Cubic Bezier Curves

As of the latest release, r144, it is possible to edit the path of an instance as it is animated using cubic bezier curves. This is not activated by default though. In order to use this feature you will need to set the new Path Mode property of the timeline. Currently there are two setting for it, Line and Cubic Bezier.

Once the mode is activated a few extra UI elements will appear in the Layout to allow you to edit the path of an instance as a curve. Remember that the new controls will only show up as long as Editing Mode is turned on.

It is also possible to see in the Timeline Bar which path mode is being used in between each pair of keyframes, and change the value if you like. This is similar to how you can change the ease function that is used in between each pair of keyframes.

Keep in mind that this feature is only used for X and Y properties of an instance, so other property tracks will not show a path mode.

luckyrawatlucky

That is a feature I am planning on adding, at some point in the future. The idea is that somehow, possibly through an event action you should be able to change the instance or instances that a timeline is affecting, that way it would be possible to re-use the same animation for multiple instances. Not too sure when will I get around to doing that though.

mekonbekon

When I first implemented the feature, there was no need to press ctrl to scrub. Right before making it public though, I was doing a little example animation, and I was constantly following what at the time was the wrong flow to create keyframes, which was:

1. making changes in the layout or properties bar
2. moving the time marker to a new position
3. setting keyframes in the new position

This meant that any changes I made in order to later create keyframes out of them, were lost because the program would preview the animation from the current time as soon as I moved the time marker to the position I wanted.

As the developer this was just a mild annoyance because I knew exactly what was going on. So I continued working taking into account that the correct workflow was:

1. moving the time marker to a new position
2. making changes in the layout or properties bar
3. setting keyframes in the new position

I thought that for anyone else this small gotcha would be confusing/annoying, so I decided that the default behaviour when moving the time marker shouldn't change instances values in any way.

Having to consciously press a key in order to preview makes it almost impossible to do it on accident, so the mild confusion of loosing changes because of an incorrect scrub becomes almost impossible.

When implementing these I thought about my previous experiences with other software like, 3d Studio Max or even Unity, where you have to juggle a bunch of keyboard shortcuts along with the mouse, just to be able to do something. I like every other person got used to that very quickly, so I thought it would be the same here.

dop2000

Somewhere in my TODO list there is the item "Further Event Sheet Integration", particularly the possibility to set a keyframe that would trigger an action on the related instance, an "Action Keyframe" if you will. But I have no timeframe as to when I would start working on that.

As for C3 crashing, I must have introduced that bug recently because I am pretty sure that should work, I will get around to fixing that for the next beta release.

justifun

Is it theoretically possible for a plug-in developer to write something that could convert motion data from a Json or xml sheet into the timeline format so that construct could play it back? Would it be hard for timeline to have a load Json function?

I suppose it would be technically possible. I haven't tried this myself so I'm sure there are lots of caveats, but a plugin should be able to create a timeline programmatically at runtime, this is pretty much what the Tween Behavior does under the hood.

But I suppose that you are thinking of importing data from other animations tools so C3 can just play it back. At the moment this would be very difficult because the feature is just not mature enough, so it just doesn't understand a lot of features present in other animation software.

Delenne

One more question: will users have access to properties of plugins? For example, will it be possible to control Spriter object parameters with the timeline? Or will it be limited to the standard Construct objects?

In order to be able to animate C3's built-in plugin properties I had to do a little bit of work, because there was no way to update the values asides from event actions. The way it works is that each plugin needs to define which of it's properties are animatable and then implement the appropriate logic to react to changes at runtime. By default a plugin property is not animatable.

All of that means that each plugin creator needs to update their plugin if they want to support animation of properties through a timeline.

The details on how exactly to update a plugin will be released later, when the whole feature is more stable.

So to answer the question, at the moment only the built in plugins support timelines. In the future it will be possible to modify existing plugins to do so aswell.

Delenne

Are nested timelines possible?

At the moment this is not possible, I was thinking about it just yesterday though. But I don't think I will be able to start working on it any time soon.

The animation interpolation control is quite rudimentary. Are you planning to add a graph editor of sorts?

I am planning to add the option to create custom ease functions. These feature would come with a special editor to build your custom easing curve. You should then be able to assign that custom curve in the same way you assign the built in ones. Is that what you mean?

Will bones/segmented characters be implemented? The competition allows for these, and it opens up many possibilities. Construct still relies on Spriter, which is less than ideal.

At the moment there are no plans to support bone structures. That is a completely different feature which just happens to work very well with the concept of a timeline, so they are often assumed to go hand in hand.

Will motion paths be integrated with the timeline?

I Have thought about this too, but I am not too sure when I will be able to start work on this.

Which parts of Construct's functionality can be keyframed/used in a timeline exactly? Everything, including event sheets and functions, and parameters for any object that is inserted in the layout? How far does the integration go?

At the moment you can create keyframes for almost all properties that can belong to an instance. This includes the common properties, instance variables, behavior properties, effect parameters, and plugin properties.

Some properties don't make sense to be interpolated, so those are not available. Ej. Sprite's Initial Frame can not be interpolated.

There are some properties which are missing, because they are not part of Construct at all. For instance at the moment it is no possible to set the current frame of an animation from a timeline. That is a missing feature I would like to add.

I have though about the possibility to interpolate Layout and Layer properties, Event Sheet global variables and the ability to trigger an event sheet action from a timeline, but those things are just in my TODO list. There is no estimated time of even when will I start with any of that.

IJCT

scrubbing preview should be a button on the interface, like "enable scrubbing preview" while dragging the timeline, its not obvious that we need to press CTRL (cmd)

This, along with other keyboard shortcuts will be outlined in the manual, when it is written. I think that once you know about it, it's pretty easy to use.

also please add dark theme for the timeline.

This should come in time, otherwise it looks pretty ugly in any theme other than the default one. While we don't have this the whole feature will remain behind the experimental flag.

onion skinning its a needed feature for this.

What exactly are you thinking about? I picture a few different things.

1) A translucent preview of how an instance looks in each keyframe. So you can more or less tell how the animation will take place.

2) Several translucent previews of how the instance looks as it is animated. Something like this maybe?

I have the feeling you are thinking of the second option. While I think it would look nice, I don't think it is absolutely crucial to creating an animation. The scrubbing preview already serves the purpose of giving you a feel of how the animation is turning out.