Exploring the timeline

Timeline is a component in the Unity Editor that is intended to put a sequence of animations together, which is attractive to industries such as film and TV. Timeline is also welcomed in games that may have cutscenes to help tell a story or introduce a player to a level. Unity also has two other useful components – Animator Controller and Animation Clips – as you will know if you have been following this book, as we covered these other components in Chapter 4, Applying Art, Animation, and Particles. They carry out the same tasks, but as a scene becomes busier with a series of individual animation clips, things can get messy quickly in the animator controller, with the multiple states transitioning between each other.

The following screenshot shows the animator controller with multiple states and transitions:

Figure 12.26 – An example of how chaotic Animator Controllers can get

Timeline supports three tasks:

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