Animator - The Ultimate Timeline Cutscene Editor for Unity

Hi eAi2k,

A solution is to copy code from the Code View. You can either copy code line by line or export the take as a JSON text file that can be used across different scenes.

Simply open up the Code View, click the toggle on the right to open up the track selection list, and click on JSON on the bottom. This will produce a text file that contains all of the information necessary to run your take. You can then use Animator.ParseJSON("FileName"); to run the take from any scene.

The JSON text file should be placed in a Resources folder. It should also be noted that the Code View identifies GameObjects by name, so make sure GameObjects used in the take have unique names.

Thanks for the question. If you have any more feedback or questions, please don't hesitate to contact us again.

 

Hi absameen,

Just like to start by saying I really think you have put together a great product and it's quickly becoming an indispensable tool I use almost daily.

I have ran into one minor issue and a major issue...

The minor issue has to do with modifying the Fps. When I change it to 30Fps the tracking no longer works even when I hit the Animator play button it does nothing. I did get a quick and dirty work around just un-dock animator from unity then re-dock and tracking works again.

The major issue I ran into is I have an Orientation track that pointed properly to a target and worked fine until I slid some frames around and got the Shift Frame Message popup. Now when tracking the Take the camera does not look at the target in preview mode as it did before. It still works correctly when I play the scene in game mode. but It was very hard to edit so I rebuilt the Orientation with another track and deleted the old Orientation track. Still the same result the preview was broken.

so when your stamping bugs just take a look
thanks,

 

Edit: We are still investigating this issue but are having trouble reproducing the bug. Please PM or e-mail me with the steps leading to the bug if you run into the issue again.

Edit: As of v1.52, this problem has been fixed.

 

Update - v1.51

• New Transition: Radial Wipe
• New Feature: Hide Timeline Actions
• Improvement: Increased timeline performance
• Misc. improvements and fixes

Transition Preview

 

Wow, sweet And I love the focal point option. You're doing such a great job here.

 

Thanks, before that transparency has solved. but I have another problem need to solve, how can let "Tree" have support transparency?

 

hi,before can only change single GameObject transparency, how to make the group gameObject unified change?
in addition, like show/hide is through the event track to make?

 

Thanks for the reply, it works perfect.

Great job, I love the ease of use.

 

Hi topaz1012,

I've updated the ModifyAlpha script to support groups of GameObjects. Just like before, attach the script to a GameObject, add it to a Property Track, and set the property to "alpha" under "ModifyAlpha".

Download link: ModifyAlpha.cs

Yes, you can easily enable and disable GameObjects with the Event Track. For your convenience, I've written a simple helper script that will do this for you. Simply attach the script to an empty GameObject, add the GameObject to an Event Track, and use the methods "enableGameObjects" and "disableGameObjects".

Download link: StandardEvents.cs

 

dude i love you, u make our life soooo much easyer. thanks man

 

hi absameen
i test a switch texture script, the script work fine, but it seem animator give me this error, it s just a switch case, with an int that i d like to modify in the property in the trackview.any idea?


ArgumentException: Object type System.Single cannot be converted to target type: System.Int32
Parameter name: val
System.Reflection.MonoField.SetValue (System.Object obj, System.Object val, BindingFlags invokeAttr, System.Reflection.Binder binder, System.Globalization.CultureInfo culture)
System.Reflection.FieldInfo.SetValue (System.Object obj, System.Object value)
AMTween.ApplyPropertyFloatTargets () (at Assets/Animator/Plugins/AMTween.cs:4680)
AMTween.TweenUpdate () (at Assets/Animator/Plugins/AMTween.cs:5268)
AMTween.Update () (at Assets/Animator/Plugins/AMTween.cs:7436)


and here the script

public class switchTexture : MonoBehaviour
{
public Texture2D health1;
public Texture2D health2;
public Texture2D health3;

public int LIVES = 3;

public void Update ()
{
switch (LIVES)
{
case 3:
renderer.material.mainTexture = health3;
break;

case 2:
renderer.material.mainTexture = health2;
break;

case 1:
renderer.material.mainTexture = health1;
break;

case 0:
break;
}
}
}

 

Thanks to your help, I have finished my work.

 

Edit: As of v1.52, this issue has been fixed and integers will work correctly with the Property Track.

