Additive tracks in the timeline

Hello!
Timeline is amazing! Thank you!
But is it possible to use additive blending in the timeline for applying multiple animations for one character at the same time (like layers in Animator window)? Or now it is possible to create only Owerride tracks and blending two animations for one character is impossible in timelines?

 

will it be considered in the future? could be a good tool for lipsync/visemes tool

 

*feedbacks in favor of feature*

 

I too would love to see this feature implemented.

 

Our team would benefit from this feature as well

 

@seant_unity any update for additive track?

 

We really need this!

 

Yeah I dunno. Without more complicated animation blending I dont know how you'd make a movie using Unity, which is kinda what timeline/cinemachine is all about. I've been thinking that there must be a way to grab control of an animation controller via timeline and do it that way. Otherwise, I can see a Unity Store product waiting for someone to code it.

 

Definitely need.

 

This would be amazing to have! I'm trying to blend a timeline on top of my Animator and it definitely has been very difficult

 

We absolutely need this

 

Yeah we def. need this! I think it's odd that Unity releases Timeline without supporting core features that you'd expect to be supported. (Like animation layer blending, Audio track playback in Editor, Access to PlayableBehaviour LateUpdate/FixedUpdate etc.).

With these missing "core" features it's not really feasible to use in production in the current state of Timeline.

 

Hi! I also vote for this feature

 

On a similar note, I was hoping to be able to do something similar to the Layering functionality available within the Animator Controller. Via my Timeline cut scene, I wanted to play a "Kneel from Standing" clip, followed by a looping "Working on Something" clip, then a "Stand From Kneeling" clip. Outside of Timeline, in my Animator Controller, I have the "Working on Something" on a layer masked for just the upper body, so he can be "Working on Something" from either a standing or kneeling pose. I cannot see a way to make this happen via Timeline. I don't even think its feasible to switch to having 2 animations ("Kneel and Work on Something" and "Stand and Work on Something"), because the time spent "Working" (which is a looped clip on its own right now) is up for grabs. It's not a set amount of time every time. I can manage that with a variable and transitions in the Animator Controller, but if I wanted to control that loop via Timeline, I don't see a way.

 

Agree, really needed here too.
How to vote for this feature?

 

I'm also throwing my hat in the ring... this would be a welcome feature! especially for smaller subtle animations!

 

Definitely could really use

 

Ran into this blocking issue today, would be nice to be able to just shove a quick root transform nudge into the timeline with an additive track rather than editing the animation directly.

 

same here.

 

Yes, definitely! It would save a lot of headaches for me.

 

totally needed!

 

Know what? I'd be happy with some way to record joystick/keyboard input and just 'act' the part, then switch the script to listen to the recording rather than the real inputs. That way I could have the animation controller doing its full, additive, scripted, responsive thing without having to tediously go in and tweak every little thing manually. I cant find any such 'joystick recorder' on the asset store. Someone-- Make this and every cut-scene creator will buy it!

 

definitely need those features. Guys we need it

 

If we had Child Tracks support I suspect it would not be very hard at all to implement a custom animation track without help from Unity, for all I know about how Timeline works and remember about how playing animations directly from playables works. Give us child tracks please

 

Can't stress enough how important this feature is, especially for anyone using motion capture.

 

*poke*

Very important feature.

 

will confirm this is still badly needed by all

 

Any chance we can have a better understanding of what has priority, and what doesn't? This sounds very ... contradictory ... on the one hand its for sure, its on the back log ... on the other, there's no immediate plans ... which probably translates to vapor ware or potentially Unity 2025, which means it might as well be vaporware.

Unity has a lot of upgrades going on right now all over the place ... which is nice ... it would just be great to know when any one bit of Unity is going to become "fully functional". Right now it feels a bit like "great things are coming, so stick around!" ... without knowing how close or far off those things are from being polished, user friendly features.

