⏲️Time

General time and loop settings

Apply Settings to All

This button (in the top right) is only available when multiple Timeflow instances are present. This applies the current time settings to all instances of Timeflow in the scene, which can be used to synchronize all instances with the same framerate, duration, and other settings.

Display Format

This drop-down menu offers different ways of displaying time. This only affects how time is displayed in the editor and can be changed as needed.

• Seconds (ex: 1.233 seconds)

• Frames (ex: 74 frames)

• Timecode (ex: 00:01.233 HH:MM:SS:FS)

• Measures (ex: 1.3.3 - based on the BPM)

The Display Format affects the main time display (shown in bold white numbers above).

This can also be changed directly in the view by clicking to the left of each time field. For convenience, the Timeflow view has 2 time displays that can each be set to whichever time format you prefer. The default display shows seconds on top and frames below.

To enable the Measures time format, enable musical timing by clicking the note icon

Fractional Seconds

Determines how microseconds are displayed when viewing timecode format. When enabled, the fractional time .233 in the example above would equal 23/100s of a second. Alternatively when Fractional Seconds is disabled, the .233 is converted to frames based on the FPS set below, which in this case would be 14 frames (00:01.14). This option is a matter of personal preference and can be set to match external editing software.

Click the time to edit using the keyboard

In many cases where time units are used, a value in seconds is assumed unless otherwise specified. It may be helpful to display Seconds mode in the Timeflow view to select and copy specific times relating to a marker or keyframe.

Current Time

Displays the current time in the timeline, displayed in the format selected. This can be changed manually to jump to another time. This corresponds to the playhead marker in the view shown below (orange wedge).

Click and drag the playhead to set the current time, or click anywhere in the time ruler bar to jump to another time.

Start Time

Sets the beginning time of the timeline. This value is usually 0 though can be set to any value desired. This can also be used to globally (and non-destructively) insert or remove time from the beginning of existing animations.

Play From Start

Enable this setting to ensure that Timeflow always begins playing from the beginning of the timeline when in play mode or running in a build. In most cases this value should remain enabled. Otherwise if disabled, then playback starts from the current time.

End Time

This sets the ending time of the timeline.

Timeflow requires a minimum duration of 1 second, therefor the smallest allowed value for End Time is Start Time + 1 second;

Play Past End

If this option is enabled, playback continues beyond the end of the timeline indefinitely. Use this option if you have procedural or looping behaviors you wish to extend. Alternatively, if this option is off then playback will stop when it reaches the end, or loop if looping is enabled.

Play Past End is only applicable when looping is off.

Duration

This sets the total time of the timeline, with a minimum value of 1 second.

Timeflow has a maximum duration of 100,000 seconds, which offers more than 27 hours of continuous play. This limit is to avoid potential issues with UI drawing. Generally it is advised to avoid such long durations unless needed for special circumstances.

Lock Duration

The total duration may be locked to prevent accidental changes and disables dragging of the end time indicator in the Timeflow view.

Match Audio

When an Audio Track is assigned, use this button to set the Timeflow duration to match the audio clip length.

Fit to Displayed Objects

Press this button to set the start and end time to match the currently displayed objects in view. This takes into account all keyframes and tracks displayed. This can be helpful to discover any animation data that has ended up outside of the original time range.

Keyframes out of range

Once keyframes or tracks have been moved outside of the current time range, they are no longer accessible in the view since scrolling prohibits going beyond the timeline duration.

An easy workaround is to change the Start Time and End Time as needed to view more time in either direction, or use Fit to Displayed Objects. The start, end, and duration can safely be changed at any time without adversely affecting existing animations.

Enable Looping

Enables or disables looping. If the Work Area is active, then the specified region of time is looped, otherwise the full duration is looped.

Looping can be used with or without the Work Area enabled

Local Time Scale

This multiplies the speed of the Timeflow instance and affects the playback rate of all animations within it. This is the same as setting Time Scale in Update Settings.

Local time scale can be set to counteract the global time scale. For example, if you want the global time scale to be 2, you can set the Timeflow local time scale to 0.5 so that it plays at 1:1 in real time.

Global Time Scale

When enabled, this sets Time.timeScale, affecting the scene globally. This value can be used to create special timing effects such as slower or faster motion, affecting all timing globally.

Since Time.timeScale is a global value, the checkbox ensures that it is set intentionally, only by those Timeflow instances that have it enabled.

BPM

This defines music timing as beats per minute. When using a soundtrack and/or synchronizing to music, set the BPM to match the audio track. To view musical timing select the Measures format. This can also be set for the grid display.

Timeflow prohibits directly animating its own properties such as BPM since it can cause unexpected behaviors. If BPM needs to change over the course of an animation, this could be accomplished through a script and an example is included in the examples. Assets/AxonGenesis/Timeflow/Samples/Demo/Scenes/AudioMidi/BPMControl

FPS

This sets the target number of frames per second, which acts as the basis of timing. This works in conjunction with the Timeflow Preferences to determine the time tolerance (i.e. the smallest discreet unit of time for setting keyframes).

The FPS setting by itself does not impose a limit on the actual framerate rendered during runtime unless configured to do so in the Update Settings.

Custom Grid Time Increment

Overrides the grid and snap spacing using a custom time interval.

An example using a Custom Grid Time Increment of 1.5 seconds

Auto Play

When enabled, Timeflow starts playing immediately upon start. This may be turned off to start playback using user input, a trigger, or some other game logic.

Startup Frame Buffer

This determines how many frames are rendered before auto play begins. This effectively causes playback to wait until the scene has initialized. This avoids playback skipping when loading a scene that takes more than 1 frame to initialize.

It is recommended to set the Startup Frame Buffer to a value of 3, though may be adjusted based on individual scene performance.

Audio

An audio soundtrack may optionally be assigned to synchronize the scene to audio or music. Please see the Audio Track documentation for more information.

Create Audio Track

Click this button to generate a new Audio Track game object with the required components and assigned to Timeflow.

Be sure to assign an audio clip after creating the track by dragging and dropping and audio file from the Project view into the audio clip field.

For longer or large audio files, it is recommended to set the import settings Load Type to Streaming to minimize memory usage. However, this is not required and any setting may be used at your discretion.