Animation Montages
Centralize and coordinate your character's dynamic interactions, reloads, locomotion variants, dynamic footsteps, visual trails, snapping paths, cancel windows, and environmental alignment inside one readable timeline asset.
Practical Introduction
Coordinating dynamic character events (like reloads, steps, snaps, and potion buffs) traditionally leads to scattered logic—spanning coroutines, wait timers, and duplicated scripts. If you swap an animation clip or change its speed, timings break.
Animation Montages solves this by wrapping animation-driven events into a single, unified Scriptable Asset. Designers can visually author frame-accurate cues for audio, VFX, status windows, interaction branches, and spatial offsets—with zero custom coding.
Why Animation Montages?
Go beyond basic movements. Animation Montages offers an organized visual approach that eliminates structural bottlenecks:
Normalized Timing (0% to 100%)
Events scale automatically. If you swap an animation clip or scale its playback speed, all triggers stay frame-accurate.
Active Range Windows
Define precise windows to toggle character state flags, invincibility frames, parries, or cancelable periods with clean entry/exit hooks.
Centralized Branching Flow
Evaluate conditions mid-timeline. If players interact during a window, jump cleanly to another animation stage; otherwise, blend back.
Safe Transform Offsets
Align characters smoothly to interaction anchors or chests using built-in easing curves. Easily restore coordinates on completion.
Main Features
The module wraps complex animation mechanics into highly usable visual blocks, requiring zero custom coding:
| Timeline Module | Gameplay Advantage & How It Works |
|---|---|
| Normalized Timeline | Keeps gameplay events synced even if animation clip lengths are swapped or speeds scale dynamically. |
| Notifies (Point Events) | Triggers footsteps, audio pops, particle bursts, screen shakes, or instruction lists at an exact percentage. |
| Windows (Range Events) | Defines active spans to drive character snaps, status buff applications, or input buffers. |
| Sections & Loops | Splits timelines into named anchors (Intro, Loop, Outro) to support structured action loops and stances. |
| Branch Points | Evaluates conditions mid-animation to alter playback flow (e.g. open next door stage, abort recovery). |
| Transform Tracks | Applies position, rotation, and scale offsets relative to target meshes with smooth easing curves. |
| Runtime Parameters | Drives visual speed scales, branch success flags, and targets programmatically via C# or GC2 variables. |
| Visual Scripting | Full integration with standard Game Creator 2 Actions, Conditions, and custom playhead Triggers. |
Quick Start Overview
Getting up and running with Animation Montages requires just three basic steps:
Create Asset
Right-click in Project view and create an Animation Montage asset.
Attach Player
Add the Animation Montage Player component to your target Character.
Play Visual Action
Use the GC2 Action Play Animation Montage to initiate playback.
For complete details, check the detailed Getting Started Guide.
A Simple Example: Potion Drink
How it works in practice when authoring a standard potion-drinking interaction:
Create a new Montage asset and assign the drinking animation clip.
Place a Point Notification named SFX.CorkPop at 15% to trigger a bottle-pop audio cue.
Draw a Range Window named Buff.Apply to apply status boosts or health recovery during this period.
Place a Point Notification named VFX.Liquid at 80% to spawn splash particles at the character's mouth.
Draw a Cancel Window from 85% to 95%. Tapping movement inputs here aborts recovery to run immediately.
Gesture vs. State
Play identical timeline montages in two completely different ways depending on which Action you trigger:
Gestures (Temporary One-Shots)
Plays a temporary animation that overlays and blends over active locomotion. Once completed or cancelled, it blends out smoothly.
- Item Interactions: potion drinking, coin flipping, chest opening.
- Mechanical Actions: dynamic reloads, key turnings, levers.
- Acrobatics: rolls, dodges, dynamic climbing jumps, hit flinches.
States (Sustained Stances)
Enters a continuous locomotion sub-layer. The animation loops or holds its state continuously until commanded to exit.
- Locomotion Overrides: injured limps, heavy load carries, stealth crawls.
- Stance Overrides: blocks, shields, aiming stances.
- Environmental: carrying props, wall-snug walks.
When to Use Animation Montages
Guidelines to help you choose the right system for the job:
✔ When to Use Animation Montages
- Interactive movements and combos (dodge rolls, slide cancels, vaults) depending on input buffers.
- Object interactions (reloads, key turnings, lever pulls) triggering timed particles or audio cues.
- Precise coordinate snaps (aligning character roots smoothly to chests or door handles).
- Frame-accurate triggers for footstep SFX, screen shakes, or visual trails.
- Sustained stances (injured limps, shields, block stances) with entry/exit phases.
✖ When to Use Regular GC2 Gestures/States
- Simple animations with zero timed triggers (e.g., a simple idle head nod).
- Base locomotion (walking, running, falling) already handled natively by character controllers.
- Ambient cosmetic poses that do not require condition checks or open range window callbacks.
Safe Game Creator 2 Extension
Animation Montages compiles in isolation, ensuring clean, worry-free module updates and zero asset-store breaking changes.
Assets/Plugins/SkywardGames/AnimationMontages/.
Documentation Sections
Explore deep guides, scripting guides, technical architectures, and gameplay examples.
Getting Started
Import the module, configure player component, and play your first montage sequence.
How It Works
Learn about normalized timelines, blending state machines, root motion, and masks.
Timeline Authoring
Detailed guide on Notifications, Windows, Sections, Branch Points, and Transform tracks.
Architecture
Memory allocations, direct GC2 runners, playmode debuggers, and assembly definitions.
Visual Scripting
Expose and trigger Game Creator 2 Actions, Conditions, and custom Timeline Triggers.
Runtime API
Control playheads, subscribe to events, and scale speed in real-time through custom C# code.
Examples & Patterns
Step-by-step combo templates, dodge cancel windows, and interactive doors.
Best Practices
Production checklists, Naming guides, and timing advice to optimize gameplay feel.
FAQ
Answers to common setup, compatibility, performance, and version-specific questions.
Changelog
Full package release notes, major updates, and version target histories.