Hey there,
I’ve been trying to follow up on Matinee, and how the name has been since changed to Timeline. Been trying to follow along on how to use it, but documentation appears rather conflicted in this area. The good news is that it provides some basic nodes – stuff that I used to see with an old fashioned Matinee node that has since been compartmentalized and splintered into their own nodes for dynamic customization, but it does not provide an A-Z method of actually moving stuff around in the scene. Or at least not in any way that becomes immediately apparent to me.
Also, in a Matinee node, I had a curve editor and a track editor which corresponded to dragging things visually in the actual level, as well as fade / director / camera groups / etc. However, double clicking on a timeline presents me with this foreign interface to which I have no idea how to use. There’s also no input variable that accepts a MatineeActor anywhere. The “K” key command does not set a key, there are no green / red arrows to indicate sequence start and finish, or a “ticker” to indicate where I am on the matinee timeline.
So I’m left asking:
How can I get a skeletal mesh and an InterpActor (or whatever it’s called now) working in Timeline, in the same way as I could in Matinee? Examples?
Matinee and Timelines are two separate things with separate uses. You can still use Matinee for the things you are asking about.
I thought they were merged, because I don’t see a matinee node when I search for it in the blueprint editor. I see things pertaining to matinee in the class panel, but not a matinee node itself. Not even if I right click and do a search. Hence where the dummy part comes in and why I’m even asking this question at all. Can I trouble you to show me how to access matinee in the blueprint editor?
Hi Markus,
Matinee has been changed a bit since UE3. Getting started, make an “InterpData” asset. Then drag the asset into the level. This will create a MatineeActor. In the details of the MatineeActor, you can click “Open Matinee” to begin creating your movement tracks, etc. From that point on you can reference the matinee in the Level Blueprints like in UE3 Kismet.
You can find more information about it here: https://rocket.unrealengine.com/docs/ue4/INT/Editor/Tools/MatineeAndCinematics/index.html
I hope that this has helped.
Thanks,
Alexander
Alexander,
Thanks for getting back to me!
Yes, I checked the guide and everything in documentation regarding this first before posting. It explains the interface; stuff I already knew coming from UE3.
But it doesn’t explain what you just told me now. Turns out you can just add a matineeactor from the right click menu without even having to create interpdata in the content browser. How cool is that? 
Another thing that takes getting used to is that you also do your mesh conversions via the properties window too now. Drag and drop your level asset from the content browser (or even the existing squares from the default map).
Select the mesh you want to change, go to its properties. You’ll have to scroll down a bit, but there’s a dropdown button box that says “convert”. Convert the actor to interpactor this way, from a static mesh. All your conversions will be done here. A pretty welcome change, but one that will definitely take some getting used to.
From there, you just create a new group with the interpactor selected, and then a new movement track (or whatever track you want) and start doing what you would normally do with matinee.
I gotta say I’m quite excited to be able to test exporting matinee data to FBX and into programs like Maya and Max again. Definitely a new thing coming from UDK.
Hopefully this helps other people tripping over themselves about Matinee this generation :). Good luck!
Just a note - to use the interpactor so it doesn’t throw up a ‘cannot use Static Mesh actor’ warning, make sure you first have the Interpactor selected in the scene when you create the Group and movement Track you’ll actually animate within an open Matinee window.
Can I ask — when playing a Matinee that just moves a block does it strip the player camera out? Is this correct for playing a moving Interpactor?
How to reproduce what was in UE3 the Finished output of a matinee?
Sorry if these questions are really basic.
How to expose the matinee’s Event track outputs in an eventgraph in Rocket?
I tried using custom events with the same name as the event track keys, but that doesn’t work. I thought to create a ping pong playing of the timeline by reversing play at the keyed events, but they’re not firing.
Is this the best way to loop? Ping pong style? The delays are set to the length of the playing animation timeline (which is playing while the delays are active).
Alt dragging a matinee actor in the editor that is populated (with group/tracks, at least Skeletal Mesh ones) will crash Rocket. [Edit: Well there will be a fail message but it may keep running … but what will happen is that any anim track you put in the first matinee actor will update to be the same as whatever anim track you put in the second matinee actor (the copy) and vice versa.
Swapping between two animations (each a different anim control track in a different matinee or interp data actor) via EventGraph.
I don’t know if this is the best way, but it works.
LMB plays one anim, RMB plays the other, as often as you want.
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While playing matinee’s sometimes the Player cube (default pawn) pops into view after it vanishes when the Matinee begins … don’t know why that would be. [Edit: It’s when the input event is fired twice, ie, LMB LMB or RMB RMB.]
Hi Tom,
These are some really great questions. I’d be happy to help you out with this, but could you create a separate question for the crash report that you have and another for your matinee questions? It will be much easier to find you answers and assign specialists this way. Thank you very much for your understanding.
-Alexdander
