animation

[heavy hedge]

Quick dumb question, the range for Blend Weights for "Layered blend per bone" is 0 - 1 correct? 0 Being only base pose, 1 being only pose 0.

[deft furnace]

Wait, I think I figured out how I want to explain my combat, you know how in dark souls, you can change the direction of your attack even if you are not locked on, that's what I want.

[heavy hedge]

Nvm, they renamed the node I wanted to use called "Two Way Blend" Lol.

[misty dagger]

Hey, I'm pretty new to Unreal (trying to level up my skills as a Nuke photoreal compositor working in film/tv for the past 12 years). I'm trying to set-up a shot (top-down camera angle) of a snake in a circular position. I've purchased an asset from the marketplace, which is perfect, and it comes with cool animations, but that's not what I'm going for. I'm trying to set the skeletal mesh in a very specific pattern (a figure 8) and would like to add some very subtle, custom animations to it. I understand that this is not typically possible (?) or recommended typically in Unreal (best to go into a program like Blender or Maya), but checking the updates for 5.4 and it looks like it could be doable now. I'm struggling to find tutorials or resources on this latest update and how to adjust the skeletal mesh (and create animations in the rotation/translation values of the bones) without having to detour to another application. Thanks in advance. 🙂

[brave vector]

Hey guys anyone knows how they did that Bone cage https://youtu.be/4NkNBImONJU?t=1906 in the video? (there is timestamp). What im trying to do is bone based cloth physics for long skirt, currently its working pretty good but legs go trought areas between bone chains and in the video it looks like they did some kind of cage to prevent that. I belive they are somehow constrained but how do they do that in unreal?

[hidden drum]

Hello. I'm having issues in 5.4 with rendering out a level sequence. I have just one camera cut of my scene. When I render, the animation sequences play out of order, then repeat, and just get all wonky--nothing like the cut I put together. What is the main culprit here? It can't be this borked.

I tried warming up the scene, but that doesn't matter. I simply have clips that play early and wrong.

[serene fiber]

hi does anyone know how i can get socket location if target is skeletal mesh component

i know how to do it if it is static mesh but i specifically need skeletal mesh

i dont understand what it needs as a target, it wants a socket but why a socket if i want to get a socket location returned in first place? how do I get the socket itself then as target?

i want to return socket's world location

[naive mountain]

get socket first, then get location

[misty dagger]

so I've found a tutorial to create a control rig to do what i want here, which is allowing me to rotate the bones as desired however the mesh isn't following along!?!?! any ideas as to why this is happening?

omfg.... right click on asset in sequencer->Bake to Control Rig -> FK Control Rig and it looks like that's working

between last night and this morning i spent like 6 hours trying to figure out how to basically just place a skeletal mesh on a surface in a custom position with the hopes of creating a subtle animation (didn't seem like a crazy idea); every tutorial or document i could find on the matter emphasizes to just import a pre-made animation or do something stupid complicated that doesn't end up working and it turns out to be like three. f'ing. buttons. 😂

[dark crow]

What is the point of something like this? Whats the reason for copying the bones to ik bones?

[serene fiber]

Lets say i have a first person camera attached to a full body mesh which is animated, and i attach a skeletal mesh gun actor to the body. When moving around with the gun in aimed state, the mesh starts jittering/acting in weird way when moving the camera. Is that to do with animation or something else?

nvm figured out

so weird that nobody tells you about this on yt vids 🙄

[misty dagger]

feels like the blind leading the blind 😅

[serene fiber]

lol

i found the solution here; https://forums.unrealengine.com/t/true-first-person-setup-jitter-when-walking-backwards/424890/2

when i did the thirdperson to firstperson switch function nobody told me about this or i might have forgot about it

[misty dagger]

i just spent 45 minutes adjusting these bones on this skeletal mesh to get it how i want it. Was looking almost perfect, hit the undo button for a minor change that i didn't like, and the whole thing magically reverted back to default. can't get all that work back. just gone. undo history? wtf....

[serene fiber]

CTRL+Y

[misty dagger]

doesn't work!!!?!?!

it's gone...

didn't save... didn't do nothing... just. gone.

literally clicking through the undo histroy trying to backtrack and it just gives me the default values again

[hidden drum]

Hey again everyone--I wanted to better explain my issue. I have a bunch of different props and several characters animated in my level sequence. Two of the character animations are activating early, well before they are cued up in the timeline. They are the only two doing this, and I don't see a correlation, a rhyme, or a reason.

You can see in the two images--the furniture is suppose to drop in first (in a viewport playback, it does). But in the movie playback, you can see two of my characters are dropping in first.

I even tried to delete the character anims totally from the project, and reimport them...same exact thing.

I'm using 5.4
Framerate for anims and project is 30.

[deft furnace]

can you please tell me, I want it to be like in dark souls or any other action game where you can change directions of the attacks to other opponents.

[short sorrel]

Hello guys, I am sorry if I am using wrong channel to ask since I didn't find one related to physics, but can someone here tell me please what may be a reason of why does my character's skeleton bone turn in a strange direction immediately after starting the physics simulation? I turned off collision, set the maximum bone deflection to 5 degrees, but still it deflect in a strange way right after start.

[nimble torrent]

It's just a matter of changing the pawns rotation when you want them to change direction, like I said here:

#animation message

Do you know how to do that?

And are you asking for the player or for the enemies?

[nimble torrent]

Huh! That's an interesting behavior! What are you trying to do with this?

My guess as to why it might be being weird is that maybe the capsules are pre-overlapping when you start simulation.

[short sorrel]

That should be a slime enemy 😂

[nimble torrent]

OK, I get that, but why use physics?

Like - in an rpg, typically, the bouncy slime bits would be animated.

[nimble torrent]

Are they characters or meshes?

[short sorrel]

Well, isn't it easier to make it jiggle when I punch it instead of wasting a lot of time on making good looking animation?

[nimble torrent]

Depends on if it's a punching game. If it's a stylized turn-based combat game where characters never physically even approach each other - than definitely no.

Remember: nobody has any idea what your game is.

[short sorrel]

It is an action RPG game.

[nimble torrent]

So, later, you can use the ik bones to drive the hands. My guess would be, this control rig is designed for processing animations from skeletons without IK hand bones.

[nimble torrent]

Neat!

[dark crow]

This is animation blueprint. Specifically procedural fps

[nimble torrent]

Then it's a similar idea. It's caching the fk hands positions for use later.

Don't know where or why - but that's the purpose.

[dark crow]

so whats the point of the ik_hand_r versus the hand_r

[nimble torrent]

hand_r is the FK hand. It is part of the arm hierarchy. ik_hand_r is child of ik_hand_gun which is child of root. They exist in different spaces, and can be used for different things. If one were to cache the hands like this, then move the ik_hand_gun bone, then turn on IK, one could reapply the relative position of the hands to each other in a different place.

[dark crow]

Hmm this is confusing

[short sorrel]

So, I removed all other capsules instead of two. The second one I moved far away from first one to make sure they aren't overlapping, but still the same thing happen with bone 🥲

[nimble torrent]

My guess would be, they created a series of bones in maya, then skinned the cloth mesh to them. The springs and constraints are then created in the chaos physics graph. When you say 'cloth physics' are you using the cloth simulation system, or are you using ragdolls?