 

New Video - Lip-Syncing Mega-Morphs
Lip-sync Mega-Fiers morph targets with the Property Track.

 

The problem with either of these solutions is that you can no longer edit the timelines with the GUI - which is the main reason we'd use this tool.

 

Hi eAi2k,

You could keep a copy of the takes for editing purposes by exporting them as a scene. To do this, open up the Options window and select Export Take(s). It should also be possible to load the takes directly from the exported scene using Application.LoadLevelAdditive.

If none of these solutions solve the problem, then please get back to me with more information. We will be happy to add any features that you would need for your projects.

The reason the AnimatorData file cannot be stored as a prefab is because it is made up of ScriptableObjects. Unity currently does not support saving ScriptableObjects into prefabs.

 

is it possible to import animation from blender to this to create a in game cutscene for my RPG

 

Hotween support would be great! (we use Hotween in our project)

 

Hi absameen,

I noticed that there was some mention around page 2 about Playmaker integration. Currently working on a project with Playmaker, NGUI and also Animator Timeline.

Playermaker Support would be great.

 

Hotween and Playmaker +1

 

Hi cynel,

Yes, you can play animation clips with the Animation Track.

Hi guys,

We've taken both of these features into consideration and will do our best to develop them in a timely manner. Thank you for the feedback. If you have any more feedback or suggestions, please don't hesitate to contact us again.

 

Hi!

First of all, thanks for the great tool! I found it really easy to get going from scratch. Here are some suggestions from my first session:

• After checking the examples, I figured I could delete the data bundled with Animator, but when I deleted the Resources directory, it totally froze Unity; it was clever enough to recreate the settings file when I added an empty Resources directory, but it would be great if the tool could do this without assistance.
• The most tedious part of creating my first animation was adding the objects (about 15 of them, each with translation and rotation) to the timeline. It would help a lot if multiselection in the scene was supported, and the tracks created had better default names than "Track #", e.g. "ObjectName PropertyName".
• It would help a lot with navigation if I could see the timeline and the keyframes for collapsed tracks as well.
• When a track is collapsed, you could use the icon for known property types (e.g. translation or rotation) instead of spelling out the name of the type, just to save space.
• I could use better support for looping. In particular, I made a walking sequence, and I needed to tween from the last to the first keyframe. The manual way to do this is to make the animation one frame longer than desired, copy the first keyframe to this extra frame, and make sure this frame is never played back. Not sure what the right general solution is here, but it's something to think about.
• How about being able to manage groups as single properties? In practice, this could simply mean that keyframes and tween types applied to the group would be inherited by all the members. In my case, I just used linear interpolation everywhere, and the keyframes were in sync on all the tracks. While automatic keyframes helped immensely when creating the animation, managing 30 or so tracks afterwards is not ideal, when logically they have the same structure.

In any case, good job, and I'm really happy with this investment!

 

Hi cobbpq,

Edit: As of v1.53, this issue has been resolved.

Edit: As of v1.52, Multi-Track Selection has been added.

Edit: As of v1.53, these features have been added.

We understand the issue and will be looking into solutions that will provide better looping support.

This is a very interesting suggestion. We're all about fast workflows and are definitely open to adding a feature like this in a future update.

Thanks for the feedback and suggestions. If you have anymore feedback, please don't hesitate to contact us again.

 

Thanks for the quick response!

Just to make sure there's no misunderstanding, what I had in mind here was about adding new objects/properties. What I'd like to be able to do is to select multiple objects on the hierarchy pane, and drag this selection to the timeline, where all the objects in question would be added with the chosen property combination. Currently only a random member of the selection is added.

This is good to hear! In the long run, I intend to build an editing environment (matching our particular workflow) on top of Animator that I can hand over to our graphic artists with confidence, and I do believe that improvements like this are necessary to make the tool usable for them, since they cannot code around the limitations.

By the way, what is the preferred channel to send patches in case I make a useful change I want to contribute back?

 

if i want to change shader how to do? a shader change to another shader.

 

Hi cobbpg,

Edit: As of v1.53, this feature has been added. Drag multiple GameObjects onto the timeline at the same time to add multiple tracks.

We are very open to useful changes to the editor. If you believe the community will benefit from your code, then please send us the code via e-mail and we will likely include it in the next update if we agree to it.

