animation

[granite jay]

ive tried get owner and the parent class of the BP thus far

[nimble torrent]

To get the anim BP, you should be able to get that from the skeletal mesh.

I think it's just a property.

[viscid willow]

You should be able to copy the same setup as the third person template, that's used to talk between the character and the abp

Begin Play/Initialise > Get Owner > Cast to Third Person Character aka Your Blueprint > Set Variable (Character Reference)

[granite jay]

but the variable isnt in Third Person Character, its in the weapon BP, ive tried getting character owner but always come up empty handed

[nimble torrent]

Can you show your graphs?

[viscid willow]

➕ ☝️

And yeah so you'd instead cast to your Weapon Blueprint using the Get Owner

[granite jay]

this is the Anim BP where im trying to get the variables stored in the revolver 'Big Iron' whos parent class is BP_WeaponsMaster

[viscid willow]

oh yeah you're setting the variable with the same variable, which is empty

Is this in your Weapon ABP or your Character ABP?

[granite jay]

Weapon ABP

I tried to mimic what i saw in my Character ABP, how do i make the variable not empty?

[viscid willow]

Instead of casting off this variable you will wanna use Get Owner

coz you're casting from it, which is empty, and setting it, so setting it to empty again

[nimble torrent]

Yup!

[viscid willow]

Do you need to be casting to your character too?

[celest vector]

@nimble torrent Thanks, I'll need to look more into that.

[granite jay]

That was legacy code, the character has an object variable of 'Current Weapon' that i was trying to access

[viscid willow]

right.

Is that error after setting the the cast from Get Owner?

Is your ABP assigned in your weapon BP?

[granite jay]

Yes on both counts

sorry i made a mistake

i used get owning actor previously, this is the error with get Owner

[nimble torrent]

Hmm

What about setting the 'As BP Big Iron' variable from BP Big Iron?

What did you get from 'Get Owning Actor'?

[granite jay]

get owning actor was a NULL reference

and did you mean llike this?

[nimble torrent]

The actor itself was null, or it was null after you cast it?

And your gun is it's own actor?

How are you spawning it?

[granite jay]

There a static mech actor on the ground that spawns the blueprint in my character's hand when i press E on an event beginOverlap for a sphere collsion

[nimble torrent]

Interesting.

OK.

[granite jay]

when the begin play starts when i pick it up, i close out the instance and get the NULL error

[nimble torrent]

Again - did you test what you get from 'Get Owning Actor' before casting?

By, for example, printing it?

[granite jay]

It returns as BP_BigIron0

[nimble torrent]

Neat. Well that certainly should be able to cast to BP BigIron.

You're saying it doesn't?

What happens if you print right after casting?

[granite jay]

still get BP_BigIron0

with this error

[viscid willow]

👀

[granite jay]

im trying to get a float variable from the BP to do a bone transform in the ABP and thats where the error comes from

[viscid willow]

What kind of variable is your As Big Iron variable? I wonder if it's not set because the variable type is incorrect in its object reference?

[granite jay]

Its an object

[nimble torrent]

OK, if you don't get 'none' when you print after casting that means the casting worked.

So you are storing your variable then.

[granite jay]

so where is the null coming from?

[nimble torrent]

Hmm - could be an order of operations thing. I remember having initialization trouble before. If you print that variable in the update function, what do you see?

Does it continuously error, or does it error once, and then print fine?

[granite jay]

Still one error, then prints the display name every tick

[viscid willow]

nailed it lol

Might require an is valid check first?

[nimble torrent]

Yeah, try that.

[granite jay]

btw thanks for the help guys, ive been trying to nail this thing down the last 2 weeks

[nimble torrent]

👍

[viscid willow]

Oh you're coming off begin play? There's also an Initialisation function IIRC that might be the point in the flow you need

[rustic island]

I've decided to scrap the DTL stuff since its causing me too much issues..

the flight animations have been updated to 5.4 so im going to go back into Daz and prep a fresh character from there and use Kawaii physics 😄

[granite jay]

im getting a single 'notValid' for the isValid check then nothing

[nimble torrent]

Oooh. OK, I think I understand what's happening.

So when you build a BP, all it's components are assembled first. So your Skeletal Mesh component is generated before the BP fully exists.

It generates it's AnimBP, which gets a reference to it's owning Actor, which is a valid pointer, but isn't fully initialized.

Then it tries to run it's update function, but it's asking for a variable that doesn't exist yet, as the main BP is still assembling itself.

[viscid willow]

makes sense, it's basically the same as your null ref but just telling you about it instead of an error lol

[nimble torrent]

That's why you get one frame of error.

[viscid willow]

https://tenor.com/view/nod-kermit-nod-nodding-gif-24624072

[nimble torrent]

Instantiation errors are ridiculously common.

[nimble torrent]

Good luck! Make absolutely sure that you're working with the correct skeleton when you start over!

[viscid willow]

I remember going through a lot of that with possessing actors

[granite jay]

okay things are making sense now lol!

[viscid willow]

does building it from Initialisation instead of begin play solve it?

[nimble torrent]

I don't think that will solve it, but it would be interesting to test.

[rustic island]

https://tenor.com/view/bruce-lee-bow-master-smile-gif-12365468

[viscid willow]

The Blueprint Initialize Animation event is executed once when the Animation Blueprint instance is created to perform initialization operations.

So presumably the skel mesh would exist at this point

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

[granite jay]

it takes away the error!

[viscid willow]

woo

[granite jay]

one last thing however, im having a print for the remaining bullets in the gun on the AnimUpdate event, and whenever i fire the gun, the print string no longer fires, is that something i should be worried about?

[viscid willow]

i guess it depends how that is set up lol

[nimble torrent]

Nice!

[granite jay]

ill have to revisit that another time unfortunately, but you guys have been a big help! really appreciate it!

[viscid willow]

np @nimble torrent is the real mvp

[nimble torrent]

Glad we could be of assistance.

[viscid willow]

https://tenor.com/view/predator-handshake-muscle-strong-man-gif-5783927

[celest obsidian]

When you get or set transform by name does the engine do an iterative or recursive search of the skeleton tree?

I wonder if doing so many times will incur a performance hit

[nimble torrent]

It seems pretty fast, considering they don't provide alternative methods of referencing.

It's all name based.

[celest obsidian]

things like:

[nimble torrent]

So my guess would be some kind of hashlookup.

[celest obsidian]

Ok yeah a hashmap would be super fast

[finite summit]

thanks, that would be for a rendered cinematic

[nimble torrent]

Then you're probably better off doing it in Blender or Maya.

And importing the resulting animation into Unreal.

[ashen junco]

I believe you could animate spline mesh component directly in Sequencer.
If the snake is already rigged and skinned (no pun intended), you can use Control Rig to assemble spline controls and animate it in Sequencer

Using the second option would be easier to control, but you'll be at the mercy of the rig you give to the snake mesh

[nimble torrent]

You can do that, yeah.

It's just... maybe more complicated than necessary.

[finite summit]

thanks! I think if i can do it in Unreal that'd be best (so I learn) cause if the snake needs to animate through a very specific path, there would be a lot of going back and forwards from Blender, i'm guessing? I'm watching tutorials of how to do a rig and apply to skeletal mesh, I think I'll have to tackle the control rig after 😃

[ashen junco]

Do note that Control Rig itself doesn't rig and skin the mesh itself, you'd still need to rig the bones in Blender/Maya
Once you rigged the snake, then you can add Control Rig on top of the skeleton rig and animate it in Unreal.

There is a built in skeletal mesh editor, but as of 5.4, the results are iffy at best, so I won't advise using it

[finite summit]

oh i see, I was looking at the UE Skeletal mesh editor and it seemed simple enough but I guess i can rig in Blender. Then in regards to the control rig, is there much blueprinting to do in roder to animate through the spline? thanksfor help!!

[ashen junco]

Not much, a simple spline node in Forward Solve using 4 (or more) controls will do the job.

[halcyon sinew]

I want to achieve motion capture in Unreal Engine 5, using an MPU6050 sensor connected to an ESP8266 (Node MCU) module. The sensor data will be transmitted to Unreal through a simple UDP protocol system. I have attached my Blueprint script and ESP8266 code for the same.

I am unable to directly test these scripts on the sensor, since it is yet to be delivered. Can somebody please verify if this prototype would work if connected to a static mesh in the form of a 3D bike model?

[celest obsidian]

Can't help you sadly but that's an interesting project

[spring valley]

I made a button and also a camera sequence. Now I want to script that if this button is clicked then only the sequence starts. Any solution?

[old falcon]

So it seems just having an Inertialization node in your AnimBP will 100% crash the editor in 5.3 when trying to animate an Actor in Sequencer via control rig.
Anyone got any workarounds? I could remove the AnimBP but that's surely not what's intended right...?

[halcyon sinew]

Do you know where I can get help for this kind of topic?

[rich bane]

Hey friends 🙂 I followed the SmartPoly and Gorka Motion Matching tutorials I have a few bugs when implementing :
When I press two keys like up+right, the character starts walking animation instead of running,.
Do you know how to implement fall and jump with Motion matching ?
Thanks a lot again !

[fossil lion]

An earthquake throws everything to the floor- triggered via sequencer. do i treat my static meshes layout and the abc versions of these as two different setups? Or can i drive the initial setup with the animation data? thanks

[dire crag]

Hello, i hav a question. Can somebody tell me if its possible to have a True First Person Setup (1st person view = 3rd person view) but change the character and weapon FOV seperate from the camera fov?

So the green area should stay the same, but the weapon and hand models should come closer to the camera :

[celest obsidian]

Yes it is possible. I've seen someone do it.

A quick search yields me this: https://forums.unrealengine.com/t/first-person-viewmodel-correction-z-clipping-and-separate-fov/147783

[dire crag]

This is for normal First Person, not TFPS

[celest obsidian]

You want to use a full character, not just a pair of arms correct?

