Animator - The Ultimate Timeline Cutscene Editor for Unity

nice job fixing the power of two and the Audio. I'm still getting an issue with the audio that is, now it does play at the right time but it also plays at the start of the take as well

Oh btw. I pushed a change to my fork that has different control for mouse and holding alt. Now it matches the normal Unity animation window behaviour. Take a look and consider merging

 

Hi,

I don'tknow how I missed that tool.
I'm looking for something exactly like that for month.

Is there a way to use it with Playmaker?

Thank you

 

Yup, here is the repository: https://github.com/ddionisio/MateAnimatorPlayMaker

This is working under Unity 4.5 with Playmaker 1.7.7.2 I can't say for certain if it's backwards compatible.

If you have git setup in your dev environment, you can just clone it directly to your project's asset folder. Or click on the 'download ZIP' and extract it to a folder.

It should have everything needed for FSM purposes, if you need something in particular to be exposed to playmaker, let me know!

 

Thanks for taking a look at the audio! I'm fine with going back to using callback for it. I never got around to debugging the issue. But all is good.

 

Thanks, pretty excited to start using it!

 

This seems to be identical to uSequencer (which makes me wonder what the difference between the two are) except that I can finally copy/paste keyframes, heh

Curious though, just like with uSequencer, the animations don't work on 2D sprites. On further inspection, this appears to be because the 2D rendering is entirely separate from the 3D? I assume animations as well, which explains why they don't render animations despite having an Animation/Animator.

I downloaded the version from the asset store. Does the updated newer version from the git support 2D animations (drag & drop into the timeline editor)?

I am having so much trouble trying to get the animations to change and play at the correct speed. I had finally got it animating correctly (changing animations) in the preview, but it didn't loop them correctly nor the correct speed (in the preview). When I hit play, nothing happened (animation wise) despite it working when I hit the Animator Timeline's play button when the game was not running. Transforms work perfectly, but 2D sprite animations are driving me nuts.

 

Hi CarterG, thanks for checking the plugin out!

Make sure to use the latest version via github. I have yet to create a package for this plugin, once I get the time.

I haven't used uSequencer yet, so I'm not quite sure what the difference is. But from watching its tutorials, it seems to have the exact same workflow as Unity's, which is really not all that useful for me (I might as well use Unity's!). Hence why I still use MateAnimator. As far as I know, there's a fundamental difference: the way you work with keys. uSequencer follows the model of Unity's (which I assume is similar to 3D modelling packages), while MateAnimator follows the model of Flash/AfterEffect (which is more familiar to cinematics). I don't know the terminologies, but the difference is in the workflow. Again, this is based on me just watching uSequencer demonstrations. Plus, it's completely free and open-source.

There will be more features added to this package, such as material property editing, etc.

In terms of 2D editing, sprite animation is supported with the version I'm working on. Simply drag/drop a sprite onto the animator window or to an existing sprite track. If you want to add the track yourself, then you can use: "property->sprite".

 

Thank you

I downloaded the new version, which seems greatly improved. However, I am still having problems with animations (albeit different errors).

I get this, spammed on my console,

Code (csharp):

1.  
2. NullReferenceException: GetRef
3. AMUtil.SampleAnimation (UnityEngine.Animation anim, System.String clipName, WrapMode wrap, Single weight, Single time) (at Assets/MateAnimator-master/Scripts/Classes/AMUtil.cs:11)
4. AMAnimationTrack.previewFrame (AMITarget target, Single frame, Int32 frameRate, .AMTrack extraTrack) (at Assets/MateAnimator-master/Scripts/Classes/AMAnimationTrack.cs:77)
5. AMTakeData.previewFrame (AMITarget itarget, Single _frame, Boolean orientationOnly, Boolean renderStill) (at Assets/MateAnimator-master/Scripts/Classes/AMTakeData.cs:598)
6. AMTimeline.timelineSelectFrame (Int32 _track, Int32 _frame, Boolean deselectKeyboardFocus) (at Assets/MateAnimator-master/Editor/AMTimeline.cs:5192)
7. AMTimeline.selectFrame (Int32 frame) (at Assets/MateAnimator-master/Editor/AMTimeline.cs:5225)
8. AMTimeline.processDragLogic () (at Assets/MateAnimator-master/Editor/AMTimeline.cs:4640)
9. AMTimeline.Update () (at Assets/MateAnimator-master/Editor/AMTimeline.cs:604)
10. System.Reflection.MonoMethod.Invoke (System.Object obj, BindingFlags invokeAttr, System.Reflection.Binder binder, System.Object[] parameters, System.Globalization.CultureInfo culture) (at /Users/builduser/buildslave/mono-runtime-and-classlibs/build/mcs/class/corlib/System.Reflection/MonoMethod.cs:222)
11. Rethrow as TargetInvocationException: Exception has been thrown by the target of an invocation.
12. System.Reflection.MonoMethod.Invoke (System.Object obj, BindingFlags invokeAttr, System.Reflection.Binder binder, System.Object[] parameters, System.Globalization.CultureInfo culture) (at /Users/builduser/buildslave/mono-runtime-and-classlibs/build/mcs/class/corlib/System.Reflection/MonoMethod.cs:232)
13. System.Reflection.MethodBase.Invoke (System.Object obj, System.Object[] parameters) (at /Users/builduser/buildslave/mono-runtime-and-classlibs/build/mcs/class/corlib/System.Reflection/MethodBase.cs:115)
14. UnityEditor.HostView.Invoke (System.String methodName, System.Object obj) (at C:/BuildAgent/work/aeedb04a1292f85a/Editor/Mono/GUI/DockArea.cs:241)
15. UnityEditor.HostView.Invoke (System.String methodName) (at C:/BuildAgent/work/aeedb04a1292f85a/Editor/Mono/GUI/DockArea.cs:234)
16. UnityEditor.HostView.SendUpdate () (at C:/BuildAgent/work/aeedb04a1292f85a/Editor/Mono/GUI/DockArea.cs:291)
17. UnityEditor.EditorApplication.Internal_CallUpdateFunctions () (at C:/BuildAgent/work/aeedb04a1292f85a/artifacts/EditorGenerated/EditorApplication.cs:224)
18.  

