Your comments

Hey Tmpxyz,

Yeah I noticed the animator gets disabled during the CC, the main reason this worked for me is because the issue I was having was the last animation or pose the animator was in, was blending with my CC animation. So as such any bones which had not been animated in the CC, were "out of place" as compared to when I previewed my CC animation using the Unity Animation window.

With the code above, it forces the character into the bindpose before the CC starts, so it matches the start state of the CC animation and thus all bones/motion looks exactly as it does when I preview the cutscene in the Animation window.
Figured it out!

So as it turns out, I was right about the animator/current character pose affecting the animation. In order to fix it, I basically added code that does the following before entering a "takedown" which is just a cutscene as per the examples you gave me.

1) Disable the animator for both characters (prior to starting cutscene)
2) For each model that will be in the cutscene, reset them to their default bind pose before starting
3) Proceed with the normal cutscene activation process as per the demos.

Here's the function I wrote that handles the reset so far, pretty sure I can clean up further, but it will help others perhaps.
private void DisableAnimator(Transform pawn)    {
        Animator anim = pawn.GetComponentInChildren<Animator>();
        if(anim != null)
        {
            anim.enabled = false;

            //reset the bones to their bindpose
            SkinnedMeshRenderer skin = anim.GetComponentInChildren<SkinnedMeshRenderer>();
            if(skin != null)
            {
                Transform[] bones = skin.bones;
                Matrix4x4[] invbinds = skin.sharedMesh.bindposes;

                //find root bone
                Transform pawnBoneRoot = RebirthUtil.FindChildTransformByName(pawn, bones[0].name);
                Transform[] pawnBoneTransforms = pawnBoneRoot.GetComponentsInChildren<Transform>();


                //add all bones to a dictionary
                Dictionary<string, Transform> pawnBoneDict = new Dictionary<string, Transform>();
                foreach(Transform b in pawnBoneTransforms)
                {
                    pawnBoneDict[b.name] = b;
                }


                foreach(Transform bone in bones)
                {
                    Transform t = null;
                    pawnBoneDict.TryGetValue(bone.name, out t);
                    if(t != null)
                    {
                        ResetBoneToBindPose(t, invbinds, bones, pawn);
                    }
                }
            }
        }

Hmm after some testing, I'm not sure if the approach I suggested will work. It still seems to be blending the Animator animations into it despite me manually setting the keyframes.
Hey Tmpxyz,

Thanks for the reply. I had some more time to investigate tonight, and I think I might know what the issue is.

It appears that the CC animation is not setting variables for some of the bones I didn't move/manipulate while recording the animation for the cutscene. Thus, I believe the problem is that the animations being applied to my characters prior to entering the cutscene might be blending into the CC animation.

So for example if my hands are closed in the Animator animation leading up to the CC animation, the hands will be closed while performing the animation even though if I look at the animation on the actual CC component, the hands might appear open (because the original model's pose defaults to open hands) while sampling the animation outside of gameplay.

Is there any way to essentially create a keyframe for every bone manually at once? This way I can create a start pose where I know every bone position/rotation will be set to some default pose at the start of the cutscene, and then any changes applied to it will look exactly as they do outside of play mode. I tried the Create Snapshot button but I believe that only creates keyframes for some of the bones, only the ones that have changes. I need something to snapshot all the bones, changed from default model pose or not :-)

Also is there any documentation for the Blend-in/Blend-out variables in the Cutscene component?
Hey Tmpxyz,

So I think I have it all mostly figured out. However I'm running into a bit of a problem.

If I use a Generic animator avatar, the process works fine and all is as expected in the documentation and example scene.

However, most of my characters are humanoid and I'm experiencing some issues due to that.

It appears that for the most part, the finishing move works as planned. However, with Humanoid animators the hands for some reason refuse to animate. More specifically, the wrists.

Is this a known issue? Anything I can do to get around this?
Hi Tmpxyz, this is exactly what I needed. 

You're 100% right this is what I'm looking for, I'm glad you have a scene available for study. I'd gladly take any additional details you can provide, I'm a pretty advanced programmer in Unity so no worries, I just need some pointers in the right direction to save me some time.