Timeline - Available in Unity 2017.1

Unity Engine
1

Timeline - Available in Unity 2017.1

2951147--218796--TimelineExample Dark.png
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Update: Timeline has been released as part of Unity 2017.1. Try it today!

www.unity3d.com

The Playables Example project has also been updated for the official Unity 2017.1 release

We’re excited to share with everyone Unity’s new Timeline sequencing system.

Timeline is a new visual tool in Unity that allows the creation of cinematic content, cut scenes, gameplay sequences, complex particle systems and more. With Timeline you can organize a multitude of gameplay elements in separate tracks and orchestrate the play back easily deciding of the sequence of events.

For more information about what Timeline & Cinemachine are and how to use them, check the four sessions recorded at Unite Europe; we’ve compiled a playlist for you:

Finally, Timeline is extensible via the Playable API and offers the ability for you to create your own tracks to drive any system you have in your game.

To get an overview of what Timeline can do, here is a preview from the Unite Seoul conference in May!

Here is another video from GDC 2017

Highlights

  • Animation Tracks

  • Root motion (externally authored clips)

  • Anim clip keyframing workflow, synchronized with Animation Window

  • Activation Tracks

  • Enable / disable Game Object’s within Timeline

  • Audio clip support

  • Target custom Audio mixers

  • Custom track support

  • Write your own custom tracks with the enhanced Playable API

  • Scripted Timeline control

  • Start, stop, ‘go to time’ and much more

  • Cinemachine integration (available from the Asset Store)

Please refer to the Release Notes and Reference Guide below for more detailed information.

Downloads
Timeline is integrated in the Official Unity 2017.1 release!

The latest Cinemachine is available on the Unity Asset Store:

Release Notes

Reference Guide
Reference guide on features available in this release can be found here:

Timeline / Playable API Examples
There are 2 packages available to demonstrate Timeline and the Playable API. Each demonstrates different aspects and use cases of Timeline.

Download Timeline Examples V2

Default Playables (available from the Asset store)

21 Likes
2

Sweet! Been really looking forward to this.

3

@mikew_unity , the Example Projects YouTube video linked in your post appears to be unavailable. Is it still set to private by chance?

4

Sorry Andy requested that I take it off temporarily, we’ll redo it and add it back asap.

5

does this support scrubbing of mecanim animations like cinema director does.

6

Depends on what you mean by ‘scrubbing of mecanim animations’

Timeline is meant to set up linear sequences of animations. It is built on the same underlying system (the Playable API) as mecanim. You can animate (and blend between) root motion animations for characters in a sequence, or you can do your own keyframing of animations directly within Timeline.

Currently you can’t drag a full Animation controller onto the Timeline and have it scrub the full state machine, although this is on the roadmap. However, you CAN blend seamlessly from state machines (ie gameplay) and a Timeline sequence (to blend into and out of cutscenes for example).

7

Thanks guys - been waiting 10 years for this! Very excited to try it out. Cheers!

1 Like
8

Will it be available as a .dll like Cinemachine? compatible with 5.5?
Also how do I skip, ffwd, restart a timeline sequence via code? What’s the recommended way to transition smoothly from scene state to timeline sequence back to another scene state?

9

This looks really nice. Hats off to you folks at unity for thinking about artists :slight_smile:

1 Like
10

Very nice,
Any plan to add avatar masking in override track?

11

Any chance we can have a simple tween engine and a path waypoint system?

12

Yes, we have plans for that in a future release.

1 Like
13

Time and play controls are done through the PlayableDirector component. It has a scripting interface. Playing a timeline will automatically transition to and from scene state, and you can put ease-in/ease-out curves on your animation track clips to blend those transitions.

14

It’s looking pretty good. I wonder though, where can I get the gameplay examples project?

15

We had a few last-minute issues with the gameplay examples project, it will be published again shortly.

16

Re: control of a sequence at runtime - if you check the playables example project there is a demo of controlling a timeline from runtime, with UI ‘player controls’ as well - you can play, pause, rewind etc all from runtime.

17

Blending from a scene to a timeline is easy to understand but how do you define the out state? A new scene? And how do you take over game logic, it just works? (something tells me it’s also related to this new Playable API)
Sorry for just asking questions that may be answered by testing this demo you linked, I’m in the middle or breaking everything for an iOS port :slight_smile: Good thing is one of the animatic is such a clusterf*ck of coroutines that I’m tempted to use Timeline on it. Could we get a 5.5.1 build?

18

So… clicking “Add from animation clip” shows me all animations in my project, which is horrible, and then when I click an animation, it crashes.

Sooo… I guess I previewed the timeline feature!

1 Like
19

Would it be within the scope to make it possible to grab arms/limbs and animate character bodies and then morph their faces/textures while playing some audio with this?

For the first part, I was thinking of using something like Skele to animate directly in the editor, though it would be much better if this could just be done natively. I have a feeling we could use lip sync to animate the mouths programmatically with approximation, and using morph data when more precision is required. The only thing left is morphing the faces to different shape keys for various emotions. With these three features, it would be possible for anyone to make cutscenes easily.

3 Likes
20

Sorry, it’s not being backported to the 5.5 line.