🎠Animation Sequencer

Multi-track animation clip blending and sequencing

Blends multiple animation clips in a keyframed sequence with smooth transitions, multi-track layering, and IK support.

When to Use

Animation Sequencer is best suited for characters with existing animation clips that you wish to choreograph in Timeflow, creating smooth transitions between a series of animation clips.

If you only need to play individual clips one at a time, use the Animation Clips behavior, which also provides the ability to time remap the clip using keyframes curves.

If animating a game character with an Animator Controller, you might alternatively consider using the Animator Blend Trees approach to animate the character using control parameters instead of sequencing animation clips. Which method you use depends on your use case.

Inspector Overview

Default Clip

This specifies the base animation to play when no other animation clips are playing.

To blend the animation sequence with an existing Animator Controller, leave the Default Clip unassigned. This allows you then to use the blend weight to control how much Animation Sequencer influence the base animation.

Rebind Animator

Use this button to reset the binding pose and rebuild the setup. This might be needed if your character gets into a weird state for some reason. When using Animation Rigging constraints, this also rebuilds the Rig Builder graph.

Blend Weight

Controls the overall blend between with the Default Clip, or base Animator Controller.

  • 0.0 = base Animator only

  • 0.5 = equal blend

  • 1.0 = sequencer animation overrides base Animator

Additive

Enable Additive mode if you want to blend the Animation Sequencer with the base Animator animation. Or turn this off for the sequencer to overwrite the Animator. With either Additive enabled or not, mixing with the base Animator is also affected by the Blend Weight

Additive can be set for each track and/or for the whole Animation Sequencer, which means that the resulting animation is mixed in additively with Animator Controller (or if none is set, then the Default Clip).

Additive Animation Clip Setup

It's important to note that additive is only applicable for animation clips that have been especially setup as additive.

  1. Select the AnimationClip asset in the Project view

  2. In the Inspector, click the 3 dots menu and switch to Debug mode to expose all fields.

  3. Enable Has Additive Reference Pose and be sure to assign the Additive Reference Pose Clip, which is used as the baseline to determine the relative offsets from.

IK Constraints

Animation Sequencer supports IK (Inverse Kinematics) constraints from the Animation Rigging package using Rig Builder. Or it can be used with Mechanim Avatar IK system.

For a free tool to quickly setup a control rig see: https://assetstore.unity.com/packages/tools/animation/control-rig-249848

Apply Root Motion

Toggles Animator.applyRootMotion while the sequencer is active. This also allows Animation Sequencer to modify when root motion is applied with the following setting:

Single Track Only

When enabled, root motion is applied only if exactly one track contributes to prevent drift from multi-track blends.

Animation Clips

This section lists all of the animation clips available to the sequencer. Animation clips are automatically added from the Animator component when the Animation Sequencer is first applied. You may also add more individually by pressing the + button.

After a new slot is created by pressing the + button, assign an Animation Clip asset by dragging and dropping it from the Project window, or click the target icon on the right to search the project for a clip.

Drag and Drop Animation Clips

To quickly add animations, you can drag and drop Animation Clip assets from the project view into a Clip Track in the Timeflow window. The animation clip appears highlighted in green until it is dropped into position. The new clip is automatically added to the list in the inspector.

Clear All

Removes all animation clips from the list.

Sort

Sorts the list of animations alphabetically. This only affects the display in the inspector and does not impact sequencer keyframes.

Reload

Click this button to repopulate the list of animation clips with those used in the Animator Controller.

Clip Tracks

In the Timeflow view, animation sequences are created using keyframes on a Clip Track. Each keyframe defines an animation clip to play with optional blend in and out durations. Multiple tracks may be added as needed to layer animations.

Adding Tracks

To create a new clip track, right click on any existing track and select Add Animation Sequencer Track.

Track Weight

Each clip track has a weight value determining how much it mixes with the layers below it. The weight for each track may be adjusted in the info panel in the lower left.

Or alternatively the weight may be adjusted in the inspector in the Tracks section.

Animating Track Weights

Each Clip Track has a weight value that may be animated (with support up to 10 tracks) using a standard keyframe channel. Below is an example which animates the blend weight of Clip Track 1 to smoothly transition the character from walking to idle, then walking again.

The weights are exposed as values named BlendWeight00, BlendWeight01, ... BlendWeight09.

Avatar Mask

Optional filter that limits which transforms the sequencer drives. This applies to all animation clips on the clip track.

  • Humanoid: mask by body parts (upper body, hands, head…)

  • Generic: mask by transform paths (ensure names match your rig)

For more information see the Unity documentation for Avatar Masks.

Keyframes

Each keyframe on a clip track defines an animation to play with options to adjust playback and create a smooth transition from the preceding clip.

Tip: you can expand the height of channels by clicking and dragging the bottom edge of the channel below the channel name, or right click to select a channel height from the context menu.

The selected keyframe(s) can be edited in the Timeflow info panel.

Time

Specifies the keyframe time in the timeline.

Colorize

Enable this to override the track color for the selected keyframes.

Animation Clip

Select an animation clip from the drop down menu. This only lists the animations that have been added to the Animation Sequencer. To add and manage clips, see the Animation Clips section in the inspector.

Click the arrow icon button next to the drop down menu to select the animation clip in the project window.

Click the pencil icon to open the animation clip in the Animation window for editing.

Loop

This toggles looping for the selected keyframes. If looping is off, then the animation will hold that last pose if the keyframe duration exceeds the animation clip length.

Limit

When loop is enabled, the limit specifies how many times the animation can loop after which it holds. To loop without any limit, set the value to 0.

Speed

This sets the speed of the animation clip playback. If for example it is set to a value of 2.0, then the animation clip will play twice as fast.

Note that the speed of the entire Animation Sequencer can also be changed by setting the Time Scale in the Update Settings.

Clip Range

This determines the portion of the animation clip to play. The Start and End fields allow numeric entry for the start and end of the range slider.

If you wish to play only a portion of an animation clip, adjust the clip range as desired. This sub section will be looped if Loop is enabled.

Blend In/Out

Specifies an optional duration in seconds to transition the clip in and out.

This is visualized in the track view by a ramp in and a ramp out. Drag the square handles to adjust the in and out durations. If the keyframe is not overlapping any others, then it blends with the layer below it. Ultimately the layers blend with the Default Clip or Animator Controller animation.

When the keyframe is overlapping another, the two blend together, indicated by the crisscrossing ramps.

The blend in and out animation curves can be edited by clicking on the green curve field. This opens Unity's built-in Curve editor window. Here you can customize the curve, as well as apply and create presets.

To reset the in/out curves to default, click the circular reset icon

Duration

The length in seconds of the keyframe track.

In the Track View, this is the duration of the keyframe track outlined in yellow when selected. Click and drag on the yellow block handles on either side to extend or shorten the duration.

Out Time

This sets the end time of the keyframe. This is tied to the Duration, so changing either one will affect the other.

Foot IK / Playable IK

These toggles are only applicable when using the Mechanim Avatar IK system. They enable on a per-clip bases whether foot and other playable constraints are applied.

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