[nimble torrent]

What's confusing you?

[nimble torrent]

Good old ragdoll. I hate it so much. I wish I could help you, but I don't know why it's doing that.

My suggestion would be to remove everything, and then slowly add things back in, only after confirming that they are not creating this problem.

Like - delete everything.

The whole physics asset.

And start again.

(don't delete the mesh, that's fine, just the physics asset)

[dark crow]

I just dont understand the reason why each copy is done. Not only the ones I took a screen shot of but others as well

[nimble torrent]

Does it... matter?

[dark crow]

Yes?

[nimble torrent]

Why? Is it not working? Are you specifically attempting to investigate an animation blueprint?

An animation blueprint you can't modify for testing purposes?

Like - what happens if you bypass those nodes?

That'll show you what they're for!

[dark crow]

I would like to understand how all of this works so that I can make changes if needed or know how to expand on it in the future.

But its cool I just need to do more research

[nimble torrent]

OK. I strongly recommend making a copy and just wrecking the heck out of it.

Breaking things is a good way of figuring out how they work.

[short sorrel]

My God, thank you very much. I wasted two hours on that and I just was need to recreate physics asset...

[nimble torrent]

Yay!

I wish I knew why that worked!

[short sorrel]

I think I just updated skeleton and forgot to recreate physics asset.

[nimble torrent]

Ah!

[short sorrel]

Honestly, I thought it should work without need to update 😂 I am a noob.

[nimble torrent]

I mean... like... sometimes the solution really is to just restart your PC, right?

[short sorrel]

😂 Right...

But that was in Windows XP times 🙂

[deft furnace]

Sadly no

Sorry if I am being a bother

[nimble torrent]

OK, well - the process is like this:

1. Determine when you want this to start happening. You need to identify the correct moment to being and to end tracking.

2. You need something that, when it detects tracking, decides where to aim. For a player, this is usually in response to a control input of some kind. For an enemy, this is usually at a target like the player. The 'Forward Vector' of the pawn will probably be useful for you, as is the knowledge that if you subtract one position from another, and the normalize the resulting vector you get the vector pointing between those two points.

3. Once you know the angle you want the character to face, you want to blend the characters rotation from it's current rotation to this new rotation. Look up the 'lerp' function for this.

But, like I said, there is a lot of subtlety to an attack tracking system.

[short sorrel]

Em, guys, do you know how can I make capsules smaller on physics bodies? For some reason it generate them too big, and I can't make them smaller with scale tool for some reason (the minimum size still too big for me).

Here is video to show. Like, capsules still so big that they overlap each other and this make issues.

[viscid willow]

my bone scale senses are tingling

https://tenor.com/view/spidey-senses-gif-23174675

[viscid willow]

are you able to confirm whether your root bone is at a scale of 1.0 or not?

[short sorrel]

Well, yes, I guess...

[viscid willow]

Oh I meant in Unreal. Since you're coming from blender I'd guess that there may be some scale issues present

[short sorrel]

Oh, you are right 😂 I understood now. Thanks.

[viscid willow]

Are you familiar with bone scale and how to solve it? There's a video Squishy posted which gets linked frequently which explains how to solve this issue

https://youtu.be/YbWfoyf4MqI?si=0LKYCOY8LGYSpd-G

[nimble torrent]

Hehehehehe

[golden arrow]

Hi I followed a yt tutorial on getting the left hand to attach to a weapon with ik, but my character's elbow inverts when moving ://

here's the tutorial link https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gR5P3h34Nn0

I've tried moving the joint target but it seems to ignore it

[next siren]

Does Anyone know why retargeting ue maniquen anims to Maximo skeleton have the character upside after being retargeted? I have the Mixamo retarget showing everything fine and it retargets fine but when I enable root motion on the new retarget animation it just has them upside down and rotated incorrectly. I am using ue 5.4

[golden arrow]

maybe because mixamo doesn't have a root?

they just have pelvis iirc

just a guess tho

[next siren]

Right but when previewing it inside the retargeter it looks and works fine. its worked fine for when I manually create an Ik rig for the mixamo skeleton the only difference is Ive used in the new auto ik rig feature for the mixamo skeletons

[viscid willow]

This looks like the joint target (or pole vector) position is incorrect. I notice this tutorial manually adjusts the position to stop the flipping. I havent watched the full thing but I'm curious why you'd need a two bone IK and a FABRIK node. Two bone IK should get the result you want

[golden arrow]

The two bone ik doesn't lock the hand to the gun iirc, but maybe I need different settings for that?

[viscid willow]

If the effector position is matched to a position on the gun, then it should follow along. So for example if you give it a transform with position, rotation and scale, it will match that transform. What 's important there is where are you getting that transform? you could get a socket position on the gun for example.

With Two Bone IK you're defining 1) an effector position -> where the hand should be placed 2) a Joint Target -> which way the elbow should point

[golden arrow]

I did it just like the video. I'm getting socket from the gun and converting it to bone space

[viscid willow]

Sounds good. In that case, how have you set the Joint Target on the Two Bone IK node?

[golden arrow]

I just moved it manually

but it's not locked to position like I said

[viscid willow]

Oh the target doesn't match to the gun? It did in your first video

[golden arrow]

I took off fabrik like you said

the only problem with the first configuration (two bone and fabrik) is that it seemed to ignore the joint target location

[viscid willow]

Okay I watched through the fabrik bit, it's odd because the tutorial is essentially running IK twice on the same arm. I wonder if the two bone IK node is even working because FABRIK would be overriding what TBIK is doing

[golden arrow]

only when playing tho. the abp preview looks fine for some reason

[golden arrow]

oh...it appears I only need fabrik

took off tbik and it jus works

thanks tho lol

[viscid willow]

Right, really strange that it's running those two nodes together. Glad it works

The FABRIK setup seems to be using the right arm as a parent bone so it follows that motion, from the position which you define as its target. Like a parent constraint with maintain offset.

[willow pilot]

Hi is there a way to match my starting point with my finish point on an animations i am using one from the anim starterpack, i am using sprint fwd rifle

[golden arrow]

idk you could try using the graph editor in blender to try to smooth out the curves and get your last frame to be more similar to the first if you're trying to get a seamless loop

is that not what you meant?

[willow pilot]

yes

[viscid willow]

yes it's not what you want or yes it is what you want 😅

[willow pilot]

😂 yes its what i want,
i was thinking maybe i can fix it here in the engine

i thought maybe, because i was able to fix foot slide

so i though maybe i can fix the animation. its like a small hiccup

[viscid willow]

I'm not 100% sure if this is something Unreal can do but when animating one "trick" you can do is bring your animation into sequencer, and if you make an additive layer on top of your sprint, you can copy set a key on the first frame on your additve layer, and if you can copy that and paste it to the last frame (in maya you wuold middle mouse click and drag from the first to the last frame), then you will have an additive layer which will slooowly interpolate to the same pose over the whole animation.

