Unity Development — Animate in Timeline

When building a cutscene in Timeline, you can use dolly tracks, audio tracks, animations previously created and more, but you can also animate objects within Timeline. Let’s take a look at that now.

In the Timeline window, one of the tracks you can create is an Animation Track. All you have to do is go to the ‘+’ symbol and add one.

From there you can drag any object from your scene that you want to animate within the cutscene or clip you are making with Timeline. If that object just not already have an Animator component, you will have the option to make one on the spot.

Now here is where Timeline can help you out when you do not already have an animation made for your object. On the Animation Track, you will see a red circle. That is the ‘Record’ button. Hit that and then you can make animation changes to the object.

Line up the cursor on the Timeline with where you want something to begin. Hit the record button and then you can click on the Inspector of that object and make your setup. Then go to where in the Timeline you want that animation to end and make the final step in the Inspector.

Let me explain this a little better with an example. Say you want to fade in, like a black bar to cover the screen. Make an Animation track with that object. Then put your cursor on where you want the fade in to begin. Hit the record button and go to the black bar’s Inspector.

In Color under Image, you can change the alpha to make it completely transparent or invisible. Once you do that, you should see a key marker set up on the track in Timeline.

Now go to where you want the imagine to be completely seen and set that alpha all the way up. Make sure it creates another key. With this, Timeline will automatically animate it into a fade in.

Try this technique with other components. You can move an object’s transform or anything else. Play around and see what you can do.