I'm not complaining about Timeline ... great job ... just about not having any idea if UT is planning on stringing its development along over 10 years, or wrapping it up over the next two in a polished, feature complete workflow. And yeah ... this is something that we should really have some information about. Even though I know its more of a marketing area than something developers are probably allowed to discuss, or even privy to ...

 

In case anyone misses the announcement this has recently been fixed with the addtion of Layered tracks:

https://unity3d.com/unity/beta/2019.3.0b3

"Timeline: Added UnityEngine.Timeline.ILayerable interface. Implement this interface to have custom tracks support multiple layers."

https://forum.unity.com/threads/any-code-samples-for-how-to-use-ilayerable.745751/#post-4969409

 

Has it been implemented? (additive blending)

 

I want to know too please, I'm struggling with this in my game at the moment.
I just posted a question here.

 

I too wanna know about the Additive Layering! I really need that feature for the Timeline. I do not know If It's already on the engine but If It is I can't seem to find anything about It not in the engine nor online! Please Unity If It's not on the engine please do It! Please

 

Closing in on four years since the original post, time to resurrect this thread, lol.

We've been trying to use timeline with lipsync animation but it isn't going smoothly. Basically, we've setup our own playable track that triggers the facial animation on an animator layer that's set to additive, while using an animation track to time out the full body motion.

Obviously, this doesn't work, I assume the animation track hard overrides everything on the animator, when the animation track is muted the facial animation plays as expected. Is there a way to, I donno, specify what layer the animation track should use on an animator or something?

Being able to add an additive track, similar to how you can just right click and add an override track would be a welcome feature.

 

@SillyBilly I did the exact same thing, and created my own custom playable track for overlaying automatic lipsync when toggled on. We did not have any issues, the Timeline is always updated between Update() and LateUpdate() and after coroutines. So it should work.

You could also try to update your facial animation in LateUpdate to see if that helps.

 

You know what I ended up doing? Scripting my characters to run around via joystick input and then changing the script to instead have some public variables instead of joystick-driven variables. I could hook into those variables via the animation dopesheet. Now I can use the full power of the animation system. So by fiddling with the variables there, I could make the characters do what I want and also react to the environment correctly... This means that timeline is more or less useless to me and I just use animation tracks with the variables and it works and has less complexity.

 

bump
What worked for me was making an override track and masking out everything except the parts moving in that override track. There really should be an easier way to do this.

 

For those looking at this look up override tracks in timeline. Does what you need to do

 

Nope, this thread is about additive tracks, not override tracks.

Was this ever added in the end? I see it's been discussed for a few years. We'd need it in our project as well.

 

Can you describe your approach further? Not necessarily code examples but the rough outline.

 

Hey, does timeline support additive layers now? It would be really helpful to fix motion capture animation clips directly inside Unity. It would allow very lightweight pipeline for realtime motion capture. As far as I know there is just override animation track. Any hint on how to implement an additive animation track for the timeine?

 

We had this same problem, this is actually doable with a custom track and the

AnimationLayerMixerPlayable

class. Takes a bit of figuring out that it's possible though.

Here is a POC:

Code (CSharp):

