Creating a Simple Timeline Animation

Objective: Create an animation using Timeline

There are a couple ways we can go about starting our first track. We can click on the “+” symbol and add a track like this.

Also, we can drag our object into the Timeline Editor and create a track like this. I will drag my object and select Animation Track. You will see that it automatically creates an Animator for my object as well.

To create a basic animation, I am going to select record on the Timeline Editor, and then I can select my object. Once selected I will create a new Key by right clicking on the Inspector and I will move the recording bar and add a new key around the 8 second mark.

Then, I can move the recording bar over and move my object around in the scene, and repeat this by moving the recording bar and moving the object some more.

Once we have our animation recorded. There are a few ways we can adjust the timing of our clip. We can double click on our recorded track and it will open up the Animation Editor and we can individually grab our key frames and drag them.

Or, we can create a new clip for our recorded animation. Simply right click on the recorded animation we did in timeline and select Convert Clip to Track. This will also add a new Recorded clip within the Timeline Directors folder.

This will open up an Editor within the Inspector so we can control things within that entire clip we created.

For example, we can easily speed up the timing of this clip with the Speed Multiplier.

We can also create an Ease In and Ease Out transition into our animation by holding Ctrl and dragging the edges of the clip.

You will notice below that it will slowly ease into the transition.

This might be helpful for stitching multiple animations together in order to blend them nicely.

I can also add multiple animations with the same object. I can hit the record button within Timeline, and after the first clip, I will add a new key and then add another key at the end, just like we did before. And then I will create multiple keys in between. Then, if we hit save you will notice a second Recorded clip in the Timeline Directors folder.

We can even add another animation in here! Once, we have our animation clips, we can easily move our clips around to our liking, and we can even push them onto each other and this will blend them into each other. That is only if we are using the Mix Mode.

Sometimes our animation clips have a slight offset to them and when we transition from one clip to the next, you might notice a little jump between them.

If we wanted to solve this, we can use “Match Offset to Previous/Next Clip” and it will match the offsets on the transform so it becomes a smooth transition.

This is a rough idea on how to create an animation. Stay tuned for more!