This page contains some tips to help you obtain the best performance in Unity, covering the animation system and run-time optimizations.
Note: For tips on modeling your character in a 3d application for best performance in Unity, see Modeling characters for optimal performance.
The Animator doesn’t spend time processing when a Controller is not set to it.
Playing a single Animation ClipAnimation data that can be used for animated characters or simple animations. It is a simple “unit” piece of motion, such as (one specific instance of) “Idle”, “Walk” or “Run”. More info
See in Glossary with no blending can make Unity slower than the legacy animation system. The old system is very direct, sampling the curve and directly writing into the transform. Unity’s current animation system has temporary buffers it uses for blending, and there is additional copying of the sampled curve and other data. The current system layout is optimized for animation blending and more complex setups.
Animating scale curves is more expensive than animating translation and rotation curves. To improve performance, avoid scale animations.
Note: This does not apply to constant curves (curves that have the same value for the length of the animation clip). Constant curves are optimized, and are less expensive than normal curves. Constant curves that have the same values as the default sceneA Scene contains the environments and menus of your game. Think of each unique Scene file as a unique level. In each Scene, you place your environments, obstacles, and decorations, essentially designing and building your game in pieces. More info
See in Glossary values do not write to the scene every frame.
Most of the time Unity is evaluating animations, and keeps the overhead for animation layersAn Animation Layer contains an Animation State Machine that controls animations of a model or part of it. An example of this is if you have a full-body layer for walking or jumping and a higher layer for upper-body motions such as throwing an object or shooting. The higher layers take precedence for the body parts they control. More info
See in Glossary and Animation State MachinesA graph within an Animator Controller that controls the interaction of Animation States. Each state references an Animation Blend Tree or a single Animation Clip. More info
See in Glossary to the minimum. The cost of adding another layer to the animator, synchronized or not, depends on what animations and blend trees are played by the layer. When the weight of the layer is zero, Unity skips the layer update.
These are tips to help you decide between these types:
There are many optimizations that can be made, some useful tips include:
Always optimize animations by setting the animator Culling Mode to Cull Completely, and disable the skinned mesh renderer’s Update When Offscreen property. This saves Unity from updating animations when the character is not visible.