Unity Animator Override Controller — Another Tool to Improve Animator Functionalities

Objective: save a lot of time when dealing with controller replicas

Now that the moss giant in my game is done, and needs just some fine-tuning, it is time to work with the other enemy species. All we have done till now paved the way to smarter work, having reduced code duplication through abstraction and polymorphism: so any non-special enemy will work effortlessly and each of them just needs additive, specific code.

One thing I noticed was the complexity of the animator tree, with all the transitions and parameters.

If code and scripts are components that can just be attached to a new enemy species, the animator seems to need a total rework: new enemy → new animator → SAME states and transitions → new animations.

Since it was a boring, repetitive job I was sure that a more automated way was available. The answer is Animator Override Controller.

The Animator Override Controller can be created as an asset. It appears with an icon similar to the Animator Controller one, but with a plus symbol.

This has the purpose to suggest that the animator override controller can be referenced in a game object animator component as if it was a simple controller.