This is a pretty common trick in maya to loop animation, especially useful for mocap or simulations which are never going to loop accurately on their own.

[willow pilot]

i have animation options on my side. for the animation, and also in my Blend Space. i was hoping maybe i can adjust something.
i tried searching it up in google and youtube but maybe i am not using the right search

ok,
then i think ill keep it like that for now. i am using the animstarterpack animations. ill go through those steps when i find some animations i will work with. these are temp only. at least now i know what to look for, for a second i thought it was my doing took me a bit to find out it was the animation. thank you guys i appreciated.

[nimble torrent]

You do run into foot sliding with that method whenever the foot is stationary.

I really gotta make that adjustment blend plugin.

I'm already two projects deep on side-projects. I cannot afford another.

[hollow axle]

I use the new compatible skelaton feature in ue5 but my mesh turns microscopic standing still why?

[viscid willow]

By adjustment blend, are you basing that on the work done in Mobu by people like Dan Lowe? 👀

[hollow axle]

is it because my bones dont match ?

[nimble torrent]

Yep.

[nimble torrent]

My guess is another scale issue. Did you import something through Blender perhaps?

[viscid willow]

that would be VERY COOL

[fathom bluff]

https://youtu.be/Z1VQrAQcsik?si=wgDvvKvD7UVA6SIm

I tried adding start direction blendspace.. not sure how i feel lol

[viscid willow]

I'm not very familiar with the compatible skeletons feature, but i expect it will require a very similar hierarchy. So the fact that your character doesnt have a root bone, but instead begins at the hips may be causing you problems.

You can find the compatible skeletons list here:

[lofty sphinx]

So I revisited this one and tried an experiment where I made the cape just single sided with the same additional map. It...got messed up regardless as the cloth physics weren't working to my liking.

[slender wadi]

Trying to import a model someone made for me and I can't figure out why the skeleton keeps doing this

It's like it just ignores how the skeleton is setup for the most part even tho the bone names are the exact same

if anyone has any ideas... please let me know

[viscid willow]

Are you importing this as a new skeleton or as a skeletal mesh to an existing skeleton?

These all look like "leaf bones" which are sometimes applied to the end of joints to define the orientation of the last deform bone in the hierarchy. For context is this coming from blender?

[slender wadi]

This is coming from Blender, yes

I am currently working on retargeting it as it doesn't even load into mixamo weirdly

[viscid willow]

When you are exporting from blender, under the armature settings in the exporter, try disabling "Add Leaf Bones" to remove them from your exported skeletal mesh.

[slender wadi]

Nope

[smoky shell]

I just looked at his repo. Don't fully follow the intent. Is it a better way to loop animations with a mismatched start and stop frame?

https://github.com/Danlowlows/MobuCore/blob/master/MobuCore/MobuCoreTools/AdjustmentBlend/AdjustmentBlend.py

[slender wadi]

Failed to merge bones in unreal and mixamo says nope too

[viscid willow]

so that's with add leaf bones disabled?

[slender wadi]

Yep

[viscid willow]

I'm not really familiar with mixamo and their skeleton setup. When it does come into unreal what does the skeleton hierarchy look like?

[slender wadi]

Unreal skeleton

mixamo skeleton

I'm honestly about to head to bed since I can't even load it in the place where the skeleton matches

it's 3:32am and honestly I'm fed up of trying to fix this for the last 3+ hours

[viscid willow]

fair, when you come back to it, the fact that there's no root is gonna be a problem

[hoary tusk]

When importing an animation from blender. It imports as multiple animations sequences. One that works, and a few that dont. Why does it do this?

[slender wadi]

Hips is the root

or it's supposed to be

I honestly don't know why its been set up like that and how to fix it

I've tried deleting the rig so mixamo can do its thing but even that can't fix it

[viscid willow]

I believe mixamo treats the hips as the root, but that's not what you want for the engine. In the engine the root should be at the base of the character at 0,0,0 and the hips/pelvis is a child of that bone

[slender wadi]

Yeah

Well I got the obj to import into mixamo

maybe progress

[viscid willow]

noice

[nimble torrent]

Yeah. The technique is delightfully simple.

You have a key-per-frame animation that you want to link up with the rest of an animation set. Like, a start animation that needs to get into a particular run pose to sync up with your run animations.

The obvious way of doing this is to create an animation layer over top of the key-per-frame data, and paste your poses onto the character. Now you have your new animation data but the poses at the start and end are corrected.

The problem is, your correction layer just has the two poses on it, and those poses are interpolated across the whole length of the animation. This means that anywhere that the character is supposed to be unmoving (such as their feet when they are on the ground), will display an artifact.

Basically - you get a bunch of foot sliding.

To fix this, you want the corrective pose layer to be applied only when the bodypart is motion. That's what the adjustment blend does. It reads the motion of the track, and then changes the interpolation between poses to happen only during periods of movement.

You click a button, and the foot sliding goes away. It's honestly very impressive when you see it.

[past jungle]

that sounds awesome

hey since everyone in here was so helpful and nice last night....why the heck is animation exported from maya (fbx) with the same settings/rig etc sometimes coming in as 24fps source, and sometimes 30fps source

sometimes just deleting the track/anim file, closing UE, reopening and reimporting will correct it and set to 24 (correct)

[nimble torrent]

It is pretty cool!

[past jungle]

yea thats been an issue with every engine forever

love it

[nimble torrent]

I'd check one of the 30fps files by reimporting it into my DCC.

If it's got a bad frame-rate in the file, then it's the DCC export being weird.

If it's got a good frame-rate, the problem is probably Unreal forgetting it's import settings?

[past jungle]

the thing is, i reimport the exact same file with no changes

sometimes 30, sometimes 24

[nimble torrent]

Which could explain why the problem is fixed when you close and reopen the engine.

[past jungle]

i do have the sample rate set to 0 tho (let UE decide)

but if i manually set to 24, no change

sometimes 30, sometimes 24

im chalking it up to a 5.3 bug as ive gone through this this week with around 50-70 separate animations

and seen the same behavior again and again

90% of the time its correct

sometimes...

no dice

[slender wadi]

Worst

workaround

I have ever done

But his model is in

Somebody kill me there is sunlight outside

[viscid willow]

👏 👏 👏 🎉

[slender wadi]

I tell you what i did

i literally got the obj in

exported with skin, 60 fps

had to uniform scale that shit 100*

and only now it works

[viscid willow]

oooh i dont think you're out of the woods yet

sounds like tomorrows problem though 😅

[past jungle]

haha

yep get to bed

[slender wadi]

too late now

sun is visible

sleep go bye bye

[past jungle]

oh youre one of those 😄 i have 2 young kids i have learned to sleep anywhere, anytime

its a skill issue

[slender wadi]

Guess so

I can not sleep normally

nevermind after doing an all nighter fixing shit

[past jungle]

yea i hear ya. used to have more issues w that. sleep is health tho you can get better at it i promise. has a lot to do w lifestyle fsho

[viscid willow]

☝️ this 💯

[viscid willow]

Bone scale is absolutely going to cause you problems in the future, so I'll leave this right here: https://youtu.be/YbWfoyf4MqI?si=0LKYCOY8LGYSpd-G

[nimble torrent]

That's so weird!