(You can find the e-mail address in the provided documentation)

Hi topaz1012,

To change a shader, click on a Material, and then find Shader in the inspector. You can then use the popup menu to select another shader. If this is about the GameObject transparency, then you should select a shader under the Transparent category.

 

Update - v1.52

• New Transition: Wedge Wipe
• New Feature: Multi-Track Selection. Select and manipulate multiple tracks at once for a faster workflow:
  • Hold shift and click on a track to add it to the selection.
  • Hold control and click on a track to toggle its selection.
  • Hold shift and click on a group to add all of its contents to the selection.
  • Hold control and click on a group to remove all of its content from the selection.
  • The selected frames will be reflected across all selected tracks. You can then move, copy, cut and paste frames with multiple tracks in one go.
• Misc. bug fixes

Transition Preview

 

hi
i come up with an issue, how can i say when an animation clip is finished? is there a fonction wich could be call? like onFinishClip() do something.

thanks

 

Hi toto2003,

Currently, there is no such feature. However, a workaround is to check Animator.isPlaying in an Update method. When it changes to false, the take has stopped playing.

Thanks for the suggestion, we will look into adding such a feature in a future update.

 

Hi absameen,

Can you include a feature to duplicate "Takes", or perhaps have a paste function inside code view ?
-using this for development previews so that there is no need to save multiple scenes.

Thanks.

 

Hi again,

I just ran into a rather painful glitch related to tweening rotations. When I'm setting up a rotation using Euler coordinates, it might happen that the resulting quaternions point in the opposite directions, since quaternions have this extra degree of freedom. This messes up tweening in a really non-intuitive way, since linear interpolation can seem like taking a roundabout even between two seemingly identical orientations. To tackle this problem, it would help if there was a button on the rotation info pane to invert the quaternion, and make sure that this inversion is actually persisted.

Also, the weird thing related to the above phenomenon is that during playback (editor only, not gameplay) the angles at all the keyframes of the object get an offset of 360 degrees every time the animation loops, and these values actually overwrite the existing ones. Saving and reloading the scene restores the angles to be within the 0-360 range, but the above behaviour is undesirable in any case.

Steps to reproduce:

1. Create a new project and import Animator to it.
2. Set the animation to have just a few frames, like 10, so it loops quickly.
3. Add a cube.
4. Add a rotation track for the cube.
5. Set the rotation of the cube to (0, 45, 0) and add a keyframe in the first frame.
6. Select the last frame, set the rotation to (0, 42, 0) and add a keyframe there.
7. On the second keyframe, invert the quaternion (flip the sign of all the four components). The Euler angles will remain the same.
8. Press play on the animator tool. You should be seeing a weird rotation and the rotation offset accumulating persistently.

 

Nice extension! I bought it today to give it a test run, I'm currently using Unity 4 and I was aware that this wasn't supported but saw as you have full source code I thought I might try and make it work anyway so took a chance! Glad I did as I did get it to play properly in Unity 4. (I might of saved yu some work here ) There's some changes to the OnGUI stuff required and you need to rename from Animator to something else. So I renamed the Animator file TimelineAnimator and refactored the name change throughout (thankyou for including full source and not packaging to a dll!)

If you want the changes I made so you can propagate them back to the official version, let me know and I'll upload a package for you to grab.

If I may make a request in return for this public service I'm not sold with the blue skin you are working on... Try and stick to Unity colour schemes so that it blends seamlessly and looks like a natural part of the editor.

 

Yes please make the blue optional, I like to keep unity clean too

 

Hi KillQ87,

Currently, you can export a take as a scene from the Options and then re-import it to duplicate the take. However, we will consider adding a duplicate take button in a future update.

Thanks for the suggestion, please don't hesitate to contact us again if you have anymore feedback.

Hi cobbpg,

Thanks for reporting the issue. We'll be investigating the problem and should post a fix by the next update.

If you have anymore feedback or suggestions, please don't hesitate to contact us again.

Hi Quickfingers,

Edit: As of v1.53, Unity 4.0 support has been added.

Edit: As of v1.53, a dark skin has been added.

 

I'm very interested into buying Animator, but before i'm going to buy it, i have a question. Is it possible with Animator to modify existing animations imported in unity3d?

