Animation Browser

The main window: every animation clip in the project, searchable, previewable and sortable. Ctrl+Shift+W.

Finding a clip

Search

The search box takes several terms at once, separated by spaces, and scores matches rather than doing a plain substring test - so run fw finds Run_Forward_Fast without you spelling it out.

Filters

Filters stack, and they combine with AND:

Filter	Comes from
Type filters	Clip properties - humanoid, looping and the rest
Ruleset filters	Your rulesets, one toggle per rule, or a click on a rule's icon in the list
Quick Filter	An ad-hoc rule you build on the spot and throw away again
Folder / tag	The tree on the left, and palette tags

Ruleset filters can be inverted - click again for NOT, which turns "everything tagged Combat" into "everything that isn't". That is how you find the clips a rule missed.

:::tip Quick Filter is for the question you only have once "Which of these 400 clips run longer than three seconds and still have no events?" Build it, read the count, drop it again - without spending one of your saved rules on it. Quick Filter is a Pro feature; see Lite & Pro. :::

Sorting

Name, duration, frame count, last updated, version count, events, audio events, spawn events, usage in project, usage in scenes, and preview character - ascending or descending.

Sorting by usage is the fastest way to find the clips nobody references any more. Sorting by events finds the ones that were never wired up.

Viewing a clip

• Grid or list, with a size slider
• Inspector panel beside the list for the selected clip - metadata, events, versions
• Keyframe Editor for a single clip, on double-click or when it is the one clip selected in the list on the left, with a preview you can spin and frame. Back returns to its folder with its card marked. In the list on the left, where a click already opens the editor, a double-click opens the clip in a Keyframe Editor window of its own
• Rename in place, without leaving for the Project window
• Navigation history - back and forward, like a browser. Each folder remembers where you had scrolled to, so going back lands where you were.

Drag a clip out of the window and drop it into the scene or onto a character to try it there.

Folders

A folder in the grid shows what lies directly in it, as Unity's Project window does: its subfolders first, as cards, then its model files and clips. A folder card shows its name and how many clips and subfolders it holds. Only folders with clips in them get a card.

Asset packs often nest a folder inside a folder with nothing else in it. A card reaches down through such a chain to where it branches or where clips start, and names the whole way, for example Animations / fbx, so a pack nested five folders deep opens with one double-click instead of five. When the name does not fit, the middle drops out: KayKit / … / fbx.

• Double-click a folder card, or press Enter, to open it. The list on the left follows.
• The path bar at the top of the grid shows where you are, for example Assets › Feel › FeelDemos › Models. Click a part of it to go there, with the folder you came from selected; click the arrow after a part to pick one of its subfolders. The last part is the menu with recently viewed clips and all folders. Right-click a part to find the folder in the Project window.
• The up arrow in the toolbar goes back one level, with the folder you came from selected. Out of a folder you opened through a chain card, it goes back to where that card stands; the path bar still reaches every folder in between.
• With the list on the left hidden, the mouse's back button goes up one level, as the up arrow does, and forward goes back down the same way, one level at a time, as far as the clip you left. With nowhere left to go back down to, forward opens the selected card. With the list showing, the two buttons step through the places you visited, like a browser.
• Drop clips on a folder card to move them into that folder; hold Ctrl to copy them instead. Ctrl+Z undoes it, as a drop on a folder in the list on the left.
• The right-click menu pings the folder in the Project window, shows it in Explorer, or copies its name or path.

A filter, a rule set or a tag for example, keeps the folders: only the ones holding a matching clip get a card, and the card counts only those, as the list on the left does. While you search, everything below the folder lies loose in the grid: a search is looking for clips, not for the folders they sit in.

Model files

A model file with several clips in it, an FBX with a dozen takes for example, lies in the grid as one card instead of one card per take. Two sheets peek out above it, its first clip plays on top, and the line under the file name says how many clips it holds.

Move the mouse across the card to leaf through them, or across its picture in the list view. The position picks the clip: the left edge shows the first, the right edge the last. While you do, the second line names the clip you are on, the badges show its duration and flags, and a thin bar at the bottom of the picture shows where you are in the file.

• Double-click the card, or press Enter, to open the file. The grid then shows its clips one by one, just as after a click on the file in the list on the left. The up arrow in the toolbar takes you back to the folder, with the card selected.
• Drag the card to drag all of its clips.
• The right-click menu regenerates the previews of all its clips or gives them a preview character in one go.

While you search, the clips lie loose again: a search is looking for clips, not for the files they sit in. A filter keeps the card, holding only the clips that match. A model file with a single clip, or a single matching one, shows up as that clip.

Color labels

Right-click a clip, or a selection of clips, and pick a color under Color Label: red, orange, yellow, green, blue, purple, pink or gray. None takes it off again. The same submenu sits in Unity's Project window under Animation Workbench ▸ Color Label, for a .anim file or an unfolded take inside a model file. The label colors the small clip icon in the list on the left, in the Work Area, and in Unity's own Project window, so a clip you marked in the Workbench looks the same wherever you meet it.

