This guide has been completely rewritten to provide an 83-step explanation in how to turn a fire particle effect on and off using Timeline, as well as activating sounds and building an animation start button. A new fire effect is added to this post and included in the Timeline CUA Setup Scene. The setup scene provides a starting point for you to follow along with in this guide. There are also completed scenes provided for each of the three parts of this guide.
This guide includes a demonstration of an elf mage casting a fire spell. Timeline will be used in the animation of the hands, as well as activating triggers for the CUA to turn on and off. When using Timeline* to turn CUA on and off, it is not recommended to add Timeline to the CUA itself, instead use another atom in the scene, such as a person, or perhaps an empty atom.
* Please note that Timeline requires Virt-A-Mate version 1.20.77 or more recent!
The guide is divided into 3 parts.
Part 1 = build triggers for CUA (steps 1 to 50)
Part 2 = add triggers for sounds (steps 51 to 74)
Part 3 = add options to play the animation when the scene loads (steps 75 to 83)
LET US BEGIN.
Part 1
1. In order to follow along with this guide, please open up the "Timeline CUA Setup Scene" posted to this resource. Select the person and the plug-in tab for the person and open the GUI for the Timeline plugin. The default view for Timeline is the Target menu as circled below.
2. Click the Edit menu. The Edit menu has some global settings that we would like to adjust.
3. We would like to increase the length of time for this animation in the Edit menu.
4. Click the +1 second button until the count reaches 15 seconds.
5. Once you have the length set to 15 seconds, click the Apply button.
6. Click the + button to the right of the Targets button.
7. In this menu one can select the controls to add to the animation, such as head controls, shoulder controls, etc. Click the > button highlighted below until it reaches rHandControl for right hand control.
8. When you have found rHandControl, click the Add button.
9. You will see that the rHand control is added to Animation 1.
10. Go to the Add controls selection again, find lHandControl for left hand control and click the Add button highlighted below.
11. Now you see that lHand (left hand control) is added to Animation 1.
12. Since we want the hands to start at the animation in their current position, we will not move the hands. Instead click the +1 second button till you get to 3 seconds.
13. Now you will see the timeline has moved to 3 seconds. Please note that there aren't any diamond nodes for the hand controls at this point, this is because nothing has yet been changed. Timeline inserts nodes when something about the scene changes, such as control position changes or the addition of triggers.
14. Now move both of the hands to be slightly underneath the fire CUA. You can keep adjusting the hands until you get the desired pose. Note that in the timeline there are now nodes designating the changes for both the hands.
15. We want to maintain the positions of the hands for most of the scene. In order to minimize movement, we will copy and paste the nodes. Click the Copy button highlighted below.
16. Click the +1 second button.
17. Then click the Paste button.
18. Keep clicking the +1 second, and then paste button repeatedly and stop at 12 seconds.
19. If you followed these steps, the timeline will look like the below image.
20. You can click the "Anim 1" play button to see what the hand animations look like so far. Since there is only one animation, you can also click the "All" button to see the animation as well.
21. If you click the Stop button once, it will pause the animation. If you click the Stop button a second time, the animation will reset to time = 0 seconds. Please click the Stop button twice and proceed to the next step.
22. Click the + button next to Targets menu since we need to add more controls to our animations, specifically for triggers.
23. Now we will add a triggers track to turn the fire cua off and on. Click the Add Triggers Track button.
24. After you clicked the Add Triggers Track you will see Trigger 1 added to the animation timeline.
25. Now click the Targets button to go back to the Targets menu.
26. Here you will see the Triggers 1 box in the upper right corner. Click the square area of the Triggers 1 box as indicated by the arrow.
27. Now you will see the Triggers Actions menu. This is the typical trigger menu for VAM which includes Start Actions, Transition Actions, and End Actions. For our purposes here, let's just use Start Actions. Click the Add Discrete Action button while being in the Start Actions tab.
