Instant transition with Mecanim (Unity 2d)

Questions & Answers
1

Hello guys,
Im using mecanim state machine with Unity 2D. I have several 2D elements that is supposed to play in sync (character with different eyes, hair and cloth possibilities). I set my transitions blend to 0 size and tryied with atomic option enabled and disabled (Im not sure what this could help but I saw something about this here)

I`m not using ExitTime because I want the transition occurs in the exactly call from a trigger (the exactly frame).

However I`m getting about one frame of difference between my animated sprites (believe me, some parts of the eyes need to move without any delay or something very odd happens)

I put a trivial example below (A one state animator trigged by a boolean called dance).

15703-transition.jpg
15703-transition.jpg390×858 74.5 KB

I set my trigger in a simple code as the one below (Unityscript):

var childAnimators : Component[];

function Start ()
{
	childAnimators = GetComponentsInChildren(Animator);
}

function Dance ()
{
	for(var littleAnimator:Animator in childAnimators)
		littleAnimator.SetTrigger("Dance");
}
5

Delete the ExitTime and the transition will be Instant

2

For animation transitions, I’ve had a bit better luck with scripting (C#); however, while scripting the animation made an improvement with the animation transition issues, it brought a new set of challenges for me.

I’ve got a sprite sheet from which I derive multiple animations. So far each animation is only 2 frames. I have each frame last 0.5 seconds for an animation lasting one total second. My problem in using the animator controller was instantaneous transitioning (or lack thereof) from one sprite animation to the next. If I’m walking and I jump, if I’m falling and I land, or some other transition, it needs to play out the entire frame before it transitions. That’s a minimum of a 0.5 second lag. The different features in the transition property don’t seem to do much - I have not seen a change yet whether “Atomic” is checked or not. Perhaps I’m not using it right?

The “Any State” animation box is very useful, but is limited as far as player states. Transitioning from “Any State” to another state allows your animation to transition immediately; the problem arises when you need to transition from one state to another - neither of which are “Any State.”

I have tried scripting it. The scripting seemed to work a bit better - when I went from idling to walking, the walking animation would cut off the idling animation as expected, and so on. This was pretty easily done - I simply added an Animation.Play("Idle") in the code. That’s it. But eventually my code became so chaotic and buggy that I had to reduce it, and that meant cutting the animation out.

I have yet to dive into Unity further, but these are my experience so far. Everything is working amazingly and is far better than having to write out an entire script dedicated to animating your sprite sheet. I just wish I could figure out how to transition instantly in the animator!

Hopefully one of my attempts can enlighten you as to working towatds a solution!

-Clopay

4

Just found if I use an exit time of 0.01 instead of 0.00, it instantly transitions. An exit time equal to zero is possible a special case to use the full length of the (longest?) clip.

3

I’m using triggers to change animations, but also using exit time with 0.0.
If I used only triggers, then the time reseted to 50%. Using exit time with 0.0 fixed it.