1. using System;
2. using UnityEngine;
3. using UnityEngine.Animations;
4. using UnityEngine.Playables;
5. using UnityEngine.Timeline;
6.  
7. [Serializable]
8. [TrackClipType(typeof(AnimationPlayableAsset), false)]
9. [TrackBindingType(typeof(Animator))]
10. public class AdditiveAnimationTrack : TrackAsset, ILayerable {
11.  
12.     public override Playable CreateTrackMixer(PlayableGraph graph, GameObject go, int inputCount) {
13.         return AnimationMixerPlayable.Create(graph, inputCount);
14.     }
15.  
16.     public Playable CreateLayerMixer(PlayableGraph graph, GameObject go, int inputCount) {
17.         // This mixes the the first layer as override ("base" track) with all the other layers as additive.
18.         AnimationLayerMixerPlayable layerMixer = AnimationLayerMixerPlayable.Create(graph, inputCount);
19.         layerMixer.SetLayerAdditive(0, false);
20.         layerMixer.SetInputWeight(0, 1f);
21.         for (uint i = 1; i < inputCount; i++) {
22.             layerMixer.SetLayerAdditive(i, true);
23.             layerMixer.SetInputWeight((int) i, 1f);
24.         }
25.  
26.         // Create an output to the Animator
27.         PlayableDirector director = go.GetComponent<PlayableDirector>();
28.         Animator controller = director.GetGenericBinding(this) as Animator;
29.         AnimationPlayableOutput playableOutput = AnimationPlayableOutput.Create(graph, "LayerMixer", controller);
30.         playableOutput.SetSourcePlayable(layerMixer);
31.  
32.         return layerMixer;
33.     }
34.  
35. }

With this you can add animations to your track, and if you want additive animations create a layer (right click -> add layer) and add the additive animations there.

There may be a better way to do this, but at least this is a starting point.

EDIT: Also tried extending an

AnimationTrack

directly instead of

TrackAsset

, but with that, the

CreateLayerMixer

method doesn't work properly, "something" resets

SetLayerAdditive

to false for all layers.

 

Thanks for sharing that should be a great help! I just can't make it work in my projet. I can't add any animation clip neither on the principal AdditiveAnimationTrack nor on the layers. I'm on Unity 2021.1.7f1 and Timeline 1.5.5 what about you? I'm looking for finding where the problem is.

.

EDIT : I can add an AnimationClip if I change the class heritage to AnimationTrack like this

Code (CSharp):

1. public class AdditiveAnimationTrack : AnimationTrack

But layers can't add key, they can only import AnimationClip so far like the main layer... I need to add keys to fix the AnimationClip in the main Layer. Any ideas of why the key don't write? Fields that I change are maked red as recordable but when I change values it does not write the key.

 

Hmm, I'm on Unity 2019.4.18f1 and Timeline 1.2.17. Try to change the

false

in the

TrackClipType

attribute to

true

. Doesn't change anything for me but maybe it was a bug in my version of timeline (plus I'm creating the clips from code so for me it doesn't matter).

Changing it to AnimationTrack won't work, since it won't use Additive but Override for the layers. Unless that was also "fixed. As for keyframing / recording, you got me there, I only used it to add clips, not modify them.

 

Uh you're right it becomes "override" instead of "additive". Changing to "true" does not change anything too bad... if only we had additive animation layers in Unity we would not use Maya at all to fix motion capture and to do round-trips everytime

It must be possible and I'll find how! Thanks your hint it was still helping

EDIT :

Changing

Code (CSharp):

1. [TrackClipType(typeof(AnimationClipPlayable), false)]

Into

Code (CSharp):

1. [TrackClipType(typeof(AnimationPlayableAsset), false)]

Allow me to add clips in an additive mode. Now I just can't record anything of these tracks, with keyframing neither on the main layer or children layers (There is no red button). I'll look for that and tell you if I find

 

Ah cool, I edited my answer if anyone comes across it, nice find.
I'm also confused why Unity doesn't already support this in it's animation track. With this layer mixer it should be straight forward, and they could just add a dropdown / checkbox on the track to switch between "Override" and "Additive" mode (since now it always forces Override).

 

I confirm importance of this feature for the world of non stantart applicaton of Unity!

i make dmx512 light control sequencor on Unity - and this feature a last mile for me . It's not possible to use timeline in ergonomic way, when you have to place given channel on fixed track - and as the lower animation track with clip on it turn off the control from the same anination clip asset from upper track

POC above work as proof of concept but it is still a bit glitchy for me, when i start move play cursor fast from one position of timline to other in preview mode (and this is key moment to create precise light sequence), values from are holded in nonzero value when timeline cursor leave animation clip, even if it zero at the end of the curve.

i very , very need for this feature.