Introduction to the 2D World of Unity - Unity 2D Game Development - page 11

5. Select the newly created Animations/Player folder, name the animation
PlayerIdleAnimation , and click on Save .
You now have a blank animation, and you'll notice that a few other changes occurred
as well. First off, in the Animations / Player folder, there is now a Player object
along with PlayerIdleAnimation . This player object is actually an Animator
Controller object, which Mecanim uses to know how to animate something; sort of
like a description of dance steps. It is essentially a tree of animations, with certain
requirements that are met to switch between different animations. We'll discuss that
further in a little bit, but to keep things organized, rename the player animator object
to PlayerAnimatorController . Now it's clear what it is.
When you click on the player object in the scene Hierarchy tab, you'll see that
an Animator component has already been attached and the Controller field uses
PlayerAnimatorController . This Animator component does all the actual
animation-changing work for the sprite's animations and uses the Animator
Controller fed to it as the guidelines on how to animate.
In the Animation tab, you'll now see that PlayerIdleAnimation is open. If it's not,
click on the player object in the Hierarchy tab and PlayerIdleAnimation should
automatically open.
Make sure the Dope Sheet button, which you can see circled in the following
screenshot, is clicked on at the bottom of the Animation tab: