The animator seems like a big convoluted mess. Am I just using it wrong?

I'm doing 2D sprite animation on my player character and the animator seems like a tedious convoluted mess.

There are 2 main issues that are getting to me. One is I that the number of transitions quickly become unmanageable. I only have about 1/4th of my over all states implemented so far and the thing already looks like an indecipherable spider web. It would be so much easier if I could directly set a state in code instead having to update parameters and have a hundred transitions.

The other issues is I have several different versions of my player character. They will use different sprites and animations, but the states and logic for switching is identical. The best way I can see to tackle this problem is to make one animator and copy it after it's fully implemented and pray nothing ever needs to be changed later on. I would expect unity to have a better solution. Ideally the group of sprites used would just be a parameter I could change. If not that then have something like prefabs for the animation controller where I can make a change on one and have it propagate down to the others.

Anyone have advice how to tackle these two problems? Are there features that I'm unaware of? As is the animator seems beyond clunky to use.

 

Yes, one word... Playables. Totally bypass Animator Controller.

 

You can just change animation clips at runtime...
Here's my before and after animation change implementation...

 

You might be interested in my Animancer plugin which lets you use a code based approach instead of creating AnimatorControllers.

 

You can set a state (by name) in code using either Animator.Play() or Animator.CrossFade(). Generally, you can do this in place of Any State -> transitions. If you need to transition directly from one state to another, then you would probably want to keep the explicit transitions, although you could have a script monitor the normalizedTime of the current AnimationState or listen for an AnimationEvent that you set up on an animation clip. (And then use Play() or CrossFade() to start a different animation clip)

Unity does have a better solution: the Animator Override Controller.