Pause timeline but loop active animations, possible?

Short answer: timeline doesn't support that right now.

Longer Answer:

It is possible with timeline, but requires some scripting customization. A good starting point is Ciro's blog: https://blogs.unity3d.com/2018/04/05/creative-scripting-for-timeline/

However, this is a use case for timeline that we are quite interested in exploring right now. Some of the work we have planned has this type of scenario in mind.

 

It might. We are looking into creating some more example custom tracks that would better handle this type of scenario. The current plan would have them in users hands before 2020, but that is subject to change.

 

No, we don't have that sample. I really wish we did.

However, there are a few ways to accomplish this. For example, similar to the original post.

1) Leave a gap (no extrapolation on the previous clip) on your animation track where you want the looping animation to be. (I'm assuming you have something to pause and/or loop the timeline)
2) Place a signal on the animation track before the gap to trigger the looping state on the animator.
3) Place a signal after the gap to trigger the looping state to end.

The gap will revert control to the animator. If you ease out the previous clip and ease in the next, and place the signals before/after the eases, then it will blend from and to the animator.

Alternately I think it would be possible to write a custom animation track that allows the animation to 'free run' when the graph is being looped, but I haven't validated that.

For pausing/looping/etc... there is this post as well as a bunch of other forums posts.
https://blogs.unity3d.com/2018/04/05/creative-scripting-for-timeline/

 

There's no accessible property to do that. The reason the animator gives you the controllers current clip is that the controller is still playing underneath the timeline....i.e. timeline is running independently and overwriting what the state machine is doing - all the animator really knows is something else is giving it a pose, and not which clips generated it.

The only alternative is to write something that determines which animation clips are currently being played by the timeline.

Here's a sample of how to do it.

Code (CSharp):

1. using System.Collections.Generic;
2. using UnityEngine;
3. using UnityEngine.Animations;
4. using UnityEngine.Playables;
5.  
6. [ExecuteAlways]
7. public class PrintAnimationNames : MonoBehaviour
8. {
9.     public Animator who;
10.    
11.     void Update()
12.     {
13.         if (who == null)
14.             return;
15.  
16.         PlayableDirector director = GetComponent<PlayableDirector>();
17.         if (director == null || !director.playableGraph.IsValid())
18.             return;
19.  
20.         // goes through each animation track
21.         var animationOutputs = director.playableGraph.GetOutputCountByType<AnimationPlayableOutput>();
22.         for (int i = 0; i < animationOutputs; i++)
23.         {
24.             var output = (AnimationPlayableOutput) director.playableGraph.GetOutputByType<AnimationPlayableOutput>(i);
25.             if (output.GetTarget() != who)
26.                 continue;
27.  
28.             var root = output.GetSourcePlayable();
29.             if (!root.IsValid())
30.                 continue;
31.  
32.             // walks the playable graph, searching for animation clips
33.             var port = output.GetSourceOutputPort();
34.             if (port >= 0)
35.                 root = root.GetInput(0);
36.            
37.             var queue = new Queue<Playable>();
38.             queue.Enqueue(root);
39.             while (queue.Count > 0)
40.             {
41.                 var playable = queue.Dequeue();
42.                 for (int j = 0; j < playable.GetInputCount(); j++)
43.                 {
44.                     // skips playables with 0 weight or disabled
45.                     if (playable.GetInputWeight(j) > 0 && playable.GetInput(j).GetPlayState() == PlayState.Playing)
46.                         queue.Enqueue(playable.GetInput(j));
47.                 }
48.  
49.                 if (playable.IsPlayableOfType<AnimationClipPlayable>())
50.                 {
51.                     var clipPlayable = (AnimationClipPlayable) playable;
52.                     // skips the editor generated clip of the default pose
53.                     if (clipPlayable.GetAnimationClip() != null && clipPlayable.GetAnimationClip().name != "DefaultPose")
54.                         Debug.Log(clipPlayable.GetAnimationClip().name);
55.                 }
56.             }
57.         }
58.     }
59. }
60.  

 

Which version of Unity/Timeline are you using? If I remember right we fixed an issue with 0 weights which might be the problem.... so try removing playable.GetInputWeight(j) > 0 - change it to just
if (playable.GetInput(j).GetPlayState() == PlayState.Playing).

 

That looks great! Good stuff.

I used 2019.3 to build that, and there are differences to the graph between 2019.2 and 2019.3. So.... one last try...replace the while loop with this.

Code (CSharp):

1.            while (queue.Count > 0)
2.             {
3.                 var playable = queue.Dequeue();
4.                 for (int j = 0; j < playable.GetInputCount(); j++)
5.                 {
6.                     if (playable.IsPlayableOfType<AnimationMixerPlayable>() && playable.GetInputWeight(j) <= 0.01f)
7.                         continue;
8.    
9.                     queue.Enqueue(playable.GetInput(j));
10.                 }
11.  
12.                 if (playable.IsPlayableOfType<AnimationClipPlayable>())
13.                 {
14.                     var clipPlayable = (AnimationClipPlayable) playable;
15.                     // skips the editor generated clip of the default pose
16.                     if (clipPlayable.GetAnimationClip() != null && clipPlayable.GetAnimationClip().name != "DefaultPose")
17.                         Debug.Log(clipPlayable.GetAnimationClip().name);
18.                 }
19.             }
20.