Mecanim Failing to Visually Animate in Standalone PC Builds

Unity Engine
1

Hey everyone,

We are seeing an issue where occasionally we make a Standalone PC Build and the Mecanim Controllers fail to work correctly. I havent been able to track down the exact cause as yet but what we see is:

  • All characters using the same Animation Controller do not visualy animate
  • Characters seem to be animating behind the scenes as sounds and other events we have written occur as if the animation is playing correctly (atleast as far as going through the mecanim states and taking the right times).
  • The characters will NEVER work in that build. No matter how many times you load it and no matter what machine. If its broken the first time, its always broken. Likewise if it works, it always works.

I am pretty certain the animations are playing, its doing the transitions as sounds are playing at the right times (Characters get bored based on mecanim states and they are playing the sounds of these bored anims at the right times).

But the characters are just rendered in one pose, with no movement. Its not the deafult T-Pose either.

Sometimes some animation controllers work, sometimes they all work, sometimes none work. There is no real consistency except that it always occurs the same way in every re-run of that build.

For instance just now I built 6 times in a row, the first 5 times one of my two animation controllers on the first level didn’t work, then finally on the 6th they both worked and continue to do so not matter how many times I run it.

Has anyone else run into this?
Does anyone have any ideas of what I can look at/try to avoid this?

2

We are having this same issue, was a solution ever found? They aren’t exactly frozen but the characters seem to get their animations cut short

This seems related: http://forum.unity3d.com/threads/187195-Mecanim-animation-clip-length-works-in-editor-but-not-in-player and was apparently never fixed

3

Any update or news on this issue? We just got burned by this in an update to our Alpha (The Long Dark). The “workaround” is to just keep making a standalone build until the problem mysteriously goes away.

4

I’m encountering this on our project too. And right now my method for solving it is exactly the same as Alan’s; eventually the standalone build seems to just work. But it’s a frustratingly slow workaround.

5

Hi guys.

Are you using Prefabs with Animator on them ? If so, this really sounds like a problem that we just fixed and will be in our next patch release.

Until then, the a workaround I can suggest is making sure the Animator window is closed when building the game.

Otherwise, it would be nice to have a repro.

pp

6

This has been happening to me since I started with 4.3 months ago. I’m making a 2D game, but the same thing happens. I do have prefabs with animators on them, and every once in a while published builds will not play any animations, they just stand there. I did narrow down a method to fix this, but it is extremely impractical for a large game. Basically, any animations that you have viewed at least once running in editor play mode will in turn work in the published build. I posted this in answers and another person replied, but we both didn’t get any real help. Hopefully this info helps you guys track down the real issue, or as you said, hopefully you guys just fixed it! That would be fantastic.