In the Project window's list and tree views the icon itself takes the color. With large icons (the grid in the two-column layout) a colored dot sits in the corner of the tile instead.

A label stays with the clip when you rename or move it. Clips inside a model file each keep their own label, so the takes of one FBX can carry different colors. The labels are stored in Assets/Settings/AnimationWorkbench/ClipColors~/, a folder Unity does not import, so they cause no reimport and travel with your project in version control if you commit that folder. A duplicated clip starts without a label.

The Work Area

A tray along the bottom of the project list holding what you are working on right now. It appears once something is in it, and while you drag a clip, folder or model over the window, so there is somewhere to drop it.

The point is that a working set is rarely a folder. The clips you are touching this afternoon are three from one character, one from another and a whole model you are about to retime - and no filter describes that. Put them here and they stay together while you keep browsing, searching and filtering above.

Putting something in	Drag it onto the tray, or use Add to Work Area in the right-click menu. Clips, whole folders and model files are all accepted
A folder or a model	Goes in as ONE row with the number of clips beside it - not as its contents. Click the row to select all of them, Ctrl-click to add them to what is already selected
A clip row	Click to select - the inspector beside the list follows. Drag it out into the scene or the Keyframe Editor exactly like a row in the list above, and use Open (Standalone) on the right-click menu to open it
Taking something out	The cross on the row, or Clear Work Area in the header
Capacity	32 entries - and a folder counts as one of them, however many clips it holds

A folder row counts the clips that sit directly in it, which is the same number its header shows in the list. Subfolders are their own entries.

The tray survives domain reloads and restarts. It is a scratch list, not a saved selection: it stores paths, so a renamed folder drops out of it rather than following along under a name you did not put there.

Multi-clip compare

Select several clips and compare them:

• Side by side - one character per clip, playing in sync
• Ghost mode - every clip as a tinted ghost on one stage, spaced as far apart as you like. Push them together and you see exactly where two takes diverge

This is the tool for "is attack_02 actually different from attack_03, or did someone duplicate it?".

Each clip gets its own row on the left with its length and event count; the playhead drives all of them at once.

The Ghost toggle in the toolbar switches the stage over: instead of one character per clip, every clip becomes a coloured, semi-transparent ghost. A spacing control decides how far apart they stand - turn it down to zero and they occupy the same space, which is how you see the exact frame where two takes of the same action start to differ.

Thumbnails

Thumbnails are short animated previews, rendered by the tool and cached at three levels:

Cache	Lives	Purpose
RAM	Session	Instant redraw for recently shown clips
GPU	Session	Render textures for what is on screen
Disk	Persistent	Library/AWAnimationPreviewCache/

Rendering is serialized, one clip at a time, and driven by a time budget that adapts to how fast you are scrolling. That is a deliberate design: previews share one scene and Unity's global animation mode, so the work cannot be parallelized - but it can be paced so the editor stays responsive.

Consequences worth knowing:

• The first pass over a large library takes a while. It runs in the background and you can keep working. The second visit is instant.
• Quality is a preset, not a resolution slider - see Settings.
• No preview? Almost always a missing or unsuitable preview character. Character Setup has the checklist.

How much of the grid moves

The window menu has four modes under Animated Thumbnails → Mode:

Mode	What moves
Always Animate	Every thumbnail on screen
On Hover	The clip under the mouse, and the ones you have selected; the rest hold their frame
Selected Only	Only the clips you have selected; the rest hold their frame
Disabled	Nothing; every thumbnail is a still

On Hover and Selected Only are the middle ground on a large library: the motion stays where you are looking, and a grid full of clips stops competing for attention and for the render budget. Pressing Space in the browser switches the animation off and back on - back on means the mode you last chose, not Always. The same menu sets the playback speed, which is deliberately separate from the preview speed: thumbnails are an overview, not a preview.

Hold Alt over a clip card to scrub through the clip with the mouse: the position across the card is the time, left the first frame, right the last. In the list view the picture is the area. It works in every mode, also with the animation switched off, and the clip goes on from that frame when you let go.

Keeping up to date

The library re-scans:

• On first open, asynchronously
• When animations are imported, via a change watcher
• On a manual refresh

You should not have to press refresh in normal use. If you do, that is worth a bug report.

From the browser into an editor

• Double-click a card, or press Enter - opens the clip in the Keyframe Editor, with its preview
• Double-click a clip in the list on the left - opens it in a Keyframe Editor window of its own. A window that is already open takes the clip; Ctrl+double-click opens another one beside it
• Context menu → New Keyframe Editor - opens the clip in its own editor window
• Drag into the scene - drop a clip onto a character to try it in place

From the Keyframe Editor you can then pose the clip on a stage character or, with Scene Edit, on a character that is already in your scene. Both are available in every edition - see Pose Editing.