learn how to make my own games. I followed a tutorial which actually made such a mess of the animator system that I lost sight of an error within the animator system, taking me hours to find out what that error was. Thanks man!
After trying out this approach I don't believe it's a healthy way to deal with animation states. When you have like dozens of animation clips to different contexts, force playing a state through code might create every sort of misbehaviour in the animator specially with animation states overlapping each other. And considering that you'll have multiple scripts accessing your animator after implementing your features, it should be painful to track the origin of an undesired state. In the end you'd be just moving from a messed up animator to a messed up code.
Code monkey just released an awesome tutorial about handling multiple animation conditions with Blend Trees, which I believe is a way better approach: ruclips.net/video/W2z1BvnT0-o/видео.html
Clean Code.
You know its crazy to me how ultra simple and code-focussed this method is that none of the other tutorials ever mention this is a valid approach. Still 4 years later.
To be honest, all of this would be easier with the Animation component rather than the Animator.
this is by far the most important game dev video I have watched
Idek why I'm watching this, I'm Not even using unity.
I found this video while looking for something completely unrelated, and you have just derailed my entire afternoon by forcing me to redo my sprite animation system. Thanks.
Escape unity animator hell? Just uninstall unity.
I use this system about 5 years now. Is good to see other people talking about it.
Thank god. This video saved me from the anguish of every single project I've worked on in the past.
Your youtube channel is the best unity tutorial channel. You teach us how it works while other people just show some code and tell just to memorize it. Also pls use the dark theme of unity as it is free now.
This has proven extremely valuable.
My use case is a Visual Novel System where character portraits animate so expression changes are interpreted from string inputs.
I think I’ll make a utility class whose sole responsibility is to interpret those string inputs into enums which I’ll tie to hash values. Those hash values will be used to switch the Animator state.
Mate, great video. As a full time software engineer just getting into unity and c#, it’s these kind of tips that I’m looking for, and intro courses only tend to give the basics. Keep em coming!
you are now my favorite channel in RUclips
Thank you so much for this. I am a Software Developer as my profession and only recently started to try learning Unity and a tutorial led me down the path of animation transitions. It was good for learning the basics of unity, but I quickly saw how unmanageable it could become. Seeing that it can (and should) be done through my own coding logic makes sense, but due to my inexperience with Unity and game development it didn’t immediately cross my mind.
I havent made games in years but I remember this distinctly being the bane of development for weeks. Thanks for this vid
It's taken me days to watch through this video but even ten minutes in this has revolutionized my animation code in my project. Fantastic video, thanks a lot!
This is a basic example of a finite state machine. You can also create enums that hold animation name. If you need something more complex you can write a state class, this is useful if your state holds any data.
Brother you are the best RUclips GAME DEV
BY FAAAR!!! Thankyou ✊🏻❣️👊🏻🤝🏻💪🏻
Great little video mate. Always good to see how other devs are handling unitys spiderweb of an animation system.
This is most beautiful code I have ever seen! Thanks a lot!!
i almost fucking cried when you typed "play" like why in the fuck didnt i search that up in the documentation. youre a saint thank you sir
After doing some digging into the Unity documentation, this common issue seems more an issue of understanding state machines in Unity. If you learn to use sub-state machines WITH blend trees and proper parameters powered by a script, you can easily avoid the nightmare web. For instance, Entry > Idle sub-state > Idle Blend > Walking or Running Sub-State > Walking or Running Blend > Back to Idle Sub-State if not walking or running. This covers Idle, Walking, Running, and back. This method is about as clean as coding it, but with much less effort once you 'get it.'
Wow this is purely amazing I had a lot of headaches with unity animator but it simplifies everything thank you
You gave me so good idea ❤
It fixed my animations' bug, made my animator very easy to understand and it also took less lines of scripting
I can see the pros of this method, that it basically allows complete control on the animation transitioning. However the cons is that there is no visual footprint of the transitions and someone joining in with development (or you coming back to the code after half a year) will have to delve into the code and mentally (or physically) draw a state machine to understand the animation transition network. With that said, if you work alone on a game and don't see yourself coming back and tweaking the code after a long period of time, then go for it!
Wow! I just did this on my little sandbox game and it worked. Thanks so much, this is a fantastic approach to animations, I wish you great success on Blood & Mead.
Thanks for making this video because I was about to give up on animating my games for the reason explained in the video. Now I can animate without wasting a bunch of time.
i know this is an older video but there is an asset called Animancer, and it looks promising
I love you, I have been thinking that there has to be an easier way of using animations other than just a wall of bools and you have truly made my unity experience so much better in 3 minutes, I am in tears thank you.
Thank you so much! I haven't done Animation's ever before. As an experienced programmer, when I discovered the animator, I instantly saw what was coming. So I looked for an alternative. Gladly I found your video, so I don't actually need any alternative.
Your editing just keeps getting better and better dude. Expect exponential growth by the end of the year!
You know you did a good job on a video when someone finishes your video & goes back to the youtube home page, but remember they forgot to like and subscribe, and backed up and did that.
In a 2d game with basic animations, yes you can use that method. But if you're developing a 3d game, you've to set animation transitions. But if you manage substates correctly, believe me that'll look really clean and readable.
It was cathartic to watch you delete all of those transitions at 2:56 😌
Thanks for this heads-up for saving hours on not using the linking transitions method as before :)
I am really like him, fully code oriented and wanted someone to do such a video. He is literally a life saver(my animator tab looked the way he showed at the start)
I think this problem many yeara ago, you provide greatest method I heard.
Personally, I find that most of the extreme webbed examples are because people aren't using sub-state machines, layers, and overrides appropriately. Animator overrides can be loaded seamlessly at runtime, so it makes sense to use them for different base character states that have a lot of unique animations associated with them that follow the same basic logic of press x to attack, y to jump, and joystick to move or what-have-you (gun equipped, sword equipped, unarmed, etc.)
You're right though, if you're using sprite-sheets to animate basically none of the built-in machinery in the animator is worthwhile. It's just better to play your animations when you want. I do kind of like the style of 2D rigging though, and you can get some great results using layers and masks to combine animations alongside the typical transition blending process. A megaman run and shoot, for example, can simply combine upper-body animations for shooting with lower body animations for running. You can even have some overlap and use weights to determine how the blended parts act. I find it makes everything feel a lot more organic. It's definitely not a style for every game though, and I typically work in 3D so I'm a bit biased toward workflows that are compatible across both domains.
Uggh, days of going back and forth between blend trees and rolling my own animation manager than I found your video. It hit every single point I was having issues with!
Thank you!
Awesome video!
I'd like to add a little thing: If the animation is less of a "state" and rather a clip that's playing until it is finished, and you want to Play() that same clip twice, you need a transition (arrow) from your state back to the idle state.
3:07 is absolute gold. *Chefs kiss*
I barely know unity (just learned animations and transitions how you said is wrong 20 minutes ago in an online class) and I completely understood how this works. Great tutorial, and perfect timing for me :)