And the fp camera is stuck to the head

[dire crag]

Yes

[umbral plover]

Hey guys, can I play two animations with root motion at two Character Meshes at the same time? I have encountered a really weird behavior: I have two NPCs with "turn 180" root motion animation. If I play then at the same time on two characters, they just spin around like crazy. I did some research, and what I thing is happening, is that somehow the root motion animations are sharing data with each other, maybe through the skeleton... If I disable root motion on the animation, they both works correctly.

[uneven hatch]

could anyone tell me why this is happening to my third persons camera? it's like it's rotating 90 degrees and is overly large in the take recorder

[snow vapor]

Anybody know if the Asset Override Editor in a child animation blueprint is only able to override blend spaces? I was hoping I'd be able to assign something (whether it be a sequence player or some sort of Animation Layer Interface stand in - a whole other series of questions) in the Animation Blueprint Template, and then override that with the correct animations in each instance.

[snow vapor]

I believe this is an export issue. If you exported it yourself you can try to export it again with the correct axis alignment settings, or you might be able to get away with just rotating the model in it's blueprint so it's facing the correct direction. I don't have a ton of experience with animating in UE though so I could be wrong. Just some things I'd try, personally.

[plain wyvern]

Hi i need rotate bone by wheel, first bone rotate front and second bone rear,

[tawny veldt]

I've been having trouble trying to change the scale of my character. I saw a post somewhere that I should be trying to use delta transform scale. If I only do that and try to export it through auto rig pro, the animations are completely broken. I tried to also apply the scale after setting the delta scale, and a similar thing happens. I have almost no experience working with Blender and the person that was originally working on the character left the team.

https://www.loom.com/share/92fdc893027e466e939f3976c6f1d1f2?sid=93638000-353d-4cae-bb9c-be739ed4812a

[old falcon]

ABP Templates require a pretty awkward workflow.
You pretty much cannot do anything in an ABP template that directly references a skeleton or bone. Layered blend per bone comes to mind. So since you can't directly reference a skeleton you can't play sequences by referencing an asset. You need to instead create variables that you set in the child ABP and use those to play them. However, now you are kind of locked into a sequence and if you wanted to play a blendspace instead, well, doesn't work. You'll have to make heavy use of linked anim layers for this kind of flexibility.

The problem is that not all nodes expose all their properties as pins. For example layered blend per bone with blend masks. So you simply cannot use LBPB at all, among other nodes.
The solution again is to use linked layers and fill those functions in your child ABP. You see where the trend is going? Yup, bunch of linked layers in your template.

Now this might not be much of a problem. It makes the template really generic and reusable.
If not for the fact that you cannot override animation layers in the child ABPs. You have to manually manage their link/unlink at runtime.

Make sure that before using templates that this is not a dealbreaker to you.

[snow vapor]

Yea I was actually able to work out exactly what I want. So I now have an Animation Blueprint Template with all of my logic in my event graph and anim graph. It uses an Animation Layer Interface so in each of my states, I pass in one of those layers into the output node. Then, I make a child blueprint from the template, set the skeleton in the class settings, and implement that animation layer interface, overriding each of the layers with that specific monsters animations. And then yea like you said, link the layers at run time. Seems to work great. Still working out a few kinks, but I don't think that they're related to the workflow, just my lack of knowledge of animating. lol.

[old falcon]

It can get really complex quickly, but if works for you all the better!

[snow vapor]

I think it should in my case. Luckily my animations are pretty basic. The game is stylized like a ps1 game so I'm hoping to not use blend spaces at all to keep it looking like that era of games, which makes things a lot more simplified.

One thing I did just notice though is that the settings like the play rate or loop animation are taken from the Template, not from the child class. Is there a way to sync those easily or is that going to be something that I need to go through and manually set all those things when I assign the layer?

[old falcon]

Variables

You can expose them as pins and then set them via variables

Another really annoying thing about templates

[snow vapor]

Yea like wtf. why is there no one button check to choose between which one to use? lol. FML.

[old falcon]

I mean

You could just anim layer everything

Gotta pick your poison

[snow vapor]

lol that sounds like a nightmare.

[umbral plover]

Does anyone have a input on this, please?

[nimble torrent]

That behavior is very strange. Under normal circumstances, instances of blueprints should have no communication with each other.

[umbral plover]

Right...

I'm playing the animations from a level sequence, if that changes something

[warped dirge]

Hey. I have some hand raising montage. I also apply some bone rotation in ABP depending on camera rotation. I would like to use a rotation from montage when I use it which I achieve via blending. But If my hand is already uplifted on montage start, during blending it goes to initial position (lowered) and then rises cuz montage use idle pose as start and end. My question is how can I make a hand to rise from its current point without blending to initial position first?

[crystal blade]

its funny how often I see still problems like this popping up. I run into it even with Paragon assets. I asked last week if there was some automation to fix this because I got tired, so I just ripped out a python plugin that fixes the ik_foot bones in the AnimSeq so I never have to do these manual steps again and its sharable

[boreal quarry]

Interesting! I'd love to see the script, and how it works!

[crystal blade]

https://gist.github.com/hartmannr76/c8e677c79754f48b67e37e3262a7f31d

no way was I going to manually fix ik bones 😂 it took a few hours to get this working but it'll save me hours of despair in the future and hopefully can help others

I don't really know anything about making editor plugins and publishing on the marketplace so if someone wants to help me to do that, I'd gladly make this even easier to install

[nimble torrent]

That seems probable. If you're using the same level sequence for two characters... I could see that messing up. Level sequences are not designed to be used as Smart Objects.

[nimble torrent]

Hmm, tricky.

You could add a curve track to your hand raising animation that tracks how high the hand is relative to the spine, and then when you go to trigger the animation you could check the current height of the hand, then seek forward in the animation to the point where the height curve is high enough, then start there.

But that would be exceedingly elaborate.

I don't recommend doing that.

That is likely to cause problems when you go to blend them. You're better off fixing the import issue.

[umbral plover]

Even if a spawn one for each? And bind them dynamically?

[nimble torrent]

Maybe not?

I can't say for certain that using a level sequence is specifically the cause of that particular problem.

But I can say for certain, they were not designed for that purpose.

And I would not be surprised for them to cause unanticipated behavior if used in that way.

[snow vapor]

Is there a way inside the animation blueprint's event graph to track the current state the animation graph is in?

[nimble torrent]

Not directly, no. You can use enter and exit notifies in a state machine to feed some information back, but it is imprecise and I would strongly recommend against using it that way.

It's almost always better to look at the animated mesh as a reflection of gameplay state, and not a driver.

[umbral plover]

Got it... How do you think I should implement this?

[nimble torrent]

Using Smart Objects.

https://dev.epicgames.com/documentation/en-us/unreal-engine/smart-objects-in-unreal-engine---quick-start

[snow vapor]

hm... any idea how I could ensure that some function only fires while the character is in a certain animation state then? I have textures for facial animations and I want to be able to switch between them. Most are pretty simple and I just need to put them on when the animation plays, but sometimes I need to display it at a certain time in the animation, or for like the blink animation, I only want it to play during the idle or walking animations.

[nimble torrent]

(that page is good, but it implies you can only use smart objects through behavior tree. That's not entirely true anymore, you can also use the new State Trees)

[nimble torrent]

For blinks, you could use an animation curve in your animations, and then read that using Get Curve Value.

Or, I mean, you already know when your character is walking or idle because you're controlling your state machine - so just... use that.

[snow vapor]

I haven't used animation curve in UE before, but that might actually work for all of facial expressions. I'll look into that. Thanks.

[nimble torrent]

👍

[old falcon]

Have you tried playing montages with root motion instead of level sequences?

[umbral plover]

Damnn, did not know that existed. Will dive right away

[umbral plover]

No, I did not. The logic on my system was implemented to use level sequences, but as I said (yesterday I think), using level sequences always felt that they were not flexible enough for what I was doing

SmartObjects really seems what I need here

[snow vapor]

How in the world do you view the Anim Curves panel? I'm reading through UE's docs on animation curves and it's got exactly what I want to do on there but I don't have an anim curves panel like they do and everything I google says I should be able to get it from under the Window drop down, but I definitely don't have that there.

Oh I guess it's renamed to curve debugger now? unless that's not the same thing?

[old falcon]

Do you mean this?

[snow vapor]

This one

[old falcon]

Is that not a PoseAsset thing?

[snow vapor]

uuum I'm honestly not sure. I don't believe so as I'm not using any PoseAssets as far as I know.

[celest obsidian]

When you create a control object through spawn node is there a way to set offset transform from current?

I tried spawning the control using the offset transform parameter but that keeps the control's pivot point at the center of the parent object

In character rigging it is convenient to set a rest pose where the both translation and rotation are zeroed out and the scaling is at 1. Right now you'll see that's not the case:

Notice how the lowerarm fk control's rotation and translations are not at zero

[warped dirge]

Do these nodes always return 0 in blueprint?

[cunning locust]

how do i mirror when i copy and paste in the sequencer, for a walk cycle

[rustic island]

So.... I've gotten rid of the DTL stuff as it was causing more issues than i wanted for physics. I started over, exported my character Daz in to 5.4, retargetted the character to the Superhero Flight animations, I got the Kawaii Physics as suggested from @ashen junco so I'm tryingto set that up, however when i go into flight mode and start flying the camera seems to go inside the body or the body gets really big, and then when i land the character snaps back into normal size..., Why does this happen ?

EDIT: all this error pops up "Trying to play a non-additive animation 'MM_Land' into a pose that is expected to be additive in anim instance 'ABP_FLIGHT_FLAME_C /Game/SuperheroFlight/Maps/UEDPIE_0_TutorialMap.TutorialMap:PersistentLevel.BP_Player_FLAME_C_0.CharacterMesh0.ABP_FLIGHT_FLAME_C_0'.... EDIT2: GOT THE LAND ANIMATION ERROR RESOLVED!

I've tried changing it but it ends up changing the orientation and the character implodes

*** (see video) ***👇🏾👇🏾👇🏾👇🏾

[nimble torrent]

My guess is, a problem with the blender exporter.

Check your flight animations for a weird scale value on the root object.

