Timelines out of sync

I have 3 timelines (including the main timeline). None of these are relative timelines. I have a circle in my design. If I change the color of the circle at point 00:00:00 in the main timeline, I see that change reflected in all three timelines. If I change the color of the circle in timeline 3 I again see the change reflected in all timelines. If I change the color in timeline 2 it doesn’t cascade to the other timelines. Is this something other people have seen? What would cause the timelines to not stay in sync?

@redb1087

Posting your Hype project would be helpful in analyzing the issue.

PracticeHype.hype.zip (29.0 KB)
And of course now I can’t repeat the problem with color but the same thing is happening with size. In the Expanding Category 2 timeline at 00:00:00 the green bubble is bigger than in all the other timelines. When I resized it, none of the other timelines changed.

@redb1087 @jonathan @Daniel

@redb1087 I’ve been able to replicate your situation - something I haven’t run across as I’ve not had a set-up like yours. I would not have expected this behavior either.

Issue - General Description
The same element, a circle, appears in (3) different timelines (no timeline is set to relative). In one of those timelines this element has keyframe values set for width and height. The other two timelines do not have width or height keyframes for this element. Changing the width or height in one of the non-keyframe timelines changes the width~height in the keyframed timeline. This situation does not seem right: A keyframe value in this circumstance should be constant, not variable.


Set-up:
• The element involved is a green circle called “MainCat”.
“MainCat” shows up in three timelines in the Project:


  1. “Main Timeline” - No width/height keyframes for “MainCat”
  2. “Expanding Category” - No width/height keyframes for “MainCat”
  3. “Expanding Category 2” - Width/height keyframes set for “MainCat”

No timeline is “relative”.

Adding 10 pixels to the width of the “MainCat” green circle in timelines “MainTimeline” or “Expanding Category” changes “MainCat’s” width~height in timeline “Expanding Category 2” by the augmented amount (10 pixels).

Example:


  1. “Main Timeline” > “MainCat” diameter = 100 pixels;
  2. “Expanding Category” > “MainCat” diameter = 100 pixels;
  3. “Expanding Category 2” > “MainCat” diameter = 152 pixels;

Changing the width from 100 to 110 pixels in the “Main Timeline” changes the width in “Expanding Category” from 100 to 110 pixels (or vice-versa).

However, in the “Expanding Category 2” timeline (keyframes used) - the width for “MainCat” is changed from 152 pixels to 162 pixels, reflecting the extra 10 pixels added to “MainCat” in one of the other timelines.


I would not have expected a value for an element, explicitly set by a keyframe in a non-relative timeline, to change its value.

I think I might have expected the opposite behavior of what you are describing as normal but I am very new to the product.

My initial expectation was that 00:00:00 should be constant across all “non relative” timelines so that no matter which timeline I made a change I would see it reflected in the others.

The problem is that now the three timelines keep getting out of sync and for only certain properties I have to change them on multiple timelines to keep everything consistent. I’m also having some problems then going back and trying to align the various timelines because changes made in the other timelines seem to affect the expanding category timeline in a “relative” way. Ie if I change the location from 45px from the top to 47px from the top, the location in the expanding category timeline moves down 2 px from its current location but not necesarrily to 47px. That might be better for a new topic.

It does make sense to me that if I change a “relative” timeline at 00:00:00 it would not be reflected in the other timelines not sure about vice versa.

I might be using Hype in a slightly different way than originally intended though.

@redb1087

I am agreeing with Your assessment. Your quote above is what I said also in my post - in three places (please see below - bolding for emphasis here).

Opening paragraph:

I've been able to replicate your situation - something I haven't run across as I've not had a set-up like yours. I would not have expected this behavior either.


Last sentence under sub-head _"Issue - General Description"_: > Changing the width or height in one of the non-keyframe timelines changes the width~height in the keyframed timeline. This situation does not seem right: **A keyframe value in this circumstance should be constant, not variable.**
Concluding statement: > **I would *_not_* have expected a value for an element, explicitly set by a keyframe in a non-relative timeline, to change its value.**

This does seem like a bug.

Opacity is understood in the animation system as a relative property: An opacity adjustment is a percentage of a starting state, and this can cause some odd behavior (-20% opacity or 103% opacity) in some odd cases when adjusting opacity across timelines.

Origin + size should not behave like this, especially for non-relative timelines. At first I thought this might have to do with the motion path – that has in the past caused some issues especially with groups.

@Daniel
Indeed it doesn't seem like that's how it should work. Thanks for checking into to it.


@redb1087

I got side tracked by what looks like a bug - a situation that was also giving You an issue.

However, when You explicitly set a keyframe for an element it should be set to that value and not vary otherwise You have a cascading series of changes from one timeline to the next for a given element.

The reason the "Main Timeline" and "Expanding Category" reflect the size changes made to the "MainCat" green circle element is they did not have keyframes set for those properties; whereas "Expanding Category 2" does have the width and height value set by keyframes. It should become separate from the other timeline width and height values.