game objects in Unity we use the

Animator Component.

Animator components have a number of properties

which may differ depending on what you are animating.

For example, a 3D humanoid character

will require different settings than a 2D sprite.

Here we have a scene with a model in it.

The model has an animator component attached.

The first property of the animator component

stores a reference to an animator controller asset.

Animator controllers are Unity generated

assets that contain one or more state machines

which determine which animation is being played

while the scene is running.

These state machines can be on multiple layers

and use parameters of various types.

To affect when they transition between states

and blend.

For example

you can set the parameters of an

animator controller from your scripts to tell it

if the character is running, jumping

or shooting a gun.

It will then play and blend the animation

automatically.

The avatar is an asset that Unity creates

when importing a 3D humanoid.

It contains a definition of the

skeletal rig the character has.

When adding a character of this type to

your scene the avatar field will

automatically be filled in with an asset

created for that character.

Try to think of the avatar as the glue

that binds the model to be animated

to the animator.

For generic objects without skeletal

rigging an avatar is not required.

The Apply Root Motion field

determines whether the animation can affect

the transform of the game object

and is generally used with 3D humanoids.

Root Motion is the core movement

within an animation clip.

For example

imagine the difference between an animation

of a character running on the spot

verses one that is animated running a few

paces forward.

In the latter example

we can use the motion of the character moving

forward to drive the character

around in our game.

Looping that clip to give us realistic

continuous motion.

However, if you simply have

animations that run on the spot

you would uncheck Apply Root Motion

and instead move the character via script.

It is also possible to override this

property entirely.

This is done by creating a script with a

call to the onAnimatorMove function

and attaching it to your game object.

See the documentation link below

for more information on this.

Animate Physics can be either checked

or unchecked.

When it is checked it means that the

animations will be executed in time

with the physics engine.

Generally this is advised

if what ever you are animating

has a rigidbody.

The Culling Mode of an animator effects

whether or not the animations are being played

while they're not being rendered.

Always Animate means that the

animations will play even while not

being rendered.

Based On Renderers means that the

animation will only play while being rendered.

Meaning that when the character is

obscured from view animation will cease

to save performance.

With either option the root motion

is applied as it would normally.

That is if a character was being made

to walk with root motion applied

then they would continue to move even while

not being rendered so that the character

would end up in the correct place

when they became visible again.

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