[past jungle]

i agree 😄 im sure theres a reason, honestly its probably process related and not a bug, but so far i have no idea. and dont care enough at the moment ot track it down

maya has 1 place to set fps and one place to adjust playback - same for every scene

.fbx doesnt officially support FPS is the weird thing - for some reason UE doesnt just let you define the source fps, or change it after import

no setting to do that

it just...guesses?

i am exporting with it baked into fbx as much as you can - its an attricute called like collada_fps or something

attribute

so the fact that its not legit supported by fbx format makes it surprising UE is so confident

project/sequence settings all 24, everywhere possible in UE itself. and like i said, the same anim file will import at different source FPS at different times

just laying it out, not expecting a solution 😄

[viscid willow]

I guess because the FPS of an animation kinda becomes transient in the engine, so instead you have sample rate, so it becomes a case of the amount of data in the file and the accuracy it then has at varying framerates. But you can set the sample rate on import, or just take the sample rate from the file

[past jungle]

it doesnt change the source fps tho, so when i drop it on a timeline, no matter what the sample rate is, it will cover more/less of the timelines whether the source came in at 30 or 24

the current fix i have is just to set the time scale to 0.8 for the stubborn ones that wont change from 30fps source

super dirty

[viscid willow]

am i right in thinking that if you have an animation that is 1.0 seconds long at source 24fps but you sample it at 30fps on import it will then be faster? 0.8 seconds?

[past jungle]

yes. im running into the reverse, where 24 is correct everywhere but when a source comes in at 30fps, its faster than it should be and a 50 frame animation is cut short

so i scale the time 0.8 (in UE its confusing, that means slowing it down 20% not shortening it)

then it matche sup

[viscid willow]

yep, wibbly wobbly timey wimey

[past jungle]

yaaay

the kicker is when i just delete, close UE, reimport 2 or 3 times and it comes in at the right source fps

thats that shit i dont like

weather? time of day? trouble at home? why UE, why

[viscid willow]

turn it off and on again, tried and true

[viscid willow]

yeah i dont think there's a value that would shorten the animation unless you could clip the end. The time scale/rate scale is scaling the playrate of the animation so 0.8x slower, 1.0x normal, 2.0x faster

[past jungle]

yep

[thick token]

Which version are we fighting tonight?

[past jungle]

5.3 😄

5.3.2

[thick token]

Ah, so not the mystery that is 5.4

[past jungle]

there are a couple issues like this i run into, and search online, and all i end up with are more questions

read a forum post about someone digging through the UE source and recompiling from scratch to try to figure out how it decides what source FPS is

supposedly it can see different bones in the same animation as having different FPS, so it defaults to 30

maybe whats happening to me, no idea

saw a couple different ways to bake keys slightly different ways from maya that ill try next

[short sorrel]

Thank, I already did it with main character before, but forgot after that. Going to download and save this video to not forget how to do it.

[dense remnant]

should I use a sequencer for this type of animation? Currently I am doing this in a very dirty way of using 3 timelines, so I would like to know if there's any better method to do this

[short sorrel]

And again I don't know which channel to use for my question, because there is no channels for Blueprints. Guys, can someome tell me please how can I increase the size of Capsule Component more then 88 points? My slime mesh don't fit correctly into it. Also, if I wanted to make slime bigger in the game I will need to increase capsule component even more, isn't it?

[hoary tusk]

When I import an animation from blender it imports as multiple difference anim sequences. There is always one that works, but the rest dont, and I want them to not import lmao.

[nimble torrent]

Try turning 'All Actions' off

I suspect you have a bunch of additional actions for some reason.

[nimble torrent]

There is a channel for blueprints. It's called #blueprint !

[short sorrel]

Oh, I am sorry, I am blind. Going to ask there.

[nimble torrent]

No trouble!

[nimble torrent]

Is this something you do more than once, or is this a one-off interaction?

[dense remnant]

this is the main part of the game - inserting cassettes and listening to them

[nimble torrent]

All right, well - like most things in game dev, there are no correct answers, but there are lots incorrect answers.

If I were going to do this, I'd probably make the VCR a skeletal mesh, and then, when the player interacts with it, I'd have both the player and the VCR mesh play a montage.

A level sequence isn't a bad option though, if the action is always the same and there are no variations.

[dense remnant]

so I can use a sequencer?

[nimble torrent]

Sure. You could also use your timelines. There are lots of ways of doing things!

[dense remnant]

ok, thanks ^^

[nimble torrent]

I do think you'll probably have an easier time regardless of what else you do if you make the VCR into a mesh though.

Having all the bits be separate objects is likely to get annoying after a while.

[fathom bluff]

Lol when you have to trouble shoot in a side proj.

https://youtu.be/Fg8qJy2SZNE?si=nZtpkWF2DQquopxW

Just practicing with transition blends. basic third person setup playing with start n stops 🙂

[hoary tusk]

all actions didnt work, but deleting all the others in blender did lol. hopefully it will work in the future though cause there will be many more animations

thank you!

[nimble torrent]

👍

[signal edge]

when i enable root motion on my animations they all flip upside down and become unusable, im not sure how to fix that

[steep fjord]

anyone know why im unable to adjust the end of the animation?

[gusty lintel]

I've placed some animation notifies into the default character walk and run cycle animations

But they are not triggering in the animation blueprint

[nimble torrent]

Is your characters root upside down?

Like - in it's skeleton definition?

Do the animations and your mesh disagree about which direction is up?

[hybrid acorn]

Hi all -- I have a short character that I rigged with the Manny skeleton. I am using retargeting to reuse Manny animations on my custom character.

For authoring new animations, do I need to animate Manny, or am I able to animate my character directly? Since I'm using retargeting, I'm not sure if one way is preferred.
Thanks!

[signal edge]

No idea, idk how I would check that I'm just following a tutorial for motion matching, and I exported a bunch of walking animations
when I tested on a different pc with 5.3 it worked fine, but the same animations on 5.4 don't work

[nimble torrent]

Well, you can check the orientation of the bones by opening the skeleton and the sequences in their respective viewers.

If their orientations are not pointing in the same direction - that would be an indication that something is very wrong.

[nimble torrent]

You can do either, but it's probably easier to use your new character because then you won't have to retarget your new animations.

[hybrid acorn]

Thanks! The reason I'm not sure is because I'm doing runtime retargeting. Is that still possible?
My concern is that I'd be applying retargeting on animations that don't require it.

[nimble torrent]

I mean, you probably would?

But in that case... why not just retarget everything to your new skeleton offline.

Then just work with your new skeleton?

Why keep the animations on Manny?

[hybrid acorn]

Yeah, maybe that's the way to go. Honestly I just do it this way so I don't need to manage duplicated animation assets

I might be going about the process in a weird way. I used Game Rig Tools to create a Manny skeleton in Blender, rigged my character to it, but have my character using the actual Manny skeleton in UE instead of its own.

[hybrid acorn]

Does anybody know why my anim previews use Root Motion, even though I set Ignore?

