Unite Now - Blending Gameplay and Storytelling with Timeline

Unite Now Session
There are many advantages in displaying cutscenes with realtime graphics. With Timeline you can go the extra mile and integrate them with gameplay to give players a real seamless experience. Join us in this session to see how to harness Timeline's tools and how to customise it to unlock its full potential.


When
Thu, July 16, 9:00 AM PT


Where
You can watch the session here!
Make sure to sign up to get access to all Unite Now content.


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A team of product experts from across Unity will be available during and after the session. Our Community team will continue to field questions to foster an ongoing discussion with the community. Please feel free to ask your questions in this thread.


Some basic rules

• Only questions related to the topics of the session are permitted.
  
  
  
• All questions will be fielded by our Community Managers (@LeonhardP and @AskCarol)
  • Replies will have to be approved by the moderators to show up in the thread.
    
    
    
  • Once approved, the questions will be forwarded to the relevant experts.

We really look forward to hearing from the community.

Thank you!

 

Is it necessary to create separate assets for each section? For example, an island game where the player triggers an even that opens the next area of the island. So do I have to create separate sections of the island to make the events possible?

 

Not exactly sure what you mean. Where would Timeline be in all of this? When you say "event", you mean a marker on the Timeline?

 

I have a situation where I'm trying to have a bunch of creatures running around my level, using timeline until the player comes across them. When the player enters a collider on the creature game object, pause timeline turn off one child mesh and turn on a different one. I got all of the above working to a point that I'm happy with.

But it's creating some unforeseen complications in the timeline workflow. I would really like to use Root motion if possible on the parent gameobject to move around in timeline. Seems like a much more intuitive way to block out the rough animation, and making it move naturally in the world. When I use root motion, it moves the child mesh inside the game object at double speed. The parent game objects collider, and center is no longer where it should be on the GO.

I tried to make a "fake" root animation clip that would move the parent gameobject the correct amount in scene space to look natural, and match the non root animation loops attached to the child mesh. Allowing me to quickly drag in animation clips and loop them to create natural looking movement in timeline like you could with a cut scene and a FBX file. But instead with a Game Object that has a visible and invisible child mesh.

So I when I go back through timeline to make sure uneven terrain isn't causing the creature to float or have their foot go through the floor. There doesn't seem to be anyway to keyframe that information on the parent game object in timeline without overriding the XZ scene movement I was trying to make with my "fake root motion". My current solution is to use a third track in timeline, that is a child of the parent game object, to match the animation clip to the uneven surface. Which is, of course, separating the parent Game Object center and collider from the mesh again.

My solution has been to move all the relevant colliders and trigger scripts down to the mesh child layer instead, and just let the parent game object float off wherever it wants. periodically re centering the game object with the mesh. But this feels very clunky, and I foresee it having some unknown consequences down the line in development.

Is there anyway to get root motion working with timeline on a complex parent game object, rather then only being able to use root motion in the context of a cutscene?