Control Tracks Using Timeline in Unity 2020

Control tracks are used to control other Timelines within a Timeline.

As you can see above, I created a Control Track and assigned it the AudioTractTest-Director game object from previous articles which has its own separate Timeline from the CubeSphere-Director Timeline.

I’ve resized the Audio Track to have an easy to identify start and stop within my CubeTimeline.

If I hit play, I can clearly hear the audio track starting and stopping as designed.

Now you could use a Control Track for Animation, Audio, Activation or any other type of Timeline tracks.

The real beauty of this will be to have an entire complex sequence in one Timeline, such as a chest opening and something popping out, being called by Control Track in another Timeline sequence such as the character entering a particular room with the chest.

The Timeline with the room sequence could be one of many different rooms where there is a unique character walking in to find a chest in a unique room, but all of them could use the same Director Timeline object of the chest opening sequence via Control Track.

Instead of recreating or copy pasting that chest opening sequence, the developer needs to only do it once and then “call it” from other Timelines as needed.

Aren’t we fancy?

Additionally, you could pull in multiple Timeline Sequences into the same Control Track and blend or sequence as needed making additional Control Tracks unnecessary in most circumstances.