animation

[nimble torrent]

So!

[high light]

Alright, how would i go about fixing this problem then?

[nimble torrent]

Here's one of the many ways you can fix this:

• make your reload animation into a montage
• play your reload animation using the Play Montage function, this will give you both start and end events for the reload (you need these)
• when you start your reload animation, use the function 'Attach Component To Component' to reparent your gun from your right hand to your left hand. Make sure all the 'Rule' options are set to 'Keep Relative'.
• when your montage ends, use the 'Attach Component To Component' function again to reattach your gun to your right hand

In your case, 'Parent' is your animated mesh. 'Target' is your Gun, and 'Socket Name,' is the name of the bone you want to reparent the gun too.

[high light]

OKay so i need to add a bone right? also how do i make the reload aniamtion a montage. thanks for helping me 🙂

[nimble torrent]

You do not need to add a bone.

This will work without one.

It is a much more error prone method than adding a weapon bone, but it is far less involved and complicated for someone in your specific position.

I would never advocate for this method in most circumstances, but this is a school project, you did not create the animations, and you are a beginner - so in these circumstances, using this method will probably be OK.

[high light]

Okay cool. thanks, so how do i turn the reload animtion into a montage?

[nimble torrent]

You can create a simple montage by right clicking on the sequence:

[left spade]

im lost just reading all of this xd

[old falcon]

Squishy hard at work as usual 😄

[left spade]

the dedication is real

mad respect

[nimble torrent]

: P

For you JustAGhost - do you know how to get anything to happen when you press a button? Like, do you have basic input stuff working?

[left spade]

honestly

no not yet xd

[high light]

Hey so I’ve made a montage. Where do I find the attach component to component

[left spade]

well actually, i have a main menu thing im working on where i can press like the start button and it loads the game if that counts

[nimble torrent]

You would do this in your pawn class, where you are controlling the reload action.

[nimble torrent]

But not a keyboard thing?

[left spade]

no unfortunately

[nimble torrent]

Well... I mean - probably best to get that working first before you worry about doors right?

[left spade]

wait do you mean like wasd movement controls?

sorry im pretty new

[nimble torrent]

It depends on your game! Unless your game is specifically about opening and closing a door, you probably have a set of actions that you need to do that are more important.

[left spade]

well in my game there is no movement its basically sit in an office and close doors type thing

but you can turn left and right

[nimble torrent]

Ah, a Five Nights At Door Management kind of game. : )

[left spade]

exactly :)

[nimble torrent]

OK. Do you have a player pawn or player controller setup, or anything like that?

[left spade]

yes i have a player controller but not a player pawn

[nimble torrent]

OK, well... you're gonna need one of those!

It doesn't have to have much in it though.

You're also going to need an InputAction and an InputActionMapping object. They're easy to make, let me find you a video.

https://youtu.be/CYiHNbAIp4s

In your pawn's construction event, add the mapping context containing your 'Open Door' button, and that will give access to your action as an event.

From there, you need to get access to your door object. You would do this through an exposed variable (probably).

The best way of doing this is probably to have your door control it's own opening behavior.

So you'd need a function on the door that you would call from the pawn.

And inside that function, you would make the door open by moving the Mesh up and down.

You can do that in a variety of ways - probably a timeline would be good in your case.

[left spade]

wow thank you so much

absolute life saver

[nimble torrent]

Aha, a video of using a timeline to open a door:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UlcK7MSP75w

[left spade]

where would i put the player pawn? or does that not matter

[nimble torrent]

You need to put it in your Project Settings.

Under 'Maps and Modes'

[left spade]

oh wait i think i have a player pawn then

[nimble torrent]

You can also set it on a level by level basis, in the Gamemode Override section of the World Settings.

[left spade]

because the base character is there the BP_FirstPersonCharacter

[nimble torrent]

OK, then you just need to add your action mapping to that BP's construction event.

Rather than creating an entirely new pawn.

You still need the actions though.

[left spade]

alright awesome

for the input action would i need one for opening and one for closing the door? or can i use one to do both

[nimble torrent]

Depends on your game design, but probably you want it on a toggle, so hitting the same button will open and close the door.

[left spade]

alright thank you

got a lil issue, in the tutorial he has all of these nodes but since i dont need like any movement i dont have them and hes tinkering with them im not sure what to do

[nimble torrent]

The door tutorial or the action tutorial?

[left spade]

the action tutorial

[nimble torrent]

OK, you just need to add your Action to the end of the construction event in the pawn.

That should give you the ability to put the name of that action into the search bar when making a new node, and it should show up as an event.

Have you done that?

[left spade]

where would i find the construction event?

[nimble torrent]

It'll be called 'BeginPlay', it'll look like this, and it'll probably be somewhere near the top of the graph:

[left spade]

found it!

so where would i link my input action?

this is what ive got

[nimble torrent]

You don't need to link it. Like it shows in the video, you need to Add the Mapping Context.

You need to get the local input mapping subsystem:

Then add your mapping context:

You need to set the mapping context to the mapping context that has your action in it.

[high light]

sorry i had a powercut. How do i know if i have a pawn class?

[nimble torrent]

Check what it says here:

#animation message

[high light]

okay i found the pawn, but i cant find the attach component to component

[nimble torrent]

Are you looking at the pawns graph?

[high light]

err idk, i checked to see what the pawn was as its set to a Blueprint

[nimble torrent]

Right, so you have to open that blueprint.

So you didn't create the pawn either?

Did you create the animation blueprint?

How did you setup the reload animation?

[high light]

i have an animation blueprint

[nimble torrent]

You're going to need to find the place where the reload animation is triggered.

It's probably in the pawn.

[high light]

wdym triggered.. sorry im a real newbie

[nimble torrent]

Somewhere in your code, pressing a button causes the character to reload the gun.

You're going to have to find where that happens.

[high light]

oh right

found it

[nimble torrent]

Cool.

[high light]

now what?

[nimble torrent]

I've already told you.

[high light]

i mean i still cant find the attach conponment to componment, but after that i think ik what to do

[nimble torrent]

Should be in the right click menu.

[high light]

ah i see, thank you sm 🙂

[high light]

sorry to be a bother, is there a way i can re possition it after its change to the other parent?

[nimble torrent]

Yes. There are several functions that will let you do that.

They're called things like "Set World Transform" and "Set Relative Transform"

[high light]

which would you recommend?

[nimble torrent]

They do different things. You probably want 'Set Relative Transform', because that lets you set an offset from the parent.

So in your case, that would be the offset from one of the hands.

[high light]

great thank you 🙂

[high light]

what do i do with the 4 things on the left?

[nimble torrent]

• sweep is for physics movement, you want that off
• teleport makes it happen instantly from the perspective of physics (so it doesn't accumulate velocity), you want it on
• New Transform is where you put the offset, but you need to make a new transform to put in there:

[high light]

Your a life saver. thank you so much

[old falcon]

By the way, does anyone have a good workflow for using linked animation sequences in sequencer?
I got a bunch of sub-tracks for each of my character's animations (I just mute them on/off depending on what I'm working on) and would love to have the auto-baking for this. But you can only have one linked sequence per track.

Am I really supposed to create separate tracks for each of my character animations?

[regal arch]

I have a first person camera set up for a third person character, so you can look down and see your body. Whenever they are idle, they face forward. When they are running, moving, or jumping their body faces at a 45 degree angle. I'm not sure if this would be an issue for #animation or #blueprint ?

[craggy cape]

Hi y'all, more control rig stuff. I'm working on making a rig manually since modular didn't work out, but when i set up controls for leg IK, the result looks like the first picture. Second pic is my IK setup. I can't figure out what i need to do to make the leg look normal in the default pose when the control is active. In the pic, the first pic has only the character's left leg rigged for IK. Has anyone had this issue before? My skeleton follows the bone structure of the default mannequin for legs

[old falcon]

What are your bone orientations like? The left bones really face in -X direction? You could also try setting your secondary axis to 0,0,0

[craggy cape]

-x is down leg for the skeleton. Secondary axis of 0 results in this:

[old falcon]

Your shin bone doesn't seem to face -X, does it? Can't see it well

[craggy cape]

Calf is same as thigh

Thigh with no control applied

[old falcon]

Yeah that doesn't quite look like -X to me on the shin, though I'm not too sure about this. Also depends on whether you have global or relative enabled when selecting the bone.
As far as I know ideally you would want the bones to face exactly along one of the axis.

For example, my shin (and all other left-hand bones) face in +X, which is then mirrored for the left/right side. (i.e. if left is +X forward then right is -X forward)

[craggy cape]

Could you send a zoomed out pic of both legs? just so i can make sure i'm using left and right correct

[old falcon]

You don't have to have your bone aligned on X. In fact, I think none of the skeletons Epic provides (i.e. manny) follow +X but rather Y (?). Don't quote me on that.
It's only important that your bones are aligned along any axis. Preferably what Epic uses if you want maximum reusability with animations from the marketplace and so on.

[craggy cape]

So the leg's skeleton in Tpose needs to be completely straight?

[old falcon]

No not at all. The bone (e.g. from knee joint to foot joint) needs to be aligned exactly along one of the axis. Regardless of bone position, one of the arrows needs to point exactly at the next joint

Have a look at the "Orient bones" section here: https://dev.epicgames.com/documentation/en-us/unreal-engine/skeleton-editing-in-unreal-engine
The gif demonstrates nicely what needs to happen. After orienting, the X axis of each joint points exactly at the next joint in the chain

Take all of that with a grain of salt, I'm not an expert on rigging/animation

[opaque comet]

Having a weird issue with the LayeredBlendPerBoneNode. I'm using a float variable that is saved in the Event Graph for the blend alpha between two poses. For some reason, during runtime it looks like the second blend pose (Blend Poses 0) only starts to kick in once the alpha float goes > 0.5. If I manually set the float value to 0.5, it correctly shows a 50% blend.

I have a print node running from the Event Graph to confirm the float variable value

[craggy cape]

Thanks for the help, will look at the link and see if that fixes it

[opaque comet]

I also tried doing a 1D blendspace that uses the float variable, then feeding the result of that blendspace into the LayeredBlendPerBone with alpha = 1. Same result. Is there something different with the way the AnimBP Event Graph sets variables and communicates with the AnimGraph? This makes no sense to me. I've unhooked all other AnimGraph logic to confirm this is the only node affecting the output pose.

[nimble torrent]

That certainly shouldn't be happening. You should be able to blend poses at less then 50%.

Like, if you look at the default 3rd person animation graphs - they do that in their blendspaces a lot.

[opaque comet]

Restarted the editor too

[rustic island]

I'm trying to work out a in / out transition using ultra dynamic sky, when in space and my character passes through the atmo, it changes to sky, and vice versa..

but im stuck on the logic i know im missing something but not sure what...

[hollow moat]

I cant seem to figure out why the blend poses by bone isnt working. Im using a montage to play a attack animation so i made a upperbodyslot node.

[nimble torrent]

What does it do instead of work?

[opaque comet]

This is so bizarre. I'm feeding in a sin wave to the blendspace and it works as intended. As soon as I feed my variable, it stops working.

[nimble torrent]

Looks like it's working fine, but the character stopped moving.

Don't think that's an animation bug, I think that's an AI bug.