[nimble torrent]

Well, it's possible that during retargeting you lost the root motion, and the forward movement is now on the hips.

That'd be my guess.

Check the tracks in sequencer!

[hybrid acorn]

Would that be the case even if the source mannequin is also showing the same behavior? I'd expect that if only the new mesh was exhibiting the behavior.

[nimble torrent]

I mean - I'd check.

If they're both doing it, it's possible that both of them have no root motion.

And they're just walking away from their roots.

You should be able to see this in the anim sequence viewer if you show bones.

[hybrid acorn]

You mean like this?

[nimble torrent]

Well, the little guy is walking away.

The mannequin appears to have root motion.

That's what the red line means.

The little guy is leaving his root behind.

You can see - no red line, and his pelvis is clearly the child of the root on the ground.

Also, I'm finding it fascinating that you're always viewing them together.

I would expect, after retargeting, that when you opened them in the animation sequence viewer - you'd only see one.

[hybrid acorn]

It may be an issue only in the retargeter preview. When I view the animation asset directly, root motion (and being able to ignore it) works as expected on both meshes.

Sorry for the confusion, I'm working in the editor of the retargeter.

[nimble torrent]

OK, well - I would be concerned about the little guy walking away from his root.

But if it works in the sequence viewer - that's what matters!

That's the real animation data.

After you've run your retarget, you don't need to look at the retargeter anymore.

[hybrid acorn]

I'm currently not running the retargeter, but I'm using a Retarget Pose from Mesh node and passing in the retargeter asset, so it's retargeting at runtime

I'm doing this based on Lyra's animation blueprints. That method of retargeting is new to me, but I'm following it for now

[clear dune]

What's the best method for selecting one of several fighting styles within a single AnimBP? ie: one of several different walking state machines. I've been using a series of Blend nodes with boolean Alpha inputs, but is there a better way?

[viscid willow]

Blend poses by enum is one option. You can create an enum with all the different states you need and plug everything onto one node.

If you're looking for something more complicated, the Lyra example swaps the locomotion set based on data assets. This is a bit trickier to work with.

[clear dune]

Ohh, I see, I didn't realize you could add pins to those by right clicking. I tried one or two of the different blend node types, but since they only had one input and no + button, I figured they were for something else. Thanks for pointing me in the right direction!

[viscid willow]

Np 👍

[dark crow]

In my project I have different weapons. Each weapon requires a different pose. What can I do besides "Blend Poses By" and creating a node for each pose/weapon? What I would like to do is store the pose on the data asset for that weapon and then when the weapon is equipped, use that pose. However I am not sure how to do that.

[nimble torrent]

Usually I say to people who want to do this - don't.

You can make a variable on your weapon BP of the AnimSequence class, and you can (by passing the weapon to the animation BP in your character BP) read that value, but generally speaking, when you have data that you want to associate between two assets in a game, the correct place to put that association is in a third thing, in unreal's case - you'd put them in a Data Asset like battz suggests.

But yeah! If you want too - a variable of the anim sequence class is the way!

[deft furnace]

Ok, I'm not sure how to code it in but I have a rough idea.

[deft furnace]

Ok I tried using motion warping but it wasn't doing what I wanted.

[timid shadow]

there is a way to make gun ik following hand

[nimble torrent]

Yes, but you will have to process your animations. You can do this inside Unreal using Control Rig and the retargeter.

[timid shadow]

how? what i need to setting

[ashen junco]

https://dev.epicgames.com/documentation/en-us/unreal-engine/fk-control-rig-in-unreal-engine

[nimble torrent]

It is unfortunately not a simple setting. May I ask how you ended up with animations with bad IK setups like this?

[ashen junco]

The process isn't super straightforward, but the gist of it is that you edit the animation in Sequencer using FK Control Rig,

[timid shadow]

that take more time with 70 animations

[nimble torrent]

That's how it goes sometimes.

[ashen junco]

There is kind of a hack using IK Retargeter, the idea is to align the IK bones to the corresponding deform bone in a duplicate skeleton

[nimble torrent]

Yeah, it's a pity that the retargeter can't easily do same-skeleton retargeting.

It can't right?

[ashen junco]

Yeah, but one can easily reassign the skeleton of the skeletal mesh, even more so with exact duplicate of the skeleton and skeletal mesh

I used it when I encounter a snag with IK bones when retargeting

[nimble torrent]

Ah!

[timid shadow]

the retarget with the same skeleton will not change the position right? but hwo about the IK

[nimble torrent]

It could, but like I said, I don't think you can retarget onto the same skeleton.

IchinoseP apparently did a workaround with a duplicate.

But not the same one.

[timid shadow]

gun IK attached to ik root, no hand

[ashen junco]

Yeah, not the same exact skeleton asset, but the exact same hierarchy and skelmesh

[timid shadow]

that can edit the IK position?

[ashen junco]

Yes
I don't know when this is added into IK Retargeter, but in UE5.4, you can pin the IK bones in the retargeter to another bone, basically allowing you to align the IK bones

[timid shadow]

maybe i'll try letter

[jagged swan]

Can anyone explain why this is happening and/or how to fix it? I'm rigging a character with Modular Control Rig, and if I put AddControl modules (just the regular single joint controls) on joints parented to the head joint, they jiggle around when I rotate the neck or spine controls (but not if I rotate the head directly). I'm guessing it has something to do with the space switching/rotation lock on the head from the neck module, but there aren't any options to fiddle with that in the rig editor.

https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/990753522645614742/1243757849923026974/UnrealEditor_hCdiqONEkL.mp4?ex=6652a343&is=665151c3&hm=18428684ba7ab9ed3d9ca5991fb7d476d857891dc5afa565aa568361ce432f78&

Here's a clearer example on another character. It seems the effect is compounded on grandchildren, as his bottom lip is parented to the jaw which is parented to the head but it seems to jiggle around independently of the jaw.

[jagged swan]

Is this for animating in the Sequencer?

Oh. I don't know how to use control rigs during gameplay, but I do know how you can apply one to a blueprint in the Sequencer for animation.

[nimble torrent]

Hmm, this definitely seems to be a graph evaluation order problem! I'm not sure you have enough access to fix that in the modular rig.

[jagged swan]

I know a tiny bit of Control Rig blueprint logic so I can tinker with the modules a little bit, but if it goes beyond even that then yeah maybe they should have tested these base modules on something other than faceless mannequins, haha.

[nimble torrent]

Yeah, it's a bit weird!

Part of the nice thing about control rig, the non-modular kind, is that you have so much control over the evaluation order of the rig. You can resolve problems like this by changing which order things get updated in.

The modular rig appears to sacrifice so much control for a marginal increase in accessibility.

[jagged swan]

I think it gives a huge increase in accessibility, honestly. Setting up a single control rig on a character by hand is a monumentally tedious task since you need to set up the control hierarchy, position the controls and wire everything up manually, but breaking it down into reusable modules where you can just plug the joints into them and they'll set up the controls and logic for you is so much faster and more convenient. I just hope they work out the jank like this soon.

[nimble torrent]

We can hope!