[rustic island]

i didnt use blender

[rustic island]

and ok I'll check for that

[nimble torrent]

They shouldn't, but they only work in very specific contexts. I don't know if 'Received Notify Tick' is one of them.

[rustic island]

When you said to check for a weird scale value on the root object of the animations, are you saying that in the assumption that the flight animations were made by me exported from blender?

The superhero flight asset pack is from the Epic marketplace 😊

However I will check each animation and look at the settings to see if I see any weird values for root? In Unreal Engine

[nimble torrent]

Yes. My assumption is that the character has gotten very large, and the problem is caused by a scale on the root.

These assumptions could be wrong, but it does make sense.

[nimble torrent]

If you multiply a transform (like a bone) by another transform (like an offset) you can create an offset.

So if you want to move your control away from the original transform of the bone, multiply two transforms together.

(you can create a transform node by right clicking and choosing 'make transform')

Note: The order you multiply them together matters.

I think you want to do offset x parent.

[nimble torrent]

You use an asset called a Mirror Data Table. They're pretty easy to make. They're in the animation menu.

Chances are, it will automatically populate, but if it doesn't, making it work should be pretty intuitive.

In sequencer, right click on your animation track name (not the track, the name in the track, its weirdly specific).

In 'properties' there is a slot for the mirror table.

Put it in there, and your sequence is mirrored.

[rustic island]

the root scale is 1.0

[nimble torrent]

OK. What happens if you play a flight animation on your character not in flight mode?

Like, you just put the sequence directly into the output?

Does she get huge?

[rustic island]

no just did that in this anim graph and she is normal sized

[nimble torrent]

If you are adding curves to a sequence, you do it here, in the animation viewer:

[nimble torrent]

OK, well that implies the problem is either somewhere in your graph or somewhere in your code.

What happens if you plug a flight idle directly into your state blend node.

So you don't do anything complicated, it's just one animation.

And you take off?

[rustic island]

did that and she remained normal,

[nimble torrent]

So it seems like you've narrowed down your problem!

You know where it is.

[snow vapor]

I ended up not using curves. they were causing issues cause of the limited frames of the animation.

[nimble torrent]

👍

What did you decide to use instead?

[rustic island]

the flying state machine

[nimble torrent]

Yep!

So you have to debug that.

[misty dagger]

Squishy you're awesome

[nimble torrent]

[celest obsidian]

Is there any difference from inserting the product of the bone get transform and the offset transform into the initial transform pin versus moving the bone get transform from the initial transform pin to the offset transform pin?

[nimble torrent]

Well, the bone would be in a different place?

[celest obsidian]

No it is the same place

[nimble torrent]

OK, I don't understand then. Sorry.

Maybe?

Try it!

[celest obsidian]

Basically I want the fk controls to stay where they are but their rotation and translations are all set to zero

The set offset from transforms does exactly that but it seems I can't get that to work with controls created by the spawn transform control node

[rustic island]

alright thank you for your help, I'll try to iron this out

[nimble torrent]

OK, what about using nulls?

So you have a null, then a control that is the child of that null.

The null is aligned to where the bone was.

So the control has no transform offset.

But the null does.

You only interact with the controls.

[viscid willow]

Seconded

[nimble torrent]

[misty dagger]

Lol

[celest obsidian]

That sounds like the only workaround.

[viscid willow]

makes sense if you're coming from something like maya, null/groups with controls nested under those

[celest obsidian]

Yup! Although I thought maya has a way to zero out your transforms

[viscid willow]

You could with something like freeze transforms, although for rigging it's typically a hierarchy of nested groups and controls so the controls sit at the zero of their local group

[celest obsidian]

I see, in that case you wouldn't have to freeze transforms

[frozen relic]

is there a way to play an arbitrary animsequence (that would be passed from elsewhere to animbp) and then have stuff layered on top?

[old falcon]

Additive anims and blend nodes?
Don't think it matters where the base anim sequence comes from

Montages can also be layered with groups+slots

[frozen relic]

how do you make animbp play a sequence thats saved in a variable?

[old falcon]

You can use a plain sequence node (the one you get when you drag in a sequence asset) then expose the asset as a pin

Then you can just connect any sequence variable to that pin

Although this could also be achieved with montages

[frozen relic]

ah. lol. ok. thank you. yeah thats all i needed.

i was like "where the hell is the arbitrary sequence node, its only listng specific ones" xd

thanks

[old falcon]

Yeah anim graph is really picky in some ways...

[frozen relic]

is it ok for other objects to be setting variables and/or calling events in the animbp? or is that bad practice and i have to save everything in characterbp that animbp will read from?

[old falcon]

It's better to pull variables from your ABPs Update or UpdateThreadSafe.
Events kind of depends what you intend to do after the event? Usually there are other ways to achieve "event" logic

[frozen relic]

i see. i guess im just trying to figure out whats the best way to pass info from skills which are their own actors, into animbp

do i have to go through characterbp variables that will then be read in animbp? or is there a better way, as to not crowd character bp too much?

[old falcon]

Yeah you would go through the owner actor, cast that and then pull variables as required. When using the UpdateThreadSafe you get a really nice property access node that makes deep nested access much simpler (and also thread safe!).
Can I ask: Are you by chance trying to play a different animation based on which skill was used?

This is what the property access node looks like btw

Doesn't have to be just variables, can also call functions

[frozen relic]

is this a ue5 thing? im still on 4

[old falcon]

Gotcha, might be a 5 thing. If so you would just use the plain Update to pull the variables manually

I'll check if I can find whether 4 has it tho

Ok, I think the threadsafe update function was introduced with 5, so the property access would've been introduced with that too.

[frozen relic]

i see. so i guess i gotta store all the data in characterbp variables for the animbp to pull, right? no better way?

[old falcon]

I mean you could do
GetCharacter -> GetSkillComponent -> GetAllSkills or something like that in your ABP

Don't necessarily need to clutter your character with variables

Functions would work too if you want better organization in your ABP

[frozen relic]

i kinda want the skill actors to have a pretty granular control over when to play which animation, at what play rate, etc. saving all of that in variables in the skill that the animbp then pulls is kinda gonna make the skill code a mess. i think im just gonna do an event in characterbp, store the data there, and have the animbp pull from that

[old falcon]

Yeah this is why I asked earlier:

Can I ask: Are you by chance trying to play a different animation based on which skill was used?
I would recommend montages for this (assuming you're making a videogame, not movie, animation etc.)

Montages are good for one-off animations and you can customize them easily per character

[frozen relic]

yeah but you cant layer other stuff on top then

[old falcon]

How so?

[frozen relic]

can you? if i use a "play montage" node, does that not override the entire anim graph for the duration of the montage?

[old falcon]

Nope!

Hold on

Here I use a simple "Layered Blend Per Bone" to layer 3 montages over each other
You use slots to specify where in the AnimGraph a montage will play. From there it's only a question of how to blend them

[frozen relic]

oh, thats cool, thank you for letting me know.

tho tbh given that every one of these in my use case will be a single animsequence, making a montage for each and every one of them sounds like needles work

are there other reasons why this is better than the approach i was trying to do?

[old falcon]

It depends! Montages give you additional flexibility at the cost of having to create more assets. You can repeat sequences, compose them in different ways, loop them arbitrarily (e.g. imagine a reload where you loop putting the shell in the gun), start playing them at arbitrary starting points or layer them on top of each other from within the montage, too.
Also some things are not possible with just sequences: If you want to use the same sequence, but with a different blend in/blend out. Those things are not exposed on the "PlaySequence" node.

Oh, another possibly big one: You want to play the same sequence, but want to change when the AnimNotifies are triggered. Or change the AnimCurves for a specific character for that animation.

[frozen relic]

i see

hmmm, tough decision honestly. i dont think im gonna be doing any of those things tbh

[old falcon]

Then start off with playing sequences directly and if you find it works for you then no need for montages 🙂

[frozen relic]

can play sequence be also played in a specific slot with other stuff layered on top?

[old falcon]

Nope, no slots for sequences, you'll have to play your sequence variable like so

The blending works regardless of what you use

Since that's the LBPB node

[frozen relic]

yeah thats what i was thinking initially

ok thank you for the explanations

[old falcon]

👍

One thing I'm not certain about is what happens when that variable is empty

Might be A-posing, or not, no idea

Since there's no input pose on the play sequence node

I assume it will actually A-pose

[frozen relic]

yeah which is why im doing this

[old falcon]

Which you get for free by using slots and montages... 😉

Oh yeah, that "Convert bool to float" node also kills fast path I believe?

You can use blend by bool... not sure how that behaves

[frozen relic]

i see, thats really good to know, thank you

one thing i wanted to ask too - would another benefit of montages be the blend in and blend out? cause i dont really see settings for that when just playing a sequence

[old falcon]

Oh, didn't know that, you're right sequences don't seem to have blend settings

[frozen relic]

so i guess by default they're not really blending in or out, i'd have to vary the alpha on the blend node over time

ok i guess that decides it, montages it is. thanks for the help.

[old falcon]

👍

One thing to note about montages: If you want to play multiple montages at the same time then their slots have to be in different groups
Montages played on slots in the same group will cancel each other. Last one to play wins.

Kind of a gotcha

[frozen relic]

thats super good to know

also, how does one cancel / interrupt a montage?

do you just do play montage again selecting "none"? or is there a better way?

[old falcon]

I think there's a stop montage node

[frozen relic]

ah, i need to get anim instance, and from there i can do that

i see

[viscid willow]

https://tenor.com/view/spongebob-patrick-star-noted-notes-gif-26231953

[misty dagger]

Ok wtf lol. I have a shooting animation that doesn't seem to work correctly when I use it as a montage. If it means anything, I'm using retarget pose from mesh.

Ok interesting the issue happens with the source mesh as well.

[spare forge]

hey, I have issue with UE4 animations, when I want to convert them to ue5 while using RTG, they just does not appear in asset browser, anyone has an idea?

