SI FAQ: Play Action from another Action

How do I play an Action from within another Action?

Play an Action from another Action Yes, you can do this, though it takes a couple non-intuitive steps to set it up.

This is a very useful feature, especially if you have an animation that's part of several actions. You can create one Action that contains all the common animation bits, then just call that Action from all the other Actions that use it.

Suppose you have an Action named "Called," and another Action named "Caller" that you want to trigger the playback of "Called" somewhere on its timeline. Do this:

Select the Action named "Caller."
Move the Timeline Thumb to the time in "Caller" at which you want "Called" to start playing.
Turn Animate Mode on.
Select the View >> Parameters menu item to display the Parameter Editor Window.
Click only the Scene radio button at the top of the Parameter Editor Window. Make sure the Parameter Editor name window is clear.
In the list of Scene Parameters, you will see a parameter named "Scene Called command" (or in general, "Scene <action name> command"). Double-click on that parameter's value field to open the Parameter Value Editor.
In the Parameter Value Editor, click the "Text" value type radio button, type "play" in the text value field (without the double quotes), and press the OK button. Since Animate Mode is on, a keyframe is created in the "Caller" Action, at the time selected by the Timeline Thumb, for the Parameter named "Scene Called command".
Try it: turn off Animate Mode, right-click on the "Caller" Action, and select Play from the popup menu.

Once you've got the basic stuff working,

You can play a called Action multiple times within the caller Action - just repeat steps 2-7 with the Timeline Thumb positioned to another time. This shows up as another keyframe in the "Scene Called command" Action Item.
You can play several different called Actions from within a caller Action. Each reference appears as another Timeline Item in the caller Action, named something like "Scene Called 2 command", "Scene Called 3 command", ...
To change when the called Action plays, just slide the keyframe to a new time value.
You can issue "stop" or "scrub" (pause) commands to an Action, as well as "play". Unfortunately, there is no way to resume a paused Action playing at the spot it was paused - the "play" command always starts playback from the beginning of the Action.

last modified 8/24/2005

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