This is the old Animancer v7.4 documentation. Animancer v8.0 is now available.

04 Directional Sprites

Location: Assets/Plugins/Animancer/Examples/04 Directional Sprites

These examples demonstrate how you can group animations into sets of up/right/down/left (including or excluding diagonals) using Directional Animation Sets to implement characters who can face any direction while performing various actions.

This concept can be extended to any situation where you want to define a reusable structure for a set of animations (whether 2D like these examples or not). For example, you could make a CharacterAnimationSet containing all the standard animations of a character (Idle, Walk, Run, Attack, etc.) or a Weapon could hold all the animations that characters need to use when it is equipped. That way you can reuse the same structure throughout your project.

These examples focus on using animations in Animancer. Several of the official Unity tutorials explain how to actually create those animations in the first place:

The Platformer Game Kit is a much more extensive example of how to use Animancer in a complex game.

04-01 Directional Basics Use DirectionalAnimationSets to organise animations in groups of up/right/down/left, using the exact same structure for both Idle and Walk animations across various different characters.
04-02 Directional Character Use DirectionalAnimationSets in a slightly more complex character and then change to a character that uses DirectionalAnimationSet8s to support diagonal movement as well, without changing the controller script at all.