 

Another question, is there a way to rounds the tween between keyframes, to where it doesn't exceed a certain decimal place?

Like instead of X = -0.8878261, it rounds it, -0.888 or -0.88?

With 2D, this is problematic, as -0.8878261 creates sub-pixel problems with my sprites. I need to clamp any transform to keep it from sub-pixel positioning. I guess I could do this with a script which updates the position, but it would be nice for the cutscene to know this.

Finally, does the current version support moving gameobjects at a constant speed, towards a location? If I move from PointA to PointB, the speed is very different if PointB's keyframe is at 1s or 2s, so it's difficult to get multiple characters to consistently move at the same [constant] speed.

 

Rounding each step should be do-able. It might make more sense to have a check-box for pixel-snap, along with pixel-per-unit. That might be more helpful. I'll have to take a look.

There's no current way to make movement go at a constant speed in the path. I'll see if HOTween already has that option, so it's a matter of just toggling it. Otherwise, I'd have to write a special tween plugin for that. Shouldn't be too difficult, I just have to remember the math part of it

 

im on my phone right now but it seems I'll need to use paths?

From Hotween site

 

Looks like I'm already using PlugVector3Path, the problem is the preview is not using constant speed.

I made a test-case to make it obvious, and the preview is definitely not in constant speed...I'll have to fix it so it matches HOTween's.

 

I did the Property-Sprite for animating, which works perfectly, BUT it requires me to animate via each frame. I'd prefer to be able to use the 2D Animations which Unity now supports ever since it's 4.5 update. (This would allow me to loop animations with consistent timing, instead of pain-stakingly keyframing the same animation in loops, anytime it needs to play).

These are the 2D animations which do not work for me in any cutscene asset (not in usequencer, not here either).

Dragging the gameobject to the timeline and selection "Animation", and then making a keyframe for it to change to a specific animation, is what gives me that error in post #308.


Edit: I seemed to not remember/understand how to setup animations correctly with Sprites. I finally have the correct Controller, and didn't even use the "Animation". For animations in this asset, I used a script along with calling an EVENT, then put in the string input for the animation.

Code (csharp):

1.  
2. using UnityEngine;
3. using System.Collections;
4.  
5. public class PlayAnimation : MonoBehaviour
6. {
7.    public Animator animator;
8.  
9.    public void PlayAnimationNow(string animStr)
10.    {
11.      animator = this.GetComponent<Animator>();
12.      animator.Play(animStr);
13.    }
14. }
15.  
16.  

This is only a temporary solution though.
It does not play in the preview editor. Only when I play the game.

 

I've updated the MateAnimator to fix the issue with translation track not using constant speed during preview. It's now directly using HOTween's path code.

I just need to add the pixel-snapping. This is something that can be useful even if Unity's sprite material has pixel-snapping option. Good for non-sprite renderers and camera movement.

As far as sprite editing goes, yeah, Unity definitely is better with their Animator. It'll take me a while to get something similar with MateAnimator because it would have its own special way of doing things in the timeline. But for now, it's definitely better than nothing and I've been using it a lot.

I'll be adding support for Animator soon once I get around it. If they expose previewing or sampling of the animation, then I can work something out.

I haven't managed to reproduce the null error you got in regards to the Animation track...I tried adding it with an empty target and an Animation with no clips. I'll take a look again.

