Objects on timeline (a newbie question)
Apr 14, 2020
Hi guys, I'm new here, in the SL Community.
I have been working with e-learning since 1996, I have learned several authoring tools and software (Macromedia Director/Flash, Animate and other). Now I will learn SL.
My issue is the timeline. My experience is from Adobe Animate: you just drag - let's call it a slider, across the timeline and you can see objects coming up and disappearing on the stage. You can see twinning and movements.
In SL you will see all elements on stage at once, often placed above each other. You can, of course, see those objects placed across the whole timeline. But I find it difficult to select them, to find which one is animated and how. Not to mention to see what happens and when 'in life'. The only solution is a preview.
How do you guys cope with it? Hiding the objects (the eye)?
It is a big, maybe the biggest challenge, to be familiar with and 'adopt' this new logic in the otherwise nice and powerful tool.
What are your best tips for a newbie like me?
2 Replies
Hi, Agnes,
Yes, with a complex slide, it can be overwhelming to see all the objects on the screen at the same time. You can directly select an object or objects in the timeline. As you've discovered, hiding some can make it easier to select and work with others on the screen. Preview is the only way to watch the objects in action...
My best tip is a simple one: give everything a helpful name. It's much easier to grasp what's happening when you see something like "guide pic" and "machine pic" than "Picture 1" and "Picture 2."
I also try to arrange items in the timeline so the ones that will animate are at the top. Of course, that's not always possible, since the order in the timeline correlates to whether an item appears in front of or behind another object. But when it's possible, it allows me to concentrate on fewer rows in the timeline.
Good luck adjusting to SL!
Thank you very much, Judy :)
Yes, to give the object the name is quite useful and I will try to order the elements on timeline in the way you suggested.
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