[nimble torrent]

Any chance your variable is bad?

[opaque comet]

It feels like the AnimGraph isn't looking for an update to the variable until it hits a threshold or something

[opaque comet]

I'm printing the variable from the AnimBP Event Graph, so I know it's correct

[nimble torrent]

OK!

[rustic island]

well no change happens

[nimble torrent]

Have you confirmed that the collision is happening?

By using, the debugger for example?

That's the obvious way this fails

[rustic island]

no I'll open that and use that, one sec

[rustic island]

in the debugger no breakpoints show up

[opaque comet]

I made a duplicate function in my pawn character to calculate the value of the float variable. In my AnimGraph, I'm now referencing the variable from the pawn and not from the AnimBP Event Graph. For some reason this method works, lol

[nimble torrent]

So you don't hit any breakpoints?

[nimble torrent]

Interesting!

[rustic island]

no

[nimble torrent]

That suggests the problem is not your graph, it's your collision setup. They're not interacting for some reason.

Personally, because it's a sphere, I wouldn't use collision.

I'd just use a distance test.

Distance tests are real cheap.

[rustic island]

is my graphs correct ?

[nimble torrent]

Who knows?

[rustic island]

take a look, i posted them 🙂

[nimble torrent]

If you're not hitting any of it, then the problem can't be in the graph.

It has to be in the collision.

[rustic island]

ok then

[still cipher]

Hi, didn't Unreal release a free pack of Motion Matching animations? Where can I get this?

[nimble torrent]

They don't appear to have released it yet.

[still cipher]

Oh ok

[mystic meadow]

anyone know what this is?

[nimble torrent]

No, it might have something to do with 'Choosers' which appear to be some kind of new animation state machine system that has, from what I have been able to find, no documentation of any kind.

[hallow pewter]

An update to this: I importted it sucessfully by merging and then parenting. the bone hierachy looks weird (Already had to rename the armature in blender to "root", for it to not give an error). Also, when i try to retarget thge animations from the default third person character, it simply doesnt retarget anything. There is also an error or warning below.

[hallow pewter]

This is the bone hierachy in blender:

[nimble torrent]

It looks like retargeting was not matching correctly. You have to set that up for non standard characters.

[hallow pewter]

Like with an Ik retargeter?

Propably

[nimble torrent]

I'm afraid this is a bit beyond me. I haven't used the retargeting systems very much.

[hallow pewter]

Alr, thanks anyway!

[mystic meadow]

the new version of unreal makes retargetting easy as 1 2 3

[hallow pewter]

yeah, but my character is a robot, not a normal human character so the retargeting doesnt work that well

[naive mountain]

Does the new retargeting perform accurate hands from manny > metahuman?

[hallow pewter]

Hey, is there some way to "join" those bones into one group, because unreal always makes a skeletal mesh for each bone group

[rustic island]

@nimble torrent HEY THIS WORKS FOR WHAT I WAS TRYING TO DO 😄

[snow vapor]

Would it be possible to use the same animation blueprint for 60 monsters in a game if all 60 monster have the same list of animations (i.e. walk, attack, take damage), but the animations themselves are unique for each monster? Since the way the animations work and are triggered is identical across all 60 monsters, it seems silly to make 60 animation blueprints just to go make them all the same with the only differences being swapping the Sequence Player being used in each state of the state machines.

[nimble torrent]

Yes. Look up how child anim bps work.

[snow vapor]

Ah ok cool. Thank you!

[snow vapor]

So the problem with this though is that it seems like it requires using the same skeleton. My monsters are all fairly unique and the majority of them won't be able to use the same skeleton. Is there a way around that?

Essentially what I want to be able to do is play an animation by it's name on the current skeleton. My monsters skeletons will sometimes change when they evolve, so I want to just grab whatever current skeleton it's using and play the animations for that skeleton.

[nimble torrent]

Nope, sorry. Don't know a way to make fully skeleton agnostic blend trees.

[nimble torrent]

Ok, you can't do blends but there is a way to play montages by names or enums.

[snow vapor]

hm.... I wonder if I can make that work. I'm still somewhat new to animation stuff but from what I know I think it would be nice to have blends, but for the game I'm making I might be able to get away without them.

[old falcon]

If you really have that many unique skeletons you've got your work cut out for ya. I would strongly recommend you reuse skeletons wherever possible and make use of retargeting too. You can get pretty far with just creating skeletons per species, so biped, quadriped, avian etc.
You can also use animation blueprint templates to further reduce blueprint duplication between your skeletons. Keep all the generic animation logic in the template and implement details in the child anim BPs (will require heavy use of linked animation layers/graphs).

It would also probably be better if you don't handle your one-off animations (e.g. anything that does not loop: attacking, interacting with objects etc.) in the anim BP but just play montages on your skeleton directly. Makes your anim BPs more concise.

Since @nimble torrent is here I meant to ask:
Do you use/know about linked animation sequences in sequencer?
I got a bunch of sub-tracks for each of my character's animations (I just mute them on/off depending on what I'm working on) and would love to have the auto-baking for this. But you can only have one linked sequence per track.
Am I really supposed to create separate tracks for each of my character animations?

[naive mountain]

Runtime retargeting too

[mystic meadow]

how do I get animnotify to call a bp function

[old falcon]

Whose BP function?

On the skel mesh, character...?

[mystic meadow]

character

[old falcon]

You get the skel mesh component as parameter in your notify right?
You can just get the owner of that component and cast to your character class. Then you can call any functions from that

[worldly anvil]

Hello, does anyone know how to play a specific section of animation montage without carrying on the execution?

I have 3 sections, and I want to play only one of them. In the animation preview window it loops on one single section, but in the game it plays the section I give it and all the others that I have after it, i.e. if I play 01, it plays 02 and 03, for 02 it plays only 03, and for 03 it doesn't play anything after it since there's no other section.

[old falcon]

You'll have to manually stop the montage

Or easier: make 3 separate montages for each animation
Montage sections are meant to be used for sequences not selections, e.g. StartReload -> ReloadShell (looping for every single shell) -> EndReload
Your death animations don't seem to be sequential, so montage sections are probably the wrong tool

[worldly anvil]

Oh, that sucks, thank you 😄

[snow vapor]

A lot of the problems I have with reusing skeletons comes from things like "this one has big long ears that need animated, this one has a tail that needs animated" and things like that. So I guess maybe one question I have might be what happens if I use a skeleton that has a tail and long ears on a creature who's general body and limbs fits but does not have those ears or tail? Can I just.... not do anything with the ears and tail bones and it'll be fine?

[old falcon]

Absolutely, as long as the hierarchies are the same and the bone names match, the animation will totally work, even if you have ears or a tail.
It's a good practice to establish a "main" skeleton and add whatever secondary bones you need later

[snow vapor]

oooh ok interesting. That should help a lot then.

[limpid zenith]

Hi, i have a problem, yesterday i was working on my control rig, and all was fine, but today when i try to open any map with my player, or even click on my Control Rig in content browser it just crashes ue, what can i do?

[cinder linden]

@dusty willow Post your issue here

[old falcon]

Some cast in some blueprint looks messed up/corrupted. I can't tell where though. If you install debug symbols/UE source code and re-trigger that issue you will get more information about where the issue is exactly.

[limpid zenith]

Yeah, but how can i repair it, like okey, i have it in this blueprint, but how to fix if i can't open it

[old falcon]

I would just recreate the blueprint. Or maybe you can do something with the context menu options?
Right click -> Validate Assets or something?

Or if you have source control enabled just roll back to a previous version

[old falcon]

Also can you post the entire error message? It's cut off

[limpid zenith]

When i even click rmb it crashes, so i don't think so, i have tested a bit, and i can select two assets and then it does not crash btw

[old falcon]

So it crashes on RMB on the control rig, but doesn't if you select multiple?
Sounds to me like the control rig is either corrupted or broken. Not too sure what you can do in that case other than roll back in source control

[limpid zenith]

I don't really understand what can really be the issue, coz i was just coding it and all was fine, went to sleep and it broke 😦

Wow, i can't even open anim blueprint now

And player ofc

[old falcon]

Isolate the issue

Pretty sure it's just the control rig

If you have source control you might wanna just try to delete the control rig and see what happens

[limpid zenith]

Yeah, it is

[limpid zenith]

What is source control?

plugin?

[old falcon]

Version control

Like git etc.

Allows you to roll back to a previous state of the file

[limpid zenith]

i don't think 😦

[old falcon]

Yeah might wanna look into that sometime. Binary files like Blueprints/Assets are a pain in the butt if they get messed up or similar

[limpid zenith]

Hmm, i have an idea, what if i try to import this control rig into another project

Nope, crashes

[old falcon]

Yeah something's wrong with it. No way around it but to recreate I suppose.

[limpid zenith]

So, i have new info, i deleted it from my project and it fixed all

So the issue is surely in control rig

Well, this is fk up

3 days in the bin

[old falcon]

Make sure to set up version control, you should always put any project that you're not willing to lose under version control.
I mean, what if your hard drive breaks? That's more than 3 days in the bin...

[limpid zenith]

Is there mb a way to see what was inside it?

[old falcon]

You can try to open the control rig as a text file, but I doubt you'll get anything out of it really.

[limpid zenith]

I sometimes copy all my project to my hard drive and cloud

[limpid zenith]

Yeah, don't think this ll help

[old falcon]

Yeah so version control is the automated way of doing that, and you can go back in your file history almost at will.
So what you could've done if you had version control is to roll back the control rig to a previous version and see if it works. That way you would maybe still have a large portion of your rig intact.

[limpid zenith]

How can i make it and is it free?

[old falcon]

There are free platforms for it. Check youtube for "UE5 version control"

[limpid zenith]

Okey, thanks for advise!

So there is no way for sure to open this bp in safe mode or smf

[old falcon]

Not that I know of, the asset seems to be corrupted.

[limpid zenith]

I know like what can cause this, i was working on it last day, only if i could somehow change it...

[upbeat wren]

hi guys

i have this attack im performing and i want to create a camera movement i have in mind

whats the best way to create this when im using montages to hit the enemy?

i want to create some camera movement which is more animated and cinematic

*sorry for the notification sound in the video

[hollow moat]

Hi is there any way for the left hand to touch the gun i already tried keying but it just stays there. Also rotating it makes my aim offset look weird.

[hallow pewter]

Hey, is there some way to "join" those bones into one group, because unreal always makes a skeletal mesh for each bone group

[ebon granite]

Anyone can explain me the difference between "enable root motion" and "force root lock" in animation assets ?

[old falcon]

First one enables root motion. Second one afaik only makes it so that the character sticks in place in e.g. anim sequence editor. I don't think it has runtime impact

[nimble torrent]

Yeah! This is one of the things that control rigs are really good at. A simple control rig with one IK effector would do the trick.

[topaz narwhal]

I am also struggling with Motion Matching 5.4, but I dont even get diagonal in any direction. I dont have the animations but is not interpolating correctly, maybe I should force it creating diagonal animations? but I am having problems just editing duplicates with a rotation in root.

[nimble torrent]

I think we're all going to be a bit lost regarding Motion Matching until the examples come out.

[topaz narwhal]

and a more general question, how to easily rotate a root animation?

