Are reusable/stackable 2D animation curves possible w/ mecanim?

Questions & Answers
1

With mecanim, for example, if I move a simple gameobject (say, a generic uGUI panel) to a new position in an animation clip, can I somehow reuse that movement clip to move other (unrelated) uGUI panels to a new position too?

If so, how?

What if I also want a gameobject to both follow that animation clip’s motion and also fade and rotate too – to do this, I want to make 2 new animation clips (one to fade and the other to rotate) and apply these three animations to various gameobjects in various combinations. I’d prefer to use the editor to create the animations. Is this at all possible with mecanim?? Would I have to apply them with code somehow? If so, how?

Tell me there’s an easy way to accomplish these two tasks through the editor that I’m just not seeing?

At the moment, the only way I can find is to create a TON of animation clips unique for each object’s specialized configuration – and I’d totally rather avoid that tedium if at all possible! D:

2

After weeks of searching for the answer myself, I’ve found they are possible with “Animation Layers” which simply allows you to layer animations on top of one another and even sync your state machine from one layer with another layer’s state machine and simply add different animation clips to the machine, blending or overriding the animation where you see fit.

The one thing to be careful with are your animation clips and their hierarchies.

When creating an animation clip, ensure the hierarchy of the gameobject you want to attach a stackable animation to is shaped (and named) relatively the same as the gameobject hierarchy the animation clip was created on. Specific details in the lower parts of that hierarchy can be different, but the top-level animating/moving things MUST be named identically between gameobjects.