Frequently Asked Questions
Does my game depend on Animation Workbench?
Only if you use the audio events. Everything else is editor-only.
Clips stay ordinary .anim files - even ones authored across several layers, because the stack is flattened on save. You can remove the tool from a project and your animations keep working exactly as before.
If you do use audio events, one runtime component (AWSFXManager) plus the baked audio database ship with your build. See Audio Integration.
Does it modify my prefabs or clips?
Prefabs: never. Previews and pose editing run on a temporary stage character.
Clips: only the ones you edit, and only where you edit them. Clip actions like mirroring write a new asset rather than changing the source.
How does this work in a team?
Commit Assets/Settings/AnimationWorkbench/. That folder holds what your team decided: the preview character picked for a clip, the IK chains, bone slots, props and rig drafts on characters, color labels, audio library and channels, rulesets, palettes, the baked runtime audio database, and the version history under Versioning/.
Its files change only when someone decides something. What the Workbench works out by scanning - which clips and characters exist, their length and events, which controllers use them, bone maps, the character it finds for a clip on its own - lives in Library/AnimationWorkbench/ and each machine rebuilds it. Importing clips or editing a controller therefore leaves the committed folder alone. A fresh clone scans once before its library is complete.
Favorites are your own. They live in UserSettings/AnimationWorkbench/, which Unity's standard .gitignore leaves out.
Update the Workbench on every machine at the same time. An older version that saves the library or the character database drops what the newer one keeps there.
The snapshots live in Versioning/Snapshots~, the color labels in ClipColors~. The trailing ~ hides a folder from Unity - no .meta file and no import - while git still commits it like any other folder. Watch out for a blanket *~ rule in your .gitignore; that would exclude them without telling you.
Leave Library/ out - the scan results and the thumbnail cache in Library/AWAnimationPreviewCache/ are machine-local and each machine rebuilds them.
Default characters are stored as asset labels on the prefabs, so that choice travels with the prefab rather than with a local setting.
Can I drive it from my own scripts?
Yes. The editor API covers the library, the keyframe editor and the caches; the runtime API covers audio playback. Both are documented in the Script Reference.
Do thumbnails persist across restarts?
Yes, in the disk cache under Library/AWAnimationPreviewCache/. Deleting it is safe - it costs render time, not data.
Why is my first library scan slow?
Because every thumbnail is a short animation being rendered for the first time. It runs in the background and you can keep working while it fills in; the second pass reads from disk and is instant.
If it is slower than you would like, lower the thumbnail quality preset in Settings → Thumbnails.
Can I switch preview characters?
Three levels, most specific wins: a per-clip override, then the pipeline-specific default label, then the plain default. See Character Setup.
Do I need Feel or Asset Inventory?
No. Both integrations are optional, reflection-based, and activate on their own when the asset is present. Nothing breaks if they are absent - or removed later.
What is the difference between Lite and Pro?
Consuming your library is free; producing with it has volume limits in Lite. The exact numbers are on the Lite & Pro page.
Content authored in Pro always opens correctly in Lite - a colleague can hand you a clip with six layers and it previews fine.
I hit a limit. Did I lose anything?
No. Limits stop the operation that would exceed them; they never delete or degrade what exists.
The one case worth understanding is editing a layer stack deeper than Lite allows - that asks first and keeps every saved version intact. It is explained on the Animation Layers page.
Where do I report a bug?
Tools → Animation Workbench → Report a Bug, or #bug-reports on Discord.