 

Hi Tripwire,

Unfortunately, due to the fact that Animator uses custom tweening engines (such as iTween), it does not currently support existing animations made with Unity's built-in animation view. However, when compared to Unity's existing animation solution, you'll find that Animator has a lot more to offer.

Thanks for the question. If you have anymore feedback or questions, please don't hesitate to contact us again.

 

Update - v1.53.1

• Unity 4.0 Support
• New Skin: Dark
• New Feature: Show Frames for Collapsed Tracks
• Misc. improvements and fixes

Important: The Animator class has been renamed to AnimatorTimeline

Documentation | Changelog

 

Yay! I was waiting for this update Thanks.

 

Could you please make it look for AnimatorData component instead of name of GameObject? or maybe GameObject.GetInstanceID() ?!
If we change name of game object to anything else many stuff stops working.

 

Just bought and it is looking great so far.

Just a quick change needed to your Animator_Documentation.pdf on page 2.

Where is says:

Animator.Play(“Take1”);

Needs to be:

AnimatorTimeline.Play("Take1");

It had me scratching my head for a few minutes!

 

Hi Bruno,

Thanks for the suggestion. At the moment, the Animator Timeline does not support renaming the AnimatorData GameObject. We've added this feature to our to-do list, and it should make one of the future updates.

Hi jkafkaris,

Thanks for reporting the issue; we'll be sure to fix the documentation error in the next update.

If you have anymore feedback, please don't hesitate to contact us again.

 

Hi all, I just bought Animator and giving it a test run...

I've have a question perhaps someone can help with.

Situation:

I have a model that's doing a walking animation and I would like to make the mouth joint of the model open and close with Animator.

// OpenMouth
void take1(){
// Track1 (Translation)
GameObject track3OBJ = GameObject.Find("MouthJoint");
track3OBJ.transform.position = new Vector3(-0.4374017f, 52.06374f, 0.3319883f); // Set Initial Position
AMTween.MoveTo (track3OBJ, AMTween.Hash ("delay", 0f, "time", 0.7916667f, "path", new Vector3[]{new Vector3(-0.4374017f, 52.06374f, 0.3319883f), new Vector3(-0.374815f, 51.45503f, -0.05952877f), new Vector3(-0.4345093f, 52.03559f, 0.3138861f)}, "easetype", "linear"));
}

This code works fine when the character is stationary and not "walking", however, when the character walks, the mouth mesh gets completely distorted.

It seems that the problem is that the transform is not local to the joint. What is the best way to fix the problem.

Thanks in advance.

 

Hi,

I copied the following code but cannot compile in Unity Editor. Unity cannot find PropertyInfo. Do you know what the problem might be?

Component track6OBJ = GameObject.Find("characterObj").GetComponent("Transform");
PropertyInfo track6OBJProperty = track6OBJ.GetType().GetProperty("localPosition");
track6OBJProperty.SetValue(track6OBJ, new Vector3(-0.3053246f, 0.1172631f, 5.125999E-06f), null); // Set Initial Value
AMTween.PropertyTo(track6OBJ, AMTween.Hash("delay", 0f, "time", 0.375f, "propertyinfo", track6OBJProperty, "from", new Vector3(-0.3053246f, 0.1172631f, 5.125999E-06f), "to", new Vector3(0.1693112f, -0.1440473f, -9.176973E-05f), "easetype", "linear"));

found the answer: Forgot to add using.System.Reflection;

 

Hi rocki,

In this situation, you should use the transform's local position. Here is an example implementation:

Code (csharp):

1.     private bool didSetInitialPos = false;
2.     private Vector3 initialPos = new Vector3(0f,0f,0f);
3.     void openMouth() {
4.         GameObject trackOBJ = GameObject.Find("MouthJoint");
5.         if(didSetInitialPos) trackOBJ.transform.localPosition = initialPos;
6.         else {
7.             initialPos = trackOBJ.transform.localPosition;
8.             didSetInitialPos = true;
9.         }
10.         Vector3 offset = new Vector3(0.0625867f, -0.60871f, -0.39151707f);
11.         AMTween.MoveTo (trackOBJ, AMTween.Hash ("delay", 0f, "time", 0.7916667f, "islocal", true, "path", new Vector3[]{trackOBJ.transform.localPosition, trackOBJ.transform.localPosition+offset, trackOBJ.transform.localPosition}, "easetype", "linear"));
12.         // Notice that "islocal" is set to true and transform.localPosition is used
13.     }

However, after testing the code, I have discovered a small bug in AMTween's handling of local paths. The bug will be fixed by the next update.

