Session 18: Standard clocks
Preparation
- There are no external assets required for this training session.
Description
Standard clocks in Swift automatically take system time from the render machine.
Session specific objectives
Using clocks
Chapter 1: Adding a clock node
- Setting the font
- Using clock formats to format the clock time
Chapter 2: Adding offsets for different regions
- Adding an offset using an input
Chapter 2: Countdown and count-up clocks for less than 24 hours
- Absolute clocks
- Supplied time calculations
- Start time and end times
Expected duration
15 minutes
User Level
All new users
Clock format syntax
The new format uses % to specify elements.
Numbers can be padded out by adding a letter followed by a number.
Modifiers
U - uppercase variation of day and month names
L - lowercase variation of day and month names
% - %
a - abbreviated name of day
A - name of day
b - abbreviated name of month
B - name of month
p - am/pm
P - AM/PM
o - st/nd/rd/th
O - ST/ND/RD/TH
Y - year
M - month
D - day of month
h - hour in 24 hour format
H - hour in 12 hour format
m - minute
s - second
z - millisecond
Preset day nomenclature
Mon, Tue, Wed, Thu, Fri, Sat, Sun
Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday, Sunday
Preset month nomenclature
Jan, Feb, Mar, Apr, May, Jun, Jul, Aug, Sep, Oct, Nov, Dec
January, February, March, April, May, June, July, August, September, October, November, December
Examples
%UB %D%o %Y = MONTH nth YEAR
%2h:%2m:%2s = 12:02:34
%H%p %A = Time in hours + am weekday in caps
%2h:%2m:%2s:%z = Time with millisecs
Markup
It is possible to insert markup into the text format to adjust sizes, fonts etc.
For example:
%H
Offsets for time zones
Offsets for time zones can be set using the Offset Millisecs function.
There are 3,600,000 milliseconds in a hour
Offset example
UTC + 4 hours
3600000 x 4 = 14400000 milliseconds
Session Project
If you want to review Justin Avery's instructor project at this point in the course, you can download the project zip here.
