[REGRESSION] mecanim no longer allows to show animation at time t

Legacy used to allow for animationstateinfo.normalizedTime = f
For some reason mecanim animatorstateinfo.normalizedTime is read only so we can't show animation at time t!

EDIT: it's called animator.playbacktime... which doesn't work.
Reading the (god awful) doc on animator, there seem to be a difference between playback lower case and Playback upper case. Where playback is normal playback of a clip and Playback is something related to recording animation live.

So what is the new and (un)improved way to do normalizedTime in mecanim? Or better yet: FIX THIS and make is read/write. pretty please with sugar on top.

 

If you want to change the current time of the current played state you need to use
Animator.Play(0, layerIndex, myNormalizedTime);

 

I am also using StartPlayback before calling play. Is this the correct way if you want to play the animation manually?
I wouldn't want to run into compatibility problems in the future for this as I am relying heavily on this feature(need fine grained real time control over playback speed).

 

Hi, you don't need to use StartPlayback(), this function should be used only when you want to record an Animator with
https://docs.unity3d.com/ScriptReference/Animator.StartRecording.html
once you have recorded data you can replay the recorded data.

The only thing you need to call when you want to play a clip is
https://docs.unity3d.com/ScriptReference/Animator.Play.html
or
https://docs.unity3d.com/ScriptReference/Animator.CrossFade.html

 

Can't remember what was the issue exactly but I remember seeing animation glitches due to the fact that Play without StartPlayback automatically play the next frame and probably do some other things automatically. In some cases like when playing an animation backwards it is leading to some glitches(probably something in mecanim gets updated after lateupdate).
Don't know if it was a bug or something unavoidable due to the way mecanim works.
In my game I switch between the mecanim state machine to my manual playback, is it supposed to be always working regardless of any state,transition or whatever if I don't use Startplayback()? Keep in mind I do things like playing forward, backward and playing the same frame.