Hi i recently saw paper moon and it is alot like ideas i was wanting to work with but have been struggling with. It is a 2.5d platformer with a paper aesthetic.
I was just wondering what is the process people use to get their animations to work in game?
I can understand how to do it in 3d but i fall over the process in 2d
Im assuming you just project a animated texture onto a 3 dimensional object or plane … now the problem is how do you define each specific animation and what file formats would you use? I would be drawing out these animations and shooting them on a rostrum and then either digitally inking them out and digitally animating or just masking the frames shot.
Sorry if this is a bit diffuse its late and ive been up for three days cramming syntax back into my brain.
There is no such thing as automatic texture animation.
You basically have to ways to achieve it:
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BAD way. In this way you just switch out the texture on the material. Thats bruteforce and will kill your performance considerably
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Good way. In this case you use UV animations to create the animation from a single image with multiple frames.
Sprite Manager (freely available) offers this kind of animation on a basic level, you just need to add the animation logic.
Sprite Manager 2, which is sold by Brady has a pretty much automagic animation handling among other powerfull 2D features and even comes with an animation editor which takes a way a lot of typing work for the frames and animation definition
ok, so does the same thing apply to 3d models with animation apply to 2d images with animation? Can I for example make an animated gif, that contains my walk cycle and jump animations…etc then select the range of frames i want for each action?
Unity has no 2D, its all 3D models, just that you keep them in a single distance and potentially even reduce them to a quad so they look like 2D 
And no you can not use GIFs. You must use image strips in one of the supported texture formats (jpg, png, psd) and then jump through the different areas through UV changes on the vertices of your objects.
The frame ranges for the animation, how you define them and how it works depends on your own code (unless you buy a system that offers this like the previously mentioned Sprite Manager 2).
wow is that really the best way to do it? christ that seems awkward, so i have to make a cube uv a texture to it with all my frames to all the animations my character has then code in the change of uv placment?
thank you for mentioning SM i will have a think about the way im going to code this.
you have really cleared up alot of my concerns and also let me know im not in for an easy ride