I have a moving actor with a timeline node. For now it’s just a line going from (0, 0) to (1, 1). I have a series of nonlinear x and y values in a DataTable, also going from (0, 0) to (1, 1). How can I tell Blueprint to use my (x, y) points for the timeline curve?
Hey @kriegorx!
To “adjust” the X axis of your float track, you can use the Set Play Rate node (the target pin should be connected to the TL component, which you can drag into your Event Graph from the My Blueprint window on the bottom left, under the Variables section, and under the Components group by default), and to “adjust” the Y axis, you can simply multiply the float track’s value.
Hope this helps! 
It’s not apparent how adjusting the play rate could help with defining a nonlinear timeline curve from a series of loaded (x,y) points. Could you please be more specific? I had thought keyframes would need to be set somehow.
The simple answer is “You can’t in blueprints”.
Timelines work with Curves and although you can replace the Curve asset at runtime (in BP) you can’t create a or modify it runtime with blueprints.
My suggestion is to forgo timelines altogether and write your own logic to work directly with your point data.
I can’t import points to use as timeline track keyframes? I’d thought I was close, leaving the Data Table behind and instead importing into a Curve Table. The name of my imported Curve Table is “profile”, which contains Distance vs Time. I attempt to cast to a Curve Vector, then I set “NewTrack_0” in the Timeline to that curve. Unfortunately, that doesn’t work and the warning message is that CT to CV is an illegal cast. Suggestions?
Yea. You are not getting your curve table data properly and also the curve table data is of type float and you are trying to cast it to CurveVector asset… which wont work.
I would suggest you use CurveVector directly if you don’t need to modify it externally (from outside the engine).
Otherwise I would advice against the use of Timeline Components and make a custom component that handles properly the external data.
My suggestion was a workaround for your goal, as explained here:
I say try to implement the approach I explained in my initial post. It’s way less complicated than what you’re trying to do right now.
Here are the steps for setting timeline keypoints from a file:
- Save a CSV file with abscissa and ordinate columns for the timeline curve
- Import the CSV as a “float curve” object (Misc → Curve → Float Curve)
- Open the timeline tool by double-clicking the timeline node in the blueprint
- Click the “add track” button in the timeline tool and select the “float track” option
- Select the imported float curve object from the track’s “external curve” pulldown menu
- Re-wire the spline interpolation/transform nodes to reference the new timeline track
Here’s the working blueprint, showing a situation where you might want to import timeline keypoints. The spline has been pre-computed and we would like to define a velocity profile along the spline path. The timeline node has been re-named to PlatformMover:
