Unity Timeline for Simple Animations (Tutorial)

By: Aarav Kumar (2025)

Unity's Timeline is a powerful tool that allows you to create simple animations without writing code. It provides a visual interface where you can keyframe object transformations, trigger events, and sequence animations. This tutorial will guide you through the process of animating a GameObject using Timeline.

Setting the Scene

Open Unity and create a new 3D Project.
In the Hierarchy, right-click and select 3D Object > Cube (or any other object you want to animate).
Position the cube in your scene where you want the animation to start.

Creating a Timeline

Open the Timeline Window by navigating to Window > Sequencing > Timeline.
With the cube selected, click Create in the Timeline window and save a new Timeline (you can name it whatever you like, i.e. CubeAnimation). Make sure to save it somewhere within the Assets folder, or Unity will not recognize it.
This automatically creates a Playable Director component on the cube, which controls the Timeline playback.

Adding an Animation Track

In the top-right of the Timeline window, click the gear-icon to toggle between frames, timecode, or seconds (seconds is often easiest to understand). This setting alters what units the timeline is measured / shown in.
In the Timeline window, click Add (+) > Animation Track.
Drag your cube from the Hierarchy into the track, or add it manually by clicking the ⊙ icon next to "None (Animator)", and the finding + selecting your cube from the list.
Click the Record button (red circle) to enable keyframe recording.
Move the playhead to a new position (e.g., 2 seconds) and change the cube’s position, rotation, or scale.
Unity automatically adds keyframes when you make changes.
Press the Record button again to stop recording.

Playing the Animation

To preview your animation, click Play in the Timeline window (NOT the play button at the very top -- that is the play button for the game view). This should allow you to see the animation in any view you toggle to (Scene, Game, or Timeline).
To make the animation play automatically in-game, ensure the Playable Director component is set to Play On Awake.
Press Play in Unity’s game view to see the animation in action.

Adding More Effects

Add multiple tracks for different objects.
Use Activation Tracks to enable/disable objects at specific times.
Add an Audio Track to sync animations with sound effects.

More Resources

If you want to add more adavnced animations/effects to your objects in Unity, you may find the following resources or tutorials useful:

Using Timeline: Working with Animation Clips (Intro Tutorial by Unity) — https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y1mwswiuung
Blending gameplay & storytelling w/ Timeline (Tutorial by Unity) — https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gsEe0_o_934
Getting Started with Timeline — https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=taIEYXHgW-w
Unity Timeline: Animation and Activation Tracks — https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yHDkIi6Xpdk
Timeline tutorial by Unity Learn — https://learn.unity.com/tutorial/introduction-to-timeline-2019-3#