28. After clicking the Add Discrete Action button you will see an action row as the arrow points to below. Click the Settings button.
29. You will see a menu with Receiver Atom, Receiver and Receiver Target.
30. Click the Receiver Atom and you will see a list of all potential receiver atoms in the scene, as shown below. We will want to select the fire cua atom.
31. Here it shows that fire cua is selected as the Receiver Atom.
32. Click on the gray box for receiver as pointed to below and from the drop-down list select AtomControl.
33. Click on the gray box for Receiver Target and from the drop-down list select "on." This trigger basically controls whether an atom is on or off.
34. In this trigger, when the checkbox is unchecked, this will turn the atom (the fire cua) off. If the box has the checkmark turned on, the atom will be turned on. At time 0, we want the fire to be off at the start of the animation, so make sure the box is not checked, as seen below.
35. Clicking the Test button will test the trigger and will execute the action, in this case it will turn the fire cua off and you will no longer see the flames. Let us leave the flames off and continue to the next step.
36. Click OK to leave this menu.
37. This is the only action we will add to the trigger at time 0, so click the Done button to leave this menu.
38. Click the +1s button to go to time 3 seconds on the timeline. Note that the hands will move to the position that was set earlier.
39. Click the Triggers 1 box. We are now going to set the trigger to turn on the fire cua at the 3 second mark.
40. Click Add Discrete Action.
41. Click Settings.
42. We are going to be selecting the fire cua again as the receiver atom.
43. The steps are similar to before. Select fire cua as Receiver Atom. AtomControl as the Receiver. And Receiver Target as "on." At 3 seconds we want the fire CUA to turn on, so make sure the checkmark is turned on in the middle of the menu. When you are done, click the Ok button at the bottom right.
44. Click the Done button.
45. Now click the +1 second button and keep going until you reach the 12 second point in the timeline as shown below.
46. Click the Triggers 1 gray box.
47. Click Add Discrete Action.
48. We are now going to turn off the fire cua atom. You should have the routine down by now. As before, select fire cua, AtomControl and On. This time make sure the box is not checked, again, this trigger will turn off the fire atom at the 12 second mark. Click Ok when you have completed the setup.
49. Click Done.
50. Now, click the "Anim 1" button to play the animation and watch the results of your labor. Now is a good time to save the new scene. This is the end of Part 1.
Part 2
51. Click on the Stop button 2 times in order to stop the animation and reset the animation to time = 0.
52. To keep our triggers organized, we will only use Triggers 1 on the timeline for turning the fire cua on and off. We will make a new trigger to activate sound effects. Click the "+" button to go to the menu to add a new trigger track.
53. Click Add Triggers Track.
54. We can see that Triggers 2 is now added to the Timeline.
55. Click on the +1s three times to go to the 3 second mark.
56. Click the Targets menu.
57. Click the gray box for Triggers 2.
58. Click the Add Discrete Action button.
59. Click Settings.
60. In the Receiver Atom, click the gray box and you will see a list of potential receiver atoms. Select the AudioSource atom.
61. In the list for Receiver, select AudioSource.
62. For Receiver Target, scroll down until you see "PlayNow" and select that. What PlayNow does is it will tell the AudioSource to play a sound, even if the AudioSource was already playing another sound, basically overriding what the audio source was doing previously to the trigger being activated.
63. In this order, select Clip Type as "URL" first. Then, select the Clip Category as "Web." And finally select the Clip as the ignite sound that is already included in this scene, as shown in this image below.
64. Click "OK."
65. Click "Done." From now on, I am not going to show the click OK and click Done steps, I will just say to close out the menus.
66. Click +1s to go to 4 seconds in the timeline.
67. Click on the gray box for Triggers 2.
68. Click Add Discrete Settings, then click Settings. I am going to start listing multiple steps since you should be getting an understanding of the steps.
