Using timeline with AC - is that really useful?

KaySievert

Hi,
I have been playing around with timeline and was at first very exited about this new feature.
However, as far as I can tell, it is still far easier to move NPCs around in a cut scene using AC, Animator Controllers and root motion.
Am I missing something maybe..?

And while timeline has some other neat features, it would still require a mix of AC actions and timeline to create a complete timeline cut scene.

Might as well stick with AC then and have everything self contained.

Just my 8 cents,
- Kay

ChrisIceBox

I'm not going to speak for Unity, but Timeline is still very young and missing some key features such as event triggering - which does reduce its usefulness somewhat for the moment.

KaySievert

I have developed a pretty good workflow in AC, to where I can create cut scenes with NPCs moving about the scenes and good character animation by adding Salsa3D to them. Lip synced speech audio and all that good stuff.

I don't see getting that complete kind of functionality in Timeline / CineMachine any time soon.
Parts of it, yes. But not the whole nine yards.

I'm going to be OK creating cut scenes in ACs action editor for now. And while that may not be as slick as a timeline sequencer - at least I get a complete set of features with AC.

Alverik

@KaySievert You are seeing this the wrong way. Too much AC usage I guess, lol. Timeline is an animation tool, you can see it as the big brother of the Animation window. The main difference is that you can animate anything in the scene, not just what is parented to the animator (which was a huge limitation before). This is specially useful for stuff you haven't made custom animations for, since you can animate it right then and there. But, to deal with characters moving around the scene you won't want to move them manually and set their currently playing clip manually either... If you've watched show cases and other examples of Timeline/Cinemachine in Unite you'll notice they use regular NavmeshAgent character controllers and simply animate the Target for each character, which makes it ridiculously simple and that way the Character controller you've setup for your characters deals with calling the right animations. You'd probably just run clips manually when your character/model is stationary or need him to do something specific, like jump an x length hole or something. 

The other good thing with timeline is you can play audio at any moment and sync it easily with the rest of your animation (something super hard to do with the Animation window). You also have more control of the camera (albeit it takes some time to learn. Cinemachine has a ton of options so it does have a learning curve. Plus it's still in development so there are quirks here and there). 

A mistake people do often is think of it as just a tool for cutscenes, since it's an animation tool in general, and you can loop the "animations" you make with it, you can use it to easily bring life to your scene by giving small props simple animations, and without having to spend time in Maya or Blender.

Besides that, you can make custom playables to do whatever you want and make much more complex things. But, there's only one or two examples packages running around in the net and rather simple yet (which is bad if you are not a programmer). I've been thinking of making a custom playable to run AC's actions directly in it or at least actionlists assets. I think AC and Timeline could work really nicely together. But for now you should think of it as an extension of the animation tools in Unity (since it's basically an advanced Animation window), not as a replacement for running logic.

You could also buy Cinema Director or Slate which are much more mature products for sequencing, but Timeline is free...

KaySievert

Thanks for your feedback Alverik.
I will look at the Unite 2017 vids to see if that helps me to figure out how to move AC characters around. Without scripting that is. I have decided that I will not invest the time it would take to get comfortable scripting in Unity, even though I have coding experience.
I'm a one man band, and rather focus on other aspects of game creation then calling procedures();

Here is what I was hoping timeline / cinemachine (or Cinema Director for that) would be useful for: Creating complete cut scenes with animated NPCs that are fully lip synced (Salsa3D) and can *easily* be moved in the scene. And with the appropriate camera cuts and audio clips of course.

As far as I can tell, this is currently not going to happen. So, for me it just isn't as useful as I had hoped and I'd rather stick with one main Unity extension (AC) which can do pretty much all I need it to do.
All the interactions between different plugins and extensions are already becoming pretty complex, so I'd rather not muddy the waters any further.
Cinema Director seems to fizzle out btw, and it has similar limitations as timeline as far as I can see.

Not sure if I got my point across, but it will have to do. Maybe in the future I will discover timelines usefulness.

Alverik

@KaySievert Of course, I was just trying to explain how people go about controlling characters using Timeline. But, AC is made specifically with this kind of situation in mind and it's very good at it (else I wouldn't be such an AC evangelist myself, lol). My point was: Timeline is just one more tool for animating things in Unity. Like any other tool in the engine or the asset store, you use it when it's useful and when it makes sense. Timeline, like other sequencers, is best for situations where you need to choreograph/animate a "group" of objects in a certain way. Like having a statue wobble and then have a key fall down gracefully from its head and land in a specific place in the ground (and put audio and stuff in it at exact moments in the sequence). Situations like these are very hard and/or annoying to do well without the ability to see things playing live, and it is very hard/annoying to do well with the Animation window (Since the Animation window only allows you to animate things parented to the object with the Animator, and you need to use animation events and a bit of scripting to play audio to boot... all of which is not necessary with Timeline, since you can animate anything in the current scene and do it all without a single line of code).

Anyway, just like with animations created with the Animation window, you can then just run the Timelines when you need them using AC. In my opinion, they are not tools meant to compete, but complement each other.

Though, some will find it less useful if they, or a teammate, is an accomplished animator in an external application (like Maya, Blender or 3dsmax). Since, in that case, they can probably do a better job outside the engine, and then just import the animated objects right in... Or may simply find Timeline to still be too green (since it is). But for an amateur animator, or a dev in need or in a hurry to get some animations (like us, lol), it'll probably be more than enough.

salex

On my part as an artist, I think that the "timeline" tool is headed in the right direction but it is still "fresh" and has yet to be tested.. Personally, I haven't tried it yet, but as far as I can see he is good for example, small animations that require a closed loop. Of course, this is a much better system than unity previous had, because it gives the possibility of video editing within the editor and the greater flexibility as far as the animation goes. As far as I'm concerned, the timeline can  help when something needs to be done quickly.

  AC is a very good animation tool and many complex things can be done, but certainly there are better and more expensive solutions, and the timeline has been added as another good tool to be in pair with AC.

I think that the unity 2017 headed in the right direction but again we'll see..

ChrisIceBox

As a general note about using AC in conjunction with other sequencing assets - a character's Motion control setting can be set to Manual to allow another asset to control it.  When left as Automatic, AC will assume control over it every frame.  It can be changed in code, but it's simple:

myCharacter.motionControl = AC.MotionControl.Manual;

KaySievert

OK, so after watching several of the Unite 2017 videos about Timeline and CineMachine, I must admit that this has some really impressive possibilities.
Fully integrating it with AC probably won't be easy, but being able to use some of the virtual cameras sure would be nice.