Animation always starting from set start value (and not from current value)

[hugo-faria-origin]

Even if I set StartValue to false in a TweenAnimationComponent animation, at runtime it seems the StartValue is set to true and the animation always start from the set start value and not the current value.

Am I missing something?

[KyryloKuzyk]

@hugo-faria-origin This is by design. The Inspector tooltip of the Start Value says:

Start value of an animation. Enable to set the start value manually. Disable to use the current value (only works in Edit Mode).

The reason behind this decision was that the animation should behave exactly the same at runtime as it does in the Edit Mode. When the Start Value toggle is disabled, PrimeTween automatically saves the current value from the scene to simplify animation authoring. This guarantees that "you get what you see" after you press "Play," no matter the current values.

But I'm open to suggestions if you have an idea how to make this consistent between the Edit and Play modes.

[hugo-faria-origin]

Hey @KyryloKuzyk! Thanks for the super fast answer!

I misunderstood the tooltip text. My bad. Sorry. Thanks for the explanation!

But let me take a step back and try to explain what I'm trying to do: I'm experimenting with the Pro version and I want to play an TweenAnimation using the object current value instead of the Start Value set in animation.

I made a simple scenario to test (video below), where I have a circle starting on point 0 and I have two TweenAnimations - Animation 1 moves the circle to point 1 and Animation 2 moves the circle to point 2 (using UIAnchoredPositionX). The animations are triggered by Button 1 and Button 2 respectively.

When I trigger Animation 1 the circle goes from point 0 to point 1. All good.

Then when I trigger Animation 2 I want the circle to go from point 1, where it currently is, to point 2, but as it's taking into account the set Start Value, it starts from point 0 instead.

Same thing when I trigger Animation 1 after that. I want it to go from point 2 to point 1, but it also starts from the Start Value in point 0.

tween_example.mov

If I was going to do that by code I would use the WithDirection method and set _startFromCurrent to true, right? Is there a way to do that through the Pro version inspector component?

Thank you!

[hugo-faria-origin]

Hey @KyryloKuzyk!
I'm not sure if you had the chance to see this other question of mine.
I would really appreciate if you could give us some feedback on that. 🙏

[KyryloKuzyk]

Hey @hugo-faria-origin, sorry for the late reply.

Your example makes total sense! There is currently no way to achieve that in the Pro version. Currently, when you trigger TweenAnimation, it always plays something and reports isAlive == true during the playback. But if I were to implement the startFromCurrent feature, nothing would happen if the animated value is already at the endValue, which might be confusing. Let me think about what would be the best way to implement this.

[hugo-faria-origin]

Thanks for the reply, @KyryloKuzyk!

Yeah, when doing it by code, to avoid the warning about the animated value being already at the endValue, we are checking if the values are the same and if so, we skip the tween. But it doesn't work for all cases (like in a sequence, for example)

Maybe including an inspector warning explaining it if you select startFromCurrent could minimize the confusion?
And/Or including a sub-option to startFromCurrent to instantly complete the tween if end value is equal to the current value?

Just throwing some ideas. 😅

Thanks for considering implementing this!