[nimble torrent]

Rotate a root animation?

[topaz narwhal]

for example

duplicate an animation, and rotate it 45 degrees

so I avoid to manually create the same animation

and I keep the same distance

[nimble torrent]

That wouldn't be helpful with Motion Matching.

Motion Matching is checking the velocities of your characters body against it's database. If you have the first animation, the second is irrelevant.

[topaz narwhal]

but is using the root animation aka the "direction"

so when I go left it triggers the specific animation for left,not for right

so in diagonal is struggling and sliding

because is not interpolating correctly

between left and backwards lets say

so I thought about creating manually that one

[tranquil junco]

Hi! I am rewatching a tut on making control rigs and I am confused because I dont know why my root_ctrl is so big when I created it, it happens with every _ctrl I try to make for any bone, I dont really know why ; (

[topaz narwhal]

and others

[nimble torrent]

That's probably because you're not including animations to cover those scenarios. Motion matching requires plant and turns (lots of those), and also rotation animations of the character running in a circle.

Multiple 'running straight in different direction' animations are unlikely to create a good result.

In my experience.

Back when I was using it, we used 'dance cards' where the mocap actor would run around and do a complicated series of movements all in one animation clip.

Epic's new method of creating a dance card from smaller animation segments seems good, but you still need plant and turns and rotation animations.

If you don't have those - Motion matching is unlikely to create a good result.

[topaz narwhal]

exactly, so is there anyway to take an animation and rotate its direction?

if I rotate the global ctrl it doesnt offset gloably the root

[nimble torrent]

I don't believe that would help.

[topaz narwhal]

but the root ctrl is animated frame by frame

[nimble torrent]

Even if you did the thing you're trying to do - I don't think it would provide a quality result.

Not without lots of 'plant and turns' and 'running in circles' animations.

Do you have those?

[topaz narwhal]

I have all the lyra animations

which are missing the diagonals

[nimble torrent]

I've never looked at Lyra, sorry. Does that mean you have a lot of plant and turn and running in circles animations?

[topaz narwhal]

have these

[nimble torrent]

So that looks like no?

You do not have those animations?

Sorry - I'm being specific about this, but Motion Matching requires an entirely different set of animations then a traditional gameplay system.

[topaz narwhal]

I think I dont have the animation that you refer to

but then I have this other question

how to edit an animation to have it rotated 45 degrees

if the root is already animated

blender or unreal

[nimble torrent]

You would do it by rotating the root and keeping the body in the same place.

In your example, you would delete all those root keys, and replace them with the rotation you're looking for.

I have a high degree of confidence that modifying traditional gameplay animations like this will not result in a high quality motion matching setup - but it's your game. Have fun.

[topaz narwhal]

thx, I will post results, whatever the outcoume it is

[nimble torrent]

👍

[old falcon]

@nimble torrent I meant to ask:
Do you use/know about linked animation sequences in sequencer?
I got a bunch of sub-tracks for each of my character's animations (I just mute them on/off depending on what I'm working on) and would love to have the auto-baking for this. But you can only have one linked sequence per track.
Am I really supposed to create separate tracks for each of my character animations?

[nimble torrent]

I think so, yeah?

I mean - I think the way they expect you to work is to have a separate sequence per animation?

[old falcon]

Would have to spawn an extra blueprint actor per track though... kinda weird, no? Currently I do this.
Or yeah separate sequence per animation, but that would also involve having to do the same setup for all of them..

[hollow moat]

Already made one just really confusing to make it right like the hand position.

[nimble torrent]

I mean - you could make a separate map per sequence?

If I were doing gameplay animations, I might do it that way?

[nimble torrent]

'right like the hand position'?

[hollow moat]

Yea

[nimble torrent]

I don't know what that means, sorry.

[hollow moat]

Like the hand it is just really confusing to move to the right place i dont under stand how you move it or something i would perfer is a automatic way.

[nimble torrent]

Unfortunately, custom things seldom have automatic solutions.

Game dev is hard, and very time consuming! I spent all of yesterday afternoon trying to figure out why the automatic text wrap function in UMG gives junk width values for one frame!

[old falcon]

That sounds like a lot of work... 😄
But thanks for the input, I'll try some stuff

[quaint robin]

Hi! How can I make my animation look less robot-like, more smooth?

[hollow moat]

I seem to be getting closer but i cant figure out how to make the hand move to the right so the arms wrap around.

[nimble torrent]

OK, so you're not using a control rig, you're using the IK in the AnimBP.

I don't know what space that IK effector translation is in, but I expect it's not local to the bone, and so would apply the offset either globally or relative to the component.

So I'm surprised it's not completely fucking up and throwing the hand out in a weird direction.

[hollow moat]

I honestly wish i knew what i was doing with control rigs and ik but i hate touching them.

[nimble torrent]

They are fussy.

Can you confirm that you're actually going through that node? I am really surprised that it is not completely fucked.

Oh!

Wait - hold on!

It's been a while since I used that, but I think that node has settings. You either set a target bone or you put in an effector translation?

I think the effector translation you have in there isn't doing anything?

[hollow moat]

It is doing something because every time i mess with the number it moves

[nimble torrent]

OK! Interesting!

It should do what you want then if you get the right values in there.

[hollow moat]

Yea i just been slowly moving the decimals but now the gun seems to not take up the entire hand so i gotta mess with the scaling of that.

[nimble torrent]

Ooh! Be careful with scale! It can really mess things up!

[quaint robin]

anyone know?

[old falcon]

You'll have to animate it better I guess..

[quaint robin]

Alright

[old falcon]

The motion doesn't really convey intent

Looks more like you're giving the lad a soft tap with a wet noodle

If you're going to stab, follow through. There is also barely any wind-up

[odd sable]

how can I fix thatttt

[hollow moat]

Yea the control rig for hands dont look good so i just deleted then going to each animation and keying it> 😦

[small shale]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c3J-uHxveZA

[nimble torrent]

The animation you're using is flagged as an additive. This means it can't be added to a blendspace. You would need to re-export your animation as a non-additive if you want to use it.

[nimble torrent]

I recommend checking out the 12 principles of animation.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uDqjIdI4bF4

[misty dagger]

5.4 is SOOO good for animations.

The auto align auto rig stuff is god tier.

[nimble torrent]

It is good, but there are a lot of people having problems with it.

[coarse sinew]

well u need to make the keyframes more smooth, realistic, thats the main issue of doing animations, make it believable

[glad kettle]

So i've been messing around with 5.4's Motion Matching features, and have been successful so far. Although, I am trying to mix my Equipment_Cache into a Layered Blend per bone node, and it doesn't even play the animation for equip. Anyone off first glance know why this may be happening?

All locomotion and other animations seem fine

[nimble torrent]

Hmm - not sure how the rest of your graph works, but you're making an additive from 'Idle-cache' and 'Animations-cache' and then not using it?

The additive you're applying is 'Equipped-cache' - but unless that was originally an additive, it probably won't work.

My guess is, you want to replace 'Animations-cache' with 'Equipped-cache' in the 'Make Dynamic Additives' node.

Maybe?

But then it wouldn't really do anything.

But right now, you're applying an additive to an additive (maybe?) and then trying to layer that onto Animations-cache.

Something is definitely wrong there.

[vestal aspen]

Hello, how would I Mirror an FBX animation and then use the Mirrored FBX in Sequencer.

[glad kettle]

I thought I had to mesh my idle to movement animations... you were right. Just applying animations like this worked..
Only issue now is hand is wacky placement, I think I need to learn how to properly apply additives

[barren fiber]

shoulder movement body movement rotation, leaning especially forward and poke through if intended

also from on the stab less key frames

[nimble torrent]

Ahh wacky hand placement. A common problem that.

[misty dagger]

What exactly is an additive animation good for that can't be done another way or can't be done as easily?

[nimble torrent]

These days? Not a lot. Control Rig really opened up the ability to mess about with things.

Adjusting hand position on weapons has been the traditional use. Sometimes neck and spine movements for things like flinches and reactions.

[hollow moat]

Hi does anyone have any idea why the gun is clipping through his hand.

[nimble torrent]

Fully dependent on the details of your animBP.

I thought you were working with an IK solution for that?

[viscid willow]

I'm curious how you might approach something like flinches and reactions with control rig?

no need to go really specific, but if you have some high level insight I'd appreciate the info. I ask because generally I've used CR more for the former, fixing hand positions/correctives/aim targets

[nimble torrent]

It would mostly be spine rotations I suppose? I do think that additives are probably easier and cheaper in that case.

[uncut flint]

hello, is it possible to play any sort of bone animation on a skeletal mesh with chaos flesh on?

[viscid willow]

Yep, I agree. I also think I misread your initial message haha your original point being additives are only really used for flinch/reaction use cases

[obtuse wraith]

I know that sword animations are just a mesh in a socket, but how would something like this be animated?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xcGj_RKPMQ4

is the puppet like a seperate entity? Im not sure what is controlling what anymore 🥲

[uncut flint]

could be a bone thats separated and its offset from root, i could be wrong tho

[old falcon]

You can have a "weapon" bone in your skeleton and then you just animate it accordingly

[old falcon]

Not sure about FBX, but you can mirror anim sequences using a mirror data table

[lunar torrent]

Hey guys, I personally have never messed with Animation Sequencer, but with the base VR template they have these Mannequin hands which have poses which are Animation Sequencers, when I try to change the pose of the animation and I save it, it does not update or save it to the new pose I just made.

nevermind, I am stupid. I did not know I was supposed to press +Key when making more changes.

[snow vapor]

Hoping someone can help me figure this out. I'm honestly not sure if I'm completely misunderstanding the work flow here or if I'm just missing something. I created an Animation Layer Interface, added a layer for each type of animation (walk, idle, attack, etc). I implemented the interface on an animation blueprint for my monster and then went to each layer and plugged it into the output pose. Then, in a different animation blueprint that's used by my monster, I plugged in the Linked Anim Layer node for the Idle animation directly into the output pose of the animation graph, just to keep it real simple and see if it would play that animation. But it isn't. Anybody see what I might be missing? My goal here is to assign the animation blueprint that my monster is using to all of my monsters, and then give the correct animations for each of the monsters to their animation blueprint that implement the animation layer interface, thus separating out all of my animation logic into that one animation blueprint, and just plugging the animations themselves into the ones using the interface.

[old falcon]

You have to actively link the anim BP that implements your interface
Check skelmeshcomponent -> anim instance -> link anim class layers

[snow vapor]

Is this something I do at run time through a BP? I can't seem to find that anywhere.

[old falcon]

Yeah it's a node on the anim instance

[snow vapor]

ah ok, that makes sense. Thanks! I appreciate all your help! This is the farthest I've ever dove into animation stuff and there is a lot to take in. lol.

[red tartan]

Why doesn't the entry read the first state

[old falcon]

It has to, but it looks like it immediately transitions to "Armed" on first tick

[red tartan]

I want the entry to read 'Unarmed' first. What should I do?

[old falcon]

It's doing it, for a few milliseconds. But your transition to "Armed" is triggered immediately so it moves to "Armed" right away.
You need to check your transition rule because it's returning true when it shouldn't

[quaint robin]

Does it look smoother now? How could I improve it?

