How can I add an animation to tile swapping on a tilemap?

Question

I am beginner in Unity and I have created tilemap using new tilemap system in unity which looks like this:

I created a script that lets me swap tiles. First I click on some tile and than I choose second tile, after I click second time, tiles swap their positions. Which will than look like this:

How can I apply some animation to this process? Seems like I have no control over tile object as it is. I can only access TileBase which as I understand is not all information about tile. I can't create any animator controller or access its transform object. I want to add some custom animation when tiles swap their places. Thank you!

Answer 1

The Tilemap with the TilemapRender can only handle tiles at integer tile coordinates. That means that when you want to animate tiles moving across the tilemap in a fluid manner instead of step-by-step, then you have to find a different solution to render them during that movement.

So what you need to do is:

1. Create two new game objects with sprite renderers at the locations of the tiles you want to swap
2. Assign the sprites of those tiles to those sprite renderers (tilemap.GetSprite(position))
3. remove both tiles from the tilemap (tilemap.SetTile(position, null);)
4. Animate the swap with the two game objects to their respective new positions
5. Add the tiles back to the tilemap at their new coordinates
6. Destroy the two game objects

Oh, and don't forget to handle the edge-case of the player (or something else) interacting with tiles which are currently empty because they are in the process of being replaced. But that's a subject for a different question.

Answer 2

You can possibly achieve tile animation by using unity's "AnimatedTile" Script which comes with the 2d-Extra repo. This video from unity discusses how to use the AnimatedTile Script. I hope it helps.

https://github.com/Unity-Technologies/2d-extras/tree/4eff73f468142907629f09b4a88bceb2f0148dc5/Runtime/Tiles/AnimatedTile