How to know when a timeline is complete ?

It's very simple: Unity doesn't actually use their engine for games. Stuff like this is never going to get fixed because why should they when Timeline works perfectly for isolated tech demo videos?

 

I've been working with Timeline for the past week and 90% of this time was spent looking for community solutions to problems that should have been fixed 3 years ago.

Want parameters in signals? Nope, not supported, buy this 18 euro asset from the assetstore.

Need OnComplete event? Here's a workaround that works in 1 of 3 director modes.

Unity please, get it together. We need these features.

 

yeah, video player has something like loopPointReached - why timeline can't have something similiar?

 

So a few years ago (around 2018) they promised:
- A new completion event, that works with all modes (loop, hold)
- Update to the documentation of the stopped event, to mention that it will not work with loop or hold mode
- More states than Playing, Paused to detect the different between a "real" Paused and Paused because of "editor time isn't advancing"

They told use to use a workaround by placing a signal at the end instead of adding a completion event, which is absurd, because we would have to manually place it on every timeline

Today, year 2021, we have:
- No promised completion event that works for all modes, still only stopped
- The stopped documentation sounds very basic / generic and doesn't mention anything about loop or hold mode
- Still the same states (Playing, Paused)

I have a question:
Did anything of the timline implementation change, so that these promised changes are not needed anymore, if so what's the new "correct" way to check if it is done (for all modes).

I can live with using workarounds, but please don't promise anything if you don't care enough to actually implement it, especially something like a completion event which should be trivial to add on your side.

 

Years have passed, has Unity solved this small problem? No. Unity only knows to engage in some high-impact things that can fool investors, and doesn't pay attention to community opinions at all.

 

The children of mono are left to wander the timelines as the FAITHFUL pray to the LORDS of DOTS!

(You will have to try workarounds)

 

Bump
(I also had to implement custom workarounds and watch the Timeline playing to know when it is actually completed)

 

I want to dig this up from the grave to annoy ppl who are responsible as Timeline is now a package, so it shouldn't be that hard to put a onlooppointreached action in here as I'm debugging my stopped, paused and played events for the fifth time now just to be remembered that nothing of this will get triggered at the end of a timeline.

 

2022, no callback in sight...as usual the developers are so uptight about their design decisions regarding their tools, that they don't even address this extremely common problems that the users perceive on the way their software is expected to work... and decide to just ignore us.
And no... registering to PlayableDirector.stopped, and then putting an if statement to check if it really is the end of the timeline or a call to the Stop method is not a solution.
im not even goint to talk about the "add a signal", solution just plain ridiculous...
Tools have to HELP the user to achieve something in a more efficient way, not ADD extra steps

 

Hopefully contrarily to other packages and services the team working on timeline is more than just an intern split on 5 projects while the team is working on shinier timelines for Unity 2024.

 

Hello! I come from the future. Just give up on using Timelines- they will break horribly on 2023.3 and importing the timeline package will turn your project unusable. They did however release yet another cinematic video with the help of some clever engine modifications and source hackery so the shareholders are happy!

Just use animators and animation clips. Save yourself from this horrible future. Use Unity like it's Unity 5 and you're safe.

 

my god! 5 years passed, Have we still not found a way? kill me please！

 

GIVE US AN ON-COMPLETE FEATURE PLEASE!!!

 

I can't believe this problem is still unresolved. I can't wait to see if timelines are used in Gigaya.

 

It was kinda cancelled, so we will never know

 

Me: Play this timeline.
Unity: OK.
Me: Is it finished?
Unity: ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Five years.

 

Timeline is a bit like the unity light baker where, after getting tossed around trying to drive a toy car on the highway, you end up shelling out a hundred bucks on something real: Bakery+RT.

If you really *really* need a sequencer and want to get stuff done, it is faster to use slate, at least it was a few years back.
https://assetstore.unity.com/packages/tools/animation/slate-cinematic-sequencer-56558

 

LOL Unity

 

Hi! Is this going to get fixed?

 

It's been over 4 years, is a useful feature that has been asked for by many, many people... so no, Unity won't be adding it !

 

Literally everyone I know who uses the Timeline complains about the lack of this, it's so basic I can't even understand why it was never done in the first place.

I don't think we'll ever see it coming though, as development on Timeline seems completely stopped. According to the roadmap, the only thing related to Timeline that was released in 2 years is... a bunch of samples. The UI Toolkit Refactor is there since March 2021, there's no way this can take so long.

