🎼Musical Timing

Synchronize animations with music

One of the unique features of Timeflow is the ability to work with musical timing. This feature is optional and can be enabled or disabled by toggling the note icon button.

Musical timing is a display feature that can be turned on or off any time with no affect on animations or playback. Any behaviors using musical based timing are only affected when the BPM tempo or time signature is changed. Even when musical timing is disabled in the view, BPM-based timing continues to function as expected.

BPM

This sets the tempo in beats per minute, determining the duration of each note and bar of music. This should always be set to match the audio track (if one is used).

Changing the BPM has no effect on playback speed. For example, increasing the BPM does not make animations play faster, with the exception of any behaviors that use BPM-based intervals, such as Tween.

Animating BPM

Although BPM cannot be animated directly, it can be animated using a simple script. See the provided example scene BPMControl, included in the demo samples.

Changing the BPM over time can cause procedural motions such as Tween to race or skip due to the nature of changing the base timing over time. It is recommended to make BPM changes abruptly, or during sections of time where it isn't obvious.

Time Signature

This defines musical structure in terms of how many beats per measure and what type of beats those are (quarter notes, eighth notes, etc). Music is most commonly written in 4/4 timing, the default value. The primary reason to change it would be to match a piece of music in another time signature. Apart from that it could be used to customize the grid in the Timeflow view.

For additional information on musical timing, there are many resources and videos online.