3. User Interface

Once opened, the timeline editor can be docked into the unity editor and be resized to any layout you please.

The timeline editor

The timeline editor organizes behaviors into discrete tracks. Each Track can then host a variety of actions.

The timeline uses event-driven Playmaker FSM's to control Unity.

The editor can be divided into 5 different sections :

• • 1. The track panel

  • 2. The upper toolbar

  • 3. The timeline inspector

  • 4. The lower toolbar

  • 5. The timeline canvas

The track panel

The track panel will allow you to add tracks to the canvas (3) or remove the currently selected track (2 and 4).

The displayed time under a track (1) quickly shows the current duration of a track.

Once a track is created, it will appear in the canvas (5). The canvas text on the track follows the convention of : "Gameobject track is attached to: Name of the track"

The upper toolbar

The upper toolbar allows you to navigate easily between timelines on different gameobjects (1 and 2). The currently selected gameobject (3) and timeline (4) can be changed using dedicated clickable fields.

The time unit can be changed from milliseconds up to hours (5) and be displayed in numeric or date format (6).

The canvas current zoom can be controlled using zoom in and out buttons (7 and 8) or directly using the slider in between.

Top right buttons allow you to change the current inspector view from track inspector (9) to action (10), event (11) or variable inspector (12).

The bottom toolbar

The bottom toolbar displays buttons and tools to control the experiment execution and debugging.

The error button (1) tells you how many errors the current timeline has. see Errors.

The play and pause button (2 and 3) allow you to run the current experiment and pause at any time.

The File button (4) permits to save and load timelines in human readable text or binary assets. see Loading.

The experiment logger (5) is dedicated to saving various key data's during an experiment. see Data collection.

The preferences menu (6) will quickly allow you to set your preferred editor parameters.

The timeline inspectors

Four different inspectors are available. Each is explained more deeply into its own section.

• the track inspector

• the action inspector

• the events inspector

• the variable inspector