Animating enemy NPCs through mecanim?

If I were to purchase a character through the asset store that is mecanim ready but does not have any animations in it's files but just the character only, and If I were to also purchase animations separately for that character, how do we go about jointing them together to create an animated enemy NPC only? I've seen tutorials on mecanim both non-official and official Unity3D videos but I am unable to find one on this topic. I believe this topic will not only help myself but others as well. Thank you in advance.

 

You just do it. The beauty of Mecanim is that it automatically retargets animations onto Mecanim-ready characters. Just follow any of the tutorials to set up your Animator Controller. This will tell your character how to move.

When and why to move is a different subject -- AI. You can get a basic AI rig in the new Sample Assets.

 

Animation retargeting is the term your looking for in transfering an animation to another character and its in this tutorial https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xx21y9eJq1U in case you missed it. Creating an animated enemy npc that moves on its own like an AI on the other hand is a different story. Your gonna have to code that. You might find some answers on the Scripting section.

 

I also need help with this

 

Just to share what I know (if it's correct), is that you also need to make sure that the animation was created on a character with a similar scale/size to the model that you want to put the animation in. At least that's what most of the information I've read say. The reason for this is that if an animation was created with a model of a different scale than your target model, there's a chance that parts of the animation will get messed up if you use it on your target model.

I haven't seen any horrific results yet if you use animations from a small character on a giant one on my own though. The worst I've seen was when animations made with a tiny model were used on a giant model, the giant model's arm was slightly off from its intended location.