69. Fill in all the boxes as shown in the image below. Please note now that we will now use a fire crackling sound that is designed to seamlessly play over and over again. To do this, we will use the Receiver Target of PLayNowLoop as shown in the image. This means that the sound will keep playing until another trigger is sent to the AudioSource. After you made all the selections, click Ok and Done to close out the menus and return to the Timeline menu.
70. Now we will use the +1s button to go to the point in the Timeline in which the fire effect is scheduled to turn off. This is at the 12 second point. Since the fire effect turns off at that time, we want the fire sound to stop as well.
71. Click on the Triggers 2 box.
72. Click Add Discrete Action, then Settings.
73. This time, select the Receiver Atom as AudioSource, the Receiver as AudioSource and the Receiver Target as Stop. This will trigger the audio source to stop playing the sound. Close out the menus clicking Ok and Done as before.
74. Click the "Anim 1" play button to test out the new sounds with the animation.
Part 3
75. Click the Stop button twice to stop and rest the animation. Now would also be a good time to save your new scene. Let's now look at ways in which we might start the animation when the scene is loaded. One method is to set the timeline animation to start automatically playing when the scene loads. Click the Sequence menu to explore this option.
76. In the Sequence menu, clicking the checkbox for "Auto play on load" and turning the checkmark on will mean that the animation will automatically play when the scene is loaded. Turning the checkmark off will deactivate this feature. Let us leave this checkbox left unmarked for now as we will try another option to start the effect.
77. Open Add Atom Menu.
78. Select Triggers, UI Button, then Add Atom.
79. Select the new UI Button, then when in the Button tab, give the button a name, like "start." Then click on the Button Trigger tab.
80. While in the Button Trigger tab, click Add Click Action.
81. Click Settings.
82. Since timeline is connected to the person, we need to select the person as the Receiver Atom. When you select the person then one of the Receiver items that will be listed is the Timeline Plugin. The receiver target is then the action to "play." The trigger in the UI button will command timeline to play the animation when the UI button is clicked upon. When you have selected all the items listed in Receiver, click Ok.
83. Now save the scene. When you click on the start UI button and the animation will play. This is the end of Part 3.
Warm regards,
Farger
This guide includes a demonstration of an elf mage casting a fire spell. Timeline will be used in the animation of the hands, as well as activating triggers for the CUA to turn on and off. When using Timeline* to turn CUA on and off, it is not recommended to add Timeline to the CUA itself, instead use another atom in the scene, such as a person, or perhaps an empty atom.
* Please note that Timeline requires Virt-A-Mate version 1.20.77 or more recent!
The guide is divided into 3 parts.
Part 1 = build triggers for CUA (steps 1 to 50)
Part 2 = add triggers for sounds (steps 51 to 74)
Part 3 = add options to play the animation when the scene loads (steps 75 to 83)
LET US BEGIN.
Part 1
1. In order to follow along with this guide, please open up the "Timeline CUA Setup Scene" posted to this resource. Select the person and the plug-in tab for the person and open the GUI for the Timeline plugin. The default view for Timeline is the Target menu as circled below.
2. Click the Edit menu. The Edit menu has some global settings that we would like to adjust.
3. We would like to increase the length of time for this animation in the Edit menu.
4. Click the +1 second button until the count reaches 15 seconds.
5. Once you have the length set to 15 seconds, click the Apply button.
6. Click the + button to the right of the Targets button.
7. In this menu one can select the controls to add to the animation, such as head controls, shoulder controls, etc. Click the > button highlighted below until it reaches rHandControl for right hand control.
8. When you have found rHandControl, click the Add button.
9. You will see that the rHand control is added to Animation 1.
10. Go to the Add controls selection again, find lHandControl for left hand control and click the Add button highlighted below.
11. Now you see that lHand (left hand control) is added to Animation 1.
12. Since we want the hands to start at the animation in their current position, we will not move the hands. Instead click the +1 second button till you get to 3 seconds.