 

Thank you very much! For free, I cant complain. Since this asset seems superior in every way to other cut scene assets in the store, for what im doing atleast, I cant complain even more since im saving $40 and getting something better too.
Ive spent 3 days so far figuring out how to handle some game content (creating many cut scenes quickly) and im finally getting there!

 

Thanks! Don't hesitate to post any issues here or at the github page. There are updates there on occasion for small fixes.

The latest version has the pixel-snap toggle for Translation tracks. You can set the default in the options.

 

I took your advice and used a pixel-snap enabled shader. It seems to have fixed the sub-pixel errors I had.

I tried using PIxel-Snap in the timeline, but it seemed a bit laggy looking. However, the pixel snap in the unity material is perfect. I apologize if my suggestion wasted your time adding this in the translation track. I hope others will find use for it, which I'm sure they will (it's actually only a brief moment that it sort-of lags, while he moves at first it doesn't lag)

Thank you again.

 

I notice that using the timeline Events, I can add functions which have parameters for strings, integers, bools. However, if one of the parameters is a GameObject, it will not show up in the list of functions to call for an Event.

 

Thanks for the report! Looks like specific types of Objects are not getting matched, it's fixed now in the github link. They should show up in the list.

The Pixel-Snap just rounds the resulting tween value based on pixel/unit, so I think that gives the effect of lagging. I've tried a mixture of it with Unity's SpriteRenderer. The pixel-snap can help with moving the camera to avoid sprites shaking on screen caused by the sprite shader's pixel-snap option. It's noticeable when you move the camera slowly.

 

Hi everyone,

The Dialogue System for Unity v1.3.3 just introduced support for Animator Timeline Editor! Animator makes it easy to design takes and then play them during one-off barks, in nodes of conversations trees, when quest states change, and more.

 

It was funny when unity showed their new "compositor" (that wont be released for at least a year), and it was almost exactly the same thing as Animator_Timeline.

Also, I'm the one who requested Mecanim support for MateAnimator, but really you should remove my request. Mecanim is nowhere near usable for serious production, and not nearly enough API calls are exposed to have any proper control on it. No need to waste your time on this. I switched to Legacy and I wont go back.

 

Wow, this is an awesome plugin! Thanks for adding the support!

I've been using Playmaker and adding my own custom actions for dialog. It's fairly clunky to use, but this looks to help a lot!

 

Oh, I didn't know they're working on a newer animation system.

As far as Mecanim goes, I can't say much about it yet since I haven't even touched it. But when it comes time to support it, I'm mostly looking into making it so it syncs animation for tracks that uses it. For example: moving a character in the timeline, and it has a Mechanim state for animating based on velocity, etc. Would be cool if that's possible! So when you preview, you see exactly how it'll look and you can adjust things accordingly.

But that's definitely a long ways from now, the next major update will be a new track for tweening material/shader values, something I've been wanting to add.

 

Isn't it compatible with Windows Phone 8.1 Builds?

Assets\Animator\Files\Scripts\ObjectCopier.cs(4,47): error CS0234:T he type or namespace 'Binary' ' could not be found in namespace 'System.Runtime.Serialization.Formatters'. Are you missing a using directive or an assembly reference?

 

Interesting, I wonder if there's an alternative solution for the Binary API to make it compatible with Windows Phone builds...I am using this elsewhere, but not in MateAnimator.

That one is from the original version, I removed it in MateAnimator.

 

Is mateanimator fully compatible with this version? Can I replace my version with the mateanimator?

 

In terms of compatibility with the Windows Phone, I have not tested it myself. It would be great if it is! If you'd like or anyone reading this, can try it out, that'd be cool. Mostly just to see if the project builds.

As far as transferring data from the original Animator to MateAnimator...it's definitely incompatible since the data structure is different.

 

There is no alternative to ObjectCopier so I can build the original Animator with Windows 8 Builds?

 

Huummm... it seems there is tons of others errrors when Building do Windows 8.1! =(... So bad... I will need to replace Animator with anything else and recreate everything from scratch! =(

 

It may still be possible to build via Windows 8 with the original, but it will take some modifications with the code to exclude them during build.

My recommendation is to add #if UNITY_EDITOR ... #endif around these scripts to stub them so they are compiled for Windows 8. These are most likely used for editor purposes. So long as none of these are used during runtime.

 

Hi,

Is there a way to edit a Key value in a curve editor?
I couldn't find where... if it's possible...

Thank you.

 

Unfortunately, this doesn't seem to work with Unity 4.6(b20).

After clicking "Add Component", which is the very first step, anything else I do results in tons of errors trying to display in the animator tab within the unity editor.

 

It looks like you're using the original animator, try this version:

https://github.com/ddionisio/MateAnimator

I'm not using 4.6 right now, so hopefully it works. I'm curious to know if it does!

