Sprite animation - single frame noob question imeline

Unity Engine
1

hi all I am just starting to get into unity and want to make some cut scene introduction animations, time is limited so I have dived into the deep end, the animation system is straight forward but I am having a few issues, I imported a range of animations ( single frame - not Sprite sheet ) and created a animation and dragged the images into the time line - it all animates fine - however I cannot drag the animation to the main time line.

I am assuming that the animation in unity works some where similar to flash, where you create key frame animation in a container object, so for instance in flash it would be called a movie clip, then you can drop this movie clip in the main scene timeline and animate this movie clip object with key frames in the timeline so if I created a walk sequence movie clip object, then I could have a character walk across the scene from right to left in the main scene timeline while the movie clip object of the walk cycle will loop the animation sequence. Is this possible in unity ?

I have seen the Sprite sheet method but am having issues with importing Sprite sheets and setting the grid I would prefer to work with individual frames as this gives precise control over animation cycle - remember I have just jumped into unity today and know nothing of the actual work flow, I’m just concentrating on the animation of a cut scene at the start of the game, I would like to get my animation and scene setup underway so I can arrange a project and animations so I can give developers all the assets and provide direction for actual gameplay and design . Thanks in advance.

2

Unity animation does work similar to Flash in the sense that you can have frames/keyframes. You can view the frames of an object through the Animation window (Window > Animation). I’m unsure what you mean by dragging the animation into the main timeline. I think you mean putting the animation into the game, which you’d do by placing certain components on a GameObject located in the Hierarchy of a Scene in Unity.

If the Animation Tutorials page (https://unity3d.com/learn/tutorials/topics/animation) doesn’t have the info you’re looking for I might recommend the Unity Animation Essentials book by Packt Pub (Unity Animation Essentials | Business & Other | eBook). The first 3 chapters should be all you need there. Someone else might have other tutorials to point you towards, maybe some on YouTube.

When bringing in sprite sheets into Unity, make sure you set their Texture Type to Sprite and Sprite Mode to Multiple. You can do this by clicking on the image in the Project window in Unity, and the Inspector window will update to show the associated properties. Once those are set click the Sprite Editor button and you can work with grid settings and such in there.