Force a mecanim animation to finish before transition

Questions & Answers
1

I like that I can set a transition to atomic to force it to finish the transition. However, I would also like to be able to force a looping animation within a mecanim state to finish before any transitions can occur. Any ideas or best practices? Not sure why Unity left out such a critical piece.

My example is my character shooting a grenade launcher, it would look silly if he transitions out of the looping grenade launcher shot during the middle of a shot since the shot animation animates the character with force from the weapon/projectile, as it would in real life.

2

I suggest the same as Intrawebs says.
Just exit the current animation clip state as it reaches the exit time value of 1 and then transition it into another state that can either return back to playing the previously finished launcher shot clip or into any other state.
Thus you would be able to loop your launcher shot clip, though not within the same single looped animation state, but within two animation states.