Adding Multiple Animations to an Object + Timeline Quick Tips

If you followed along with my last article, we ended after an introduction to Timeline in Unity, as well as adding a single animation to an object. This article begins by adding additional animations to an object, along with some Timeline tips and hot keys. Let’s get started!

Adding Multiple Animations to a Game Object

Here is the previous single animation in the Timeline editor.

Setting the marker past the initial animation and then pressing the record button will start a new animation.

Here are the keyframe results of the second animation.

Now playing the timeline will play both animations sequentially.

Both root animations can be found under the Timeline in the Directors folder, in the main Assets folder.

If you want to rename the animation for reference, select the clip and navigate to the inspector to find the Animation Name Clip option.

This will not however change the name of the clip as it appears in the timeline editor.

To change this, check the top of the inspector to change the name of the clip directly.

Now the ‘Patrol’ name appears in the timeline editor.

For this rotating animation I am using the Euler Angles option, but you can change to Quaternion if desired by right-clicking the main rotation component in the animator.

The third animation is a dash animation, where the object as well as it’s spot light are animated.

One clip can also be dragged on to the next to ease from one into the other.

Here is the first patrol animation, leading into the next up and down animation. (I broke them into clips for file size on Medium).

The second animation takes the drone up and down with a rotation to make the movement more natural.

The third animation is a dashing attack where the drone spins, narrows and changes the color of it’s spotlight, and then dashes forward.

Timeline Tips

The top left of the Timeline editor offers some expected buttons for Play, go to beginning or end of the timeline, and move to previous or next frame.

The drop-down carrot here is where you can toggle between multiple timelines. I currently only have one, so that’s my only option.

There are three different modes for working with animation clips.

Mix Mode let’s you drag clips over each other creating a ease in and out effect. You can even rearrange the clips entirely this way.

Ripple Mode will move all clips in a timeline together.

To show how Replace Mode works, let’s drag an animation into the timeline in Mix Mode. The animation is automatically placed at the end of the timeline.