Animating Sprites in Unity

Objective: Bring life to your Sprites by animating them and get familiar with the Animation and Animator Controller windows.

Start by selecting the sprite or prefab you want to animate. Click on Window > Animation > Animation and drag the Animation window to dock it.

Create an Animations folder and then a new .anim file for your Sprite.

To create the animation, press the record button and then drag in your spliced sprites into the Animation dope sheet. If you’re happy with the animation, click the record button again to stop recording.

When you stop recording, 2 things happen:

1. The animation file and Animator Controller are both created in your Animations folder. Make sure both are named exactly the same to avoid confusion. The Animator Controller manages the logic for playing your animation. The Controller can manage several animations for your object.
2. Unity automatically adds an Animator component on your animated object which also has the Animator Controller plugged in.

When you click on the Animator Controller, it will open up the Animator window. When your animation is playing, you can see that the orange node, which is the default animation state, will continue to loop if your animation clip has Loop Time checked.