Timeline: Activation, Audio & Control Tracks

Intro

In this article, we are going to cover the other kinds of tracks in Timeline besides an Animation track. We are going to create a flickering light with a bulb pop sound that will cause the light to swing. In creating this sequence, we will be using Activation, Audio and Control tracks.

Activation Track

We are going to create an empty game object that will hold the Timeline director. It will parent an empty game object (Bulb_Holder), which will parent the object (Ceiling_Bulb) we want to activate or deactivate. The reasoning for putting the object we are activating or animating in a Holder is we can reposition the Holder and the object will animation will be relative.

We will drag the game object we want to control into the Director’s Timeline and choose a Activation Track.

The Activation Track can either activate or deactivate a game object.

You can see how the game object remains active depending on the length of the active state and deactivates if there isn’t an active state. Whatever state the object is in (activated or deactivated) at the end of the track, the game object will remain in that state.

Audio Track

An Audio Track will allow you to play audio clips

You can move the audio clip along the track, adjust the duration, ease in and out and split the track.

The Speed Multiplier will increase the playback, but it will also increase the pitch. You can Loop the audio clip and the volume.

The Audio Clip is playing without an Audio Source, so the sound will be the same in both ears. Lets make it 3D sound…

We can create an empty game object and assign it to the Audio Source to create one.

On the Sound_Source there is now and Audio Source and will will set the Spatial Blend to 1, which makes it 3D.

The levels of the audio clip now depend on the distance of the audio listener to the sound source and its sphere of influence.

Control Track

We are going to add a Control Track to our original Director. A Control Track allows you to add a director track with all of its tracks.

The 2nd director will have an animation track of the light bulb swinging.

We can assign the 2nd Director to the Control track of the original Director and it will play like any other track.