Position of objects in animation is reset after TimeLine finishes

I use animations to move boulders into place for the player to jump on.
I wanted to trigger the animation from a TimeLine, so I added it and it plays like I want it to.

But the animator resets when the TimeLine is done, I want it to behave like it would if I had set a transition boolean = true in the animator, i.e it stays at the end of the animation so the boulders positions don't reset.

 

Unity version 2018.2.12f1, no root motion, but I've tried with it too. The anim always goes back to the default state once the timeline is finished.

 

I dont have a an animator controller attached.

The animator has a default state that is empty, and the animation I play from Timeline, no transitions or anything.

 

Here is some screenshots:

 

Yeah that does explain it, but what do I do to fix that? I cant't just remove the animator? Then it won't play anything.

 

I am already animating a parent object. that is, the Animator is attached to an empty parent, that contains all the children I move in the animation.

I am changing the position of it's children. The issue is that the position of these children gets reset when Timeline is over. Surely it's a pretty common scenario to play an anim where you don't want it to reset once it's over?

 

Thanks. Unfortunately I've tried all possible combinations of write default on/off with root motion on/off. All have same effect.

My Idle animation is literally just an empty animation state, it is not connected to a motion.
I mean I could just write a Script that sets a trigger in the animator through Timeline, but I would like to be able to do it how it's intended.
Somewhere there is something that resets the position of all child-objects in the animation when the Timeline is destroyed and the animation goes back to "Idle". Which does make some sense, but I cannot find any solution to my issue.

Is there any info I've missed sharing with you, that might be causing this effect? Or anything that would help you determine a solution?

 

If I completely remove the Timeline and just run the animation, then transition into the Idle state after playing the animation, it works (no positions reset). So it's something being caused by Timeline. Think I'll just stop using Timeline, only giving me headaches. But if you can think of a reason do let me know, I feel like it could be such a poweful tool.

 

To repro:

• Create an animator with an empty default state.
• Attach animator to empty parent object.
• Add a few child objects to parent, just simple 3d cubes.
  
• Create anim that moves positions of animator children objects, in my case I have 6 child objects that I simply change y-value on.
• No animation transitions.
  
• Create a Timeline that simply plays the animation created in above step.

This does (in my case) lead to the animation returning to the default state once the Timeline is finished, and thereby resetting the position of the child-objects.

 

Ok, so then this type of anim will never work with Timline (an empty parent that only animates children), correct?
Since using root motion on the parent won't affect the children. At least not in this case.

 

Okay, either way, thanks for all the help!

 

Yeah, I've run into the same issue.

All I want to do is slam a door. Using Timeline, I create a track with the two positions and add a nice door slam audio clip at the end. I play it, the door slams and the audio clip plays... but then the door snaps open again!

This really feels counter-intuitive to me. Is there no way to simply say "when the timeline is done, leave things as they are"? I would think that would be the default case, or at least an option.

 

Not sure if this is a newly-added feature, but it does solve the problem I was having...

In the PlayableDirector component, there's a "Wrap Mode". The default is none, but if you change it to Hold then the values that were changed by the animation stay changed.

I can now make the door slam, so I'm happy.

 

@BernieRoehl

I love you man
you made my day. Been manually adjusting timelines to fix the issue.

 

For anyone reading this: the PlayableDirector WILL NOT RELEASE your model under "Hold" mode. Meaning if you are animating a car, that is supposed to move via a script after animation finishes - it WILL NOT MOVE! Manually stopping/disabling the Director at this point will lead to the standard teleport back.

 

@seant_unity so if there's nothing else trying to control an object (animator controller, etc) then everything will be left as it is on the last frame and timeline will stop writing to the objects? Is that Wrap mode set to continue?

 

Now that we're all talking about Timelines and State Machines ... is there already a clean and nice way to transition between the two?

 

Hi @seant_unity , thanks a lot for answering the questions here.

Now to add my question to the pile

I am animating the "Minimum Ortho Size" float variable on a Cinemachine Virtual Camera to zoom the camera during my cutscene (2D project).

I'm using the 'recording' with an Animation Track. The Cinemachine Virtual Camera binding doesn't use an Animator Controller (it just has the Animator on it for Timeline).



After the timeline finishes playing through, the Minimum Ortho Size value reverts to its value before the timeline started. How can I make it stay at the final value from my 'recording'?

Thanks for any help!

 

Hey @seant_unity, thanks a ton for the response - you are correct that it was something in my code setting the value. I've been testing out a lot of types of Tracks with timeline and wrongly assumed that the value getting reverted was due to the track. Your assurance that it *shouldn't* be getting reset did lead me to find my code that was accidentally setting it. Thank you!

 

Thanks @seant_unity! Every insight is most valuable to us

One more thing (not concerning Timeline - only Mecanim):
Say I have a Mecanim animation playing a long idle clip of an NPC. The player interacts with the NPC, causing the NPC animator to jump to a second short animation clip. Now clip2 finishes and per default goes back to the idle clip.

Is there a way to return to the position of the idle clip, when it was interrupted and avoid it to start from the first frame? Since the idle animation has a distinct beginning, it would seem more natural, if the idle clip wouldn't always reset, but continue from the interrupted point in time.

Any chances?

 

Thanks so much for your reply Sean, what an epic service to be taken so seriously!!

Unfortunately what I meant was more like this:

• Idle animation is 10 seconds long
• At a random point in time we switch to animation 2, for example at second 5
• After animation 2 has played, resume idle animation from second 5 (not from start) - meaning, remember when the transition occurred and return to that point in time

 

Oh wow! Haven't thought about using signals for this purpose. So there are scripting commands to pause and resume a timeline I suppose?

Thanks for your elaborate answer and I'll post to the anim forum directly as well.

Peace
Felix

 

Just want to add my voice to this thread: this behaviour of Timeline is DEEPLY undesired and unexpected. I don't think the behaviour we'd like is too unusual or complex: if Timeline sets the state of an Animator, leave it there. Is there any chance of this being implemented?

 

Going to add to this and say that this really need to be changed as an option. Sure it would only take someone a few hours to change this in the backend as an option. I understand that maybe Timeline wasnt originally meant for this, but there is obviously a demand for it and should be updated. I have a really ugly, non artist friendly, timeline now as I have had to use events to a script to trigger animations, instead of just being able to allow the artists to just drop the animations in where they need it.

 

Transition in/out of animator is so damn touchy. I'm using timeline with pretty advanced setup, I had this nice transitions going on and suddenly all animator where reseting to 0,0,0. I did some changes around root motion. Finally I got a workaround, and everything seems to work again, people could try it, it's simply using an avatar mask that excludes the root :

Spoiler: Setup