Animal player character with Mechanim generic?

I'm very new to unity animation so I thought I'd learn Mechanim with some cool Protofactor animal pack assets, specifically the Lion asset. It's rigged and has animations. My goal is to let the player walk the lion around a simple scene and maybe add jumping and running.

Unfortunately, the only tutorials I've found cover bipedal rigs for players using the humanoid setup. I'm finding it hard to get details on the Mechanim generic system beyond simple door animation examples.

How would I go about setting up a generic rig as a player controlled character?
What do I need to do differently from the humanoid setups?
Is it just too hard to bother with?
Should I just go to sleep and try again tomorrow?

 

You can do that but then you'll never be a better developer xD

Everything is exactly the same, except for the fact that you'll need to select "Generic" (obviously) and you won't have the standard mirroring functions. That is for humanoids only, and also only across left to right, not back to front. And retargeting (applying an animation to a different rig) becomes a little more complicated, though I believe Unity makes it easy on you if you have the same namespace... You'll have to look that up though.

Generic rigs can still have roots, so root motion is not an issue. However IK targeting becomes a problem. Though you will be able to use custom IK setups in LateUpdate if you know what you're doing. I'd recommend doing some tutorials before delving further into the animation systems! Welcome to the forums!