New in 2019.1 - Marker Customization

Is there a particular reason as to why this example uses custom code to extract available methods from the gameobject in question instead of using a regular UnityEvent? Is it only to show that you can directly reference the bound object?

 

Ok, I get it, UnityEvents don't have a way to insert context in them, so if they're in an asset (like something from a Timeline, which obligatorily resides in an asset), they can only see Assets.

UnityEvents really should get a little power-up. They can only have a single parameter, you need to inherit from them because Unity can't serialize generic stuff, and now this as well.

 

From my perspective:

The sample is more demonstrating you can build the old (and kinda not great, what with the SendMessage call and fixed argument types) animation events functionality on Timeline if you really wanted to. This could be useful if you're moving from a cutscene controlled by an Animation clip to a cutscene controlled by a timeline and you wanted to salvage code that relied on the old events system before fully migrating to a cleaner setup with signals or other custom marker types specific to your use case (and likely more performant that this by a good margin).

UnityEvents are just a way to serialize parameters and delegate references to other objects in the editor, they're not a great solution for completely decoupled communication due to way delegates work. The subscriber has to know about where the UnityEvent's containing object is before subscribing/unsubscribing. On top of this, Delegate invocation is often the slowest type of call in the .NET framework and UnityEvents add another layer on top of that.

The signals way is just a contract using the Signal Asset as a token that maps to a function call. This allows a more complete decoupling. That said I'll need to get on the 2019.1 alpha at some point and actually get a feel for it before I go deeper into the pros and cons.

I can see where your frustration lies, the signals way is very different than what seems to be intuitive but there may be performance/implementation simplicity reasons for going that route that remain unseen what with all of this being brand new.

 

Sure, that looks pretty much like the idea, even if only to serve as an example:

Nothing much to add to that, it was more that I didn't really understand the reason as to why not use UnityEvents in a case in which they'd have been able to fulfill exactly the same purpose. That is, until I realised why.

That could easily be solved, I think, by extending the UnityEvent API to allow for it to have basically that same UI, but also to have context injected into it. In this case, it could even use the kind of references the Timeline Asset itself uses, with Exposed Properties which are populated through the Director Component.

I haven't read the UnityEvent source code yet, and by a glance it does seem to be quite intricate, but it surely is far from being one of Unity's most complex features. Given it's importance, I do think it's worth the investment into improving it.

See, that I don't buy as a problem. At all. At which order of magnitude in call counts would you have to be for your timeline events to actually become a performance problem? You'd need to have an insane amount of events at the same frame, which makes no sense at all if you think about most if not any use case for Timeline. And, of course, you could write your own call system if you are in one of the unlikely edge cases.

Yes, I realize that as well. I even mentioned it in the other thread. Although I do lack to see the reason as to why that much decoupling would be necessary. As I mentioned in the other thread, the current way the system does it is by creating an insane list of signals with only their names to help identify them. I think it'd be much better if they could lie in Timeline Assets themselves, at least. That way, at least you'd have the context in which said signal name is supposed to happen.

The problem with this approach is it forces all of the context to the callee, leaving none of it to the caller. In some cases, it'd be very useful to be able to divide it between the two, as my example with "A bunch of slighly different explosions" tries to illustrate.

My frustrations don't lie simply on the Signal system itself (although I've already explained a bit of the problems I immediatly see in it in the other thread). It's more on the fact that said complexity could be opt-in. There are a ton of usecases in which said complexity isn't needed at all, as a lot of sequences can be directly mapped to the scene they should reside in.

 

Something else I always forget to say:

There is no visual cue for a selected marker in the Timeline view. Is it just a bug for me or was this never present? Shouldn't it be blue when selected, like every other selectable piece of the UI?

 

@julienb could you quickly explain what a Marker Track does? It seems to be related, talking about Markers and all, but it's never mentioned, explained anywhere, used...

 

Hihi, I thought something like that was the cause.

 

Thanks for this awesome API!

