flip

[Orion]

The problem isn't the scale key, but the position keys, when the sprites move. It keeps resetting the z position to "pre-flip".

[unikronsoftware]

I think I understand, but I'm not sure if there is a clear cut solution to this. You might have to write a manager script to modify z based on flipped state.

[Orion]

I don't have a problem writing (complex) code, once I know a working solution. Right now I'm trying to find anything that will work without killing performance.

Basically what happens is this:

- Character turns around >> I flip z order of children (once)
- Character gets animated (by mecanim) >> the animation restores the pre-flip z order

Right now the only way to avoid that would be to reorder the sprites on LateUpdate, after the animation happened. But I can imagine reordering 1000s of sprites every frame is not going to be good for performance.

How would you solve this (with a manager or without)?

This seems like a common problem to me, when using animated characters that are built from sprites. How is this usually done?

[unikronsoftware]

If you're already animating the character and mecanim is already setting the z values, I can't see what harm another pass of changing the z values is going to do. How much of a hit this is going to be depends on how your hierarchy is set up. If its largely flat with a few nested children it'll cost a lot less to update than a very deeply nested hierarchy where all children. Alternatively if you are on Unity 4.3, use the order in layer property instead of z to sort your sprites.

Since you already have code to flip the z, try calling it every frame and see how much of a hit it is and if it is a problem to start with?

I don't know if there is a way to get mecanim not to stomp your z values - that would probably be one for the unity answers forum.

[Orion]

You are right. It's worth a shot. Although my code for flipping just negates the z position, so calling it repeatedly will mess things up. But I'm sure I can create some sort of simple system that just keeps setting every transform to the correct z value.