[flint osprey]

Hey All, is anyone actually doing their full animation pipeline in UE? Or mostly getting the work done in Blender/Maya? Would love to find out. I am strugglings with sequencer. ;/

[jagged swan]

I wanted to test out a small in-engine animation but my issue above is probably going to make it a non-starter.

[jagged swan]

If you've got any specific issues with the Sequencer though write them down and I'll see if I can help.

[deft furnace]

Hey is there a way I can make the motion warping target move according to what arrow keys I press.

I wanna have my combat feel freeform

[ashen junco]

I did exactly this recently. You can get the last movement Input vector and multiply it by desired length, then add it with player location to get the destination for the motion warping.
Additionally you could do a trace in the input direction to get the target before calculating the destination location, and limit the distance

[ashen junco]

I used this article as a reference to my own setup. I diverted by making a trace in the input direction first and add a limit distance.
https://www.quodsoler.com/blog/motion-warping-character-attacks-using-blueprints-no-c-required

[deft furnace]

So does your combat move via the motion warping to a single point or can you control where your character moves when attacking?

[ashen junco]

For one shot attacks like this, it is motion warping to a single point, calculated by nearest target in the input direction within a conical range. For longer thrust attacks, it may need different setup

https://fixupx.com/MakotoIchinose6/status/1794316177038315866

[deft furnace]

Ok, I'll be sure to remember this.

Not sure if the code is compatible with mine but I'll try to make it work.

Thank you

[mystic wyvern]

Is there a programmatic way to 'modify' animation sequences in-editor? I want to move the root bone in my locomotion animations to get them ready for use in Motion Matching, but I've got a lot of them and I'd rather not export each one, modify it in Blender, then reimport them one by one.

[mortal sparrow]

can i somehow make the origin of a skeletal mesh at its pelvis instead of its feet?

making the pelvis the root bone didnt work

[nimble torrent]

For what purpose?

[nimble torrent]

Not in blueprints, I don't think. You can in c++, but it's a little awkward.

You could export your animations as fbx, and use the fbx sdk in python to edit them.

[mortal sparrow]

im making a player controller and its base of movement is supposed to be its pelvis

lots of ragdoll stuff and i need the pelvis to be the bp's origin

unity had nice hierarchy for this stuff and unreals workflow seems bit weird to me

[nimble torrent]

Huh, OK, well I do recommend keeping a root bone separate from the pelvis, but you can just set them at the same place?

[mortal sparrow]

the thing is i made a character with hips only, no root bone or anything and its origin is still at its feet

[nimble torrent]

There's nothing stopping this, but the character movement component will probably fight you.

[mortal sparrow]

yeah im not using it

building my own solution

[nimble torrent]

Did you change the pivot of the mesh in your dcc? That might be affecting it.

[mortal sparrow]

dcc?

[nimble torrent]

Blender or Maya or wherever you're doing your mesh editing.

[mortal sparrow]

ah reasonable

i will try this

thank you

[mystic wyvern]

That’s probably the best option. Thanks for the tip!

[nimble torrent]

Good luck!

[river lily]

I've grabbed an anim off of mixamo of the character diving forward. It moves the character quite a bit. Shouldn't ticking off Force Root Lock make the animation happen in place?

[nimble torrent]

It depends on whether the forward movement is on the characters root or pelvis.

[mortal sparrow]

Didnt work, unreal still positions the origin at the characters feet for some reason

[nimble torrent]

I'd double check that.

[nimble torrent]

That's very odd. Is that true if you just drop the skeletal mesh into a map?

Like - if you move the skeletal mesh around, in the map, is the pivot between the feet?

[mortal sparrow]

yeah

the pivot is between the feet

its almost like

the component is the origin

or something

[nimble torrent]

I mean, that is the case, but the mesh visual relative to the component should be aligned.

[mortal sparrow]

yeah

wait im going to try something

[steel galleon]

how can I overshoot while interpolating between rotators ? currently it just tracks it but it's not what i want.

current code

[ancient plank]

5.4 question with Mixamo - I'm just starting out and playing with Mixamo animations so I can learn scene blocking for cinematics. Seems at least half of the animations don't float, half do. They look fine playing the animation, but when using the new 5.4 retargeter, and applying to Quinn and Manny the feet float off the ground taking the body with it. Is there a fix for this?

[lusty venture]

is this in the retargeter window?

you may need to adjust the feet height and placements between source and target?

[last valve]

Alright this is gonna sound dumb but for some reason my jumping animation Is not working anymore he just kinda bounces up and walks anyone care to help me out?

[ancient plank]

I took a closer look, it's in the retargetr window as well

It's only some of the animations from Mixamo, so I guess I'd need to correct them individually, just not sure how because I'm blending them so I can't adjust the character's height in the anim sequence to match because it's blending up into the float

[viscid willow]

sounds like your jump state isn't being triggered. how are you transitioning to jumping in your ABP?

[serene fiber]

retargeting all walking animations resulted in the feet being above the floor a couple centimeters which makes the character float. what should I do in this case, reimport the animations somehow? I remember for playermodels you had to reimport but not sure about animations.

[nimble torrent]

If you retargeted over top of the old animations then probably?

If you created new animations then you can probably run the retarget again, after fixing the retarget rig.

[serene fiber]

I simply chose the anim sequences and then right-clicked them and chose a new skeleton

it sounds like the root bone for the animations is somehow borked but im not entirely sure if that could be the issue

[nimble torrent]

Well - I mean - that's not a traditional retarget I don't think.

Typically you'd use the retarget manager.

And I imagine that not doing so could very easily be the cause of the floating.

[serene fiber]

the proper way to retarget is by using the new retarget system (RTG)?

I barely touched that. I will have to do some research how to use it propeerly

[nimble torrent]

Well - you could also use the old way of retargeting.

None of the ways of retargeting things involves just changing the skeleton.

At least to my knowledge.

[serene fiber]

ive gotten used to simply choosing a new skeleton but I do know that it may not always work since skeletons can be different

plus some distortions are easy to come with this

[nimble torrent]

I would not get used to that, personally.

[serene fiber]

I never got admittedly into RTG because UE5 version looks so confusing xD

[nimble torrent]

As I suspect that it will fuck up almost every single time you try it.

[serene fiber]

like imho UE4 retarget manager was way easier to use

ill note that

[nimble torrent]

I believe that still exists.

[serene fiber]

afaik RTG is the only way for UE5 as they renamed it to RTG and removed the retarget manager from UE5

unless they changed that

[serene fiber]

is it normal for ue5 mannequin to have spine_04 and spine_05, while ue4 mannequin has just spine_01-spine_03? what are the extra 2 bones for in ue5?

[viscid willow]

I can't think of a particular standard for the number of spine bones, other than in this case the UE4 mannequin is segmented and so they likely matched the number of bones to the number of segments. The UE5 mannequins are more soft skinned so I expect more bones were introduced around the lower spine because that's where the majority of the flexibility is.

[errant hamlet]

anyone know why physics won't work on bones added using the skeletal mesh tools? specifically, spring controller in the animation blueprint

only bones added through the "edit skeleton" option on a skeletal mesh, don't seem to pick up physics for some reason, even after "per vertex skin weights" are added

although the physics play fine in the editor preview... and in animation blueprint, just not in game

[nimble torrent]

Hmmm

Those tools are very new, so them having bugs would not be surprising.

