How do you remove the slight delay in the ‘Timeline’ function in Unreal Engine 5?
If you have ever tried to animate something using the ‘Timeline’ function, you might have encountered this issue: When lerping from point A to point B, there’s always a ‘short’ delay. This issue becomes more apparent when implementing movement systems, such as crouching via flip/flop.
To prevent delays in ‘Timeline’ functions, you need to open your curve, and ensure that ‘Use Last Keyframe’ is set to true, as shown in the image below:
If you’re transitioning from Blender or another 3D software to Unreal Engine 5, Epic’s naming conventions for the X, Y, Z axes might be confusing. Here’s a quick reference whenever you need to edit properties like camera angles in your scenes:
- X = Roll
- Y = Pitch
- Z = Yaw
(Optional Read) What does ‘Use Last Keyframe’ in the timeline function in UE5 do?
If you are not interested in the theory, you can skip this part, but I highly recommend reading it to gain a better grasp of how the ‘Timeline’ function operates.
When we use the ‘Timeline’ function in Engine, we create animations or timeline sequences where we typically set keyframes at specific points to define changes in properties such as position, rotation, scale, etc., over time.
Normally, the behavior of this function is that when an animation or timeline sequence is triggered, it switches from value A to B (using a ‘Lerp’ node is very common in such scenarios) that we have defined. Once it reaches the end of its defined duration, it stops/holds its final state. The default behavior of the ‘Timeline’ function is to hold the final state of the animation after its duration naturally ends. This means that any modifications made during the animation (such as changes in position, rotation, scale, etc.) will persist once the animation completes. Subsequent animations or timeline functions will start from this modified state.
The ‘Use last keyframe’ feature, on the other hand, allows you to force the animation to ‘freeze’ at its final keyframe regardless of whether the animation’s full duration has elapsed. This option is useful for maintaining a particular state for a longer duration than originally defined by the animation’s timeline. It eliminates the need for a short ‘delay’ since Unreal Engine is already in the last keyframe stage of the timeline.
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