Unreal Engine Tips: Curve Tables as an alternative to Timelines in Components

When working with time based logic in blueprints, timelines are one of the more common options. They’re easy to set up and work fine for simple cases.

The issue comes up when we want to move that logic into components. Timelines can’t be used inside blueprint components, which becomes a problem once the logic needs to be reused.

An alternative is to drive the same behavior using curve tables.

Instead of relying on a timeline node, we can keep a float that represents elapsed time and update it using a timer. On each timer tick, we increment that value and evaluate a curve using it as input, as shown in the screenshots below:

  

This gives us the same kind of progression a timeline would, but without needing a timeline node at all.

With this setup, the logic stays small and easy to move around, and the curve decides how the value changes over time.

Because the behavior lives in the curve, adjusting how something ramps up or fades out usually means changing data rather than logic. The same setup can be reused for things like charge buildup, damage scaling, or any other time based effect.