Nevermind, changed Source Preview Mesh to different and it works

[old falcon]

Does anyone else have the issue (UE5.3) that keyframing in additive tracks is weird as hell?
I have the auto-keyframe on and it does seem to automatically keyframe on my additive track, but there is just no keyframe visible in the track. Not unless I manually keyframe it.
Or if anyone could confirm that this works as intended in 5.4?

Actually, even with auto-keyframing off the additive track memorizes the pose as if it was on... huh?

[celest obsidian]

Anyone know how to add a reroute node when I pull a connection from an existing one? There should be an add reroute node in the search box but I don't see it

I found out I can at least duplicate an existing reroute node.

That's good enough for me

[old falcon]

In Control Rig you can double click a wire to add a reroute node.
Everywhere else you can drag a wire and then just press R (this is probably the most important hotkey in all of UE)

[celest obsidian]

Pressing R doesn't appear to work in control rig

[old falcon]

Everywhere else
Yup, except control rig :^)

[celest obsidian]

The double click to split does work though

Lol

[old falcon]

Control Rig is a different VM from Blueprints, so things that work in BP may or may not have an equivalent in CR

[celest obsidian]

Yup and some of the equivalent functions have interesting names like reset array instead of clear array and from string instead of string to name

[misty ore]

does anyone know or have a blueprint that automatically adds animations into a level sequence with skeletons with the same name

[timid shadow]

why the root motion isn't working

[misty dagger]

Lyra anims are kind of a pain in the ass to work with

[nimble torrent]

I don't, but also... why do you want to do that?

[midnight hull]

hi, has anyone tried use Root motion animation in Sequencer? How to keep the character capsule move along with skeletal mesh?

and if i play an character animation in sequencer, can i make it have collision with the environment? now it's floating if walk foward on a slope

[nimble torrent]

Sequencer is very much intended to just play back an animation. So if you want your character to walk up a slope... you have to animate them walking up that slope.

[midnight hull]

ok... so the only way to easily make the character walk on uneven floor is use AI control move in sequencer then..

[red tartan]

What is this,How can I get in?

[cursive pumice]

which IK would be used in Unreal for this result?

https://imgur.com/a/S1eEt8p

[nimble torrent]

You wouldn't need IK for this.

[cursive pumice]

Tell me more 😄

[nimble torrent]

The only dynamic constraint you would need would be one aim constraint.

The lower jaw(?) piece, has the wall connection(?) which needs to look at a socket, aside from that it's just a normal hierarchy.

[cursive pumice]

I had one solution with only blueprint nodes, and set the rotation of the mesh with „look at“

[nimble torrent]

Yeah, that'd be it.

[cursive pumice]

But that didnt worked well after rotation the whole actor in game mode

[nimble torrent]

You were probably using global transform values rather than local or component transforms.

[cursive pumice]

Having 0 in roations it worked

[cunning locust]

the problem is, i need the mirror in control rig. I wanna mirror frame one to flipped in 15

[nimble torrent]

I haven't seen that functionality.

If you find it, let me know!

[rustic island]

I'm still having the same weird implosion issue 😭 can't seem to rectify it, what's crazy is that it's probably something so simple and small and I just don't see it or it could be something major 🤷🏾

[nimble torrent]

Do you know how to use Pose Watch?

That might help you figure out where the weirdness is coming from.

[rustic island]

Yes I did all of that and I did try the debugging stuff yesterday, and nothing was really firing off to say okay this is the problem so I wasn't really sure how to debug this issue

[nimble torrent]

So when you watched the poses, did they all explode to massive size, or was it one specific node that did it?

[rustic island]

its only happening she goes into flight mode and is hovering.

[rustic island]

i saw no explosions

[nimble torrent]

You sure she's getting big and it's not the camera messing up?

How are you controlling the camera?

[old falcon]

Sadly no functionality to do this, but can't you just flip translation XYZ?

[nimble torrent]

Today I learned that the Unreal mannequin files are exported looking left.

Le sigh.

[old falcon]

Due to Y forward?

Or -Y? I forgot

[nimble torrent]

Fucked if I know.

That just confused the heck out of me for a few hours.

[remote elm]

dumb question, i have a linked anim layer in my animbp and i link between two of them, one for unarmed and one for armed. problem is blending as it currently just snaps. i have the inertialization node placed down as well as set my linked anim layers blend in/out time and tried a ton of values all with the same result like its doing nothing

[old falcon]

Interesting, should work just like that

[remote elm]

thats what i thought. tried swapping between layers directly and just straight unlinking them, all same result

[old falcon]

I'll have a quick look at mine see if I find smth

[remote elm]

thank you

[old falcon]

Which version are you on?

[remote elm]

5.3

[old falcon]

Ok, same

Hmm, try to place the inertialization node right before your IK and any additives you might be playing?

Also is that your main ABP or a subgraph?

[remote elm]

im splitting the upper and lower body after, theres no additives though. main abp

[old falcon]

Hm, just to test it I'd try to make almost empty graph with just the layer and inertialization. Ruling out human error the only other thing I could think of is that something else in the graph is messing with it.

My guess is the IK, but I'm grasping at straws

[remote elm]

actually was trying that now lol. same result,

[old falcon]

😕

That's not epic, Epic

No logs?

Warnings or whatever?

Might also try to re-add your anim layer node and double check its blend settings. Otherwise I'm out of ideas

[remote elm]

this is it but im assuming its unrelated, ill remove the node and test again to confirm

yea same result, no logs

[old falcon]

🫠

Can't be right

[remote elm]

idk this is unreal engine were talking about

[old falcon]

...try to create a fresh ABP?

[remote elm]

ill try

[old falcon]

I mean we're on the same version, mine works exactly like that

Also I hope you don't use that ABP in sequencer

[remote elm]

same result lol. i might have to come back to this later and test with some test anim layers and try to narrow down the why

[remote elm]

never tried, also whys that

[old falcon]

Your anim layer node looks suspicious
Mine looks like this

[old falcon]

Inertialization crashes the editor 100% of the time when trying to animate a character with control rig

[remote elm]

yea i had it linked by default to one of the layers. ill triple check but i was getting the same result even if it was empty initially

[remote elm]

ah noted, thankfully im not

[old falcon]

Ah gotcha. Well, sorry, no clue at this point :/

I could mail you my PC, seems to work there lol

[remote elm]

waaaait a minut, now its working on the test

[old falcon]

Uh

[remote elm]

sweet deal but idk about you getting the pc back XD

[old falcon]

Was it... human error? :^)

[remote elm]

crap idk at this point, so its working partially. if i start the layer empty, then link it by pressing a key it will blend as expected. but when i swap layers it does not. so if i hold C it blends in, when i release C it blends out

however when i swap between layers like this afterwards, it snaps instantly with no blending. do i have to unlink first adn then link or?

yep so running Unlink right before linking works just fine -_-

[old falcon]

Hm, linking multiple ABPs kind of depends on your setup, whether you allow multiple sub-anim-instances or not. Are you forcing single instance? I think it's "Enable Linked Anim Layer Instance Sharing" in the optimization category of class settings

Might be some - once again undocumented - side effect of it maybe

But that's really good to know, I'll have to find a workaround or run into the same issue eventually

So Link A -> Unlink A -> Link B works? But Link A -> Link B doesn't?

[remote elm]

i have that option disabled

[remote elm]

correct. also noticed that if i set the anim layer to have a value by default in the anim graph it doesnt blend at all when swapping layers

[old falcon]

Okay

Huh

So it looks like inertialization is blending the plain base pose only

[remote elm]

so if its set like this it no workie by default

[old falcon]

Yeah, so I suppose it only really knows about the base pose when nothing is linked

[remote elm]

thats what it seems from testing just now lol

[old falcon]

Which kind of kills the idea of going from Unarmed to Armed directly, no?

[remote elm]

eh soso. thankfully i setup this from the start so i can just link initially when its needed, testing confirms this works. also tried linking first thing to unarmed in the animbp's event graph and it worked as expected. but yea that seems to be why lol

[old falcon]

There's so many gotchas in anim graphs. Maybe you're just supposed to ignore any feature that is not state machines lmao

[remote elm]

thats a good idea, keepen it simple lol. i appreciate the help btw!

[old falcon]

Yeah no prob, curious about that myself

[remote elm]

not perfect but not to bad. from reading the inertialization node seems pretty powerful

[old falcon]

Hey, looks good, if it works it works I would say.

[grizzled oar]

i'm just brainstorming, but is it possible to change Notify ''time'' on timeline based on variable? So like I could cast or anything to that animation and on some unit set it to be at 2s and on the other one to be on 2.3s ?

[old falcon]

based on variable
No, but much simpler: Just make 2 different anim montages for each unit

[grizzled oar]

Okay, so what I'm brainstorming is how to implement cooldown reduction / attack speed boost in case if I do the ''DealDamage'' based on Notify on animation? Do I make animation play faster?

[old falcon]

Cooldown reduction
That would be on your ability/skill instead of on the animation

attack speed boost
Yep, just play it faster

[grizzled oar]

I'm saying cooldown reduction / attack speed boost, because it's actually depending on how you set your ''attack speed'' to be in a game, because you get set it to be for example 1 hit every 2seconds (it makes it cooldown) or 0.7 attack speed, and chosing between these 2 makes it a little bit different how you give ''boost'' 😄

[nimble torrent]

Are you really using a Timeline? Like - one of these?

For ability cooldowns?

Are you interested in potentially better ways of handling that?

[barren fiber]

https://discord.com/channels/187217643009212416/1236431270649790484

[grizzled oar]

I'm always interested in better approaches! For the context, it's not attackspeed or cooldown for just 1 character that you controll. It's a RTS game with lots of different units that will fire attack / spells on their own it if ''commanded'' to.

[grizzled oar]

by timeline I mean that timeline that is on animation where you put Notify event

[nimble torrent]

OK, so you mean a sequence, not a timeline.

Cool

If you play an animation faster, it will adjust the notify times.

So, if you play a 2 second animation that has a notify at the end, and you play it twice as fast, the notify will fire after one second.