 

Oops! Hehe, I hope that is the only reason. Funny, because I had deleted the one I downloaded from the asset store, thinking "Oh I forgot, that is an old version!" Then chose the one on the front page, lol. Maybe I deleted the wrong one

I should have known to go straight to the github
Thank you. I will report back if it works, even if I end up not using it.

 

I just found out this tool can create code for the cut scenes, this is so amazing !!!!

That is so useful in so many levels, i cant even begin to describe

BTW, is it possible to activate/deactivate components in key times ? I want to use it with my spline system and particles and this is essential to control motions on splines etc

 

Ah, I haven't tried that. A real quick test shows you can. You can do so via property track and choose 'enabled' as the field.

 

Thanks, i will try that.

 

I'm not seeing "enabled" as an option under the list of properties i can choose from. Am I missing something here?

 

Make sure you are using this version: https://github.com/ddionisio/MateAnimator

The component should also derive, at least, from Behaviour. The property 'enabled' should be there when you expand the selected component.

 

This looks like a fantastic plugin! However I have got stuck in the installation stage. I have downloaded the latest version (MaleAnimator) and the pdf file has the installation instructions -

To install Animator, create a folder named “Plugins” in your project’s assets directory and copy the
contents of the “Animator/Plugins” folder to it.
Assets/Animator/Plugins
->
Assets/Plugins


However I cannot find any 'Plugins' folder in the Animator zip. Please help!

 

If you are using javascript as your language, you need to create a folder Plugins in the Assets folder, then extract the contents there. So you'll have this: "<Your Project Directory>/Assets/Plugins/MateAnimator"

Unity just treats anything in the Plugins folder as another place to grab scripts and compile them before anything within Assets (also any native codes). That allows javascript and C# to be able to communicate with each other.

If you are using C#, then you can just extract the content in the Assets folder.

I hope that helps!

 

Thanks Sinfritz, I have now extracted the contents to "<Your Project Directory>/Assets/Plugins/MateAnimator".

Now in Unity>Windows> I can see Animator. But when I click on it it opens a blank grey tab with just the heading 'Animator' and nothing inside it. Am I doing something wrong?

 

Thank you so much for making this! It has already saved me a bunch of work and I have barely scratched the surface of what it can do.
I did encounter one problem. I can't seem to use the Animator.Play("NameOfTake"); that is shown in the documentation. Am I doing something wrong?

EDIT: Nevermind. I checked the changelog and it said Animator is now AnimatorTimeline. You might want to update the docs.

 

Hi Neole,

Sorry I wasn't able to reply soon, Windows->Animator is for Unity's animation system. What you're looking for is Windows->Cutscene Editor

That should bring up a window that will ask if you want to add animator on an existing object or create a new one.

 

Yeah, I haven't gotten around to creating a more elaborate doc besides the readme.md. As far as work goes with Animator, I'm attempting to get material tracks in, then hopefully (and finally) get around to making an official doc.

 

Please fix please.
I'm developing on Unity 5.1.2f1 and Mac.

1.hang up Editor when Create Metadata. and this error.
InvalidOperationException: Operation is not valid due to the current state of the object
System.Collections.Stack.Peek () (at /Users/builduser/buildslave/mono-runtime-and-classlibs/build/mcs/class/corlib/System.Collections/Stack.cs:321)

2.so I'm using without metadata Meteanimator , but [duplicate current take] is not work and Error when without metadata.
NullReferenceException: Object reference not set to an instance of an object
AnimatorDataEdit.DuplicateTake (.AMTakeData dupTake, Boolean includeKeys, Boolean addCompUndo) (at Assets/MateAnimator/Editor/AnimatorDataEdit.cs:329)
AMTimeline.OnGUI () (at Assets/MateAnimator/Editor/AMTimeline.cs:1397)

 

Mecanim had a lot of feature additions, a lot more things exposed into script (and therefore I made the swtich to it). uSequencer managed to make it editable and previewable.

Do you thing it could be doable for MateAnimator

 

Has anyone tried running this recently? Out of the box i'm hitting numerous errors in the console, and am unable to get it running. I'm running Unity 5.4.0f3, and need to be using this version. First, before I can even call up the window, the AMTimeline.cs has issues with the Cloth's, and the only way to get it to run is to comment those out. Then once I comment them out, i'm not getting the same interface in the documentation, and am unable to run anything and keep getting NullReferences (from AMTimeline.cs - it fails to build the menu to add items like translation and such, on line 4456).
If i try to use it the other way (by dragging an object to the timeline), i can then not add keys, and get more null pointers...

What am i doing wrong here? This looks like an amazing plugin and is exactly what i'm looking for...

Thanks

 

Your best bet is to get another of the non-free assets that do cutscenes, or to wait for Unity to release their own cutscene director next year.

 

I don't have Code View in MateEditor It would be great to get a video tutorial, especially for the API and coding.