[old falcon]

You want to exaggerate the movement. Make it fast and snappy.
Imagine yourself wielding that sword. How would you stab with it with the intent to harm? In fact, it might be a good idea to record yourself doing that movement. Or look at references online.

[quaint robin]

Ok

[hallow pawn]

in the first Image I am trying to play a montage using the jump event and in second Image is the anim blueprint and in the third is the montage, the thing is I am trying to play a montage with the default Unreal First person character But is not playing the animation at all

Any ideas here
if anyone can help me this
please
The montage, The event and the anim blueprint comes all default with First person character content

[old falcon]

Your montage is not in the "Arms" slot

[hallow pawn]

let us say if the slot is not right then even the sound notify also not work in this case

[old falcon]

If the slot is not right then the animation won't play
If the animation won't play then the notify cannot be triggered

[hallow pawn]

this is very weird, when I use "Play anim Montage" the animation does not play even if the slots are correct but when I use the "Montage play" using the anim instance it starts working even if the slots are incorrect, just the animation does not play only the sound , why is this happening

[old falcon]

You want the PlayMontage node with multiple output exec pins

Also if your animation is additive I have no idea what happens when you play it via slot
Additive anims usually should be used with "Apply additive" node

[topaz narwhal]

--> Solution: How to have diagonal animations for new Motion Matching system in 5.4 ?
Ok so finally I started to get results and as I suspect the solution was to make more animations, in all directions.
this was the original question #animation message

So first in an empty sequencer I dropped the Mannequin and dropped it in Sequencer so it activates Control Rig.
then I created a keyframe in -1 for the whole Control Rig, I selected it and hitted "Ctrl+C" to copy the default pose.

Then I took the "Unarmed_Jog_Fwd" animation from Lyra project (which I already retargeted to the normal Mannequin).
I dropped it in the sequencer, Bake it to Control Rig, and I removed the keyframes for global_ctrl, root_ctrl and body_offset_ctrl.

Then I paste in -1 keyframe the default pose and I only rotated body_offset_ctrl 45 degrees but I translated both body_offset_ctrl and root_ctrl
to the interpolated position that will be at the same translation of default "Unarmed_Jog_Fwd" but turned 45 degrees, I used a mesh as reference.

Then I baked this sequence to an Animation and I set all the options on the settings about root. Also to be a Loop.
Then I included in the pose Data Base that Motion Matching uses.

As you can see when playing now I have a diagonal motion matched animation to the forward right direction, but keeps sliding between that right diagonal and the forward, and of course other directions that doesnt have the specific animation.

Apparently there is a Rotate Towards Movement Speed in the documentation, but I can´t find it anywhere, maybe that would allow a more polished switch between directions. https://dev.epicgames.com/documentation/en-us/unreal-engine/motion-matching-in-unreal-engine

[odd sable]

Well thanks you I fixed that 🙂

[wet salmon]

Does anyone know how to import a davinci resolve FBX camera track animation into unreal engine 5?

[little creek]

Hey, I have a a serious issue with exporting animations to unreal with a particular workflow.
How can I properly work with non uniform scaling on a hierarchy?

I'm aware unreal uses aligned scale inheritance. However, I cannot export an animation that behaves correctly. Scale immediatly breaks the action.

[exotic onyx]

I created Direction in 5.2

[little creek]

This is what I'm trying to achive in unreal.

However, the rotation is skewed and broken on export...

[topaz narwhal]

Please, could you elaborate?
Even that I managed to offset the root animation, the characters doubt constantly between different animations.
For experimental porpouses, I offset the arm in forward animation, just to make more noticeable what is going on.
I found the **Rotate Towards Movement Speed ** that is mentioned in documentation, but it doesnt seems to do anything with my problem

I have currently manually interpolated root animations in 45 and 5 degrees to the right from Forward

[exotic onyx]

Can you show me your Animation blueprint veriables ?

[topaz narwhal]

sure

[exotic onyx]

No Direction

[topaz narwhal]

is the default AnimBP

but adapted with the Motion Matching tutorial

[exotic onyx]

You need Direction for walking on sides

[topaz narwhal]

do you have a tutorial that you checked for that

[exotic onyx]

Create Direction veriable

[topaz narwhal]

I assumed that just following the last 5.4 matching tutorials, where they say to just add the Character Trajectory, would be fine

[topaz narwhal]

vector right?

in my thirdperson character too, or only in the AnimBp

[exotic onyx]

Let me check

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P2X4luGMxDA

Try this

Of you need to add animations

[topaz narwhal]

do you mean the whole tutorial (which doesnt use Motion matching)?

or just this part in the screenshot?

just to clarify, I am trying to make it to work the 5.4 Motion Matching system

is this "Direction" variable playing a role here?

[exotic onyx]

What's motion matching system ?

[round lagoon]

you dont do those kind of things in motion matching?

[topaz narwhal]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S4aBd64t-hY this, it came new recently

[exotic onyx]

But this is Layra

[topaz narwhal]

#animation message my animations are flickering between different "directions"

[topaz narwhal]

is Lyra anims implemented in the new 5.4 motion matching system

check the video, is not just like what you shared

[round lagoon]

yes mine was too a little bit when i tested it hour ago

[exotic onyx]

LOL she doesn't even move her head

[round lagoon]

there are many settings you need to take care of and you cant put just 200 lyra animations as bulk and leave settings on default it dont work

[exotic onyx]

This is mine

[topaz narwhal]

ok but as I said, this is totally different system, it has anything to do with states

[exotic onyx]

Because you are using Layra

It's a game by it's self

[topaz narwhal]

I just took their anims, look

https://dev.epicgames.com/documentation/en-us/unreal-engine/motion-matching-in-unreal-engine this is a total new feature, from 5.4

it has nothing to do with what you are talking about

[exotic onyx]

No directions

[round lagoon]

Alright fellas can someone explain me what is happening, why and how to fix: I have character that I rigged to UE5 skeleton. It is using SK mannequin skeleton in the engine, all the animations work etc no problem. But I still have this annoying problem which is that my character kinda "morphs" and shifts depending on what ABP I use.

This is in Lyra project so the animations are: blueprint asset Idle (Blue default mannequin, SK mannequin), blueprint asset Idle on modular head mesh and other parts Copy pose (Red Custom Character SK mannequin), (1st. picture ABP Copy pose)(2nd. picture Retarget pose) on PIE character (Grey character, SK mannequin). Last picture is from top view with same settings as second picture.

The pictures are not the best but it should give the point. The grey character is widening the legs, both red and grey are going underground with copy pose, retarget pose will lift the grey character to the ground but kinda smashes the pose to fit in certain height and well on the last pic it becomes round back old grandfather with legs wide open... Would appreciate help!

[winter sluice]

Hi, What would be the best way to make an animation to bake in sequencer in a similar way to layer blender per bone? trying to blend 2 animations together by bone not just constant alpha

[steel tree]

hey folks anyone here have use motion matching?

im currently working on it moving on a moving platform and my character is moving with the train and mess up the animation.. it should be in idle instead it playing walk animation

i remember epic do a fix with this problem too

does epic ever say how they fix it

[coarse sinew]

another tip is, use reference video of ppl doing the thing, u cant find it? then record yourself with phone doing the exact moves u want to do, u will immediately see the difference adn additional details

[coarse sinew]

hand or shoulder? there is no automatic mesh "blocking", u need to make sure on your own it doesn't go thru things

[steel tree]

and also, im only using animation that doesnt involve turn in place only move forward backkward sprint etc..

how would i go do turin in place alongside motion matching in this case? do i just do traditional way with using blendspace? im thinking of importing lyra's turn in place animation for this and yam their turn in place code for this as well

[safe trench]

How do I create animations with props (weapons attached to socket) while having Modular Control Rig?

[old falcon]

I haven't looked into modular control rig yet but I imagine you'll have to create a new "module" and attach that to your weapon bone (or whatever you use)

Don't think any of the existing modules support a very simple flow of "get control transform -> set bone transform"

[safe trench]

module?

[old falcon]

Yeah those individual pieces that you slot into your skeleton, arm, shoulder, finger etc.

[safe trench]

oh okay

where can I open windows like skeleton tree, animation outliner?

I closed one by mistake

[old falcon]

Usually at the top under "Window" or "Tools"

[safe trench]

I got Anim Outliner, but Is it possible to get Skeleton with Modular Control Rig?

Mayby there I would be able to preview mesh on socket

I mean I can do it in skeleton editor. So can I combine that skeleton with modular rig?

[old falcon]

Oof, not sure, I haven't looked into modular control rig too much yet

But if you want to animate a weapon bone, I think you'll need to create a custom modular control rig "module" for that

Unless any of the existing ones just work out of the box for such a use case

[safe trench]

It's my first time creating animations. I though that creating modular rig would help me position hand more naturaly. How would u do it?

[safe trench]

I mean I just need preview a model. I don't need to animate it.

[old falcon]

Yeah modular control rig will help creating animations in-engine for sure.
As for positioning hands "more naturally", do you mean placing your hand on e.g. a weapon in the correct position? That would require IK instead of modular control rig.

If you only want to preview, you can do that in pretty much any of the skeletal mesh editors

[safe trench]

I don't need IK for now. I need modular control rig because it is easier to rotate/move arms with it than rotating individual bone.

I know I can preview in skeletal mesh editors, I did it previously. I need to preview it while animating it so I know how it will look like if player has that weapon.

[old falcon]

You can do that when you animate your character using sequencer

[safe trench]

how?

@old falcon

[old falcon]

https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=animating+in+ue5

[hollow moat]

Hi i cant seem to figure out what's wrong with my hand ik i cant adjust to be perfectly aligned with the gun. Lyra stuff btw

[tired coyote]

MM were in engine for a while (I think from 4.27) but it were experimental.
I have used several in-between versions. For months.

MotionSymphony (a marketplace MM plugin) were way better back then.
I wonder how they completed it to 1.0

to compare:
Epic's MM virtually had very few customization and control over things. Also special states were pain in the ass. AnimNodes lacked a lot of options. Yet, it felt much more easy to set-up and get quick results within. (Before 1.0)

But, MotionSymphony, were much more similar to FromSoftware's in-house anim systems. Had too many controls, yet, in order to get good results with low data, you had to virtualize a lot of information and transition in your head which is not clear (BlendSpace sampling), also some aspects were oversimplified (causing delays in rotation).

I hope Epic fixed them.

[nimble torrent]

I don't know if there is a way to work with non-uniform scale between packages. Unreal's baffling decision to use aligned scale inheritance means that literally every single other package I am aware of just... disagree about what scale means.

I don't think it's possible. I think you have to use some other method.

[nimble torrent]

Do you know how the preview instance stuff works? You should be able to see the offset live in the animation bp previewer.

Change the top slot to 'preview instance' and then edit the values in the 'Edit Selected Instance' panel.

That should let you put your character in the pose you're trying to edit.

[hollow moat]

Yea i got it just fixed it.

[nimble torrent]

Good!

[hollow moat]

It doesnt freeze anymore so it made it alot easier

[spice estuary]

Hey guys, i'm new for here, but any know where has a good guide for Motion Matching appliances? please

Or any know if a same Database can be apply Anim to Jump and Running states or it the same principal of Enum Animation but with Databases?