I have a question: when you select "Loop" for the timeline's "Wrap Mode" all my custom markers are fired simultaneously right at the beginning of the next round of the timeline. Why is that?

 

Also, it would be cool, to be able to specify the type of marker a receiver can process.

Something like:

Code (CSharp):

1. public class MessageReceiver : MonoBehaviour, INotificationReceiver<Message>
2. {
3.     public void OnNotify(Playable origin, Message message, object context)
4.     {
5.         var methodToCall = message.method;
6.         var argument = ArgumentForMessage(message, origin.GetGraph().GetResolver());
7.      
8.         if (EditorApplication.isPlaying)
9.             SendMessage(methodToCall, argument);
10.     }
11. }

Or maybe with a class-attribute like

Code (CSharp):

1. [MarkerType(typeof(Message))]
2. public class MessageReceiver : MonoBehaviour, INotificationReceiver
3. {
4.     public void OnNotify(Playable origin, INotification notification, object context)
5.     {
6.         var message = notification as Message;
7.         var methodToCall = message.method;
8.         var argument = ArgumentForMessage(message, origin.GetGraph().GetResolver());
9.      
10.         if (EditorApplication.isPlaying)
11.             SendMessage(methodToCall, argument);
12.     }
13. }

 

It works when I implement the

INotificationOptionProvider

and return the default NotificationFlags:

Code (CSharp):

1. public NotificationFlags flags => default;

I assumed that Unity uses the default flags by default when I don't realize

INotificationOptionProvider

at all...
Is this a bug or desired behaviour?

 

I have a question regarding implementation of signals. I have a script on an object with a function that takes a boolean. I would like to be able to set that bool with the signal to true or false. Does this mean that I'd need a signal for true and another for false?

This becomes less useful for cases where I need to pass a string. How would one go about implementing that case, if possible, using a signal and not needing a new signal for every possible string variation?

 

Hi, small question. Is this already available? Or is it "Timeline: Added ClipEditor, TrackEditor, and MarkerEditor classes the user can derived from to modify custom clips, tracks and marker functionality inside the Timeline Editor" in the 2019.2 patch note? If not available, will it be backported during 2019.1?

 

Thank you, one more question. In 2019.1 I saw an attribute [UnityEngine.Timeline.CustomStyle("ussStyle")] available. It looks like what could do a subset of what MarkerEditor can. So for the time being I want to style the marker based on this while waiting for 2019.2. Is there any documentation on this?

So in the code I saw [CustomStyle("SignalEmitter")] and I could also apply that style over my custom marker, and the default (curved top) custom marker style changes to be like the signal emitter (flat top). This is an image before CustomStyle, when applied with [CustomStyle("SignalEmitter")], they are indistinguishable.



So when I create multiple custom markers I want to be able to discern them at glance rather than them being all curved top. I tried [CustomStyle("MyStyle")] according to the code comment :

Code (CSharp):

1.     ///<summary>
2.     /// Use this attribute to customize the appearance of a Marker.
3.     /// </summary>
4.     /// Specify the style to use to draw a Marker.
5.     /// <example>
6.     /// [CustomStyle("MyStyle")]
7.     /// public class MyMarker : UnityEngine.Timeline.Marker {}
8.     /// </example>
9.     /// Then, add a 'common.uss' file in the Editor folder.
10.     /// Create an element to customizes the appearance of the marker.
11.     /// <example>
12.     /// MyStyle
13.     /// {
14.     ///   /* Specify the appearance of the marker in the collapsed state here. */
15.     /// }
16.     ///
17.     /// MyStyle:checked
18.     /// {
19.     ///   /* Specify the appearance of the marker in the expanded state here. */
20.     /// }
21.     ///
22.     /// MyStyle:focused:checked
23.     /// {
24.     ///   /* Specify the appearance of the marker in the selected state here. */
25.     /// }
26.     /// </example>

I have already add "common.uss" to the Editor folder with empty styles like the documentation, but I get this warning "Cannot find style MyStyle for MyMarker". I even tried changing "MyStyle" to "MyMarker" (In the same fashion that Unity is doing "SignalEmitter" style for "SignalEmitter") but it still throws a warning "Cannot find style MyMarker for MyMarker". What am I missing to make this work in 2019.1?