[grizzled oar]

Okay, and I'm able to easily specify animation speed time in blueprint where I'm calling that and I can base it on a variable?

I don't need to know now how, just if yes 😄

[nimble torrent]

That depends on how you're calling it. There are some ways of playing an animation that allow you to specify a speed. Others do not.

But yes. For the ones where you can, you can use a variable.

[grizzled oar]

Okay, awesome

[nimble torrent]

Look for 'Play Rate'.

It's accessible on most of the montage nodes, especially 'Play Slot Animation as Dynamic Montage', which is probably the one you're looking for.

[grizzled oar]

thank you a lot!

[wintry igloo]

Hello, when adding the animation pack animations in they're blending with the animation they transition from and i don't know how to stop it, so it's leading to weird things like this:

Any suggestions on how to make it stop doing that?

[vast socket]

Hi, I'm beating my head against a wall here. I have a Component referenced in my Animation Blueprint, but when I get a bool from the Component it is having no effect on the Set of my animation blueprint

[vast socket]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O5OWg4OpVM4 This helped me with the same problem

[old falcon]

Your isvalid is borked

[vast socket]

The Tut I'm following was able to make it work without the isvalid, it was just get rid of an error

[vast socket]

Well, I ditched it and it started working.... So the pudding is on my face

[old falcon]

You could also keep the node and actually plug some object to check for validity into it

[vast socket]

Wow, thank you. You know I actually about 30 seconds away from putting my fist through a wall

[old falcon]

I know that well, the problem is always 50cm in front of the screen

[wintry igloo]

word! thanks homie

[winter ledge]

Hello, I was wondering if anyone could point me in the direction of what setting i did to make the wireframe appear whenever I move a controller on a rig. As soon as I make a change grabbing the controller it shows the wireframe and causes lag.

[winter ledge]

I left on vertex snapping lol

UIn case others have issue

[nimble torrent]

Weird that it made it go wireframe though!

[vast socket]

Got a new odd problem, Not sure what I did but I am working on an aim offset. Everytime I adjust the keys and save it looks good

But when I open it back up this is what it looks like

just did a test and it happens in any animation, if I add a key and save, the next time I open that anim the key is very exaggerated

[celest obsidian]

Does the default mannequinn control rig have an automatic fk ik snap system?

So for instance if I drag an ik effector control to a new location will the fk controls automatically match the corresponding joint's new transforms?

And if you rotate an fk control arm the ik pole vector and effector will match the corresponding joint's new transforms

[nimble torrent]

I don't know if the sequence editor is intended for that?

Have you tried editing it in the sequencer?

Using a control rig?

[nimble torrent]

I can't remember if they snap, it should be easy to check though.

[vernal echo]

is Virtual Bones bugged? I add them to skeleton and they won't appear when trying to select in control rig

[old falcon]

Refresh your hierarchy in CR

[fathom bluff]

Does anyone have any good suggestions for resources towards combat animation systems?

[vernal echo]

how?

nvm got it

didn't fix my problem though. my metahuman like skis around

[old falcon]

Don't think there are any like best practices ones since it depends too much on what you're trying to do and there are many ways you could do it

Are you asking from a technical or artistic point of view?

[fathom bluff]

Kind of both - I have alot of animations that i have that i want to use and i havent made a combat system before

and want to practice animation techniques as well

[old falcon]

Hm, can't help with the artistic side but from the technical side if you have concrete questions then shoot

[fathom bluff]

Tired of survival style combat haha

[old falcon]

So mouse-click -> do attack -> repeat?

[fathom bluff]

Ya with at most a combo montage notify

[old falcon]

And what you'd like to do is like branching combos, or special attacks and what not? Those would be relatively basic

[fathom bluff]

Well anything more dynamic really

[old falcon]

Like, physically based animations?

Those are hard

To do well

[fathom bluff]

Ya I haven’t tried that other than a basic rag doll either.

[old falcon]

I think in principle there's just a single concept that you need to implement, but there are many ways to implement it
You would need some kind of directed graph that tells you which attack is possible when
Do you have some data structure in your project like GAS?

That manages abilities/actions for your character?

[fathom bluff]

It would be a fresh project

I do have GasCompanion though

But i understand what you mean. I'll take a look at physical animations as well.. Its motion warping to look at for combat right not motion matching?

[old falcon]

Depends what you want to do! I have no experience in physically based stuff though

Motion matching wouldn't be right for this I think

[fathom bluff]

cheers

[rigid gate]

On unreal engine when i came to animation mode for character's control rig parts pivot size sooooo big and i cant not give pose to my char ever u had this issue?

[old falcon]

This doc https://dev.epicgames.com/documentation/en-us/unreal-engine/controls-bones-and-nulls-in-control-rig-in-unreal-engine?application_version=5.0
Talks about how you can use nulls to facilitate mirroring in control rig. But of course, no demonstration.

Anyone know how that would work using a null?

[celest obsidian]

Is there a way to determine in the control rig blueprints whether a certain control is selected? I'm implementing an automatic fk ik switch and I want to detect when an fk or ik control is being selected or being transformed.

[old falcon]

I'm doing the same right now lol
I just use a bool control/channel

But not "automatic" I guess

[celest obsidian]

Lol

Yeah I currently have a fk ik bool toggle

Just need to figure out how to make it "automatic"

[old falcon]

Doesn't look like you can access selection in the graph

[celest obsidian]

Have you looked at these?:

The backwards solve doesn't seem to do anything

[old falcon]

No, only forwards at the moment

Renaming controls breaks all sequencer animations... WHYYYYY

[celest obsidian]

That sucks

[old falcon]

When will epic learn not to use display names as IDs...

And undoing the rename doesn't fix it........... 🤦‍♂️

Jesus

[celest obsidian]

Is there a way to write an editor script to update the sequencer names?

That could help lol

[old falcon]

Yeah but

Whyyy

[celest obsidian]

Depends on how many animations you have. If you have a lot a tool may automate the renaming process.

[old falcon]

Apparently there's this monstrosity

[celest obsidian]

Yoo

Hmm so apparently the interaction event detects whenever I transform a control

[old falcon]

Oh cool!

And for some weird reason you can't select a ControlRig on that rename node... I'm gonna go crazy

Just empty. I have 3 ControlRigs in my project

[celest obsidian]

That defeats the purpose doesn't it?

So now the problem is figuring out how to get the control that is being interacted

How did you get the flat blueprint ui? Is that a preference setting?

[old falcon]

Free plugin called flat nodes

[celest obsidian]

Oh nice!

Just found this little node:

[old falcon]

Nice! Good to know!

[celest obsidian]

And you can print the array directly to the screen:

That's pretty neat

I made an interesting observation about the get interactions items array. If you have multiple controls selected and transform them, the array stores them by greatest grandparent to greatest grandchildren (hope I'm describing it right)

[celest obsidian]

Woo! Got the auto switch working:

I wonder if there's any way to implement control rig blueprints in code? Some of the logic could be more concisely written that way.

[old falcon]

Wait. I restarted the editor and now renaming controls works as intended...?

Of course this had to happen after I wrote a Blutility to do it...

[nimble torrent]

Backwards solve is for Skeleton -> Control Rig, in the same ways that Forwards Solve is for Control Rig -> Skeleton.

You always need both.

[nimble torrent]

Nice job! Very cool!

[nimble torrent]

This is really useful! Thank you for sharing that.

[nimble torrent]

I think, hypothetically, you could use a null with a negative scale to mirror a section of hierarchy.

But scale is so wonky its not something I'd ever do.

[old falcon]

Oh, for some reason I got excited and thought it would be an easier way of doing Left/Right mirroring, but probably not that. Thanks!

[spare forge]

I have no idea why it is so hard to perform second step of a combo, here's some screenshots. The character is literally stuck in first step of a combo unless i spam left click

here's combo blueprints

[nimble torrent]

When you say 'stuck' do you mean they stop moving, stop responding to other controls?

Or do you mean they only do the single attack unless you click very quickly?

[spare forge]

second one

i can press left mouse button frequently and it keeps doing anim montage on the screenshots

im 100% sure that im hitting left between notifies

[nimble torrent]

Does it do the combo correctly?

Like - is the problem that you have to click too quickly?

Or does it not get to attacks 2, 3, and 4?

[spare forge]

i have spam left click to get to next steps of a combo, clicking left mouse button in more neutral way keeps triggering step 1 of a combo only

[nimble torrent]

OK, so is it possible that your notifies are flipped?

Like, your stop notify is actually your start notify?

[spare forge]

I already took a peak on that, but it looks like they are named correctly

[nimble torrent]

Names probably don't matter.

What happens when you use the debugger?

[spare forge]

elaborate on this one, I started using unreal week ago

[old falcon]

Just a shot in the dark:
Might wanna use an anim notify state instead of start/stop notifies
Also try setting your notifies to "branching point"

[nimble torrent]

If you hit 'f9' while a node is selected, it will get a red dot on it. When unreal evaluates that node, the game will pause and your blueprint display window will be highlighted.

You will be able to inspect variables, and, importantly in this case, you will (if you put a break point on nodes in both animation notify functions) be able to see which one is called first.

[spare forge]

I put break point in both anim notifies and they seem to work correctly 😢

Press left click -> break point on animnotifystart triggers -> resume playing -> break point on anim notify end triggers

while I resume after first trigger and quickly press left mouse button, it again triggers breakpoint on anim notify start

[nimble torrent]

Ok, so using the debugger, try figuring out when the 'combo' function is putting you into the wrong part of the animation.

It could have something to do with 'save attack' which appears to be set to false when you do a second attack (preventing a third or fourth).

And it's not reset when the combo stops.

[obsidian magnet]

Hello guys , when i import a character from mixamo , use a addon in blender to put the correct names for unreal and adding a root bones , it does this :
Any ideas please ?? i'm searching but no ones seems to have this problem like me

[nimble torrent]

That's an interesting one.

Haven't seen that before.

Does it do the same thing to the other leg?

[obsidian magnet]

Yep , and on arms too

[nimble torrent]

Huh.

