The Timeline and Playback
The Timeline controls time in your groom. It sets the current frame and lets you play the scene back, which matters whenever your groom changes over time - for example when a base mesh is animated, when you run dynamics, or when you read an animated cache.
The current frame
The Timeline shows the current frame and the frame range. Drag the playhead, or type a frame number, to move to a specific moment in time. Operators that depend on time re-evaluate at the frame you set, so you can scrub through an animation and watch the hair respond.
Playback
Use the playback controls to play, stop, and step through frames. Playback runs the scene forward through the frame range so you can review motion - hair following an animated character, a simulation settling, or a cached performance playing back.
Working with dynamics and caches
The Timeline is central to the animation and dynamics operators:
- Moov physics simulates hair motion over the frame range. See Moov Physics Operator.
- The Animation Cache operator plays back pre-recorded hair animation. See Animation Cache Operator.
- Other time-based effects, such as the Oscillator Operator, evaluate against the current frame.
Set the frame range to cover the motion you want to review or simulate, then play it back to see the result in the viewport.