 

Maybe you could make a custom SignalReceiver with a pair of SignalAsset -> UnityEvent<bool/string> instead? Then make a custom SignalEmitter that also holding bool/string. Then, in your custom receiver's OnNotify after matching the correct SignalAsset, you could invoke the event with parameter from the emitter. This way you could still use the UnityEvent dropdown to select your method with bool/string argument (without specifying a parameter, it is now dynamic)



The editor for SignalAsset -> method pair didn't look as good as SignalReceiver however, but it is workable. In this example when the timeline passed through my marker with `true`, the audio source will be looped.

 

Thank you. According to https://docs.unity3d.com/Manual/UIE-USS-PropertyTypes.html I was able to use `resource` to access my `marker.png` in my Resources folder with resource("marker"), however, I would like to do relative path from my common.uss file, like directly near the file.

In that page suggest that I should use url("./marker.png") instead. However I get this warning and the CSS was not applied :

Code (CSharp):

1. Cannot compile StyleCatalog: System.InvalidCastException: Specified cast is not valid.
2.   at UnityEditor.StyleSheets.StyleSheetResolver+Value.AsString () [0x00002] in /Users/builduser/buildslave/unity/build/Modules/StyleSheetsEditor/Converters/StyleSheetResolver.cs:52
3.   at UnityEditor.StyleSheets.StyleCatalog.ReduceStyleValueType (UnityEditor.StyleSheets.StyleSheetResolver+Value value) [0x00041] in /Users/builduser/buildslave/unity/build/Modules/StyleSheetsEditor/StyleCatalog.cs:1305
4.   at UnityEditor.StyleSheets.StyleCatalog.CompileBaseValue (System.String propertyName, UnityEditor.StyleSheets.StyleState stateFlags, UnityEditor.StyleSheets.StyleSheetResolver+Value value, System.Collections.Generic.List`1[T] numbers, System.Collections.Generic.List`1[T] colors, System.Collections.Generic.List`1[T] strings, System.Collections.Generic.List`1[T] functions) [0x00022] in /Users/builduser/buildslave/unity/build/Modules/StyleSheetsEditor/StyleCatalog.cs:1288
5.   at UnityEditor.StyleSheets.StyleCatalog.CompileValue (UnityEditor.StyleSheets.StyleSheetResolver+Property property, UnityEditor.StyleSheets.StyleState stateFlags, System.Collections.Generic.List`1[T] numbers, System.Collections.Generic.List`1[T] colors, System.Collections.Generic.List`1[T] strings, System.Collections.Generic.List`1[T] rects, System.Collections.Generic.List`1[T] groups, System.Collections.Generic.List`1[T] functions) [0x0002b] in /Users/builduser/buildslave/unity/build/Modules/StyleSheetsEditor/StyleCatalog.cs:1214
6.   at UnityEditor.StyleSheets.StyleCatalog.Compile (UnityEditor.StyleSheets.StyleSheetResolver resolver, System.Collections.Generic.List`1[T] numbers, System.Collections.Generic.List`1[T] colors, System.Collections.Generic.List`1[T] strings, System.Collections.Generic.List`1[T] rects, System.Collections.Generic.List`1[T] groups, System.Collections.Generic.List`1[T] functions, System.Collections.Generic.List`1[T] blocks) [0x000b2] in /Users/builduser/buildslave/unity/build/Modules/StyleSheetsEditor/StyleCatalog.cs:1069
7.   at UnityEditor.StyleSheets.StyleCatalog.Load (UnityEditor.StyleSheets.StyleSheetResolver resolver) [0x00046] in /Users/builduser/buildslave/unity/build/Modules/StyleSheetsEditor/StyleCatalog.cs:924
8. UnityEngine.GUIUtility:ProcessEvent(Int32, IntPtr)