[obsidian magnet]

IK messed up but fk no problem :/

[nimble torrent]

My mind immediately goes to scale as a possible source of problems.

As it often does!

[obsidian magnet]

It is a mixamo mesh so i didn't touch the scale :/

[nimble torrent]

Sure, but you did export it from Blender.

And that is often a place where weird scales can happen.

Double check the scale of your root bone.

[obsidian magnet]

Yep for sure , okay !

but i was following this simple step https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tf31eOe9jA4

[nimble torrent]

OK!

Still check the scale!

[obsidian magnet]

So as you can see , the add on work in a way that the file is directly send to a folder , it doesnt "load up" into blender visually

yep thanks 🙂

[uneven hatch]

im using this character and have made the ue5 rig so i can use it for the third person controller, however i seem to have these problems with the mesh not following the rig as you can see in the video, does anyone know how to fix this would be greatly appreciated!

[sharp coyote]

if i wanted to insert a certain gameplay tag into some gameplay tag container associated with my character pawn whenever a certain type of montage plays and then remove that tag again once the montage is over would there be a convenient way of doing it besides needing to basically insert an anim notify state into nearly every montage i make? could making use of anim montage metadata be an alternative

[old falcon]

In case you use GAS you get that for free btw.
But yes, you could use an anim notify state if you wanted to specify exactly from where until where the tag exists. Or use metadata to just apply it when the animation starts + ends. The latter is optional though, you will still be able to play montages without the tag if you use the built-in functions.

[sharp coyote]

ah, yes. Gas, of course. mmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm

maybe i should just install it for this particular project

its single player but i guess once GAS is set up it can be comfy to use

[old falcon]

In the case of GAS you get these and they work nicely.

Whatever you put into ActivationOwnedTags will be added to the AbilityComponent's tag container

If you need the tag in a different container though that would still be a notify/metadata

[sharp coyote]

i guess i might as well get the gas boilerplate stuff over with yet again... 😄

[nimble torrent]

Uh... I see the mesh following the rig?

[void fractal]

hey all.. anyone try out the 5.4 modular control rigs? been trying to set it up for my character, seems like it generally works except if i try baking a mocap clip to the control rig it's broken in parts of the body. in my example it seems like the clavicle/arms are getting strange results, and even the head is not baking the same as the clip. here's a side-by-side. I'm just not sure how to start trouble shooting this

[nimble torrent]

Lots of people are trying them, and a lot of them are having issues. They're less plug and play then Epic let on.

[void fractal]

damn... :{

[void fractal]

sounds like i need to just learn control rig from the bottom up instead of messing with the blackbox that is modular control rig?

[old falcon]

It's not that difficult I think
The difficult part will come when they fix modular rigs and I attempt to port my animations over to the new rig... 😦

[void fractal]

i suppose i could basically reference how the modular rig is set up to rebuild it with regular control rig

[cunning locust]

what the hell can i do against the fact, that when i try to open a retargeted animation asset i almost always get a crash with this error "Assertion failed: (Index >= 0) & (Index < ArrayNum) [File:D:\build++UE5\Sync\Engine\Source\Runtime\Core\Public\Containers\Array.h] [Line: 758]
Array index out of bounds: 47 into an array of size 47"

[nimble torrent]

Oh, someone had that problem a few days ago.

Oh! It was you!

Do you have 47 / 46 bones?

[cunning locust]

no idea, im going to look into it

i use autorig pro for blender, and use the ue5 skeleton

preset

47-48

[nimble torrent]

Hmm - interesting! Well, it's a memory out of bounds error. When you load the file, it's trying to load more data then there should be. So somewhere inside unreal's various layers of skeleton shenanigans - either a track has been added or one has been removed. There's a mismatch.

[vapid ibex]

how expensive are modular control rigs for runtime games? 🤔

[nimble torrent]

I don't know how or why - but that's what's going on.

[nimble torrent]

They're as expensive as you make them? I would expect anyone running a modular control rig at runtime to customize them.

[vapid ibex]

hmm, it just seems like a lot of is out of my hands

[nimble torrent]

Not really, you can make your own modular components.

[vapid ibex]

once I slap in a leg or an arm module it comes with a bunch of things I can't really remove, or can I?

[nimble torrent]

If you use the prebuilt stuff, yeah - you're using the prebuilt stuff, but you can also create your own modules.

[vapid ibex]

And if I were to use an entire character without too much customizing, would that be irreponsible for about 10 players running around?

[nimble torrent]

Impossibly to say?

[vapid ibex]

Figures :D

[nimble torrent]

Depends on the complexity of the characters, what else is going on, etc.

Your target platform.

[vapid ibex]

very true

[old falcon]

I wouldn't speculate about performance too much
Build it, profile it, fix the bottlenecks

[nimble torrent]

Mmhmm

[vapid ibex]

this is wisdom, i recognize this

[nimble torrent]

It has often been said that premature optimization is the root of all evil.

It's not, but it does get you in trouble.

[vapid ibex]

trouble is my middle name

[cunning locust]

thank you, but no idea how i can prevent this from happening, its not with all animations and not with all skeletons

[nimble torrent]

Yeah, sorry. I wish I could give you some help on that one, but it's something wrong with the tool.

If you can replicate the error. Like - turn it into a series of steps to create the error, you could try to send it into Epic as a bug report.

[cunning locust]

a member of the discord already did that, he has the same problem

[vapid ibex]

so I'm using a modular control rig and I'm trying to hook up the left/right feet control transforms

but I can only seem to find the left foot ctrl, the right one is just not in the list (foot_r_fk_ctrl isn't it)

Anyone know what's that about? the modules are properly set up afaik and in the modular control rig editor I can see and interact with a foot_r_ctrl

[vernal echo]

anyone know how to fix feet ik on metahumans?

[nimble torrent]

Huh, that's interesting. They're the same module, I'm guessing.

Did you make the left leg first?

(Is it possible that only the first of a particular module is accessible?)

[nimble torrent]

Depends on how they're broken.

[vernal echo]

the metahuman skiis around when walking

[vapid ibex]

Yes, then I tried putting in the right leg first, no fix

[vernal echo]

the feet wont come off the ground. If I disable footik it works fine but would like to keep it. I saw a video fix to make virtual bones and use that in the footik but it didnt work for me

[vapid ibex]

Interestingly this shows up, this does not exist

there is no right leg foot_l, obviously 🪿

[nimble torrent]

That does make me think we're on the correct track thinking that the animation BP is unable to correctly access the modular control rigs lists though.

[vapid ibex]

This is a mega oof moment for me, I don't know how else to utilize modular CR, and I really do want to

[nimble torrent]

If you have your foot IK on all the time, then they won't walk. IK involves reaching to an effector. You have to move the effector where you want.

[nimble torrent]

They seem a little undercooked at the moment, though this is the perspective of someone who hasn't used them much yet.

My opinion is that creating them was either a mistake or a mandate from someone who wanted a shiny video to show to investors.

[vernal echo]

its already setup

[nimble torrent]

Then it should work.

So either they're not setup, or something is broken.

[vernal echo]

From what I understand the metahuman using the ik rig of mannequin

[vapid ibex]

Shame, can you recommend an alternative approach for code driven feet placement?

[vernal echo]

unless I need to make its own

[nimble torrent]

Custom create your own control rig.

[vapid ibex]

Mhmm, never got IK to work as I wanted, too much of a CR newb :V

[nimble torrent]

Control rig itself is good! I think that they probably would have been better off creating better presets for custom control rigs than creating the modular system.

[vapid ibex]

I will try though

[nimble torrent]

But that's me. I don't make those decisions.

[nimble torrent]

Using it how?

[vernal echo]

idk the tutorial to get metahuman working just showed him attaching the metahuman to character mesh setting the mannequin mesh to hidden and checking liveretarget

so its using the manny abp

[nimble torrent]

Interesting! I definitely remember seeing a video with that kind of problem.

[vernal echo]

yes and theres a video for a fix. but of course didnt work

[nimble torrent]

What did it do instead of work?

[vernal echo]

it changed nothing

[nimble torrent]

OK, what was the proposed fix?

[vernal echo]

creating virtual bones and changing the footik rig to use those

the weird thing is is the animations dont work with metahuman unless the liveretarget bool is false. while should work when true, for me it works when false lol

[nimble torrent]

Interesting.

What is your goal though? Like, with this setup.

Are you really going to use manny for your main character in your game?

[vernal echo]

is the code in construction script old and needs updated?

this is side project really. but most likely yeah for now.

I just havent done much with metahumans

[nimble torrent]

OK, well - I mean, it seems like a variety of things have gone wrong.

If it were me, and I didn't have a clear idea where they went wrong, but I had both properties and techniques that weren't working - I'd start over.

[vernal echo]

so reimport the metahuman?

[nimble torrent]

I'd go through everything again. As a newbie, I always assume that the mistake is mine, and it is not the system that is broken.

[vernal echo]

I'm not really a newbie, just in metahumans I suppose

and control rig stuff ig

The steps are pretty simple idk how I could mess it up

[nimble torrent]

All right.

[vernal echo]

only thing I can think of is this should be something else?

[viscid willow]

Read through the posts, I think Squishy is right about going through the steps again but it sounds like your IK effectors aren't animated because like they said your IK will target the effectors, so if they're not animated they will look like they're "skiing".

The Virtual Bone setup is one way to solve it because if you set up the virtual bones correctly they will be able to follow the animation of the foot and allow you to target the virtual bone as an effector.

[vernal echo]

so is this incorrect?

[nimble torrent]

That makes sense to me. Manny and Quinn have full IK leg setups that I doubt that metahumans have by default.

(their deformations are really nicely setup as well)

[viscid willow]

You might be right, I havent actually generated a metahuman to know whether they come with IK bones

[nimble torrent]

I mean, it depends entirely on what's in Z_offset_L, what the original transforms are, and whether you're properly targeting those virtual bones with the IK.