13. Now you will see the timeline has moved to 3 seconds. Please note that there aren't any diamond nodes for the hand controls at this point, this is because nothing has yet been changed. Timeline inserts nodes when something about the scene changes, such as control position changes or the addition of triggers.
14. Now move both of the hands to be slightly underneath the fire CUA. You can keep adjusting the hands until you get the desired pose. Note that in the timeline there are now nodes designating the changes for both the hands.
15. We want to maintain the positions of the hands for most of the scene. In order to minimize movement, we will copy and paste the nodes. Click the Copy button highlighted below.
16. Click the +1 second button.
17. Then click the Paste button.
18. Keep clicking the +1 second, and then paste button repeatedly and stop at 12 seconds.
19. If you followed these steps, the timeline will look like the below image.
20. You can click the "Anim 1" play button to see what the hand animations look like so far. Since there is only one animation, you can also click the "All" button to see the animation as well.
21. If you click the Stop button once, it will pause the animation. If you click the Stop button a second time, the animation will reset to time = 0 seconds. Please click the Stop button twice and proceed to the next step.
22. Click the + button next to Targets menu since we need to add more controls to our animations, specifically for triggers.
23. Now we will add a triggers track to turn the fire cua off and on. Click the Add Triggers Track button.
24. After you clicked the Add Triggers Track you will see Trigger 1 added to the animation timeline.
25. Now click the Targets button to go back to the Targets menu.
26. Here you will see the Triggers 1 box in the upper right corner. Click the square area of the Triggers 1 box as indicated by the arrow.
27. Now you will see the Triggers Actions menu. This is the typical trigger menu for VAM which includes Start Actions, Transition Actions, and End Actions. For our purposes here, let's just use Start Actions. Click the Add Discrete Action button while being in the Start Actions tab.
28. After clicking the Add Discrete Action button you will see an action row as the arrow points to below. Click the Settings button.
29. You will see a menu with Receiver Atom, Receiver and Receiver Target.
30. Click the Receiver Atom and you will see a list of all potential receiver atoms in the scene, as shown below. We will want to select the fire cua atom.
31. Here it shows that fire cua is selected as the Receiver Atom.
32. Click on the gray box for receiver as pointed to below and from the drop-down list select AtomControl.
33. Click on the gray box for Receiver Target and from the drop-down list select "on." This trigger basically controls whether an atom is on or off.
34. In this trigger, when the checkbox is unchecked, this will turn the atom (the fire cua) off. If the box has the checkmark turned on, the atom will be turned on. At time 0, we want the fire to be off at the start of the animation, so make sure the box is not checked, as seen below.
35. Clicking the Test button will test the trigger and will execute the action, in this case it will turn the fire cua off and you will no longer see the flames. Let us leave the flames off and continue to the next step.
36. Click OK to leave this menu.
37. This is the only action we will add to the trigger at time 0, so click the Done button to leave this menu.
38. Click the +1s button to go to time 3 seconds on the timeline. Note that the hands will move to the position that was set earlier.
39. Click the Triggers 1 box. We are now going to set the trigger to turn on the fire cua at the 3 second mark.
40. Click Add Discrete Action.
41. Click Settings.
42. We are going to be selecting the fire cua again as the receiver atom.
43. The steps are similar to before. Select fire cua as Receiver Atom. AtomControl as the Receiver. And Receiver Target as "on." At 3 seconds we want the fire CUA to turn on, so make sure the checkmark is turned on in the middle of the menu. When you are done, click the Ok button at the bottom right.
44. Click the Done button.
45. Now click the +1 second button and keep going until you reach the 12 second point in the timeline as shown below.
46. Click the Triggers 1 gray box.
47. Click Add Discrete Action.
48. We are now going to turn off the fire cua atom. You should have the routine down by now. As before, select fire cua, AtomControl and On. This time make sure the box is not checked, again, this trigger will turn off the fire atom at the 12 second mark. Click Ok when you have completed the setup.