But the path is correct, because when I intentionally change it to `../marker.png` I get an error instead

Code (CSharp):

1. [StyleSheetImportError: error=Semantic, code=InvalidURIProjectAssetPath, context=Assets/E7Unity/-EditorScripts/AnimatorTriggerMarker/StyleSheets/marker.png]
2. UnityEditorInternal.InternalEditorUtility:ProjectWindowDrag(HierarchyProperty, Boolean)
3. UnityEngine.GUIUtility:ProcessEvent(Int32, IntPtr)
4.  

So what is this "cast" that I have to correct to get it working with `url`?

 

What's the expected usage for the ID property? Is there any internal Unity stuff which expects unique IDs?

 

hi, customization your markers in timeline with uss file, take a look at:https://github.com/Unity-Technologies/TimelineMarkerCustomization

 

It is fairly trivial to write an abstract class that works for your first example:

Code (CSharp):

1. public abstract class NotificationReceiver<T> : MonoBehaviour, INotificationReceiver
2.     where T : INotification
3. {
4.     void INotificationReceiver.OnNotify(Playable origin, INotification notification, object context)
5.     {
6.         if (!(notification is T typedNotification)) {
7.             return;
8.         }
9.  
10.         OnNotify(origin, typedNotification, context);
11.     }
12.  
13.     protected abstract void OnNotify(Playable origin, T notification, object context);
14. }

Usage:

Code (CSharp):

1. public class MessageReceiver : NotificationReceiver<Message>
2. {
3.     protected override void OnNotify(Playable origin, Message message, object context)
4.     {
5.         // Do stuff with "Message" here
6.     }
7. }

 

I use UniRx and found this works really well with the message broker and the dynamic keyword, e.g.

Code (CSharp):

1. MessageBroker.Publish(notification as dynamic)
2. ---
3. MessageBroker.Receive<CustomMarkerType>()

 

Hello @julienb and everyone, I managed to make my custom marker style with the .uss file, however, if I am not mistaken, there is no way to know, on the timeline window, if a custom marker is selected (mine doesn't brighten like the unity basics ones). Is this normal? Can I change it somehow? Thanks !

 

Thank you !!

 

Hi @julienb ,
I achieved customizing my markers with the style sheet using unity 2019.1
But I can only modify the width, height, and the background image.
I tried using: color, backgraound-color and -unity-background-image-tint-color but none of them worked.
I could use a image editor to color my collapsed, normal and selected image, but that could be bothersome if I want to add many colors. It would be so much easier to simply select a color directly in the sytlesheet.

Note that my marker icon is simply a white circle with a black outline, and I want the inner white to change color.
I later plan to add a few shapes like directional arrows, letters etc... which I would also like to color from the stylesheet.

Am I doing something wrong or is it not supported it yet?

That's unrelated by I was wondering if there was a way to have custom clips with custom styles. I haven't looked into it yet but I'd be great if I could have two circle icons connected by a line. It would also work for me if it was two markers for a start->end.

 

Hiho,

I would like to know if it is somehow possible to show the name of a marker in the timeline.
My timeline gets pretty packed after a while, and it starts to become hard to know, which marker is where, without clicking every single one.

Thank you for your help!

 

thank you for the quick response!

 

Hi,
with the [TrackBindingType] attribute it is possible to restrict the type of PlayableAssets that can be added to a track. Is something similar possible with custom markers to limit the selection in the context menu?

Another question: would it be possible to get a generic SignalAsset/Emitter workflow with signals that carry additional data? I am thinking of generic classes SignalAsset<T> and SignalEmitter<T>. Ideally, the SignalReceiver could handle any SignalAsset<T> and make use of the data as parameters for the reaction method calls. I would want this to be similar to the generic UnityEvent<T> while we currently only get the parameterless one. Do I make sense?