If you do not want to wait for the next update, here is the code that should be replaced:

Code (csharp):

1. void GenerateMoveToPathTargets(){
2. ...
3.     if(plotStart){
4.         /*new line*/ if(isLocal) vector3s[1]=transform.localPosition;
5.         else vector3s[1]=transform.position;
6.         offset=2;
7.     }else{
8.         offset=1;
9.     }
10. ...
11. }
12.  

Open the AMTween.cs file and make the changes to line 4054. Of course, you can wait for the next update which should be released within the week.

Thanks for the question. If you have anymore questions or feedback, please don't hesitate to contact us again.

 

Absameen, Thanks for the fix.

I have another 2 questions.

1. I would like to make a set of animations using the Animator Timeline Gui but my objects are in being assembled on the fly via the resource bundle. As they are created dynamically, I cannot use the drag and drop feature of the Animator Timeline. What's the recommended solution for this.

2. I exported all of the animation data as a Json file. How do I set up in Code to use the Json file to play only particular frames. In flash I am trying to do MovieClip.gotoAndStop(10);

edit: I exported the json file, created a new scene.

void Start () {
AnimatorTimeline.ParseJSON("take1");
AnimatorTimeline.PlayFromFrame("take1",1,true);
}

Result: Unity warning - Animator: Could not find AnimatorData component.
Animation plays once but does not loop.

 

Hi rocki,

The best solution would be to create the animation once with a temporary GameObject, copy the code from the Code View, and then swap the trackOBJ with the newly assembled GameObject. If you are having trouble with this, please provide us with code-specific details and I will be happy to help.

When you parse a JSON file, what you are basically doing is copying all of the code from the Code View and running it at once. There is no AnimatorData file, and because of this, the AnimatorTimeline functions (such as PlayFromFrame) cannot be used.

However, we understand why this feature might be useful and plan to improve on this in a future update.

Thanks for the question. If you have anymore feedback or questions, please don't hesitate to contact us again.

 

Absameen,

Thanks for your answer.

We really need to reuse the animation in different scenes for the current project. Is there something we can do in the mean time to get access to the AnimatorData File? We can try to do some sort of hack for the moment until this feature is added.

 

hello
i was testing switching camera in the timeline, and i got this error.
any idea?

ReadPixels was called to read pixels from system frame buffer, while not inside drawing frame.
UnityEngine.Texture2D:ReadPixels(Rect, Int32, Int32, Boolean)
AMTween:GetScreenTexture() (at Assets/Animator/Plugins/AMTween.cs:6221)
AMTween:GenerateCameraFadeTargets() (at Assets/Animator/Plugins/AMTween.cs:3642)
AMTween:GenerateTargets() (at Assets/Animator/Plugins/AMTween.cs:3593)
AMTween:TweenStart() (at Assets/Animator/Plugins/AMTween.cs:5246)
<Start>c__Iterator2:MoveNext() (at Assets/Animator/Plugins/AMTween.cs:7433)

cheers

 

absameen : There's an issue with Unity 4 currently.
In the Animator window, click on any of the buttons that creates a dropdown list (New track, Take selected even the Close Tab/Minimize Tab dropdown) and it is offset from the main window by quite a lot.
Also dragging the window around causes very bizarre behaviour of the window jittering around.

(it only exhibits this behaviour when it is showing the timeline, if there is no AnimationData component then it behaves correctly)

Great work on the dark skin, now it really looks like a part of unity

 

Hi rocki,

One way to do this is to export the AnimatorData file as a scene. Open the Animator Timeline Editor, head to Options > Export > Export Take(s).

You can then re-import the AnimatorData file into the current scene with Application.LoadLevelAdditive.

Hi toto2003,

Does this occur in Unity 3.x or 4.x? I suspect it may be a 4.x problem and will be looking into it.

Hi Quickfingers,

Thanks for reporting these problems. We'll be investigating the issues and should post a fix by the next update.

Thanks for the feedback, if you have anymore feedback, please don't hesitate to contact us again.