49. Click Done.
50. Now, click the "Anim 1" button to play the animation and watch the results of your labor. Now is a good time to save the new scene. This is the end of Part 1.
Part 2
51. Click on the Stop button 2 times in order to stop the animation and reset the animation to time = 0.
52. To keep our triggers organized, we will only use Triggers 1 on the timeline for turning the fire cua on and off. We will make a new trigger to activate sound effects. Click the "+" button to go to the menu to add a new trigger track.
53. Click Add Triggers Track.
54. We can see that Triggers 2 is now added to the Timeline.
55. Click on the +1s three times to go to the 3 second mark.
56. Click the Targets menu.
57. Click the gray box for Triggers 2.
58. Click the Add Discrete Action button.
59. Click Settings.
60. In the Receiver Atom, click the gray box and you will see a list of potential receiver atoms. Select the AudioSource atom.
61. In the list for Receiver, select AudioSource.
62. For Receiver Target, scroll down until you see "PlayNow" and select that. What PlayNow does is it will tell the AudioSource to play a sound, even if the AudioSource was already playing another sound, basically overriding what the audio source was doing previously to the trigger being activated.
63. In this order, select Clip Type as "URL" first. Then, select the Clip Category as "Web." And finally select the Clip as the ignite sound that is already included in this scene, as shown in this image below.
64. Click "OK."
65. Click "Done." From now on, I am not going to show the click OK and click Done steps, I will just say to close out the menus.
66. Click +1s to go to 4 seconds in the timeline.
67. Click on the gray box for Triggers 2.
68. Click Add Discrete Settings, then click Settings. I am going to start listing multiple steps since you should be getting an understanding of the steps.
69. Fill in all the boxes as shown in the image below. Please note now that we will now use a fire crackling sound that is designed to seamlessly play over and over again. To do this, we will use the Receiver Target of PLayNowLoop as shown in the image. This means that the sound will keep playing until another trigger is sent to the AudioSource. After you made all the selections, click Ok and Done to close out the menus and return to the Timeline menu.
70. Now we will use the +1s button to go to the point in the Timeline in which the fire effect is scheduled to turn off. This is at the 12 second point. Since the fire effect turns off at that time, we want the fire sound to stop as well.
71. Click on the Triggers 2 box.
72. Click Add Discrete Action, then Settings.
73. This time, select the Receiver Atom as AudioSource, the Receiver as AudioSource and the Receiver Target as Stop. This will trigger the audio source to stop playing the sound. Close out the menus clicking Ok and Done as before.
74. Click the "Anim 1" play button to test out the new sounds with the animation.
Part 3
75. Click the Stop button twice to stop and rest the animation. Now would also be a good time to save your new scene. Let's now look at ways in which we might start the animation when the scene is loaded. One method is to set the timeline animation to start automatically playing when the scene loads. Click the Sequence menu to explore this option.
76. In the Sequence menu, clicking the checkbox for "Auto play on load" and turning the checkmark on will mean that the animation will automatically play when the scene is loaded. Turning the checkmark off will deactivate this feature. Let us leave this checkbox left unmarked for now as we will try another option to start the effect.
77. Open Add Atom Menu.
78. Select Triggers, UI Button, then Add Atom.
79. Select the new UI Button, then when in the Button tab, give the button a name, like "start." Then click on the Button Trigger tab.
80. While in the Button Trigger tab, click Add Click Action.
81. Click Settings.
82. Since timeline is connected to the person, we need to select the person as the Receiver Atom. When you select the person then one of the Receiver items that will be listed is the Timeline Plugin. The receiver target is then the action to "play." The trigger in the UI button will command timeline to play the animation when the UI button is clicked upon. When you have selected all the items listed in Receiver, click Ok.
83. Now save the scene. When you click on the start UI button and the animation will play. This is the end of Part 3.
Warm regards,
Farger