[tired coyote]

If I am not wrong, MM in 5.4 has introduced support of GameplayTags.

Again, I have only used experimental versions of MM, there were no GameplayTags support, now I remember that it supported, check the example if you are in doubt - since it has state transitions.

[spice estuary]

Nice, i understand, Thanks @tired coyote

[nimble torrent]

We're all kind of waiting for the example project, which isn't out yet.

[tired coyote]

That is why I were hesitant at first.

Still in the 5.4 announcement video, I think they mentioned GameplayTags.

[nimble torrent]

Generally speaking, using animations designed for a different skeleton without retargeting them will cause this kind of stretching or distortion problems. That's why we retarget things!

[round lagoon]

But it is the exactly same skeleton 🙂

[nimble torrent]

Are you certain about that?

[round lagoon]

Yes I rigged it bymyself

[nimble torrent]

OK, but did you change the position of your bones to match the character mesh?

[round lagoon]

Yes

[nimble torrent]

So that's a different skeleton then.

Different propotions.

[round lagoon]

ajjajaa

[nimble torrent]

You can use the automatic retargeting that Unreal does.

[round lagoon]

I tried but it didnt help tho :/

I mean kinda yes but still looks so shady XD

[nimble torrent]

But it will tend to create things like the wide stance you don't like.

[round lagoon]

yeah I mean the woman character has like elephant size hole between the legs so nah XD

So can I rerig the characters without scaling the bones will that work?

[nimble torrent]

'Work' is relative here.

Using the standard retarget system 'works'. Your character will not clip through the floor.

It will play the animation.

That's functional.

[round lagoon]

if I remember you can edit the retargetting pose or smth right?

to maybe close the legs...

[nimble torrent]

You could modify the IK Rig! I haven't done that myself, but there's probably a way of doing it.

The one used for 'retarget from mesh'.

You could create your own custom animations.

You could run an offline retargeting routine on the animations you want to use, then bring those into sequences with a control rig, and edit them.

Like most things in game design, there are many options, none of them are correct, but many are incorrect.

[round lagoon]

Yeah there are a lot of options... I propably leave it like this for now I have better things to do than play with this🥲

oh what you can edit the retargeter in runtime ok this will be easy then 😄

[old falcon]

This was spot on by the way, thanks!
Now my sequencers auto bake all of my animations

[nimble torrent]

Nice!!

[hallow pewter]

Hey, does anyone know how to merge these skeletal meshes together? Either in Ue5 or blender? (in blender i mean the bone groups root, pelvis_l, and pelvis_r)

[old falcon]

In blender, your pelvis bones need to be children of root

[hallow pewter]

And how would i do that?

[old falcon]

I think ctrl+p is the hotkey? Or alt+p
Been a while since I used blender

[hallow pewter]

Yeah but i cant do that with bones, only with meshes

[hallow pewter]

Ah found it, its in edit mode under the bone properties

[frozen relic]

is there a way to extract relative transform of one bone to another (or one socket to another) from a specific animation in animbp? im trying to have a hand aiming a gun with fabrik, but the gun is on a weapon bone and i have a 1 frame animation that defines the relative position of weapon bone to hand bone. but i need to access that numerically somehow to calculate the desired hand transform for IK from the desired weapon transform

[old falcon]

Cant you play that anim additively?

Or use a socket instead?

[frozen relic]

i am playing it additively and i am using sockets too

but i still need the relative transforms, right

cause otherwise how can i do ik on the hand?

[nimble torrent]

Can you describe your mechanical setup?

Like - what do you have, what are you doing, and what are you trying to do?

Because the answer to your question is 'kind of, but mostly no' - Unreal does not provide easy access to the tracks inside an animation.

But there's probably a way of doing what you're trying to do.

[frozen relic]

there isnt much more to it than what i described. there is a weapon bone attached to a hand bone, which i animate in blender. and then i put a weapon socket on the weapon bone. to which i attach the weapon. then i want to do ik so that the hand points the weapon in the right direction. i calculated the desired transfrom of the weapon socket. but i need to get from that to a desired weapon transform to do IK

[old falcon]

I'm kinda lost tbh

[frozen relic]

what part is confusing?

[wet salmon]

Hey y'all, ive been trying to import an FBX camera animation from davinci resolve to unreal engine 5 to match the camera movement in a real life scene and a 3d scene, but every time I import the FBX file on to a CineCameraActor I get this message and no keyframes are imported to unreal:

What is going on here?

[old falcon]

then i want to do ik so that the hand points the weapon in the right direction.
What exactly are you intending to use IK for? Which effect are you trying to achieve?

[frozen relic]

the hand pointing the weapon where i want it to point based on the player's input

[old falcon]

You're trying to IK your weapon to your hand? Not the other way around?

[frozen relic]

no im trying to ik the whole arm with hand

ik starts at arm and ends at hand

weapon bone to hand bone position and finger bones positions are defined by a 1 frame animation

[nimble torrent]

And you want to be able to specify the IK effector position relative to the gun, because you want to be able to say "I want the gun to be here and I want the arm to get into the correct position to put it there."

Right?

[frozen relic]

yeah basically

i tried like 4 different ways to accomplish this already

but the crux of the problem seems to be that i need the relative transform of weap bone to hand bone from the 1 frame animation

to derive hand transform

for ik

[nimble torrent]

OK, but why does it have to be an animation you get the offset from?

[frozen relic]

because i already will need an animation to define fingers pose. so im already gonna pose the skeleton in blender with the weapon. and i want the in game offset to match that. and trying to manually copy relative orientations from blender to unreal is pure hell. im using a weapon bone precisely to avoid doing that

[nimble torrent]

OK, well... one way of doing it is to do it the way that Manny and Quinn are setup in the example files:

They have this bone called 'ik_hand_gun' and it has two children.

In their animations, those children, 'ik_hand_l' and 'ik_hand_r' are constrained to the characters wrists.

In gun animations, ik_hand_gun is constrained to the gun.

What this does, is it gives you two tracks for the wrists in 'gun space'.

So, if you want to move the gun arbitrarily, you still have the relative positions of the wrists accessible.

So you could move the gun bone, and then constrain the arms to the ik_hand bones.

[old falcon]

Man, this stuff makes me doubt my simple IK setup 🥲

[frozen relic]

this is interesting, but im not sure i quite understand. if its constrained to the gun, how do you get relative wrist positions from it?

[nimble torrent]

You get them from the two child bones.

In their animations, those children, 'ik_hand_l' and 'ik_hand_r' are constrained to the characters wrists.

[frozen relic]

ok that makes sense. but i dont think this actually solves my core problem - im playing a completely different animation as the main anim in the state machine, and i want the gun to wrist offset to be extracted from a different animation file

[nimble torrent]

Right, but I'm saying 'Your setup is probably not as good as this alternative setup because you can't easily read arbitrary values from animations'.

Creating one of those ik relative space setups is both pretty easy, and actually possible.

[frozen relic]

thats fair, but then how does this setup accomplish what im trying to do? i dont want to have to animate gun ik targets for all of my movement animations

[nimble torrent]

You don't animate them, you constrain them.

Using constraints.

So the wrist bones automatically follow the wrists.

You do this in Blender, or whatever DCC you're using.

You can also technically do it in Unreal, using a control rig.

[old falcon]

Aren't virtual bones similar to this?

[nimble torrent]

I don't think virtual bones get animation tracks, and you need the animation tracks.

[frozen relic]

fuck i feel like im still failing to understand some important part of this. so you constrain the parent ik bone to the gun and the children to the wrists, right? say i do this for the 1 frame animation that defines the gun holding. what then?

[nimble torrent]

You do this:

fuck i feel like im still failing to understand some important part of this. so you constrain the parent ik bone to the gun and the children to the wrists, right?

But you do not do this:

say i do this for the 1 frame animation that defines the gun holding. what then?

That idea of using the first frame of animation to read a track from? I do not know how you would get that to work without writing a custom node in C++.

Instead, you have that IK setup in all of your animations.

And when you need to move the gun and have the arms follow, you move the IK_gun bone, and use IK to constrain both arms to the ik_hand bones.

[frozen relic]

so i have to define the gun offset in all animations instead of doing it once?

[nimble torrent]

Because the ik_hand bones exist in 'gun space', when their parent moves, they will move as well, but keep their relative animations.

This allows you to do complex animations in 'gun space', permitting accurate reloads and other gun or object related animations relative to an arbitrarily positioned gun or object.

[frozen relic]

yeah but again that means i have to define the offset in all animations tho, no? i want the gun solution to be agnostic of the main movement animations because the character might be holding different weapons that do not depend on the way it is running

[nimble torrent]

OK, what do you mean by 'define the offset'? Yes, you would have to re-export your animations with the constraints active - it's a non-trivial task, yes, but it's not really work.

You don't have to go in and animate the bones.

You use a constraint.

Also, you would only activate the IK setup when it is relevant, such as when doing a specific gun animation where you are controlling the position of the gun with code.

[frozen relic]

then how do i define the offset? i have a pose in blender that defines how the gun should be positioned relative to the hand. i want this offset to be obeyed by the ik setup that will be layered on top of movement animations

[nimble torrent]

So you don't have any gun animations? The only gun related animation stuff you're doing is this specific IK control?

You have no reloads, you don't pose the character, you don't have draw/undraw weapon animations - the only weapon related stuff is this IK setup?

That's odd.

[frozen relic]

yeah basically. i mean i might have some in the future but right now its just a 1-frame animation defining the pose of the fingers and the position of the gun to the hand

[nimble torrent]

This is why describing your context is important, because that is an unusual scenario.

[frozen relic]

well, i would like the solution to allow for gun animations in the future so idk if its relevant

[nimble torrent]

OK, in that case, I still recommend adding the IK bone hierarchy I described above, and exporting your single pose animation with those constraints that I keep talking about active.

So you would have the IK_gun bone in the position of the gun, and the Ik_hand bones constrained to the wrists.

Then, you can do what I keep saying, animate the gun bone, and constrain the hands to the ik_hand bones.

You can do a 'Layered Blend Per Bone' into your normal locomotion animations that targets specifically the IK hierarchy.

So you would get your locomotion animations and then the ik_gun hierarchy of your single pose.

And then you can do the IK constraints on top of that.

You don't even need to re-export your locomotion animations.

[frozen relic]

damn i feel like im close to understanding this but still missing something. i understand the layering, thats basically what im currently doing. locomotion animation first then the 1 frame anim layered on top then the ik for the arms. but i need to pass a target to fabrik for the hand. you're saying that i should pass it in the transform space of the gun ik? what do i connect to the transform target then? again i want the gun position to be arbitrary, passed from other blueprints. and for the animbp to calculate the necessary hand position from that

[nimble torrent]

The IK targets for the hands are the child bones of the ik_gun bone.

So you have:

• root
  • ik_gun
    • ik_hand_left
    • ik_hand_right

In your single pose animation: these are positioned correctly.

Crap, it's not letting me display the list correctly, fuck.

The hierarchy is like that

So you probably don't need FABRIK, it's expensive.

You could do this with a two-bone IK very easily.

[frozen relic]

ok how do i move the ik_gun bone where i want then?

