Massive lag spikes playing animations for the first time in play mode after system restart

[PixelPockets]

As the title says, I am getting a massive lag spike anytime a new animation plays for the first time, the first time Unity enters play mode after a system restart. It also does it (albeit not nearly as bad) after a Unity restart.

Once all of the animations have played at least one time, there aren’t any more lag spikes. I grabbed a screenshot from the profiler, just to see if I could catch what was causing this -

I’m not sure if this is relevant or not, but it looks as if it’s opening an animation file, perhaps? Is this normal? Is there anything I can do to perhaps mitigate this behavior? Perhaps load all the animations at scene load or something? What’s strange is that it only does this the very first time Unity enters play mode after a system restart. Any subsequent play modes after that, and it’s as smooth as can be.

Is this just something we have to live with?

Unity 2022.3.0 LTS

[PixelPockets]

Does anyone else ever experience this? I’d like to know if it’s just on my end.

For reference, I’m using 2022.3.3, although previous versions did the same thing. I’m also using 2D URP, and am not using the standard Unity animation system. I’m still using the animator, but I’m playing/stopping the animations in code, rather than relying on the spiderweb approach.