 

I really want to say thanks for this feature. While I'm not sure why markers default to different notification flags than signals (retroactive?!), allowing us some flexibility with how they're done is great. I wish I would have done the work and used markers from the beginning instead of trying to shoe-horn signals to do what we needed. This is so much better of a system and I like that we can customize the icons too! Thanks!

 

Hi, is there a way to customize the add menu entry for my custom markers? And perhaps filter (even if only at the editor level) in which tracks can a specific marker be added?

Lets say I have Dialogue markers, Player markers and Timeline control flow markers. I'd like to be able to have my menus categorized like "Dialogue/Add Dialogue Marker 1", "Player/Add Player Marker 1", etc

Can I do that?

 

@Garrafote
I asked the same thing with no answer. But I dug into the code of TimelineContextMenu to find this method

Code (CSharp):

1. public static bool DoesTrackSupportMarkerType(TrackAsset track, Type type)
2. {
3.     if (track.supportsNotifications)
4.     {
5.         return true;
6.     }
7.  
8.     return !typeof(INotification).IsAssignableFrom(type);
9. }

and this will basically always return true and not check for any attributes, unfortunately. Nothing we can do as far as I can tell.

 

I can't seem to get my custom marker icon to change appearance when clicking it. It always displays my unselected marker (alertNew_unselected.png). I am getting these two warnings from my common.uss:

Code (CSharp):

1. Unknown pseudo class "focused"
2. UnityEditor.Experimental.AssetImporters.ScriptedImporter:GenerateAssetData(AssetImportContext)
3.  

Code (CSharp):

1. Unknown pseudo class "focused"
2. UnityEditor.AssetDatabase:GetMainAssetTypeAtPath(String)
3. TMPro.EditorUtilities.FontAssetPostProcessor:OnPostprocessAllAssets(String[], String[], String[], String[]) (at Library/PackageCache/com.unity.textmeshpro@3.0.1/Scripts/Editor/TMPro_TexturePostProcessor.cs:31)
4. UnityEditor.AssetPostprocessingInternal:PostprocessAllAssets(String[], String[], String[], String[], String[])

This is my full common.uss file:

Code (CSharp):

1.  
2. AlertDiamond
3. {
4.     width: 20px;
5.     height: 20px;
6.     background-image: resource("Assets/Cutscene/Editor/alertNew_unselected.png");
7. }
8. AlertDiamond:checked
9. {
10.     width: 20px;
11.     height: 20px;
12.     background-image: resource("Assets/Cutscene/Editor/alertNew_unselected.png");
13. }
14. AlertDiamond:focused:checked
15. {
16.     width: 20px;
17.     height: 20px;
18.     background-image: resource("Assets/Cutscene/Editor/alertNew_selected.png");
19.  
20. }

Did the keyword "focused" get renamed to something else? I've double checked all of my setup and it seems correct based on this thread.

Would appreciate any help!

 

I figured out how to draw a label next to the marker, but is there any way to change the color of the marker itself?

 

Change the :focused:checked line to :hover:focus:checked

Code (CSharp):

1. PhaseChange:hover:focus:checked
2. {
3.     background-image: resource("Assets/_Project/Textures/Placeholders/diamond.png");
4. }

Reference: https://github.com/Unity-Technologi...rker/Editor/Stylesheets/Extensions/common.uss

Code (CSharp):