[frozen relic]

i see. ok that makes sense. its basically my current setup just with the hierarchy reversed. it does make sense now that i think about it. thank you.

[frozen relic]

what space is this node expecting values in? its not worldspace, right?

[nimble torrent]

It can be.

There's a parameter on it called 'Translation Space' which lets you specify.

[frozen relic]

ok cool. so using that i can just tell it where to be in world space, right? its not relative to its current transform?

[nimble torrent]

Yes, you can tell it a place to be in world space.

[frozen relic]

cool, thank you so much

[nimble torrent]

👍

[bitter shard]

Upgrading to 5.4 broke some functionality in my control rig, so after some debugging I've encountered an issue.

There seems to be something strange happening when you call functions that have another shared function in them. The inner function gets called with the arguments of all the outer functions each time or something, I have not figured out exactly what is happening. I found a temporary fix by duplicating the functions so that they are technically unique, but that kinda defeats the purpose of having functions in the first place.

Has anyone else encountered this? Is it a known bug and is there some better fix?

[nimble torrent]

Huh - that doesn't sound good! I haven't heard of that one!

Does this only affect things if the variable names match?

Like you have function A with a variable called 'input_float' and then inside that you call function B with a variable called 'input_float'?

[bitter shard]

Nope, the names are completely different

[nimble torrent]

So arbitrary values are being overwritten? Do they match types?

Like if you called one with a float, and one with a string, would the string end up as a float?

(I would expect this to crash)

[bitter shard]

Not quite like that, let me explain it differently and also give you an example of how I found the problem in the first place.

I have a function A, and two functions B and C. Both B and C contain A and call it but with different inputs, most importantly an array with different bones (left and right side of the body). Here's how I found the problem:

When I call B and C at the same time, I get an unexpected result. If I disconnect B, the result from C is what I would expect (and B does nothing of course). If I reconnect B and disconnect C, the result in B is what I would expect. So calling one function affects the other, despite being called with different bone arrays (and yes, I checked that there were no global variables in the functions)! Calling both at the same time produces something that looks like double the effect on both sides of the body, but that's just a rough estimate. I have no idea what's actually happening.

[nimble torrent]

Hmmm

[bitter shard]

It reminds me of the kind of trouble you can get with macros in BP, but these are functions

[nimble torrent]

What are these functions doing?

Is it possible that the problem is in either the array or the function?

[bitter shard]

They are doing a fake chain simulation with spring interps

[nimble torrent]

Huh, OK.

[bitter shard]

I don't think so, since simply duplicating the function fixes the issue

So it's not something with the function itself

And this didn't happen in 5.3

[nimble torrent]

OK.

Neat!

My guess would be some kind of optimization. Are you using any variables inside the function that you don't pass through the arguments?

Like, variables in the control rig itself?

[bitter shard]

Like I said, I checked for global variables and there are none in there

This function is designed to be general

So it's really strange

[nimble torrent]

Huh! Yep, that is strange.

[bitter shard]

It's probably a bug I guess

[nimble torrent]

Entirely possible.

New versions are often buggy.

[nimble dove]

hi guys, any tips to smooth it out?

[bitter shard]

Yep, I just upgraded. It also wasn't the only issue I had in CR, I found another "bug" with the ClampSpatially node. Turns out it stops working if min and max threshhold is the same value, min has to be strictly smaller now it seems

[nimble dove]

this is the code

[bitter shard]

You can try using interpolation

A small amount can go a long way

RInterpTo is the node

If you're asking about smoothing the camera

[nimble dove]

yeah, i tried it multiple times but didn't ended up working as i wanted

[bitter shard]

Hm, you could also use a spring arm with rotation smoothing

[nimble dove]

i tried like that and it doesn't work anymore

[bitter shard]

And set the length to 0

[bitter shard]

The speed looks weird

[nimble dove]

yeah tried that too, but its pretty uncontrollable, like i want a slow but clamped rotation

[bitter shard]

Have you tried using a faster interp speed?

[nimble dove]

yeah, i just used a method i saw in a tutorial long ago

actually i just put a number like 2 and its working pretty well

well thanks for the interp tip

worked nicely

[bitter shard]

No problem!

[ripe coral]

Hey everyone, I created this cutesy 3d model in blender, but was wondering if I could make animations of it via control rig in unreal engine? Or should I rig this to the UE4 mannequin in order to create animations with it using control rig?

[old falcon]

Very cute

[ripe coral]

thank you :3

[old falcon]

You can rig and animate in UE, but the tools are relatively new so expect a few bugs

UE5 that is

[ripe coral]

Thanks, I may try that out cause i havent animated before haha

[old falcon]

Personally I've switched from blender to the UE tools recently and it's pretty good for a start to be honest
I can see those tools getting better over time. And not having to deal with export/import is a big relief too.

[ripe coral]

can i make the skeleton in UE5? or should I do that in blender before importing it over?

[nimble torrent]

Right now, you're better off making your skeleton, and doing your weight painting, in Blender.

[old falcon]

UE5.3+ has a plugin for it, yeaeh

[nimble torrent]

There are tools for it in unreal now, but they're... embryonic.

[old falcon]

^^^ But this, yes

[nimble torrent]

Not ready for prime time.

[ripe coral]

is there a skeleton maker / type thing you guys like? for example i've had a good experience with AccuRig but havent tried it on this type of model yet

mixamo makes this model a bit weird

[nimble torrent]

Yeah, it's a very stylized character.

Cute, but existing animations will probably look weird on it.

[old falcon]

What do you mean? I can totally see that thing wielding a rifle in Lyra 😂

[ripe coral]

i like this idea 🤣

ill give it a strawberry bush ghilly suit 🤣

[vague lava]

How do I setup a blend file that has multiple skeletal meshes under the same skeleton and imports properly? All of my meshes get merged into one

[nimble torrent]

I think you probably have to export multiple FBX files using the 'Export Selected' option in the export menu. Select each mesh, and the armature, then export a new FBX file.

[misty dagger]

Hi guys, so I'm new to unreal engine 5 and I replaced a mannequin with a metahuman, now I don't know how to get the animations to work

Could anyone help me please?

[terse path]

5.4 ? or 5.3

[misty dagger]

Nevermind I fixed it, thank you though

[ashen star]

Anyone have any tips or resources they could point me towards for using modular weapon packs? I purchased a modular weapon (its a rifle, but each piece is its own static mesh) and have no idea what the best way to use it is. I would think I would want a skeleton to attach all the pieces to for animations and things like that but I am not even sure where to begin with this.

[wet salmon]

can someone please tell me what this error message means? I'm trying to import a camera track from davinci resolve to unreal engine 5

[nimble torrent]

You tried to rename your CineCameraActor to "Camera3D1"?

[misty dagger]

5.4 is frikkin GOD TIER! I just FLAWLESSLY retargeted Lyra anims to a Synty mesh.

[wet salmon]

No i didnt try to rename anything, does it get renamed on import?

[old falcon]

I have a slightly weird question:
When dealing with hands IK what would be the best space to calculate effector transforms?
Let's say you want your character to pick up a crate. In the middle of your pickup anim the crate attaches to a socket. Similarly in the putdown anim it will detach.
Now let's say you want to use a curve to IK the hands to the crate with a ramp-up or ramp-down during those animations. What space should this all be calculated in?

World space is out of the question because of 1 frame delays I think.
Character component space might also suffer from the same issue as world space?
Attach bone space only works while the crate is attached, so you can't ramp-up the hands to their IK positions during pickup.

Any ideas?

[cinder siren]

Was it the new Synty skeleton?

[crystal blade]

(cross-posting) After seeing a bunch of videos like this (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2ZFoEi9XRms) where people are "fixing" the ik bone positions from imported animations, does anyone know of a script that just automatically does this and fixes the animation for you? no way am I going to do this every time I need to import an asset

[inland ridge]

Does anyone have a 3dsmax scene for with the rig for the new UE5 mannequins? I remember finding one for the ue4 version and all I had to do was reskin my mesh over that skeleton and import/export would work flawlessly

[topaz narwhal]

whats going on with the preview on my AnimationBlueprint? looks laggy, but game mode is fine

it stops happenning while I resize or if I deactivate the Post Processing

[inland ridge]

ok I found one https://www.artstation.com/marketplace/p/XKXzl/biped-to-unreal-engine-templates-for-3ds-max

[rocky falcon]

I added some bones to my skeleton and now im trying to play montages and animations on those new bones but it does not animate in the play mode. It works in the animation preview window and in the animBP preview but not in the play mode.
The only thing that has changed is that I added those bones.
I have tried playing it as a montage and I made a new animBP and played it as a looping animation asset

It is like the game is ignoring those bones

[old falcon]

Do you maybe have a blend mask that you need to adjust somewhere?

I always forget my blend masks when adding bones

[rocky falcon]

I have those but its not the cause of the problem, I checked

Also the new bones are just copies of finger bones attached to the same hand as the original fingers

[uneven hatch]

could anyone tell me why my character is doing this?

[jade latch]

Hi everyone🙂 I packaged my game. When a level sequence starts in the game, I get this error and the game crashes. Is anyone getting this error and how can I fix it?

[signal jasper]

Hi guys ! I was wondering if any of you knows how to have more control over the maximum vertex displacement when layering multiple morph targets to get rid of results like this :

[misty dagger]

I did it with both.

[cinder siren]

ok thanks, I'm having some issues with ESRPG, Synty and UE5.4 so maybe it's more ESRPG

[misty dagger]

ESRPG?

[cinder siren]

Easy Survival RPG

[snow nexus]

So I have an interesting issue that I havent seen before/my troubleshooting and online research has not solved. These are two different animations with the same rig/skeleton/mesh, they were both made the same way using Mixamo/Blender (adding root bones) and through the IK_Retargeter with IK rigs. The one on the left, the root bone and ik foot root bones stay in place but the animation keeps moving despite enable root motion/force root lock being on. The one on the right is all the same settings, but the character stays in place like it should and the root bones all move with the model. What am I missing?

TS steps done:
Confirmed root bone on mesh
Confirmed animation is using root bones
Confirmed settings are on and correct
Redid/remade the animation to confirm I did it correctly
Checked google and UE forums

[nimble torrent]

Root lock locks the root not the pelvis.

[nimble torrent]

Usually layering multiple morph targets has to be done very carefully because they do tend to accumulate in unusual ways.

I don't think there's an automatic way of correcting that, I think it's a design challenge.

[nimble torrent]

Do you mean the sliding or the jittering?

[snow nexus]

Correct, but the right animation stays in place due to the root lock, everything works like it should. The left image, the root stays in place, but the rest of the mesh/skeleton just wanders off away from it

[nimble torrent]

Hmm - that sounds like a caching problem?

The first thing I'd try would be closing and re-opening unreal.

[snow nexus]

They are both 'walk forward' animations

[nimble torrent]

These are retargetted right?

I would assume that problem is that during the retargeting process, the root did not move with the pelvis for some reason, so the pelvis is what got the translation.

Which would mean that locking the root doesn't do anything.

As it's the pelvis that is moving.

[snow nexus]

correct. hmmmmm. Let me go back and smack UE and see what I can drum up real fast 😄

[rocky falcon]

Did that multiple times and deleted binaries

[nimble torrent]

OK, what happens if you try adding the skeletal mesh to another actor, and playing the animation on that.

