Accurately timing the end of a Mecanim Animation.

Hello!

Would like some explaining on this problem that I've got, after looking into the Mecanim system I finally figured out a way to work out when an animation has finished without using events or StateMachineBehaviours. Mainly because both ways are really tedious as you can't dynamically time any animation that you call by script.

I have a function called SetAnimation which simply calls the "CrossFade" function from the "Animator" component, and then I basically store a record using a struct of the current animation that I'm calling, I store the hash of the animation so that I can clearly tell the difference between two different animations and react accordingly.

Code (CSharp):

1. [System.Serializable]
2. public struct AnimationToken
3. {
4.     public string animation_name;
5.     public string animation_token;
6.     public string animation_calledname;
7.     public int animation_hash ;
8.     public bool tracking; //Is this token being tracked ( false at start )
9. }
10.  

SetAnimation code: ( cut up the junk so you can see what's going on)

Code (CSharp):

1.  int animation_state = Animator.StringToHash(animation);
2.         if(!animator_reference.HasState(animation_layer, animation_state))
3.         {
4.             Debug.Log("<b>Animator does not have state for " + gameObject.name + "</b> : " + animation + " on layer " + animation_layer);
5.             return;
6.         }
7.        
8.         animator_reference.CrossFade(animation, 0, animation_layer, normalizedTime);
9.  
10.         //Add the animation to the animation token to track on Update
11.         AnimationToken calledAnimationToken = new AnimationToken();
12.         calledAnimationToken.animation_hash = animation_state;
13.         calledAnimationToken.animation_name = animation;
14.         calledAnimationToken.animation_calledname = originalAnimationString;
15.         calledAnimationToken.animation_token = animation_state.ToString() + "_" + Time.deltaTime.ToString();
16.         calledAnimationToken.tracking = false; //Hasn't been tracked yet until a call to WaitForAnimationToFinish
17.  
18.         //Add the token
19.         if (animationTokens.Count > 0)
20.         {
21.             animationTokens.RemoveAt(0);
22.         }
23.  
24.         animationTokens.Add(calledAnimationToken); //Add to my list of current tokens I have
25.  
26.         //Set the current tracking token
27.         currentTrackingToken = calledAnimationToken;
28.  

Then in the Update function of the script I get the current state from Mecanim and then set off a timer using the length of the animation as my time. After the timer is up it then calls a delegate event "OnAnimationFinished" that other scripts can subscribe to.

Code (CSharp):

1.  
2.             if (animator_reference) //The Animator Component
3.             {
4.                 //Current Base Animation State
5.                 currentBaseState = animator_reference.GetCurrentAnimatorStateInfo(animation_layer);
6.  
7.                 if (currentTrackingToken.animation_hash != -1)
8.                 {
9.                     //Check if our tracking token animation is the same as the current animation
10.                     if (currentBaseState.IsName(currentTrackingToken.animation_name))
11.                     {
12.                         //Track it
13.                         if (!currentTrackingToken.tracking)
14.                         {
15.                             currentTrackingToken.tracking = true;
16.                             if (waitforanimationtofinish != null)
17.                             {
18.                                 waitforanimationtofinish.Stop();
19.                             }
20.  
21.  //Start the timer based on the length of the state
22.                             waitforanimationtofinish = new Task(WaitForAnimationToFinish(currentBaseState.length, currentTrackingToken));
23.                         }
24.                     }
25.                 }
26.             }

It works really well as most of the time I can just hook up another function to the delegate on the animation script and then fire what I need to do at the end of it.
The problem comes in because I guess it's the way Unity works with animations, once a call to CrossFade is made with no transition the current state of the animation isn't updated until the next frame, which I think is causing my timing to be slightly off.

Was wondering if anybody had any other solution to timing the animation properly? Or even getting the state that you are calling with CrossFade before the animation has even changed. If I could get the state of the animation I'm trying to move to then I'm sure I could just call my tracking code as soon as I call "CrossFade" rather than calling it in the Update function.

Any help would be greatly appreciated

 

@DavidGeoffroy Thanks for the reply, I'm not running the animator on Physics just running it on Normal. It still doesn't trigger straight away and I've tried putting the code in LateUpdate just to see if I can get the timing right but it still gives me the same result as Update ( although it may be slightly different ). I'm using Unity 5.3.5f1 if that makes a difference.

 

Thanks for the info, I think I may have found a way to do it, I record the current time when making a call to SetAnimation and then when calling the Coroutine based on how long the animation is, I subtract how much time has passed from the length.