Timelines - using objects to trigger

Hi. I am new to Hype and understand timelines and have created a simple animation. I am trying to figure out something that is likely super simple. I have an object on the Main Timeline, that is set up to play Another Timeline when moused over. That mouse over simply makes another object appear. But what's happening is that the object I want to appear only on the mouse over, appears in the Main Timeline, as well. I can't seem to ask it to be hidden in the Main Timeline. If I do, it also hides it in the other timeline. What am I missing?

Perhaps separate timelines for this isn't the proper method to have something appear only on mouse over??

Thanks in advance for any assistance.

There's a few things to note that I think should help.

First is that timelines do not contain elements, Scenes contain elements. So you can't really have an element on one timeline and not the other, since that's not really how it works.

Timelines contain animations. So when you start a timeline, you're basically playing a stream of animations that effect properties of the elements in the scene.

Further breaking it down, animations are keyframes that change a property from its value in the start keyframe to the value in the end keyframe.

So to get it working such that mousing over one element changes the visibility (display) of another element, you'll have the initiating element have an on mouse over action that starts the alternate timeline. The alternate timeline then has two keyframes that take the element from hidden to visible.

If you want a mouse out to re-hide, then you can make an action to start that same timeline, but play in reverse.

Here's a basic example document:

Visbility.hype.zip (22.8 KB)

Thanks, Jonathan.

I do understand all of what you said. And I finally figured out my issue. I was asking about why some things appear on a timeline when you don't want them to. I figured out that I needed to change opacity on the Main Timeline. I have five rollovers that affect the color of one area depending on the timeline played, and was having issue with one appearing over another. I find that it's super confusing to have to see ALL of the elements in a scene regardless of which timeline you're viewing.

One more question - I opened your file (thank you) and notice that there's a purple bar denoting a symbol, which it looks like contained all of the elements. ? Why are symbols better/different than elements, and why not just use an element(s)?

Thanks!

Making items only visible an specific timelines:
You can place all elements and hide them (Main timeline) selected. On timelines you want to see the element… press record and make the item visible.

Hint about a bug:
Be careful to always press record. There is this Microsoft-Clippy-Type behavior/bug that changes the state of all your first frames if you by accident forget to press record on another timeline. Tumult should really change that in my opinion.

Hmm... maybe you opened a different file? I didn't use symbols in the Visibility.hype project at all.

Overall Symbols are great for re-usability, okay for organization, and not as good for "cross-element" communication like what you're trying to do since generally the way to do that is though Custom Behaviors. However if both elements are within a symbol it is just as good.