Thanks for taking a look.
All those hide and show actions are simply 'Activate Game Object' actions... they just make different UI buttons visible or invisible. They have nothing to do with the problem. The expanded actions just show that the two states either hide (deactivate) or show (activate) the canvas object.
Since both the UI button presses and the keyboard button presses send the same events (basically change states), and the UI button presses produce clean results and the keyboard presses do not... I think only the Playmaker developers might have insight as to why things are displayed differently.
It seems...
The UI button press sends event to change states. When this happens, the canvas is activated BUT it's children (the UI buttons on the canvas) are activated/deactivated first, then the canvas is displayed.
The keyboard button press sends the SAME event to change states. When this happens, the canvas is activated first along with all it's children (the UI buttons) and all the UI buttons are activated (displayed) briefly, then the UI buttons are properly shown/hidden according to their individual 'Activate Game Object' actions.
Essentially, two different visual results from sending the SAME event.
Yes, I tried putting a state with 'Next Frame Event' between the states but it did nothing. I also tried moving the 'Show Playback Controls CANVAS' action to the bottom of the stack to see if that made a difference but it did not.
The only thing I can think of that might work is if there was a way to have the 'Get Key Down' action NOT send the event to change states but rather have it simulate the UI button press instead... not sure how to set this up.
Thanks again.