Help Wanted Details of transitioning between animations for Sprites animations

Hello everyone, thanks in advance for any and all support...

I’m working on an 8-Bit style pixel-art game. Sprites and frames all the way. Thing is I haven’t been able to get 2 animation behaviors just how I want them.

I’ve tried using the built-in Animator System, I wrote Scripts with the help of the internet and now I ended up using an Extension called “Animancer” (which I really liked). When one animating system solves one of the problems, then I don’t know how to solve the other one, or vice-versa.

Here are the things I’m solving for (I’ll use Mega Man as an example) …

First: How would I go about making an animation starts with a specific frame, or part of animation and then loop between another specific part of the animation without going to those starter frames?

Second: If I have two animations one is running, and one being running and attacking, and they have the same number of frames, how do I transition from “running” frame 3 to “running and attacking” frame 3, and continue looping on the current animation.

NOTE: As I said, I kinda managed to get this working using “Animancer” but the way I did was completely “hacky” and not sustainable. I know there’s a lot of things I’m not seeing that are making this harder than it needs to be. I'm completely open to Animator/Scripting/Any kind of solutions to look into.

EXAMPLES Below…

 

First: just use two separate animations. In Animancer you could use an End Event or in an Animator Controller you could have two states with an Exit Time transition.

Second: Animancer's Mixers or Blend Trees in an Animator Controller will automatically handle Synchronisation for you.

 

Thank you for your support Kybernetik! I was trying to do just what you mentioned earlier and it just seems there are a few issues with how I'm building/understanding animations between state changing, player input, etc.

I've managed to work something out at the moment, as per your recommendation, and I will move forward with it. Thank you.