1. /* Collapsed Marker State -> Corresponds to GUIStyle.normal */
2. JumpMarker
3. {
4.     width: 18px;
5.     height: 18px;
6.     background-image: resource("Assets/6-JumpMarker/Editor/Stylesheets/imgs/jumpTo_collapsed.png");
7. }
8.  
9. /* Active Marker State -> Corresponds to GUIStyle.onNormal */
10. JumpMarker:checked
11. {
12.     background-image: resource("Assets/6-JumpMarker/Editor/Stylesheets/imgs/jumpTo_normal.png");
13. }
14.  
15. /* Selected Marker State -> Corresponds to GUIStyle.onFocused */
16. JumpMarker:hover:focus:checked
17. {
18.     background-image: resource("Assets/6-JumpMarker/Editor/Stylesheets/imgs/jumpTo_selected.png");
19. }
20.  
21. /* Collapsed Marker State -> Corresponds to GUIStyle.normal */
22. DestinationMarker
23. {
24.     width: 18px;
25.     height: 18px;
26.     background-image: resource("Assets/6-JumpMarker/Editor/Stylesheets/imgs/destination_collapsed.png");
27. }
28.  
29. /* Active Marker State -> Corresponds to GUIStyle.onNormal */
30. DestinationMarker:checked
31. {
32.     background-image: resource("Assets/6-JumpMarker/Editor/Stylesheets/imgs/destination_normal.png");
33. }
34.  
35. /* Selected Marker State -> Corresponds to GUIStyle.onFocused */
36. DestinationMarker:hover:focus:checked
37. {
38.     background-image: resource("Assets/6-JumpMarker/Editor/Stylesheets/imgs/destination_selected.png");
39. }

 

Thanks that worked great!

 

I ended up drawing a colored texture on top of the original graphic

 

So do resources in the common.uss have to be absolute paths?

That would be a real shame if so.
How can you expect to make a re-usable library where the user can move the contents anywhere they want inside their project?

 

Exact same issue I'm seeing. Can't use relative url for some reason.

this doesn't work:

Code (CSharp):

1. background-image: url("../imgs/jumpTo_collapsed.png");
2. background-image: url("../imgs/jumpTo_normal.png");
3. background-image: url("../imgs/jumpTo_selected.png");
4. background-image: url("../imgs/destination_collapsed.png");
5. background-image: url("../imgs/destination_normal.png");
6. background-image: url("../imgs/destination_selected.png");
7. background-image: url("../imgs/pencil.png");

https://docs.unity3d.com/Manual/UIE-USS-PropertyTypes.html

according to docs, that should work. Bug report coming up...

 

Submitted: Case 1292311

 

There is error in this case:

NullReferenceException: Object reference not set to an instance of an object

MessageInspector.OnInspectorGUI () (at Assets/TimlineMessage/Editor/MessageInspector.cs:46)

UnityEditor.UIElements.InspectorElement+<>c__DisplayClass58_0.<CreateIMGUIInspectorFromEditor>b__0 () (at <d7545a46516941d4b2f2dec578cd41ee>:0)

UnityEngine.GUIUtility:ProcessEvent(Int32, IntPtr)

How to solve it? it seems that TimelineEditor.inspectedDirector is always null.

 

It would be great if the doc about INotificationOptionProvider was added to the blog post.

Also, it would make sense for NotificationFlags to implement a None = 0 enum value like standard so we don't have to type "0" or "default" to disable retroactive.

 

Was there anything on how to change a markers selected state? I can get it to change using multiple images.
But can't seem to adjust the color of an image. Even changing size didn't seem to have an effect.

Looks like from this thread you have to basically individual icons? Otherwise can't find a USS setting to let me see its selected like the default ones. Where they are a bit grey then brighter white when selected.

Also what am I missing to get it to reload? I have to reimport my c# signal emitter every time to get the time line to change and show the updated uss file.

 

I have a use case where I would like for a custom marker to work on tracks, without those having a track binding type : is it possible ?
@DavidGeoffroy

For example, I would like this marker to work on my custom tracks, with no binding type :


So this component could receive the events :



Implementation of the marker and the component :

Code (CSharp):

1. public class ClassMarker : Marker, INotification, INotificationOptionProvider
2. {
3.         //...
4. }
5.  
6. public class UITKTimelineProxy : MonoBehaviour, IUITKTimelineBinding, INotificationReceiver
7. {
8.         public void OnNotify(Playable origin, INotification notification, object context)
9.         {
10.             if (notification is not ClassMarker classMarker)
11.                 return;
12.             //...
13.          }
14. }

EDIT : one way to solve this, would be to implement my own ClassMarker management inside the mixer of my custom tracks.