My thoughts are:

1. If you open the skeletal mesh - are the bones there? Are they greyed out?

2. What happens if you close and reopen unreal? It's possible that there's a cached skeleton in there somewhere that is not refreshed properly.

[errant hamlet]

yeah bones are there, I've restarted a few times already, doesn't seem to force any kind of update on them

I haven't tried clearing cached folders

[nimble torrent]

So they're there, and they're light grey? Active? Like normal bones?

What happens if you export the mesh as an fbx file? Do they come-with?

What happens if you reimport the fbx?

[errant hamlet]

yeah so I added them using the "edit skeleton" tool (after enabling that plugin), on the skeletal mesh, and they pop up after that on the skeleton, all as valid bones

[nimble torrent]

Interesting!

[errant hamlet]

I can try that

yeah it's weird cause after I add those bones, in the physics asset I can do all the normal stuff with physics bodies and constraints, etc...

sprint controller in ABP also recognizes them, and does all the correct physics simulation in all editor previews of the characrer

only when I jump in the game does it not work for some reason

[nimble torrent]

Hmm

Could it be your pawn somehow?

Does your pawn use leader / follower components maybe?

Or have multiple meshes?

Could you make a new actor and just try to add a ragdoll?

[errant hamlet]

so like if I had a spring controller to the "leg" bones of my character, those can wobble when my character moves in game

but if I do the same thing added to the hair mesh bones I added, those don't move in game

same steps and eveything

it's all plugging into a set leader pose component

hair, head, arm, chest, etc..

in the character BP

[nimble torrent]

Is the Leader mesh set to the mesh that has those new bones?

Even if yes - try deleting and reassigning that component.

[errant hamlet]

I'll try that

[nimble torrent]

Because the leader pose component deactivates all bones that are not in it's skeleton.

The follower skeletons are not evaluated.

(the way to have a follower mesh follow the leader component while also evaluating it's own additional bones is to use an animation BP and the 'Copy Pose From Mesh' node)

[errant hamlet]

no change 😦

I can SEE the physics in the character BP, working

[nimble torrent]

Weird!

[errant hamlet]

feel like I'm missing a setting or something

[nimble torrent]

It's possible!

That's why I do recommend running the ragdoll test.

Create a new actor with just the new mesh and make it ragdoll.

Character actors tend to get messy. Make something simple and clean to test.

[errant hamlet]

is that just a setting you flip on?

haven't messed with ragdoll stuff yet

[nimble torrent]

In the actor bp, use the 'Set Simulate Physics' node to enable the ragdoll.

(the mesh needs a physics asset, but I am assuming you already have one of those for that mesh)

[errant hamlet]

I hate this, I just don't think this works...

[viscid willow]

Could it be related to this?

[errant hamlet]

the spring controller works with other bones though, just not ones I'm adding using that "edit skeleton" plugin

that's the confusing part

spring controller in animation blueprint I mean

@viscid willow oh my... that was it, I unplugged everything from the leader pose node in character bp

it works now, wtf

so that was it

I don't even remember why I added leader pose componeont, I need that for something else to work I think...

[viscid willow]

yeah this is what it says in the documentation about leader pose component:

This offers the quickest set-up time but does not support isolated animation playback or physics rendering

[errant hamlet]

it's a modular characer with lots of separate parts, I think I have to keep that node

[viscid willow]

There are modular character alternatives outlined here: https://dev.epicgames.com/documentation/en-us/unreal-engine/working-with-modular-characters-in-unreal-engine?application_version=5.3

[errant hamlet]

I know why spring controller was working for the other bones, it was bones/sockets that weren't plugged into the leader pose node... shit

just noticing that

[nimble torrent]

That could do it.

[errant hamlet]

yeah it's leader pose node, DAMN

[nimble torrent]

There are alternatives. Battz linked them.

[errant hamlet]

I'll read through it, ty, well at least this is on the right track

well it's technically working now, but only when leader pose node is disconnected from everything 😦

I don't remember why that was added in the first place, or what that's even for

[nimble torrent]

It makes mesh components with matching skeletons follow the leader.

It's the least expensive way of doing that.

As the follower components do not evaluate their own graphs.

(if you want to really optimize your characters, you use that system on higher LODs)

[errant hamlet]

character seems to still animate fine without that node, I swear there was something I was doing that didn't work though, that required that whole leader pose setup

can't remember 😦

something is dependent on that

[nimble torrent]

It's possible that on each component you have the main animation bp?

This is very expensive.

[errant hamlet]

yeah all parts of the character using the same animBP

[nimble torrent]

Yeah, extremely expensive.

Because you're evaluating all the blend logic multiple times.

[errant hamlet]

it's like everything, feet, legs, chest, hands, hair, etc..

[nimble torrent]

Yeah, you don't want to do that, as a rule.

It's very pricey.

[errant hamlet]

how else would you be able to have a modular setup with equipment swaps, and have all the parts stay in sync

all the body parts have to use the same animation BP at the very least no?

[nimble torrent]

Use the Leader Pose component, or, if you can't do that because you have additional bones or some other reason you can't use that component, you can use a very small animation BP that contains only the node 'Copy Pose From Mesh' referencing the leader.

[nimble torrent]

They don't, no.

You can have one mesh, which is the leader mesh, and the others follow that one using 'Copy Pose From Mesh' or the Leader Pose component.

[viscid willow]

IIRC epic typically uses the copy pose from mesh method for fortnite if that helps with deciding which one to use 😅

[errant hamlet]

I figured it out if anyone is curious, basically the "new leader bone component" overrides all the children meshes plugged into the leader pose component, they all inherit the mesh/bone structure of the lead one, and in my case that was the head, which didn't have the new bones... that's why none of the spring controller stuff worked

soon as I added the new bones to the lead component mesh, it works now

which kind of makes sense, that's the whole damn point of the node I think

[viscid willow]

yep, makes sense:

coz you weren't running physics, more like a bone modification with the spring controller right?

[errant hamlet]

well both I tried, and both didn't work, but yeah... I was adding bones to the wrong static mesh basically the whole time

[nimble torrent]

👍

[steel galleon]

anything abt this ?

[nimble torrent]

By 'overshoot' you mean the animation principle of follow through and overlapping action?

Where you have a target you're trying to hit, and in the process of going towards it, you move past the point you want to hit, and have to pull back and recover?

[steel galleon]

yes

this

[nimble torrent]

Sure, well... I mean there is the obvious way.

[steel galleon]

timelines ?

[nimble torrent]

Pick a point beyond where you want to rotate to.

Rotate to that.

Then rotate back.

[steel galleon]

im not sure how to implement that here

the target is constantly changing with how the player aims

[nimble torrent]

Hmmm

Then you're probably better off using a velocity system. Are you rotating on multiple axis, or is this just a single axis turn?

[steel galleon]

im only looking to use the yaw for this for now

[nimble torrent]

OK, that's great.

Because doing this with a full quaternion would be... a bit beyond my math.

