The Power of Activation Tracks

Objective: Understanding how to utilize activation tracks!

What is an activation track? Exactly what it sounds like it, it turns on and off game objects in your hierarchy along the Timeline. Looking at our old animation on Timeline, we can turn the object on or off whenever we want. First, we need to add an activation track. We can do that by either clicking the plus symbol or dragging the object in question into the Timeline and selecting activation track.

This will create an active bar along the timeline. What this does is when you start your Timeline the animation will play as normal until it hits the end of the active bar. Once that happens the animation object turns off.

You can see in the hierarchy that the object is grayed out, it is no longer enabled.

You can extend the active bar out; you can also pull the animation start time further into the Timeline.

You can set this to activate certain game objects whenever you want.

Another key item is anything that you have set to the end of the animation will continue to stay and be active throughout your game.

You can use Timeline to turn on and off game objects on a scheduled linear sequence inside your game. What are some common uses for activation tracks? Flickering lights, creating a dark scary room and a light flickers and turns off. You want the light to stay off so you would create an activation track with quick activation bars and let the animation end with the light inactive.

This is an easy way to create some mechanics in your game without any code and just using the Timeline sequence.