[viscid willow]

THis looks like you're trying modify a foot root vitrual bone, and apply an offset based on your left leg trace, so yes I would say that's incorrect

[vernal echo]

yeah i guess you right theres no ik bones in metahuman

[nimble torrent]

I would guess that you want to set the virtual bones transforms to the transforms of the bones from manny - but I don't know how you would easily get those - unless you created and constrained the virtual bones during the IK process?

[hoary tusk]

jut trying to add some simple pants to my mannequin, but after setting leader pose and giving the rag pants the animation blueprint of my mannequin they just do this (pants are blue for easy visual)

why are they deforming so badly? How may I fix this?

[nimble torrent]

Looks the orientations of your pants bones are different then those of manny.

So each one is rotated at what looks like 90 degrees from where it should be.

[nimble torrent]

The problem is your skeleton definition, likely caused by export settings in Blender.

[hoary tusk]

they shouldnt be, but you are right, they do look like that

[nimble torrent]

You can confirm pretty easily by just checking the axis of the bones in the two skeletons.

Round-tripping one of the mannequin skeletons through blender is non-trivially fussy.

[hoary tusk]

yeah I am using the automatically orient bones when importing too so it should be fixing it

[nimble torrent]

'Should' is a fun word.

: )

[hoary tusk]

facts lol

im gonna do it all again and see if its fucked still lol

[nimble torrent]

Double check the axis though.

It can help you figure out what you need to do.

[hoary tusk]

what do you mean exactly? like they be the same

are they not the same here?

or am I being a dumbass

[nimble torrent]

I mean in unreal.

[hoary tusk]

oh, yeah gotchya. I did that and they were fine. actually went back and fixed it, and still had the problem, and came here

the rag pants were turned 90 degrees, I fixed it, and the problem was still there

[late sun]

Hi all ! I have a weird bug with a root motion animation

[nimble torrent]

OK, so when you say 'they were fine' do you mean "I checked the X axis, to determine if the X axis of the leg was pointing in the same relative direction to the mesh as the X axis of Manny's skeleton specifically in unreal, by checking their skeleton assets"?

Or do you mean something else?

[viscid willow]

If I were making an IK setup I would definitely do as you mentioned and find the IK effector position inside the control rig, rather than a VB saved to the skeleton/skelmesh.

[late sun]

When I'm on "flying" movement mode, my root motion animation gets blocked by the "Capsule Collision" of my enemy "Actor" but I'm far of it..

[hoary tusk]

I mean the pants were rotated 90 degrees on the Z axis, and I fixed it in the blueprint viewport

[nimble torrent]

So that won't help.

You need to check their skeletons.

And the axis of the individual bones.

[hoary tusk]

okay,so I am being a dumbass. I need to check the individual skellies

gotchya. Sometimes I just wish it was as simple as my brain thinks it is lol. Thank you Squishy. Pretty sure you helped me last time I came here too lol

[viscid willow]

have you confirmed that your IK solution works on the mannequin before it's applied to the metahuman?

[vernal echo]

the foot ik works by default with manny

i discovered theres no ik bones for metahuman

[viscid willow]

with or without your virtual bone changes?

[hoary tusk]

found problem but fixing it isnt working lol. trying to change the axis in the blender export, but anyway the Y axis is down on the pants

but on manny Y is forward axis

[viscid willow]

Am I seeing that right? Is that bone enormous?

[hoary tusk]

uhhh yeah actually. why lol

I applied transforms in blender and everything was matched up

[vapid ibex]

Um how can I get this control to be right under the foot so that the IK is more sensible to use?

[nimble torrent]

Where is it when you create it? Are you creating it with code or in the hierarchy?

[vapid ibex]

In the hierarchy, it's starts in the origin

(where it is when the vid starts)

[nimble torrent]

Then move it where the foot is?

[vapid ibex]

But when I compile the rig it just snaps back to the origin :(

I feel like I'm missing something lol

[nimble torrent]

So you created it in the hierarchy by right clicking on the hierarchy and choosing, from the menu, 'Create Control'?

[vapid ibex]

Yes correct

on the root bone

OH i got it

I can offset it

[nimble torrent]

OK cool, so on the control there will be a two options for it's transform. You should set initial.

Not offset.

[vapid ibex]

o

[nimble torrent]

And you can do that in the construction event.

[viscid willow]

As Squishy often mentions. You have to be very careful about scale coming out of blender

[nimble torrent]

You can get the transform from the foot bone, and set it in the construction events.

[vapid ibex]

Got it

[nimble torrent]

Also rotation on bones.

And.

Manny and Quinn have some extra special shenanigans, in that they are exported facing left.

Not forwards.

Making things even more confusing.

[vapid ibex]

The words of the Squishy are wind in my sails

Thank

[viscid willow]

Yeah they face down Y but technically X is forward in unreal. (I think thats right)

Skel meshes and anims have been like that in unreal for so long it almost feels like its the correct way to do it.

Why epic ships their assets like that I have no idea.

[nimble torrent]

I think it's an old maya / unreal relationship thing.

[viscid willow]

🤢

[viscid willow]

On your own projects do you export facing down X?

[nimble torrent]

Yeah! I mean - I want things to be an unweird as possible!

Minimize shenanigans!

[hoary tusk]

changing scale in blender export has not helped lol. Now its tiny, but the bones are still huge. Is there a good vid on this that you guys know about?

[viscid willow]

Lol that cheeky 90 degree rotation inside the capsule

[nimble torrent]

I found this one useful when I was fussing around with export options.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YbWfoyf4MqI&t=1039s

[viscid willow]

There needs to be a better "plus" emote that isnt the same colour as the discord window

[vernal echo]

so do metahumans not come with foot ik bones?

[nimble torrent]

You can check by opening their skeleton asset!

But it sounds like no.

[vernal echo]

yeah I don't see any. I assumed they did.

oh well

[viscid willow]

Interesting that they don't.

[vernal echo]

yeah its a bummer.

[nimble torrent]

They're not really setup for being game characters.

[vernal echo]

Could add my own but eh. It's a top down project anyway so probably won't notice anyway

[nimble torrent]

They seem most likely to be useful for Volume stuff.

[viscid willow]

If you're really keen on IK you can certainly achieve it with Virtual Bones. It seems like it might be easier to run your animation assets through retargeting so you have a set of anims for your metahuman and you can do all your processing on the metahuman rather than passing it through the mannequin.

[late sun]

When I'm on "Flying" "Movement Mode", my "Root Motion" animation gets blocked by the "Capsule Collision" of my enemy "Actor" but I'm far from it..

Anyone has an idea ?

This is very weird because when I'm on "Walking" "Movement Mode" I don't have this problem

[vernal echo]

I'm not worried about it right now. Weird how's theres videos on how to fix but there isn't any ik bones to begin with unless my particular model doesn't come with ik bones

[nimble torrent]

Do you do anything to the physics of your character when you start flying?

[late sun]

I'm not doing anything, I just set the "Movement Mode" to "Flying"

[nimble torrent]

Oh. Ok. When you look at your capsule collision in collision debug mode - what do you see?

[late sun]

I already made the "Capsule Collision" visible so I can see it when I'm starting the root motion animation, is that what you mean ?

[nimble torrent]

I meant more 'using the show collisions' console command.

But if doing it your way worked, and showed you something useful - then that's good!

[late sun]

I'm searching a setting that affects either the collisions or the "root motion" when I'm on flying mode but I can't find anything

My Capsule Collision does not change when I'm on flying or not that's why I don't really understand where the issue comes from

[nimble torrent]

Using root motion for flying is an interesting choice. Why did you decide to control your flight movements with animations?

[late sun]

This is an attack animation in the air so I need to set the movement mode to "flying"

[nimble torrent]

Are you sure?

[late sun]

If I let it to "Walking" my "Character" falls down

[nimble torrent]

To clarify, the character can't normally fly, but this move of theirs causes them to go into the air, and if you don't switch them to flight mode, they stay on the ground?

[late sun]

I want my Character to be "stucked" in the air while playing the animation

[late sun]

Exactly

[nimble torrent]

OK, so. How long is this move?

Is it a really long animation?

[late sun]

No it's like 80 frames animation

[nimble torrent]

That's reasonably long for an attack animation.

OK, is there any reason you're going to need to collide with anything in the air?

Like - are you going to cancel the move if you hit a ceiling?

Can you hit flying enemies during the move?

That kind of thing.

[late sun]

Yes I need to have the Capsule Collision enabled so if my attack hits the Capsule Collision the enemy takes damage

[nimble torrent]

OK. I'm asking because switching to flying mode for one animation is likely to cause a variety of cascading problems.

Such as, for example, people using this move as a movement and clipping out of bounds, or getting onto ledges they're not supposed to get onto.

Etc.

[late sun]

The question is : Is there another way to make my Character "Flying" without "Flying" movement mode ?

[nimble torrent]

Sure - you can create your own character movement component.

[late sun]

Yes I understand

[nimble torrent]

That's a pretty heavy lift though.

[late sun]

Like I set the movement mode to "custom" ?

[nimble torrent]

Nope.

I mean 'There is no such thing as 'movement modes' because I have completely custom written the entire movement system'.

Like I said, it's a heavy lift.

[late sun]

Hmm I see

[nimble torrent]

Personally, I would solve this problem by disconnecting the characters capsule and their visual mesh.

So their visual mesh goes into the air, but their capsule stays on the ground in 'walking' mode.

[late sun]

So you think the actual "movement component" has bugs with the flying mode and the root motion ?

[nimble torrent]

I would do this by constraining the root bone of the animation to the ground during the flight attack.

[nimble torrent]

I don't think so, no. I think probably your animation is not well formed for the flying movement mode.

The question of 'Does this fundamental system of unreal have a bug in it?' is almost always no.

Usually - we're using it wrong.

Unless it's very new - like the retargeting array problems mentioned earlier.

Then it's often a bug.

[late sun]

How is it not well formed for the flying movement mode ?

I mean this is a simple animation where the character goes forward

[nimble torrent]

I'm not sure. I don't have your animations or your setup, nor have I investigated this combination of scenarios thoroughly.

