Blending the timeline in a PlayableDirector

I know you can blend from the animator into an animation clip in a timeline assigned to a playabledirector using the ease in/out function, but I was wondering if it was possible to do this between timelines - blending between two timelines in one playabledirector. For example, lets say I have a character with a playabledirector who:

1. Plays a looping idle timeline until the player interacts with them, then
2. Plays a timeline where they transition to a listening-to-player timeline, then
3. Plays a looping timeline where they are listening until the player exits the interaction, then
(3.5. Switch to a different timeline if the character's mood changes or starts speaking)
4. Plays a timeline where they transition to an idle timeline, then
5. Plays the looping idle timeline again until the player interacts again

As well as containing some body animations, the timelines also have some particles etc related to what that character is doing.

I can switch the timeline assigned to the playable director on the fly nicely, but is it possible to blend between, say, 1 and 2? Lets say the idle animation is fairly active and the character moves their arms about quite a lot during it. If we change to the timeline at the 100th frame, their arms might be quite some distance from where the transitional timeline has them at the beginning, resulting in a very visible snap between animations. I'd really like to blend from wherever the character's arms were positioned in the previous timeline, into where they are at the beginning of this one.

Since I don't know exactly when the player will cause the character to switch from one state to another, I need to switch the timeline on the fly, especially if I want to have different "listening" states depending on the character's mood, as it could switch at any time depending on dialogue. Obviously in an animator I can do that, but is this possible when controlling a character's animation only in timeline? Easing in doesn't really help here since I'm easing in from whatever the animator's doing rather than the previous timeline.

 

That sounds pretty cool!
State machines as in mecanim (Animator window)? Or some new thing?
Or maybe even having timelines as "nodes" in the animator?

 

I was literally just looking for this today! I can't wait till we can do something like that

 

Hmm interesting to know that something's coming, for now I guess we'll have to look into some kind of attempt at a solution on this end. We're using behaviour designer to choose which timeline to swap in currentlly.

 

Do you know of any particular timeframe for this feature?

 

If you want blending now you can with the help of an asset
https://www.assetstore.unity3d.com/en/#!/content/56558

 

any update on this @seant_unity ? really need to do the blending, and its been 5 months since you last said its in development , posted similar thread just now here: https://forum.unity.com/threads/timeline-used-like-mecanim-or-blend-two-timelines-together.533931/

 

@seant_unity
Thanks a lot. I have been making some really good advancements with my use of timeline and playables. Manged to crack custom timeline assets + tracks for all kinds of useful things. Just started to understand the base playable system (for playable graphs, not just timeline stuff). I now am at the point where I believe i know enough to make a giant playable graph system that can act as a big animator controller style system with blending (for example to blend between clips for idle and running).

The last bit of knowledge is how to get these "states" to blend to other states. I do believe with what you posted this will be more doable now

So some questions on that "workaround" (solution imo):

- So it essentially is reading two timeline assets, getting the track that is similar and then syncing up (blending) their weights from the weight at output of one, to weight of start of another?
- Could this be used to fade a multi track timeline to another multi track timeline (same tracks in same order but potentially different bindings)?

 

@seant_unity can you explain how you would blend from one timeline being in control to another, rather than from timeline to animator in control?

 

Any word on this? It would be really useful in a turn based combat game I'm prototyping...

 

Any update on this? It would be helpful to know if this is something that's still being worked on.

 

Can you please link to any of these examples if possible?

 

Would I be on the right path to blending timelines if I tried doing something with the playable api?

 

I guess you are referencing this thread?

 

Hello, anything update about blending between two timelines in one playabledirector ?

 

@seant_unity ..Interesting! Thanks for the insight, I'll have to try that sometime if/when I happen to use playables again.

 

@seant_unity Any updates on this?

 

@ersagunkuruca
maybe not the answer you are looking for, but it is (and has been for some time) possible to blend between timelines, at least for certain tracks.
We do this ourselves for our current game, by tweening the individual weights of say the AnimationPlayableOutput in a coroutine.

Ideally Unity will come out with a native API for blending, but until then this is the only way I know of to achieve what you're probably looking for.

If I have some time and there is interest for this I might write a tool for it, but I'm not sure I can make enough time for that right now.

 

@Stacklucker would love to see that if you ever get around to it!

 

@Stacklucker, I am currently working on such tool, but I haven't been able to weight the outputs with no luck. I'd love to see how you managed to do it!

 

Any news on that?

 

Links have no resources Now What's name

 

Well, it's 2023 now. We didn't meet any related update in the past five years..