Animation Controller
The timeline editor, for choreography — several things moving together on one clock.
For a single smooth change, you do not need it: put a duration on an event step. The timeline earns its place when timing between several objects matters.
The model
| Level | Is |
|---|---|
| Preset | one named animation you can play |
| Bar | one object's part in it, on its own track |
| Keyframe | a time, a value, and the easing used to arrive at it |
A bar animates one component of one object — and that object does not have to be the one owning the preset, which is what lets a single preset choreograph a whole group. When a bar targets another object, that object's component shows a back-reference saying it is being animated.
There is a second kind of bar: a play bar, which starts another object's preset when the playhead reaches it. Nest presets this way and a complex animation stays in manageable pieces.
A preset can have an explicit duration, which extends the timeline past the last keyframe. Without one, it lasts as long as its longest bar.
The panel
| Area | Holds |
|---|---|
| Left | the object hierarchy — pick what to animate |
| Centre | the timeline of the active preset |
| Right | that object's components — click or drag one to add a bar for it |
The header has the edit commands, the playback transport, the preview toggles and a Scene / Entity mode switch.
You choose what to animate here, deliberately. Otherwise clicking around the scene would keep moving the timeline out from under you.
Two preview toggles worth understanding
Auto-frames captures a keyframe at the playhead whenever you move the object in the scene. With it on, animating is: move the playhead, pose the object, repeat. This is the fastest way to work, and it is also how you accidentally create keyframes you did not want.
Demo makes scrubbing and playback actually drive the scene. On by default. Turn it off when you want to move the playhead without disturbing objects.
Working on the timeline
| Action | Result |
|---|---|
| Drag a bar | moves all of its keyframes together |
| Drag a keyframe | moves it in time, bounded by its neighbours |
| Ctrl-drag an end keyframe | scales the whole bar from the opposite end |
| Scroll | zoom the time axis |
Bars can be copied, cut and pasted. Deleting the last keyframe deletes the bar.
With bars selected, duplicate, copy, paste and delete apply to them — not to the objects in your scene.
Easing
Pick a curve on a keyframe and it describes how that keyframe is arrived at, not left.
The families (Quad, Quart, Circular, Exponent, Back) each come as In, Out and In-Out, plus Elastic with its own amount and period, plus linear and a custom curve you shape by hand.
If you are unsure, Out is almost always right: things that arrive and settle look natural; things that speed up into their destination do not.
What each curve feels like: Animation.
Playing an animation
A preset plays from an event step, with a loop mode (once, a count, or forever), a repeat count, a speed and a delay.
Autoplay is not a separate flag: it is an event on scene launch that plays the preset. The autoplay toggle in the panel creates and removes exactly that event, so you can see and edit it like anything else.
Next: Patch Editor