🎛️Menu Bar

Common features found in most editors

Most editors in the Timeflow tool suite show a menu bar at the top of the inspector, just under the component name. This displays relevant data and options depending on the type of object.

Foldout

The twirl down arrow on the left is used to collapse or expand the UI. This is separate from the main component foldout to provide more control over the inspector for each object. It helps reduce screen clutter to collapse regions when not in use and retains the state on each object.

When the foldout is collapsed on the component level, it also disables the gizmos in the scene view, and all other components of the same type are affected. However, when using the sub foldout (unique to Timeflow editors), each component maintains its own collapsed state and won't affect visibility of gizmos.

Enabled

Determines whether the behavior is active or not. When disabled, the associated behavior no longer updates or performs. This is different from the checkbox to activate/deactivate a component. Deactivating a component means it doesn't run at all, where as disabling just the behavior stops animation updates but still allows awake and other setup operations to run, which better facilities enabling and disabling behaviors on the fly.

The enabled state can be toggled on and off by clicking the stopwatch icon shown in the inspector and in the Switches Panel.

Deactivating an object also disables its components and hides any channels they contain from the Timeflow view.

Refresh

Click this button to force the behavior to refresh. Each component defines its own refresh methods and often re-runs setup operations. Click this for the main Timeflow instance to rebuild the internal Timeflow object tree.

Use refresh to troubleshoot issues or any time a behavior has stopped updating.

The Axon Genesis logo in the top left corner of the Timeflow view, selects and forces a refresh of the active Timeflow instance.

Debug Mode

This button is displayed if debug logging is enabled in the Timeflow Preferences.

Click to toggle debug messages on or off. When enabled, messages are output to the Console window and the icon is displayed in green Every component that derives from AxonGenesisBehavior has a DebugEnabled state to enable/disable additional messages for trouble-shooting.

Debug logging should be kept off except when directly in use, otherwise it can cause excessive logging which can affect performance.

Logging can be turned off globally for all objects in the AxonGenesis namespace by selecting from the main menu: Tools > Timeflow > Editor > Disable Debug for All Objects

Editor and Runtime Modes

In special cases where you need a component to only execute in the editor, or only at runtime, this setting can be selected by clicking the small white arrow icon.

The icon changes depending on the mode selected: Editor Only

Runtime Only

Documentation

Click the question mark icon to open the documentation related to the component, linking to a page on this website.

Please note that the blue book icon displayed in previous versions of Timeflow has been removed since it is redundant to the built-in help icon.

... Additional Menu

This is a general menu to display additional commands (when available) or other tools that the component may offer. This varies depending on the type of object and is not always displayed.