Recording Values

Instead of typing a position, a size or a colour into a step, you can pose the object in the Scene view and record it. Drag it where it should end up, press Finish, and the step lands exactly there.

Recording happens in an animation's own window, so the first thing is to pop the animation out.

Popping an animation out

Every animation in a player's Inspector (and in an Animation Set's) has a Pop Out button at the end of its header. It opens that animation in a window of its own:

• The window stays open whatever you select. That's the point: you can click on the objects the animation moves, pose them, and the animation stays on screen.
• It has the animation's Play and Reset buttons at the top. A preview started here keeps running whatever you select, until you press Stop and Restore or close the window, which stops and restores it too.
• It draws the animation in the Scene view, with its draggable start and end points, whatever is selected.
• It's an ordinary Unity window: dock it next to the Inspector if you like.

While it's open, the animation shows as one line in the Inspector, with a Focus button that brings its window forward. Its fields are only edited in the window until you close it.

Animations under a player's Shared Animations have no Pop Out button, as they're read-only there. Override the animation first, or pop it out from the Animation Set itself (with Preview On filled, so there's a scene to record from).

Recording a value

Each From and To row in the window ends in a record button (the red dot).

1. Click record on the row you want. Nothing moves, and a Recording box appears at the top of the window.
2. Pose the object. Select it and move, resize, rotate or recolour it with the usual tools, or change its values in its own Inspector. The crosshair beside the row in the Recording box selects the object holding the value and scrolls the Inspector to it. The row shows the value it's going to get, live, as you go.
3. Press Finish. The values are written into the rows, and every object goes back to how it was before you started.

Want to start from one of the animation's own frames, say the end of Show? Press Play or Reset in the window first, then record. Recording carries on from wherever things are.

Tip

Recording works for every From and To row: positions, sizes, scale, rotation, alpha, colours, material values and Custom Properties.

What gets stored

Recording never changes a row's mode. It stores whatever that mode needs for the step to land exactly where you posed the object:

Mode	Stored	Example: the ball rests at (10, 0), the step starts at (50, 0), you drop it at (80, 20)
Absolute	The value itself	(80, 20)
Baseline	The difference from the resting value	(70, 20)
Current	The difference from where the step starts	(30, 20)

• Rotation is stored the short way round: a turn to -10 is stored as -10, not 350.
• With Snapping on, positions and sizes are rounded to whole numbers (0.5 rounds up), the same as when you drag an end point.
• Typewriter text on Baseline adds text onto the end of the resting text. Recording Hello world over a resting Hello stores world. If the text no longer starts with its resting text, the row says why it can't be recorded, and Finish leaves that row alone and says so in the Console.
• A colour stored as a difference (Baseline or Current) can have negative parts, which a colour swatch can't show. Hover the value in the Recording box for the numbers.
• A Custom Property's value is read when you press Finish, so its row says read on Finish instead of showing the value. Reading one means running the script's code, which shouldn't happen every time the window redraws.

Caution

Recording a material value? While recording, the object shows its own copy of the material, and that copy is what gets recorded. Change the value on the copy: the crosshair selects it, and it's also the material at the bottom of the object's Inspector, named (Instance). Changing the material asset in your project records nothing (and does change the asset), and the Recording box warns you if you do.

Several values at once

While the Recording box is open, click record on more rows to add them. Pose everything (move the card, scale it and fade it, say) and press Finish once: every row is written together.

Each row is listed in the box with its live value. The × beside one, or its record button again, stops recording just that row. Taking out the last one is the same as Cancel.

Two rows that record the same value

Rows that read the same thing, such as two steps that both move the Ball, can only get one pose between them: wherever it is when you press Finish. The Recording box warns you when that happens. It's what you want for a step that should start where another ends. To give them different values, record them one at a time.

A Current row is measured from where its step starts after the rows above it are written, so even then every row lands where you posed the object. With step 0 on Absolute and step 1 on Current, both recording the Ball, step 0 gets the pose and step 1 gets (0, 0), since the Ball is already there.

Finishing, cancelling and closing

	The values	The objects
Finish	Written	Put back
Closing the window	Written, the same as Finish	Put back
Cancel	Thrown away	Put back
Removing the last row (its × or record button)	Thrown away, the same as Cancel	Put back
Entering play mode, a recompile, closing the scene	Thrown away, with a warning in the Console	Put back

You can select other objects, other players or nothing at all while recording: it carries on until you finish it. Only one window records at a time. The others say which one is recording.

Saving the scene while recording saves it as it was before you started posing, and recording carries on with the pose intact. See Previewing.

One Ctrl+Z after Finish undoes the whole recording: the values go back to what they were, and the objects stay where they belong. Edits you made before you started recording aren't part of it.

Under the hood

• Recording starts a preview (or joins the one already running) without playing anything. That's what captures every resting value before you pose anything, what Baseline measures from, and what puts everything back afterwards. While it's recording, no other Inspector can end it, and its Stop and Restore button says to Finish or Cancel in the window instead.
• Current is measured against where the step really starts, worked out by replaying the animation from rest on paper: earlier steps, Froms, joined steps and eases included. Checked against real playback for every value type, alpha, colour, material and Custom Property included, along with positions.
• Every recorded row in the test scenes was played back after Finish and compared with where the object had been posed: they match exactly.
• Rows are worked out in the order the steps run. A Current row is measured on a copy of the animation with the rows above it already written in, which is what the animation will be after Finish. Without that, a later row would be measured from where its step used to start, and play on from the new pose by the old difference.
• The crosshair scrolls the Inspector through its internal scroll view, which Unity has no public call for. If a Unity update ever changes that, the button still selects the object and unfolds the component.
• A row is remembered by its step's place in the list. If that step is moved, retyped or pointed at another object while you record, the row is dropped rather than written into whatever step is there now.
• Undo: everything since the recording started (the posing, and what Finish wrote) is folded into one Undo step. Undoing a single pose after the objects were put back would otherwise move that object back to its posed position, outside any preview, and leave it there.
• The window finds its animation again if it's moved or renamed, and finds its player again if you close and reopen the scene.