Keyframe
Definition
A keyframe is a stored position and orientation for a mover. When a mover moves, it travels between keyframes. These are set in UnrealEd.
A Note About UnrealEngine Versions
The UnrealEngine, and therefore Mover functionality, has changed over the years. To determine which generation of the UnrealEngine you should be concerned with, here is a brief listing of UnrealEngines and their respective games:
See Unreal Engine Versions for a more detailed list.
Setting Keyframes
Before you get to this point you should already have a mover created. If you have no idea how to do that than head on over to the Create A Mover page and read over that section first.
First generation Unreal Engine Versions allow you to have up to 8 Keyframes, or 8 different positions for your mover to be in.
The First 8 Keyframes
The first 8 keyframes can be conveniently set via the Actor Context Menu.
- First make sure you mover is in initial position you'd like it to start at.
- Now right-click on the mover and in the context menu do: Movers → Key 1
(this is the Brush Context Menu in first-generation, since the mover is a brush, and the Actor Context Menu in later generations since the mover is a static mesh, but it really makes no difference here.)
- The mover is now in its key 1 (which is actually the second keyframe–a bit confusing, I know–since we start on key 0) position. At the moment this position is, by default, identical to key 0. Move the mover to its intended second position. See below for some examples of what position to give the mover for key 1.
- Now do a test. Right click and go back to key 0 (Actor Context Menu → Movers → Key 0). It should move back to its original position. Right click and go to key 1 and it should move back into position you set for it. You have a working mover!
Beyond 8 Keyframes
Second generation Unreal Engine Versions allow you to have up to 24 Keyframes, or 24 different positions for your mover to be in.
Beyond 8 keyframes, the Actor Context Menu can no longer be used. Instead, select the desired Keyframe via the KeyNum property in the Mover's Actor Properties Window. This technique will work with keyframes 0 through 8 also, but the Actor Context Menu is generally deemed to be more efficient.
General Things to Keep in Mind
The Mover → NumKeys property must be set to the number of keys the mover will use; the default value is 2.
Moving or rotating keyframe 0 affects all the keyframes in the same way. For example, if you make your lift mover go up 256 units for keyframe 1, and then decide to move it to another spot in your map, put it back into keyframe 0 and move it. Keyframe 1 will still be directly above keyframe 0.
Examples
- Simple swinging door
- Say we're doing a simple swinging door. So you add the door as a mover in its closed position. At this point it is already set to keyframe 0. Now right-click and set it to keyframe 1. Then rotate the mover in its open position.
- Simple sliding door
- See Making Doors.
- Rotating and swinging doors
- This tutorial will show you how to make Rotating and Swinging Doors as I know how to make them.
- Constantly revolving movers
- Not sure how easy this is to do with keyframes, but i found that it was fairly easy to just lock the revolving part to a second mover which does the 'moving' - see Compound Movers
Next Step
You've told your mover how it should move, now you need to tell it when it should move. Move on to part 3: Activating a mover.
Questions and Problems
2-4 Keyframe Movers
(Please explain how to create a mover with 3 or 4 keyframes, after the 2nd it is hard to know what to do to get another frame, thats what's bugging me now, and prolly others aswell. Right now i can only make simple 2 keyframe movers, if i click frame 2 after frame 1 it moves to frame 0 and it stops recording frames. I've tried everything, and asked many....)
you need to make sure you have set Mover→numKeys to the number of frames you want to have. As long as numKeys is equal to or greater than 'Keynum', then there should be no trouble creating new keyframes.
Related Topics
- Mover – Full list of what all the mover properties mean
- Create A Mover – Covers steps prior to this tutorial
- Making Lifts – Covers elements common to lifts, including mover "states"
- Mover Topics – Lists all articles on movers.