[rocky falcon]

Ill try that when I get to my PC

[nimble torrent]

That seems like the problem is something to do with the post processing. Can you just leave it off, or resize the window?

[rocky falcon]

But it did work when just dragging the montage into the scene and pressing simulate

[topaz narwhal]

I will try that thx

[nimble torrent]

Are you doing anything with layers of skeletal meshes? Like - do you have a core skeleton and you're adding clothing on top?

[rocky falcon]

Also I tried adding a constraints to the physics asset for the shapes created for the new bones and got a crash

[nimble torrent]

Yeah, that tracks with the idea that the bones are not there for some reason.

[rocky falcon]

I have a modular character so everything is cut into pieces. 1 skeleton and 1 physics asset and 1 animBP for all of it

Head, torso, legs, hands....

[nimble torrent]

Oh! Wait - so you have multiple meshes using the same animation BP?

[rocky falcon]

yes

no

wait

[nimble torrent]

I think that's probably where your problem is.

[rocky falcon]

So like I have the animation BP running only in the parent mesh of the modular setup

[nimble torrent]

Does the parent mesh have those new bones?

And what method are you using to copy the animation from the parent mesh to the modular meshes?

[rocky falcon]

It should have because the parent mesh is using the same skeleton

[rocky falcon]

SetLeaderPose() or smth

[nimble torrent]

Master Pose Components.

[rocky falcon]

Animations have worked normal before adding the bones, and they still do but just not in the new bones

[nimble torrent]

So, with that - the child components do not have their own animation bone buffer.

So that's probably where the problem is.

Try using a small animation BP with 'Copy Pose From Mesh' instead.

[snow nexus]

So what's interesting, is in the IKRetarget, the actor and everything moves correctly (animation that is being cloned/retargeted has the root lock on). Everything is retargeted correctly and the pelvis is the Retarget Root. However, after exporting/making it, the issue starts....

[nimble torrent]

When you say 'the issue starts' do you mean 'I discover that the pelvis has animation data'?

Like - when you check the curves, what do you see?

[snow nexus]

As in the curves in the Animation Sequence?

[rocky falcon]

I will try that next, ty

[snow nexus]

As in, the root lock keeps the root in place, but the rest of the mesh, including pelvis, keep right on going

[nimble torrent]

Right, yeah. So there's got to be something going on in the retarget or in the bake that is not moving the root.

[snow nexus]

(and I truly do appreciate your help and thoughts <3)

[nimble torrent]

You could theoretically post process this using a control rig and the sequencer - but it would probably be better to figure out what went wrong with the retargeter.

[snow nexus]

Yeah... because I've done retargeting with another character similarly, and everything worked perfectly no issues (multiple times), I'm going to attempt to use that retargeter real fast and see if I get anything different.

[snow nexus]

And wouldnt you know it... that one works perfectly fine O.o

So theres a setting somewhere in the new IK_Retargeter that is not working?

Again, truly appreciate your help and sparking the idea that got stuff fixed ❤️ 🙂

[nimble torrent]

Not sure! Sorry! I haven't used it much yet.

Oh! You can't see the animation curves for the bones in the animation viewer, but you can if you drop the animation into sequencer.

[misty dagger]

What is the difference between using linked anim layers via an an anim interface, and simply using another anim BP inside of your main one?

[nimble torrent]

I think it's mostly convenience.

Neither of those are particularly well supported.

[little creek]

Silly question, but what's the method to remove the last frame from an animation?

Some looping anims I exported accidentally got an unintended frame there

[bold hatch]

How can I create 3 controls that each only control one axis of rotation? If I just use the first one it's fine along the X. (just not sure how to 'add' them)

[rocky falcon]

On the animation asset window right click on the timeline and it says remove for example "frame 63 to 70"

[little creek]

Alright, thank you very much!

How can I make the selector snap to specific frames?

It seems to be off by a few pixels

[nimble torrent]

You set the rotation taking one axis from each control.

Like - use one set node (can't remember the name, sorry), and construct the rotator from the rotations of the three controls.

[umbral plover]

Hey guys! I have a NPC with a AnimationBlueprint setup with walk and run cycle through a BlendSpace. He walks and run with generic animations. In middle game, this npc becomes suspicious, and I want to "override" his walk and run animation to a more suspicious one. Can I do it without setting it up on animation blueprint - like a bool flag or something? I wonder if AnimMontage will help me out here, but will it respect the BlendSpace and still transition smoothly between the walk and run with the suspicions animations?

[nimble torrent]

Using montages is probably not a good idea for this. It will not blend the same way that Blendspaces do.

Instead, you probably want to use a state machine.

[old falcon]

Or a linked anim layer!

[nimble torrent]

I think that's a bit overkill. A two-tier state machine would handle this pretty easily.

[old falcon]

And also provide better control over the blend, true

[umbral plover]

Hmmmm, by two-tier you mean this?

[nimble torrent]

Yeah, though you don't necessarily need to cache those poses.

You could just stick them in the blend directly.

[umbral plover]

Right

But is this scalable? I mean, I have him to walk scared, or confident, or ....

[nimble torrent]

If you want it to be more elaborate, you can put a state machine inside another state machine.

So you could have the high level stat machine for 'emotional state' and then inside that you could have the state machine for locomotion etc.

[old falcon]

...linked anim layers... 😇

[umbral plover]

Hahah will study both sub-state machines and linked anim layers to see what better suits me, thanks guys 😄

[nimble torrent]

👍

[bold hatch]

thanks! on the right track now!

[tawny veldt]

I'm trying to use the retargetter in 5.4, but I'm having some trouble with the skeletal mesh target. It seems to set the waist of that mesh at floor level. One of my team members said that it could be something to do with the root bone of the Mixamo animation I was grabbing from, but it seems to work fine retargetting to the UE manny. I also noticed that when I try to set up a control rig on the mesh, the "Control Size" for the root module is extremely small compared to other models. Not even sure what the control size is used for. I'm relatively new to working with skeletal meshes and animations, so I was wondering if something was messed up when setting up my character's skeletal mesh?

[nimble torrent]

Did you import this character from Blender?

My guess is - there is a scale on the root bone.

Probably a big one.

[tawny veldt]

Yeah, it was imported from Blender with Auto Rig Pro. I believe the modeler didn't bother to make sure the character's model followed any set scale, and just adjusted it inside Unreal later.

Probably is what is making the control thing at the bottom of the character looking so small. Pretty sure that doesn't have anything to do with why the retargetted animation has my character's waist at the floor

[nimble torrent]

I think it could! Scale messes with everything.

If you have a strange scale on the character, fix that first before doing anything else.

[charred owl]

How would you blend facial animations between an anim montage and a sequence? It works great for skeletal meshes, but not for morph target animations....

[amber fjord]

What's a good way to handle different movement blendspaces for different weapons? I only need 4 different weapon types right now, maybe up to 6 or 8 in the future.

I looked into anim layer interfaces but I found these confusing tbh. Lyra seems to have like 30 things to override and there's loads of boilerplate.

I find it much easier to have a master ABP with children that just override the movement blend spaces etc.

I'm thinking of just using linked anim graphs for each weapon type and just assign which one to use in my master ABP. Sounds simple enough right?

[merry salmon]

I have a question. I have a mesh, basic character without any clothes... I get a way to add cloth on it by creating another skeletal mesh on it (the cloths) so I juste need to change the asset into this one... and they share the same animation blueprint... is that a good way to do it, or it have better way?

[misty dagger]

Yea definitely start simple.

[elfin river]

Hey how would I retarget the animations because everytime I try to do it the root motion just doesnt work
Like this. It is enable but isnt working

[nimble torrent]

Hard to see what's going on because you're hiding the skeleton.

[nimble torrent]

You probably don't want to run the same animation bp twice. It's more expensive then it needs to be. You can use the Master Pose Component, or you can create a simple secondary animation BP that uses the 'Copy Pose From Mesh' node.

[nimble torrent]

Swapping animation BP's are good for enemy classes. Like, if you have 'enemy with gun' and 'enemy with bigger gun', creating child animation BP's is good.

For the player this is probably not a good idea, because when you swap animation blueprints you lose all state.

So the animation blueprint basically 'starts from scratch' and that's going to create a visual artifact.

Your best bet for that is probably hierarchical state machines.

Or, if you want, you could create an 'animation set' Data Asset, and swap that out.

[inner drum]

Is there a way to play a non-looping animation in reverse? I set rate scale to -1.0 but it seems to start the animation at frame 0 and so the animation never gets to play. Any way to change the starting from of the animation or something similar?

[nimble torrent]

You could make it loop, or you could get the length of the animation and pass that in as the starting time?

[inner drum]

how can I pass it in as the starting time? I dont see a node that lets me do that lol

[inner drum]

loop wont work for how we r using it :/

[nimble torrent]

Start position!

You can expose it as a pin by clicking on the 'Bind' drop down on the right.

[inner drum]

Ah thanks! Do u know of a way to do this in BP? We are not using an anim Bp for this but I think I could set it up if the former is not an option.

[nimble torrent]

No, sorry. I don't know how to play animations backwards without an animation BP.

Unreal's non-animbp animation tools fall apart pretty fast.

If you're doing anything complicated, you probably want to use an animBP.

They don't have to be particularly elaborate.

[ripe yew]

How do you remove LOD0 from SK_Mesh

[nimble torrent]

Really nice!

[nimble torrent]

I don't think you can?

[barren fiber]

oh hell why would you

you can force it to load lod1

[viscid willow]

I think Data assets are the way Lyra handles it, it also allows your animation assets to be soft references if set up in a particular way, so it only loads necessary assets for your characters needs e.g. got a pistol load the pistol data asset, unequipped use the default data asset

[nimble torrent]

Yeah, they're good for a lot of that kind of thing!

[barren fiber]

or delete lod_0 in blender and use your preferred one

[nimble torrent]

OK! So - the wildest thing is how to do interactables with ghosts.

[viscid willow]

love the username, does your motion matching set include slope assets or are you handling slope with IK?

[nimble torrent]

In terms of 'not putting every animation in your animBP'.

[nimble torrent]

(betting some IK)

[rich bane]

Hey friends 🙂 I start to become a bit mad about root motion and Mixamo 😢 I imported this mixamo animation and retarget the animation which looks perfect, but I need to have root motion in order to stop the player motion when he attacks. The problem is with Mixamo animations, the player doesn't go back exactly at his place but start rotating a little on Y axis. The more you play the animation, the worst it is. I tried a lot of tutorials (Blender plugin to create root bone for mixamo anim creates a lot of bug for me...) and I am on a Mac so I can't use the Mixamo Converter by Terribilis... I just want to import animations from mixamo and use it on Unreal, and I find it super technical...
There is no an easy way to fix them on the ground, like in Unity ?
Thanks for your help 🙏

[barren fiber]

both

[viscid willow]

👀

[barren fiber]

ik sets the foots inplace and the animations get picked due to the offset of the feet

[ripe yew]

My lod0 has issue. How can i regenerate or orce it to use lod1

[viscid willow]

oh neat, without IK does it handle/detect slopes well?

