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What is a TIG?

Thinking I'm Good - TIG

The subtitle of this section is just a play with acronyms but in a real sense it is true. TIGs are a very important part of LiveMotion. You can create web pages without TIGs but good use of TIGs make for more efficient web pages.

So what is a TIG anyway? TIG stands for Time Independent Group and as it states it is time independent of the composition timeline. In reality a TIG has its own individual timeline.

How is a TIG different from a Group? A Groups timeline is the composition timeline or the timeline that the Group is in. Yes you can have a group in a TIG just as you can have a TIG inside of a Group or even a Group in a Group. A TIG has its own separate timeline and this timeline is independent of the Composition timeline.

Why should I use TIGs? A TIG is great when you create an animation which you want to run say on a down state of a rollover. You can do this by using a series of complex labels and positioning on the Composition timeline. But if you create a TIG you can place it where you want it to show in the Composition timeline and run it when you want it to or if a viewer wants it to run.

Generally speaking, create TIGs on your animations that you want to reuse over and over throughout your movie. Also, create TIGs for your rollover states, animations you want to loop, or animations that you want to run independent of the Composition timeline.

Run by Remote Control

One of the big usage for TIGs is when creating remote rollovers. We will cover Remote Rollovers is another Tutorial but in a nutshell a Remote Rollover is an animation which plays when there is some kind of button action such as a Button Over State or Button Down State.

We have a Remote Rollover Button shown to the right. This button uses three states the Over State, Down State, and the Out State.

Here is what the button does.
The Over State plays Animation 1
The Down State plays Animation 2
The Out State resets the Animation.

So if you mouse over the button the animation will play. Then if you click and leave the mouse on the button the second part of the animation will play. If you take the mouse off of the button the whole animation will reset. There are ways that we can make this better but that is another story.

Run by Remote Control

The example on the previous page can be created several ways. Some easier other more complex and some which may not run smoothly. But the best way to use these animations are by making them into TIGs.

So as we have stated a TIG or Time Independent Group is a way of creating animations which run using their own timeline. This means you do not have to try and synchronize objects to run around other objects. You can run the animation anytime you want. Are you beginning to see the importance of a TIG. It is the greatest tool that you can learn how to use.

This is another Remote Rollover example. In this case we have an animation which is looping then we have a button which will play an animation. You will see that you can press the button at anytime and the animation will play. To see this in action press the button. Press it at different times you will see that it does not affect the looping animation on the top.

Creating a TIG

To begin, we have created two objects, a magenta circle and a blue square. These are the same two objects as in the Group Tutorial. The big difference that these two objects are showing an animation path. This is because these two objects are animated.

Objects on the Canvas

Objects on the Timeline

We won't repeat the renaming of the objects. You change the name in the same manner as was covered in the Group Tutorial. Next we are going to look at the differences of the TIG.

Looking at the graphic at the right you will see this looks pretty much like a group. But if you look at the graphic at the bottom you will see that there is a major difference in the way the timeline looks. The timeline only shows the two objects in the group, the circle and the square.

Objects on the Canvas

This is what making a TIG, does it turns a object or a group of objects into a special group with its own timeline. Now do you believe me, I told you so.

Objects on the TIG Timeline

So to sum things up here let's take some time here and look at the timelines. The only way to tell the difference between a Group and the TIG is by viewing the timeline. So let's look at the the next three timelines. As you see there are three sets of objects as shown on the right.

Objects on the Canvas

Regular Objects on the Composition Timeline and Canvas

The highlighted objects above shows you what regular objects look like in a timeline. Notice each object is separate. Also, objects which are animated will show the animation path on the canvas.

Grouped Objects on the Composition Timeline and Canvas

The highlighted object above shows you what a group looks like in a timeline. Unless you name the group you will see the number of objects contained in that group.

TIG Objects on the Composition Timeline and Canvas

The highlighted object shown above is what a TIG will look like. Notice that there is a stopwatch is to the left of the object. TIG objects also show as grey in the timeline. Like is a group unless you change the name of the group it will tell you how many objects are contained in that TIG.