Timeline

The Timeline provides a comprehensive overview of every element of your entire scene. By selecting an Asset on the Timeline, you gain access to its Inspector for detailed customisations.

Here are all visual components of your timeline

• Asset Nodes and Sub-Nodes (Horizontal Bars)

• Top Navigation

  1. Timestamp: Located on the top left side of the timeline, it represents the overall duration of your scene when you play the project.

  2. Play/Stop Button

  3. Delete: located on the top middle, allows you to delete selected node, sub-node.

     1. PLEASE NOTE, if you delete a node, it will automatically delete its sub-nodes as well.

  4. Zoom in/out: is located on top right side. Zoom out can help if you have a very long scene and you want to see sequence of assets and events at a bird's eye view. Zoom in can help with time precision editing

  5. Time Ruler: spread across the entire timeline, this allows you to position nodes and sub-nodes within the desired timeframe.

• Left Navigation (to the left of the assets, on the Timeline)

  • Lock Icon: to disable editing the node

  • Eye Icon: controls the visibility of assets in the scene so you can concentrate on a single asset of choice.

  • Sound Icon: mute the sound associated with the asset when playing the project.

Asset Nodes and Sub-nodes (Horizontal bars)

Each component (Asset) of your scene is represented as a separate horizontal bar inside the timeline that we call an asset node. Each asset category has its own distinctive colour. This includes: 3D models, characters, visual effects, light, text, sounds, video, images (2D).

Some of these asset nodes can have sub nodes attached to them; for example, a character (asset node) may contain a sub node for animation, voice, visual effect, etc. When the asset node is clicked upon, it also helps you see the sub nodes attached to that asset node.

You can control when the specific asset node appears in the scene and for how long; the same applies to sub-nodes. You can horizontally move these bars (nodes and sub-nodes) across the timeline, expanding or trim their duration (eg. shorten the time a character dances)

By clicking on the assets (Node or sub-node) in the timeline,

1. It highlights the asset on the preview 3D scene

2. It opens the asset inspector so you can see all the details associated with this node or sub-node in the inspector.

See Essential Scene components and Inspector for more information