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Overview

AudioTimeline is an Editor window that lets you animate to an audio file directly inside Unity. It was designed for dialogue animation and lip-sync, but works equally well for sound-driven character movement or any timed action — a gun reload, a footstep sequence, a combat swing.

Getting Started

1 · Set up the Animator (optional but recommended)

For dialogue animation, it's best to keep facial animations on their own layer so they don't interfere with body movement.

1. Open the Animator window via Window → Animation → Animator
2. Create a new layer — e.g. Mouth. Click the ⚙ icon, set Blending to Override, and set Weight to 1.
3. Create a new Animation Clip and drag it into this layer as the default state so it triggers automatically on Play.

2 · Open AudioTimeline and assign a clip

1. Go to Window → AudioTimeline
2. Drag your AudioClip into the field. Use the Mute checkbox to toggle playback during Edit mode.

3 · Nest below the Animation window

1. Open the Animation window: Window → Animation → Animation (or Ctrl+6).
2. Drag the floating AudioTimeline window and dock it directly below the Animation window.

4 · Align the waveform

With a clip assigned and the window docked, you'll see the waveform. A red playhead line tracks in sync with the Animation window's scrubber.

5 · Animate

With record mode active in the Animation window, scrub or play back as normal. The waveform updates in real time, giving you a clear visual reference for mouth shapes, blinks, and expression changes.

Overview

The Material Swapper is a component-based tool that displays your materials as thumbnail buttons. Clicking a thumbnail swaps the mesh material and (in record mode) automatically creates a keyframe — making lip-sync animation a click-by-click process rather than a property-hunting exercise.

It works best alongside the AudioTimeline window, where you can see the waveform and click mouth shapes to rhythm.

Setup

1 · Create your materials

Create one material per mouth pose (or eye texture, or any swap target). For transparent textures that still catch lighting, use these settings in the material inspector:

• Shader: Universal Render Pipeline/Lit
• Workflow Mode: Metallic
• Blending Mode: Alpha
• Receive Shadows: ✓

2 · Create a Material Library

1. Right-click in your Project window.
2. Choose Create → Material Library.

3 · Assign materials and categories

1. Open the Material Library asset and add your materials.
2. Create categories to group them — e.g. Mouths, Eyes, Brows.

4 · Add the MaterialSwapper component

1. Select the mesh GameObject you want to animate.
2. Click Add Component and choose MaterialSwapper.
3. Assign your Material Library — thumbnails generate automatically.

5 · Animate

Open the Animation window, enter record mode, and click thumbnails to swap materials and place keyframes at the current playhead position. Pair with AudioTimeline for best results.

Overview

A set of StateMachineBehaviour scripts you can attach to any Animator state. Each one fires automatically when a character enters, exits, or passes through that state — removing the need for manual parameter management in code.

How to add a behaviour

1. In the Animator window, select an animation state (or click the layer background to target the whole layer).
2. In the Inspector, click Add Behaviour and choose from the list below.

Available behaviours

ChooseRandomState – setup guide

1. Right-click the Animator layer background and choose Create new Sub-State Machine.
2. Inside the Sub-State, create one state per animation you want to randomise (e.g. Idle1, Idle2, Idle3).
3. Create an int parameter called Randomizer.

4. Add a Transition from Entry to each state. Add a Transition from each state back out to the base layer.
5. Click the Sub-State background to deselect all nodes, then click Add Behaviour → ChooseRandomState in the Inspector.

6. Set Number Of Animations to match your clip count.
7. Select each Entry → State transition and set its Condition to Randomizer Equals 0 (0 for first, 1 for second, etc.).

Overview

When a GameObject is renamed or a hierarchy is restructured, animation clip property bindings store a path string (e.g. Root/Body/Arm/Hand) that no longer resolves to anything in the scene. Unity marks these bindings yellow in the Animation window.

The Animation Missing Reference Finder scans one or more .anim clips, lists every broken path in a table, and lets you repair them — either by typing the correct path, or by letting the tool search the active scene hierarchy and suggest a fix automatically.

Opening the Tool

The window opens as a standalone panel (minimum 700 × 450 px) and can be resized or docked like any other Unity Editor window.

Loading Clips

There are four ways to get clips into the tool:

• Scan Selected Clips — select one or more .anim files in the Project window, then click this button. The clips are added to the list and scanned immediately.
• Scan All in Project — finds every AnimationClip asset in the project. A progress bar tracks the scan. All previously loaded clips and results are cleared first.
• Add Active Clip — reads whichever clip is currently open in Unity's Animation window and adds it to the list. Useful when you are already looking at a clip with yellow bindings.
• Drag and Drop — drag .anim files from the Project window directly onto the Clip Source Area at the top of the window. Non-clip assets are rejected.

Click Refresh to re-scan the loaded clip list after making hierarchy changes without clearing it. Click Clear to remove all clips and results.

Reading the Results Table

After scanning, the results table shows one row per broken path. Multiple animated properties that share the same broken path (e.g. localPosition.x/y/z) are grouped into a single row — a property count badge shows how many properties will be repaired when you fix that row.

Auto-Resolve

Auto-resolve runs automatically on every row after each scan. It can also be triggered per-row using the Auto button.

The tool walks down the broken path segment by segment, matching each segment to the children of the previous match in the active scene hierarchy. Candidates are ranked by name similarity — exact matches are tried first, then close matches scored by similarity. A candidate is only accepted if the entire remaining path can also be resolved beneath it, so a near-match at one level that leads to a dead end is rejected and the next candidate is tried.

Applying Fixes

1. Apply (per-row) — writes the Suggested Fix field for that single row to the clip immediately. Supports Undo.
2. Fix Selected — applies fixes to all checked rows that have a suggested path and are not Skipped or already Fixed. Wrapped in a single Undo group.
3. Fix All — applies fixes to every eligible row in the table. Wrapped in a single Undo group. Assets are saved automatically after the batch.