Preview animations with several objects working together in the editor?

This issue has been driving me nuts. I know the timeline is coming soon (finally) but it's still in Beta and we can't currently update our project, anyways. So we are on 5.6 at the moment and will remain there for some time.

So my question is: Is there a way to preview animations for more than one object in the editor without entering play mode? Our animations have several characters and objects interacting with each other. The animations are split up because the individual actors don't run all the states parallel (only selected ones).

For the ones where models need to interact with each other by animation we'd like to preview the respective animation clips parallel. Is there a way to do this with the current featureset of Unity?

 

I usually use my dcc tool to confirm/have faith in the animation looking as close to perfect as they can. This always involves detailed scene mockup, measurements down to cm and exact movement creation. This isn't the best approach I will admit, but it gets the job done, although I can see/know the difficulty in your set up.

This link probably isn't helpful, directly related to your issue - I only use it to summon @TrickyHandz to provide his input.
https://forum.unity3d.com/threads/previewing-animations-with-events-attached.459628/

It looks like their a couple assets in the store that could possibly be a solution.
I'd probably try them out in this order - though I might put Slate after TransAnim and AnimTester being aware of prices. I think Slate is probably the tool that WILL work, while the others might work - though Slate is a hefty suite of tools, compared to the others. Might be overkill.

Slate
https://www.assetstore.unity3d.com/en/#!/content/56558
https://forum.unity3d.com/threads/slate-complete-gameplay-cutscenes-cinematics-sequencer.388971/

Transform Animator
https://www.assetstore.unity3d.com/en/#!/content/68289

Animation Tester
https://www.assetstore.unity3d.com/en/#!/content/70010

uSequencer
https://www.assetstore.unity3d.com/en/#!/content/14572

Lemme know what you go with. I'm also interested in a solution for this for upcomping tasks.

 

Cool - thanks. I'll check that out.