unity-animation

Unity animation

MCP tooling: activate the animation group (manage_tools) for manage_animation (Animator control + AnimationClip creation). Assets live under Assets/Animations/<Feature>/.

Animator state machines

• Keep controllers small: states for genuinely distinct behaviors, blend trees for continuous variation (speed, direction) — a controller with 20 hand-wired transitions is a bug generator.
• Drive parameters from code via cached hashes: static readonly int Speed = Animator.StringToHash("Speed"); — never scatter string literals.
• Transition settings that bite: Has Exit Time on a transition that should react instantly (turn it off for input-driven transitions); missing Any State loops causing re-entry every frame.
• Query state before assuming: GetCurrentAnimatorStateInfo, or via manage_animation when inspecting in-editor.

2D pipelines (pick per asset)

• Frame animation: sprite-swap clips. The Aseprite importer generates clips from tags automatically — prefer tagging in Aseprite over hand-building clips; re-import updates them.
• Rigged (skeletal): 2D Animation package — bones + Sprite Skin on a PSD/PSB via the PSD importer; heavier but smooth deformation and retargeting.
• Pivot/PPU consistency matters more than anything: mismatched pivots make every clip look broken.

3D / imported clips

• Humanoid rig for anything that should retarget between characters, Generic otherwise. Configure on the FBX importer, not per-clip.
• Root motion: decide explicitly — root motion moves the transform via the clip (physics conflicts ahead), code-driven movement wants it off and in-place clips.

Animation events & gameplay

• Animation events call public methods on the same GameObject; renaming the method silently breaks the event — grep clips (or re-wire via manage_animation) whenever renaming such a method.
• Hit frames/footsteps: animation events beat timers. Gameplay-critical timing (attack windows) is better in code or StateMachineBehaviours than eyeballed event placement.

Tweening (UI, pickups, juice)

• Simple one-off motion: a coroutine/Mathf.Lerp or Animator is fine. For pervasive juice, a tween library (e.g. DOTween via OpenUPM/Asset Store) is worth it — but it's a dependency: ask the user before adding it (see unity-packages skill).

Verify

Animations only prove themselves moving: play mode + read_console (animation events throwing?), and a manage_camera screenshot mid-motion or a short play-mode observation. State-machine wiring can be inspected via manage_animation without entering play mode.