is it me or mecanim is complicated?

as you add more states the transitions exponentially increases, even with substates, any state, enter, exit. It's just unpredictable and hard to debug. How do I deal with this?

 

Use Any State more or, better yet, control some transitions from code using Animator.CrossFade.

 

I cant believe everything is much more predictable with Animator.CrossFade. I don't have to keep track of all the transitions. I just have to structure my code differently, but the question is. Is this the right way to do the animations?(sprite Animations) not one of the legacy stuff?

 

I think it's a good way. A lot of the more advanced animation controllers, such as Opsive's Third Person Person Controller, do it this way.

If you were using legacy animation, everything would have to be done like this, and without all the benefits of Mecanim such as retargeting, IK, visual layout of animation states, the option to use visual transition arrows on the canvas, etc.

 

Can't you transition also from any state immediately if you want?
You should achieve the same result without crossfade by code.
That way you don't have to tinker with code and can experiment in the animator.

 

Yes. (I mentioned this in my first post.) But it still leaves a lot of transition arrows on the canvas, and also the conditions of all Any State transitions are evaluated every frame. If you have a lot of them, it could be a performance concern. But, then again, if you tinker with code you lose the advantages you stated. I think there's a balance. In my controllers, I have no transition arrows between major states (e.g., unarmed, melee, pistol, etc.) and switch between them in code. But inside each major state I use transition arrows.