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Animating an NPC in a Timeline
Hello. I'm trying to create an opening cutscene in which the player character and their sidekick NPC walk into the building through the door before the gameplay starts. My game is 3d environments with 2d sprites. I followed the 3d starter tutorial about timelines and have managed to get it mostly working despite some things moving around in recent Unity. But whilst my Player character (Spatchcock) is correctly loading his walk animation whilst moving, the NPC character (Hammersmith) isn't, so he's just floating through the scene as a static sprite. Any suggestion on what I might have done wrong? I'm using Unity 6 and AC 1.83
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Are both the Playable Director, and the NPC, present in the scene file? You shouldn't need to remap the NPC's bindings if so - only that of Player, if they're spawned in at runtime.
What animation engine does the NPC use, and are you using 2D or 3D character animation tracks? Share any shots you can of the Track's Inspector, the NPC's Inspector, their Animator, how they appear in the scene, and any comparisons with that of the Player character that works, I'll see if I can spot any issue.
Hi Chris. Yes I've got the director loaded in as game object in the scene and also the NPC. I've turned off that binding option now. I understand now that its for the player since they are spawned at runtime. Both the player and the NPC are using sprites unity. The character animation tracks are both 2D, when I right click the option there is to 'Add Character Animation 2D shot.
https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/icclpwc9rw8xnedanaftb/SpatchcockInspector.png?rlkey=hga8vm0kexoaj3r9ohlv0o3td&dl=0
https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/h6d690aplwmoyjggjp8yt/HammersmithNPCInspector.png?rlkey=w4tisoa722k9sfon05jzsb9gw&dl=0
https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/kf8bxnqfdffw2hzbzo7xb/Screenshot-2025-06-11-154952.png?rlkey=cu73mc5etfht2qi4sh2890iwl&dl=0
https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/xd0n5ttu119xa41ubf4pb/Screenshot-2025-06-11-155005.png?rlkey=vyjhj1vhjnyhp6k25nj714a3v&dl=0
https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/y0xa42kftr0ki8299crjm/Screenshot-2025-06-11-155046.png?rlkey=nzf41z84sj9p0sh1lty9e2fn6&dl=0
https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/ps33v634x78w0p4icgo2h/Screenshot-2025-06-11-155057.png?rlkey=gnj2m2mq31ko91rcxh6mki8yf&dl=0
I can get it to work if I create a second animation track and trigger the NPC's animations manually.
To be clear: the issue is about the walk animation not being played?
Are they both moving along a similar path, or in different directions?
The main difference I'm seeing between the two characters is that the Player has Turn root object in 3D? unchecked, and Retro-style movement? checked, while the NPC has the opposite. Does the issue persist if you make these the same?
The player walk straight towards camera, through the door and stops whilst the NPC turns to the right after walking through the door and then stops. I added a Character Animation 2D Track and then a Character Animation 2D Shot for both but whilst the Player loads the corrected walk animation from his animator, the NPC just remains looping his idle animation.
Tried turning off root object and turning on retro movement and still didnt work.
If I instead add a second Animation Track for the NPC and I can load Animation Clips in the right spots and time it up with the movement of the player. So it seems like Unity Timeline can access the NPCs animations, but the AC Character Animation 2D Track Component isn't doing.
Does this character animate as expected when moving around without the use of Timeline?
Check your Console for warnings. You should have been getting a warning while "Turn root object in 3D?" was checked - is this the case if you temporarily check it again?
A big of script debugging may help. Open up AC's CharacterAnimation2DBehaviour script, and look for the SetOverrideState function at the bottom.
Just above:
Copy/paste:
What logs related to the NPC then appear in the Console?