[barren fiber]

mesh settings

[barren fiber]

motion matching as far as i know only traces, x y movement

[ripe yew]

I don't see how to force ot use lod1

[barren fiber]

it cant colide with world dynamic objects yet

[barren fiber]

lod settings

[nimble torrent]

If you have a complex object that you want your character to interact with, one with several states or a variable length of interaction (like a machine with a bunch of levers, or a mounted gun or something) - instead of putting the animations inside the main characters animation setup, you put a ghost on the object.

The ghost is a invisible character with a matching skeleton. That matching skeleton has it's own animationBP that contains only the animations necessary to interact with the device.

When your character activates the interactable, you grab the ghost mesh and slot it into a Copy Pose From Mesh node in your main AnimationBP, and it follows the ghost until the interaction is done.

[ripe yew]

?

[barren fiber]

but why

[ripe yew]

So I click on CUstom then I only select LOD1. Right

[barren fiber]

well i guess

[nimble torrent]

To avoid loading animations for 'the weird lever machine you use once in Act 6' in every single level.

[viscid willow]

Oh I know what you mean

[barren fiber]

you should check content examples for this

[ripe yew]

Doesn't work. It still shows Auto and using lod0

[nimble torrent]

Why would I do that? I know how it works.

[barren fiber]

physics something(related to animations) can help you do that, without having to animate anything apart from the levers, it came ue 5.3

[nimble torrent]

OK, but also - the levers are just an example. This works for any complex interaction.

[barren fiber]

if you hit custom select every lod apart from lod0 if you need the others

[nimble torrent]

And you can't really get driven ragdolls to provide much in the way of particularly characterful actions.

[ripe yew]

It doesn't effect my SK mesh on level.

Still using auto/lod0

[barren fiber]

you hit save?

[viscid willow]

Can't find it anymore but there's a cool example someone made of a mount system using this approach

[ripe yew]

lol - nice guess. But I took your hint and used that in my blueprint. BP has min lod option which I set it to 1 and now it using lod1

[barren fiber]

great

[ripe yew]

Even better- SK MEsh has min lod and override lod. I am using that now. Thanks

[stuck pike]

does anyone know why, after adding the LEG module in the new 5.4 modular control rig, the foot goes up like this ? It has the standard ue4 skeleton, except this leg, it works great. I've tested it with quinn and manny, and they dont have this issue, and everything looks identical;

[umbral plover]

Hey guys, does anyone knows a way to pass variables to a Animation Layer Interface? I created one Anim Layer Interface for walk animations, which should receive "ground speed". However, I can't seem to find a way to pass variables from the main Animation Blueprint to the Linked Anim Layer

[old falcon]

You can add parameters in your "LocomotionLayer" asset under Input Pose -> Inputs -> Inputs

[umbral plover]

Right, but how do I set my variable on the AnimBlueprint that implements the interface?

I mean... I can calculate everything again on the AnimBlueprint, but it seems that it should have a way of passing this params from the main AnimBlueprint

[old falcon]

You'll have to use "BlueprintUpdateAnimation" or "BlueprintThreadSafeUpdateAnimation" to get the ground speed from the owning actor

Then you can pass that right into the layer

Here's an example with the thread safe variant

[umbral plover]

Right, I'm doing it... but I just can't find a way to get and set the variable on the other AnimBlueprint to use it there

[old falcon]

This is your "other AnimBlueprint" where you want to use it?

[umbral plover]

Nop, this is the main AnimBlueprint

I get the ground speed through BlueprintThreadSafeUpdateAnimation and it calls a Linked Anim Layer on its AnimGraph

[umbral plover]

My "other AnimBlueprint" is only this, which I want to access the GroundSpeed from the "main AnimBlueprint"

[old falcon]

Yeah that's what I meant

[umbral plover]

Oh right, srry

[old falcon]

The "InputPose" node is used in conjunction with LinkedAnimGraph not LinkedAnimLayer

You have to implement the exact same interface on your other ABP and then implement its functions on the left side under "Animation Layers"

[umbral plover]

Hmmm, my other ABP does implement the interface, and implements the "LocomotionLayer" from the interface

[old falcon]

Oh that's what's going on, sorry I got very confused by that Locomotion State Machine

So you are in fact getting the variable from the input pose

But you want to use it within your state machine, is that right?

[umbral plover]

Right!

Cus I use for transitions

[old falcon]

Gotcha

Hmm

Gotta say haven't tried that myself yet, let me see what I can find

It's more common for the state machine to exist on the main ABP instead

That's not an option?

[umbral plover]

Not really, I want to implement a NPC that contains many differente walk animations, like: default, nervous, scared, ... . I intend to use Anim Layer so I can swap the locomotion according to NPC state

[old falcon]

Yeah you can still do that with the state machine in your main ABP
Two options for that:
A. You can have a state machine with default -> nervous -> scared... and each of these states can contain yet another state machine (e.g. idle -> walk -> run -> jump etc...)

[umbral plover]

Right, sub state machines

[old falcon]

B. You have the state machine in your main ABP (idle -> walk -> run -> jump) but the implementation of each state is just a linked anim layer. That's what I do here

So at runtime you can just link different walk animations

Option A is more common though I think!

Out of curiousity, I'll still check how your solution would work

[umbral plover]

B. Is exactly what I want to do 😄

[old falcon]

A will give you better control over the blending of each transition (i.e. from default to scared)

B only has inertialization for that

[umbral plover]

Hmmm, good point

[old falcon]

If you don't use inertialization you'll get a very noticeable pop when you link a new anim

OK as expected, having a state machine in the ABP that you're linking is kind of difficult
You basically cannot use the animation layer interface parameters that are passed onto the graph
You'd have to do another pass in "UpdateAnimation" to fetch the variable (again)

[umbral plover]

Right, that's what I thought as well

Will work with Linked Anim Layers for now and see what happens. Maybe I won't really need to blend transitions

But good to know

Thank you for your help!

[old falcon]

Sure!

[stuck zenith]

is there a way to bake down time dilation track in level sequence to anim sequence? bake to sequence doesn't include timing changes from dilation track it seems

[stark thunder]

Anyone know how we'd use orientation warping in motion matching, or would that be applied on top?

[nimble dove]

why it doesn't get?

[stuck pike]

can anyone help me out here ?

the moment i put the leg module, it changes like this :

[nimble torrent]

My guess would be, your leg is not aligned in the way that the leg module expects them to be aligned. The modular control rig is less robust at the moment then one might wish.

[nimble torrent]

Why doesn't it get what? What's going wrong here? Your two images don't appear to connect in any way.

[nimble dove]

don't worry i fixed it, i had to connect the cast to the update animation and connect the gets directly to the cast

my worry is just, can i use a cast on a "event tick"?

yk the update animation

[tawny veldt]

That actually fixed it! I'm trying to understand why scaling messes with that and what other issues that it would have introduced down the line. The artist on my team was kind of arguing with me that it doesn't matter and that's why Unreal has an import uniform scale option when importing models. He was also saying that it wouldn't fix something about Mixamo animations not having root motion, so I'm currently learning more about animations/root motion. Still not too sure what that is all about as all the retargetted animations with Mixamo seems to work fine in 5.4 now. Haven't tested how they'll act when making a montage out of them and playing it in-game yet.

[stuck pike]

i found a fix of sorts,

"good enough"

cause when i was making the control rig and adding the leg module, the leg got squished by a few cms

and using this "strech" bool it no longers squishes it

[nimble torrent]

You can, yeah. It's not particularly fast but it's not an immediate game-breaker.

[nimble torrent]

That does still mean that it thinks the leg is a different length then it is though.

[nimble dove]

oh okay thanks

[stuck pike]

yeah but i dont know how to fix it

ive already spend the whole day trying to fix it

[nimble torrent]

I think the retargeter uses the length of bones to assess how to retarget certain tracks like the legs. If you have a scaled character, the way that they measure the bones may make them think that your character's legs are only two inches long or something.

[stuck pike]

the mesh is identical to the quinn one

size wise

[nimble torrent]

That doesn't really matter, the problem is probably in the orientation of the leg bones. If the left leg works, and the right leg doesn't - it's probably orientation.

Check which axis is 'forward' for the leg.

You might have to use the 'roll' feature in Blender to get them to point in the same direction as the other leg.

[stuck pike]

no its the same L/R, its just that i didnt add the leg module to one of them to make it more obvious in the screenshot

[stuck pike]

ill try this

[nimble torrent]

Yeah, can't hurt to try.

[old falcon]

If this is the issue I'm gonna scream because by default the skeletal mesh plugin in UE will mirror bone rotations when mirroring them left to right

[nimble torrent]

If you have animations without root motion, it should be fairly easy to fix that inside unreal using a simple control rig in the sequencer. It's a secondary process, so more time consuming then you might like, but it shouldn't be hard.

[nimble torrent]

It might be! I dunno!

When you're running your 'How do I fix this?' routine, usually your best bet is to just try shit and see what it does!

[merry salmon]

I'm not sure how i can do that.

[nimble torrent]

Have you read this document:

https://docs.unrealengine.com/4.27/en-US/AnimatingObjects/SkeletalMeshAnimation/WorkingwithModularCharacters/

It talks about both techniques.

[tawny veldt]

Thanks for the clarification!

[tribal flint]

Anyone know what might cause bones not to transform/tick on dedicated server? I have visibility set to Always tick and refresh and still everything is T-Posing

[sleek tangle]

so yeah, Bake to Control Rig isn't supposed to give you back the original keyframes, but I've been creating some animation in-engine with a Level Sequence for each animation
then I've edited those original animations within the Level Sequence and re-exported it
am I missing some big dawnfall of this approach? seems like I can create, store, edit and re-export animations, all in-engine

in other words, I have the level sequence with the original keyframes, and then the linked animation sequence

[old falcon]

I think it's nice, especially the auto-baking with linked sequences
The downside is the tools are still few and buggy

[sleek tangle]

yeah, definitely the tools are limited, wouldn't be able to make really complex animations or anything like that, but I was thinking more on the lines of "yes that works but they tank performance" or something like that, like for example UMG looks great and all until you go deep and realize it doesn't support gamepad navigation at all (except for joystick lol)

[old falcon]

Once baked it's just animation data, same as any DCC I guess

[nimble torrent]

Yeah, there's no downside to it.

I genuinely think that Control Rig is one of, or possibly the best rigging system on the market right now. If Epic can get a few of the workflow things with sequencer worked out, I think people will be animating in Unreal for games made in other engines.

[brittle tulip]

I'm using sequencer to animate a character with the control rig. I want it to return to it start state after the animation, but it takes the long way around (the animation has a spin). Is there a way to just go from key to key with in the shortest way?

[nimble torrent]

Hmm - interesting. This is the kind of workflow problem I was just talking about. It doesn't look like the paste pose system handles rotation overflow.

You have an object that has a > 360 degree rotation on it, when you return to your original rotation, it doesn't default to 360, it unwinds the whole way.

You can probably hand key this, by pasting the pose, then manually correcting the greater rotation values.

[vestal aspen]

May I ask, in 5.4 is there a way to bake animation clips and Control Rig Layer to 1 Control Rig track? Can we bake everything down to 1 Control Rig "IK" track?