I've never heard of anyone using root motion animations in flight mode, but I'm sure someone has.

[late sun]

The weird thing is that if my Enemy is not there my animation is working well even on flying mode lol

[nimble torrent]

That's good! That's a potentially interesting piece of information.

I would test it against walls as well - to see if there are problems caused by other colliders.

[late sun]

The animation "stays in place" only if I'm at a certain distance of my Enemy

[nimble torrent]

So, it's like the character is pushing against the enemy's collider?

[late sun]

Hmmm great test I will do it right now

[late sun]

Exactly

[nimble torrent]

And this never happens with other attack animations? Do any of them move forward?

Traditionally - you don't usually use your characters world collider for their hurt volume.

Usually you have separate volumes for world collision and hurt volumes.

[late sun]

Maybe I should do that and test again ?

So I have to add another "Capsule Collision" around my Character for the "hit"

?

[nimble torrent]

It depends. Often these hurt volumes are spawned dynamically based on the characters specific attack, or are attached to weapons.

[late sun]

The hurt volumes of my Sword are attached to my Sword

But I mean the collision which receives the hurt volumes

[nimble torrent]

Right, so there are hit boxes (these are the volumes that cause the character to take damage) and hurt boxes (these are the volumes that cause the character to deal damage) and world collision (these are the volumes that prevent your character from falling through the floor).

Often, these are all separate.

And they often have different collision channels they interact with.

[late sun]

Actually my default "Capsule Collision" is the "World Collision" and the "Hit Box Collision"

[nimble torrent]

Sure, yours is.

I'm saying 'often'.

[late sun]

And my "Hurt Boxes" are some "Capsule Trace"

[nimble torrent]

There are no correct answers. There are many incorrect answers, but no correct ones.

If yours is working - great.

But yours isn't working.

So it might worth considering alternatives.

[late sun]

I just tested it against a wall and it works well so the problem is the actor maybe, I will investigate

[late sun]

It's ok I found it I'm very sorry

I found a code which used "Set Plane Constraint Normal" so it blocked my Character...

I just need your opinion on the hit boxes and hurt boxes

Do you think it's better to make another "Capsule Collision" for the "Hit Box" ?

And do you think that my actual "Capsule Traces" are good for the "Sword Attacks" ?

At the beginning I wanted to use a "Capsule Collision" around my "Sword" and use the "Begin Overlap" function but I had some weird bugs with it

[nimble torrent]

It depends on your game. Often hit boxes are smaller than world collision, because you don't want the character to get stuck, but you also want to give them the benefit of the doubt when it comes to attacks.

So, it's going to depend on your game, your character, the size of your enemies, your camera etc.

Capsule collisions are fine but they are expensive, so it won't scale very well.

[late sun]

Ok I will think about that.. I guess I don't need it for the moment (different World and Hit box Collisions), but I'm still thinking about my Capsule Traces for my Sword attacks or just a simple "Capsule Collision"..

Anyway, thank you very much for helping me !

[nimble torrent]

👍

Best of luck!

[late sun]

Thanks a lot !

[hoary tusk]

Bro even watching this video, this pants thing is driving me up aa wall

fixed the orientation slightly I guess, but god damn

[viscid willow]

understandable. coming from blender can be a pain

[hoary tusk]

I just dont get it man

Why cant it just be simple

got it

I just reimported the ue5 skeleton to blender without the automatic bone orientation option, and then did a weight data transfer to the pants and re-exported to ue5

[nimble torrent]

Hurrah!

[hoary tusk]

thank you guys for putting me in the right direction and send thatvideo

[nimble torrent]

👍

[viscid willow]

A story in three parts:

woo 🎉

[hoary tusk]

lmaooooooo

thank you lol

[viscid willow]

Be sure to save your export settings from blender if they're working for you, that way you can always re-apply them

[celest obsidian]

I remember in unreal engine 3 I was using xsi softimage and finding out you couldn't export those bones to unreal

I had to create a "shadow rig" which was a collection of null objects that constrained the bones to those objects. Then I exported that shadow rig to unreal

[next siren]

Aight so i keep getting "BlendSpace Move_Blend has sample 2H-B_Jog_F_Seq that is invalid due to being out of bounds. Recommend adjusting it." I want to know can this cause an unknown cook failure?

[nimble torrent]

I've done that on occasion! It's frustrating!!

[nimble torrent]

A cook failure? Gosh - maybe but almost certainly not. Still, should be a really easy thing to fix, right?

[viscid willow]

yeah sounds like it's out of your blend space value range?

[next siren]

Yea so that's the weird thing, its inside the blend space value

Should I just delete blend space and remake?

[nimble torrent]

Sure!

[narrow blaze]

having trouble with motion matching. it looks like these animations are being mirrored automatically when moving side to side? and its doing a spinning motion trying to decide which direction to face. along with some other occasional glitches. i havent played with motion matching settings too much, just maybe 1-2 options. im just curious if anyone knows how to fix an issue like this, or just general settings to get better results

[next siren]

the animaiton being out of bounds was causing the unknown cook failure

[viscid willow]

out of bounds of the blend space?

[next siren]

Yea

this is the first time for me the engine didnt want to build because of that

[viscid willow]

but not outside the value range?

[next siren]

So I was getting the error saying the animation was out side of value range which it wasn't and Every time I tried to package it kept mentioning that so I deleted the animation inside the blend space and readded it inside the value range, still gave me the warning and failed to package or coo, then I Deleted the blend space and remade it from scratch and it just let me package/cook I also didn't get any error of animations being out side of blend error when readding the animations.

[nimble torrent]

Huh! Weird!

[next siren]

Thats what im saying

[viscid willow]

classic "turn it off and on again" style solution 🙃

[viscid willow]

Does anyone know if there was a forum post made to answer further questions from this stream? (I'm not super familiar with how those follow up posts are made)

https://www.youtube.com/live/RuYHfVKfrMM?si=MjoLubMb2aFprexL

[midnight hull]

i found a solution, just for anyone might be interested. i'm animating AI Character Blueprint implemented metahuman in Sequencer. just use the event track to activate the character's inplace locomotion movement, then it will move on any terrain it could walk on. Then use skeletal mesh track to add other action animations during the movement, just change the Slot Name as it used for anim montages as you need, and adjust the ease in out in the track anim, then it will blend the action with the locomotion seamlessly.

what's even better, if the character implemented ai behaviors, it still keeps the ai state, it will trigger its actions accordingly. Seamless realtime cutscene and gameplay blend.

[sleek knoll]

where can i see the core logic behind the pose warping nodes??

[celest obsidian]

I noticed there's a rig element key collection. How does that differ from an array of rig element keys?

[old falcon]

Not much, it's more or less a wrapper with a few rig utility functions added
Often makes me wonder why epic makes these wrapper structs when the same thing can be achieved more in a lean way using a functional approach

For what it's worth they use arrays in all CR nodes I have seen so far

[celest obsidian]

Hmm I see. Normally a collection doesn't have an index. In most programming languages a collection type allows you to do things like getting a subset of a set.

I don't seem to see such features for the rig element collection though.

[old falcon]

Depends on the programming language :^)
But they do use an array and provide some set operations:

    // returns the union between two collections
    static FRigElementKeyCollection MakeUnion(const FRigElementKeyCollection& A, const FRigElementKeyCollection& B, bool bAllowDuplicates = false);

    // returns the intersection between two collections
    static FRigElementKeyCollection MakeIntersection(const FRigElementKeyCollection& A, const FRigElementKeyCollection& B);

    // returns the difference between two collections
    static FRigElementKeyCollection MakeDifference(const FRigElementKeyCollection& A, const FRigElementKeyCollection& B);

    // returns the collection in the reverse order
    static FRigElementKeyCollection MakeReversed(const FRigElementKeyCollection& InCollection);

    // filters a collection by element type
    FRigElementKeyCollection FilterByType(uint8 InElementTypes) const;

    // filters a collection by name
    FRigElementKeyCollection FilterByName(const FName& InPartialName) const;

Which you know still makes me question why, but it's epic so...

[celest obsidian]

So the unreal array acts like a set too huh interesting

I also saw there's an rig element key and rig element type but they seem to do similar things

[old falcon]

The type is what's used in the key: control, bone, null...
The key is a combination of type + name of the element

[celest obsidian]

It seems like the rig element key type already has a name property. So it doesn't look like there is any need to ever use rig element type

[old falcon]

Yeah, RigElementKey arrays is what I've exclusively seen so far

[celest obsidian]

I see. I was wondering if I had missed something by not using rig element type

[nimble torrent]

Oh this is clever! Nice job!

[nimble torrent]

Unreal handily provides access to it's source code, so if you want more than the documentation gives, you can go to the actual code.

[sleek knoll]

Thanks! I found it

[nimble torrent]

👍

[somber glen]

Does anyone knows how to import the standard UE5 skeleton into Blender without breaking?

[nimble torrent]

Technically, that's not broken!

That's what it should look like.

Though you probably want to adjust your unit scale to be more like Unreal's, because she's just about two centimeters high there.

[somber glen]

Thank you.
If that is how it is supposed to look like, how can I make it so it is in a "workable" condition?
Like the regular human rig within blender.
Do you happen to know that?

[nimble torrent]

Are you talking about 'rigify' when you say 'regular human rig'?

[somber glen]

Yes, the "human meta-rig" option

[nimble torrent]

Interesting! I hadn't heard about that option.

[somber glen]

This one, I think it is the one that comes with rigify addon.

[nimble torrent]

Ah!

You will probably struggle with that, because Unreal and Blender fundamentally disagree about a lot of things!

One of them is the primary direction of bones, which makes things unfortunately rather tricky.

I'm not going to say it's fully impossible to get that to work, but I will suggest that doing so will be frustrating and might require a secondary import/export skeleton.

[somber glen]

Ufff.....
I'm trying to get my head around all this, I'm new in regards to rigging and animation.
Thank you for all the information, I'll see what can I do about it.
Maybe doing a custom rig and pray the animations work when I export the rig + animations into the engine.