Yet another great tool Unity dropped before being feature-complete...

 

2023 and Unity still hasn't added the OnComplete event on the Timeline. Such a useful feature requested by many users completely ignored. Shame on you Unity

 

Unity fired the entire Gigaya team, this is not a problem for them. They don't have to worry about callbacks for Timeline sequences. As long as they get to make their hair tech demos for their shareholders, they're good!

 

2023 I came back to see if it was settled

 

Of course not.

 

That's insane hahahah.

 

Ok, I would do it in this way, hope it would help.
If you don't use UniTask, use coroutine instead.

Code (CSharp):

1.         public static async UniTask PlayWithEndCallback(this PlayableDirector director, Action endAction)
2.         {
3.             director.Play();
4.             await UniTask.WaitWhile(() => director.time < director.duration);
5.             endAction?.Invoke();
6.         }

The lesson I leaned these years is simple, don't wait unity for anything, prepare to wrap another layer if you really want to use there packages.

-----
Never mind, I decide not to use timeline, it's not for game anyway.

 

I complain about this on every thread I have a chance to. Unity has awesome and powerful features that get shipped in an Alpha or Beta state and then don't get properly finished for years and years.

The Playables system is a big one. I've worked with MANY animation APIs on other frameworks and platforms, so I can say with confidence, how the !#@k they shipped one without an on-complete event is blood boiling frustrating.

This is why Unity's stock chart looks like this:

 

Yet another work-around, only tested in 2023.2a13 Editor, and perhaps relying on a bug.

Code (CSharp):

1. PlayableDirector _timeline;
2. bool _isDone;
3.  
4. void Update()
5. {
6.     if( !_timeline ){
7.         _timeline = GetComponent<PlayableDirector>();
8.         _timeline.extrapolationMode = DirectorWrapMode.None;
9.     }
10.     if( !_timeline ) return;
11.  
12.     if( !_isDone ) {
13.         try{
14.             _timeline.playableGraph.IsDone();
15.         } catch {
16.             Debug.Log( "Done" );
17.             _isDone = true;
18.         }
19.     }
20. }

When the timeline reaches it's end IsDone() will throw a null pointer. PlayableGraph is a struct, so I guess it comes from unmanaged land. Anyway, I don't think this was how IsDone() was intended to be used

 

Dear Unity, if you add this API then the stock price will go up. I promise you.

(Worth a try!)

 

I know this is an old thread but I've been working with timelines a lot.

I just check if timeline.time is approximately equal to timeline.duration to know if the timeline has finished.

As others found out it was a lot of wasted debugging until I realised that the timeline state is unreliable.

 

6 years later and still nothing?

 

maybe if we find a way to slap the word "AI" in this feature request, the people that make decisions up in the chain of command, will green light this new and revolutionary "feature"

 

+1 for an OnComplete callback

 

Maybe it will get added for the 10 year anniversary of Timeline being released?

If this was Godot, it would have been added by now by the community.

 

https://medium.com/nerd-for-tech/triggering-a-finished-cutscene-unity-42007f1b4ce4 <- at the end of the page.
Looks like you can create a signal emitter at the end of the sequence and get a end sequence event. Has anyone tried this and does it work ?

 

Yes and it works, but make sure about this: there is some setting (I don't remember the exact name) that forces the timeline to emit those signals even if the frame of the signal is skipped due to e.g. performance reasons. In the default setting, this is OFF, so sometimes signals would not be fired. Careful!

 

Is this setting inside the Unity settings or in the inspector of the signal/timeline?

 

Sure, it works. But it doesn't scale well at all compared to a callback.

 

Unfortunately many years later and there's still very fundamental flaws with Timeline. This just happens to be one of the more easy ones to fix.
The one that bugs me the most is events near the end of a clip being totally ignored due to how timing works. So you have to keep fudging where things get triggered.
For me, it's pre-alpha due to that and other things.

 

I'd say6 he talking about this :
It's in the signal emitter

@Ziplock9000 @Andy-Touch I'm a veteran of 1, 8 second timeline. Can you guy suggest a better asset paid or free?

 

Yes thats it

 

Thank you!

 

This is such a basic feature! It is ridiculous that it has not been implemented... Another reason to switch to godot...

 

Which great engineer wrote this feature? How come it doesn't even have a callback like 'complete'