Learn Curve With Animations In Unity

Unity Engine
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So I have been using Unity for over a year now and I still stay clear of the Animation window.
I started using Unity after 4 years of experience with PHP, javascript and html5
Keep in mind this post is meant for a constructive thought in mind and I love using Unity.

But this is my take on Animation as a new person with coding experience that has starting to use the game engine.
The learning curve on doing Animation in Unity is so high that I’m sure that 85% of people who quit game development is when they hit Animation in Unity. I haven’t used any other Game engines and maybe this is a standard.

How is this a clean design?

1024×563 386 KB

The learning curve was so steep that 3 months into learning Unity I stopped the game I was making with lots of Character Movement in it and started working on a space ship game. Cause I knew I wouldn’t have to deal with Character Animation.

I think the Animation window is to reliant on doing to much. Meaning you should be able to use Animation using code with the Animation window with the animation window doing less but still keep the options there for those who want them.

Should beable to just add a Animator component
Create animations with in the component like
Animation 1
Animation 2
Allowing you to assign a name to them.
And you can then just control these animations with code by the name.

So pretty much not having to use the editor state transitions unless you want too.
Now I may be wrong and maybe this is already possible? If so please link me a guide that shows how to do this. I think this is possible. I just don’t know how to set up the animator window where I’m not having to use transitions.

As for non character animations.
I am so glad I found a plug in called ITween for Unity. That thing is amazing. MoveTo() or MoveFrom()
I use a plug in made from GreenSock that is incredible. A tool like that should just be part of the game engine. http://greensock.com/tweenmax or http://greensock.com/timelinemax
Who here can think of how many type of games needs to Tween Transforms between positions? Pretty much all of them.

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Look into legacy animation for your coding desires.

On the flip side I finally decided to start using Unity (again) after mecanim came online.
Legacy animation before was locked away to only those who could code up the animations together which was extremely frustrating as an animator who wanted to be involved with the entire character pipeline instead of just creating the supporting mesh and animation assets for the character.

Agree tweening tools are really handy to have.

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I think you might be looking at it from the wrong angle. Mechanim was designed for animator and artist workflows in mind so it’s a data-driven system, not a code-driven one.
It can be complex for sure, but like anything, if you start with small, isolated stuff it’s managable. It really shouldn’t take more than a few hours to learn the basics and maybe a few days to pick up some more advanced stuff. Perhaps you started too big and got overwhelmed because you didn’t have the basics down first.
Also, for reference, that example image is not a clean, or even good design :wink:

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