Control an animation from a trigger box

Reviewed

A trigger box can start up to 8 placed animations together, or act as their pause and resume button.

In the menus: ESC → Design → Trigger Boxes

Binding the animations

Build an animation for each model, light, sound or looping effect first. Each track needs at least 2 keys to play.

Then draw a trigger box and select it on the Trigger Boxes panel.

Disarm it while you set the bindings. SET ANIMS can fire a live box again if someone is still standing inside it.

  1. Find Anim(s) #: in the Animations band.
  2. Enter the placed entity numbers, with | between them and no spaces. 4|5 binds entities 4 and 5.
  3. Press SET ANIMS.

The numbers come from Manage, not the keyframe slots. Every entity must exist and have an animation. One invalid entry rejects the whole change and keeps the previous binding.

Use each number only once.

SET ANIMS replaces the whole list. To add another animation, enter the old numbers and the new one together. CLEAR ANIMS removes the list while keeping the box's camera and cues.

Restarting or pausing

With Pause, don't restart unticked, every fire starts the bound tracks again from key 1.

Tick it to change what each fire does:

Track's current stateWhat the next fire does
Stoppedstarts it at key 1
Playingfreezes it where it stands
Pausedcontinues it from the same point

Each animation uses its own current state. Stop all the bound tracks before starting if you want them to pause and resume together.

For a pause button, set Fires: every time and By: pressing use. Press and release Use inside the box for each change, leaving the Wait gap between presses.

Walking-in boxes work too, but you must leave and enter again for another fire. Leaving the box does not pause an animation by itself.

Choose MAKE LIVE when the box is ready.

Using cues instead

The animation binding starts its tracks as soon as the box fires. To wait first, put an animate line after a wait in the cue list.

A group track also uses a cue, such as animate group dockcrates play. Group names do not go in Anim(s) #:. Build a cue without typing covers the group's picker.

Pause, don't restart affects only the bound animations. It does not change an animate cue.

Prefer the console?

These commands bind entities 4 and 5 to box 3, then make each fire pause or resume them:

/trigger 3 anim 4|5
/trigger 3 pause on

Both succeed without a chat confirmation on an every-time box. The panel reads back the new settings.

/trigger <box> anim <id[|id...]|none>
/trigger <box> pause <on|off>

/trigger 3 pause off restores restarting from key 1. /trigger 3 anim none clears the animation binding.