Playing Timelines
You may play a timeline from within the Mattercraft visual editor, or with custom scripts.
For more information about adding interactivity to your Mattercraft projects, consider reading our Adding interactivity article.
Playing a Timeline with Behavior actions
Playing a Timeline with the Play Layer Clip Behavior Action
You add a timeline behavior by using the following instructions:
- Find the Node you wish to activate the Timeline with inside the Hierarchy Panel and select it
- Head to the Behavior Actions Panel and click on the + (plus) icon
- Find the Animation Actions category and use either of the following Behavior actions to play the Timeline:
| Behavior action | Description |
|---|---|
| Toggle Layer Clips | Toggle between two clips. Useful for turning timelines ‘on’ or ‘off’ with one node. |
| Set Layer Off | Resets the chosen layer to whatever values are specified for the Off state. |
| Play Layer Clip | Plays any timeline clip inside a layer. |
Playing a Timeline with Script
To activate a timeline with script, it must be in a layer. You can then locate a specific timeline clip and use the following functions to control it:
| Function | Description |
|---|---|
.play() |
Plays the timeline along it’s track. Will play from whatever Time is currently set to. |
.pause() |
Pauses the timeline. Unless reset or played from the start, the timeline will play from this point. |
.seek() |
Sets the Time along the timeline where timeline Clip should play from. Useful if you want to replay a particular section of a timeline clip. |
.stop() |
Stops the timeline from playing and sets the timeline Time to 0 (the start of the timeline). |
An example custom behavior for playing a timeline might look like this:
// Register that this node should be listening to an event,
// in this case onPointerDown (on click or tap)
this.register(this.instance.onPointerDown, evt => {
// Play the timeline by finding the layer containing the
// timeline; and then the timeline itself
this.zcomponent.animation.layers.myLayer.clips.myTimeline.play();
});See Mattercraft's full API documentation here.