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Animated sprite sheets: Why do I need an Animator?

Discussion in 'Animation' started by Taschenschieber, Sep 17, 2014.

  1. Taschenschieber

    Taschenschieber

    Joined:
    Jun 8, 2014
    Posts:
    238
    Really quick question here: When I want to create an animation from just showing a series of sprites one after another, why does it work when I use an Animator but not with the simpler-to-use Animation component?

    It's really unintuitive to me and I absolutely don't get why.
     
  2. GarBenjamin

    GarBenjamin

    Joined:
    Dec 26, 2013
    Posts:
    7,441
    Once upon a time there was an Animation component. Now often referred to as Legacy Animation. As so often happens, developers looked at the Animation component and saw that it was good... but talked among themselves and said "we can make it better" ... "by making it more powerful". And the developers began to work on their grand vision. They decided to make a parent component called the Animator. This Animator would implement states and each state would tie to one of the simple animations. Because, after all, everyone wants to be able to flow from one animation state into another state easily, visually, right? After their work was complete they had provided an upgraded animation system that was more powerful than the "old" Animation component method. Of course, not all was for the better. Many of the users saw the Animator as just another layer they had to mess with in order to use a simple animation. What was easy before became complex. And that is how it is with over-engineering. The simple things give way to more powerful, more steps involved things.

    On the bright side, you can still use just the Animations. You need to go into Debug mode and change the Animation Type to 1. This marks it as legacy as I recall.