Unity 2D: Simple Cutscene animation system/manager - unity3d

Question

I am struggeling to come up with a smart way to deal with cutscenes in my 2D game. I think I have decided to Create/Control the cutscenes using the Animator, and moving the actual GameObjects around.
What I am struggeling with is:
This approach means each GameObject needs it's own Animator. So how do I then trigger the correct Cutscene? I am going to use game stages to control the game and its progress, so for example:
if(gameStage == 34 && entering scene castle)
{
playCorrectCutscene();
}
How and where do I keep references to all my cutscenes? Say I have 22 NPCs in a scene, and 15 of those have their own Animator since they have a cutscene, how do I play the Animation from NPC_11?
I guess what I am looking for is some sort of "Cutscene Manager". The best possible solution would be to have a List of every cutscene (animation) with an ID. Then I could just use the ID to play the correct animation. But since each Animation is stored in the actual GameObject I have no idea if that is possible.
Hope Im making sense.

Answer 1

Once you create complete prefab with 1 Animator per prefab, then you can use bellow method to create instances on the fly:
Let say you have CutsceneManager script like this:
class CutsceneManager : MonoBehaviour {
public GameObject InstantiateResource(string folder, string name)
{
GameObject resource = Instantiate<GameObject>(Resources.Load<GameObject>(folder + "/" + name));
if (resource == null)
{
Debug.LogErrorFormat("Cannot find resource {0} in {1}", name, folder);
return null;
}
resource.name = name;
return resource;
}
}
The easiest way to use it is to attach it to Empty object. Then you can create public variable for manager in other scripts, where you would need to show cutscene, like this:
class SomeOtherScript : MonoBehaviour {
public CutsceneManager CutsceneManager;
}
This will let you drag&drop CutsceneManager empty into each script where you need it. This way you have 1 instance of cutscenemanager for all classes.
Now, in place where you would need to play custscene, you instantiate:
class SomeOtherScript : MonoBehaviour {
public CutsceneManager CutsceneManager;
public void PlayMyCutscene() {
GameObject cutscene = CutsceneManager.InstantiateResource("Cutscenes", "SomeOtherCutscene");
cutscene.setActive(true); // Or whetever other method to fire it off
}
}
On folder structure you would need to have: Assets\Resources\Cutscenes
Cutscenes would be called: SomeOtherCutscene.prefab
Notice there is no need to include .prefab when you are instantiating one - Unity framework will "know" and add it for you.