Animation and timelines

In plain English

An Animator is the component that plays animations through a controller made of states and transitions. A parameter is a variable on the Animator, such as a bool, float or trigger, that a script can change to tell the controller what to do. A trigger is a one-shot parameter you set to fire a transition like a jump, while a bool or float describes an ongoing state such as running. Timeline is a sequencer that arranges animation clips, audio and activation tracks into a cutscene on a single time ruler.

Step by step

1. 1Add an Animator component and assign an Animator Controller.
2. 2Create a state and a transition in the Animator window.
3. 3Add a trigger parameter and a transition to a jump state.
4. 4Set the trigger from a script when the player jumps.

using UnityEngine;

public class PlayerAnimator : MonoBehaviour
{
    [SerializeField] private Animator animator;

    private void Update()
    {
        if (Input.GetButtonDown("Jump"))
        {
            animator.SetTrigger("Jump");
        }
    }
}

Common mistakes

• Naming the parameter in code with a different case than in the controller fails silently, so the animation never changes.
• Using a trigger for an ongoing state such as running fires once and never re-evaluates; use a bool or float instead.
• Hardcoding cutscene logic onto gameplay objects couples a cinematic to one scene and makes it hard to reuse.
• Forgetting to assign the Animator reference in the Inspector leaves it null and causes a runtime error.