OK, so what you want to do is use an acceleration and velocity for the turn.

So rather than interpolating towards your desired yaw, you accelerate towards your desired yaw.

Then you accumulate the acceleration into a rotational velocity, and then you add that to your rotation every frame (using delta time of course).

So your character accelerates towards your desired rotation, then will overshoot it, slow down, and accelerate back.

Make sense?

[steel galleon]

hmm

ill try that today

[viscid willow]

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

[primal oar]

is there a way to fix the animation so it can smoothly transition from left to right?

[wheat charm]

Maybe just check Lyra project and how the motion matching works?

[primal oar]

sure ive never tried motion matching ill see what all the talk is about

[primal oar]

i fixed it i just changed weight speed in my blend space

[crude marsh]

Hi all. Working on an equipment system to attach clothing to character using the Copy Pose method. Works great mostly except when I spawn the Actor (shirt) to be copy-pose'd to my main character, the shirt spawns in T-pose for a frame, before updating to the character skeleton. Any idea how to fix this? Or a way to force the ABP to update one frame? Pretty sure what's happening is the shirt Actor is spawned with ABP with no copy-pose target assigned. I immediately assign it right after the spawn node, and now it has the target, but it doesn't know that it should update now that it has that target, and just waits until next frame.

[static vapor]

So I made a rig using rigify in blender. Right afterwards I used the Game Rig Tools addon to turn the rigify rig into a game ready rig and after baking I inserted the animation into unreal. While the animation plays completely fine, I can't seem to retarget it to the unreal skeleton. I keep getting an error saying it can't find root source bone as well as it cannot initialize source root

Any ideas?

Even the mixamo rigs that usually don't have a root never had this issue before

[zenith mirage]

Is it possible to do Pose Interpolation in the AnimGraph ? To smooth out an animation ?

Because right now I want to interpolate the values for all of my blendshapes, but in the Event Graph I'd have to do a node setup for every single blendshape, which is not really practical.

[ashen junco]

Blendshape itself have settings to smooth out animations between value changes

[zenith mirage]

Ah ! Didn't know that, where is it located ?

[ashen junco]

Forgot what it's called, but when you open the blendshape asset editor, you should found a setting for the interpolation in the leftmost details panel

[zenith mirage]

Alright I'll check further, thank you !

[zenith mirage]

do you mean this window ?

[ashen junco]

Oh, forgive my brainfart, I was thinking of blendspace, not blend shape

[zenith mirage]

sad music

[dark jewel]

I need help. I retargeted some animations, but the head of the character is twitching. I already tried to solve it but nothing seems working.

[limpid zenith]

Hi, i know this is ue discord, but maybe someone can help me with this, why do my arms bones in mixamo counts as forearm bones?

[ashen junco]

Try making the model default to A-pose. Mixamo often confused with pre-rigged T-pose model

[limpid zenith]

Can i do it in ue, or i need blender?

[ashen junco]

Depends on which one you're the most comfortable with
Or you can discard the rig, and auto rig into Mixamo again with defined points

[limpid zenith]

I can't for some reason

Sec, i will show

It does not allow me to use points

[barren fiber]

distance matching

[limpid zenith]

Btw when i import this char into blender it does this:

[static vapor]

I'm pretty much stuck and need some help. No matter what I seem to try, making basic skeletons or even the rigify skeleton turned into a normal skeleton with game rig tools and then into unreal, I can't retarget the skeleton to the unreal one at all. Keeps giving me the "ik Retargeter could not find the source root bone" all the time
Both on my custom made rig as well as the rigify converted rig

[young lance]

Hey, i have a brief question, on playing Animation Montage other (already played montages) return to the default position. Example: i opened the driver door with Play Anim Montage, and when i'm playing to Open Passager door, the driver door goes to close.

I want to play animation montage for each door independently, but not easy to find how to combine the anim montages, without reversing to the default pose.

[nimble torrent]

I think your analysis of why it's happening is correct. I would fix it by making it invisible on the first frame, and then on the frame where you assign the body to follow, turn it visible. It doesn't matter if it t-poses for one frame if nobody can see it do that!

[simple hatch]

has anyone found the game animation sample mentioned here? https://youtu.be/RuYHfVKfrMM?t=2835

[young lance]

Solution to move logic from Anim montages to Anim states with variables and blend vai float variable

[limpid zenith]

Hi, how can i make smooth transition between two positions in Control Rig bp, i have arm and they attach to walls on trace hit, and they snap really fast, i want to make this transformation smooth, how can i do it, is there a node for that? I know about "interpolate" node, but what do i use as "T"?

[nimble torrent]

They haven't released it yet.

[nimble torrent]

Do you have a bone you're IK-ing onto? Like - do you set a bone to the position on the wall, and IK to that, or do you pipe a transform value into the control rig from your animation BP?

Either way, there's two ways of doing this:

1. You change the target transform over time.
2. You blend on the effect of the IK over time.

The latter is probably less complicated to setup.

[steel galleon]

got it working with this vid -> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KPoeNZZ6H4s

the stability part is remaining, but ig ill have to write that in cpp

loops are killing fps

[nimble torrent]

Neat!

Did you try the acceleration version?

[steel galleon]

i was actually trying your solution but couldnt wrap my head around it, kept fiddling with stuff and then this video came into mind

i think if ill try to do it now, it probably would work

[nimble torrent]

Oki!

[limpid zenith]

I have a sphere trace, and on hit position with a wall it IK to this point on the wall

[nimble torrent]

OK, cool - so it sounds like you're setting a transform value.

[limpid zenith]

Yeah

[nimble torrent]

Can you show a screenshot of your animation graph where you're putting the transform value into your control rig?

[limpid zenith]

Or what do you need?

[nimble torrent]

Ah, OK - so that's the control rig graph. What about the animation BP?

Oh - you're doing the sphere trace inside the control rig!

Wow! I didn't even know you could do that!

[limpid zenith]

Yeah, i don't use anim bp for this

[nimble torrent]

That seems - for me, probably a hazardous place to do it from an optimization perspective. As physics traces are computationally expensive, and you can't stop that sphere trace from triggering every frame.

I'm amazed you can do it, but I would not - personally.

[limpid zenith]

Yeah, i understand it, but id does it only in certain conditions

So it is not a problem for me

[nimble torrent]

All right.

That pole vector is wild.

[limpid zenith]

Yeah

[nimble torrent]

And I suspect will probably break in a variety of scenarios.

[limpid zenith]

I have tested, and this is only how it can work, so...

[nimble torrent]

I suspect that there are other values that would work, but let's not get into that.

[limpid zenith]

Idk why, but it works)

[nimble torrent]

OK, so this is likely to be tricky to do with this setup because the Control Rig largely ignores time and you want to increase the influence of this IK over time. Is there a particular reason you're doing this in Control Rig and not in the animation graph?

[limpid zenith]

Nope, i just tried to learn procedural anims and there a guy did this here so

[nimble torrent]

So this is something you copied off of a tutorial or the internet somewhere?

[limpid zenith]

No, i saw a guide how to create procedural anims for spider legs, and i did this myself referencing that guide, becouse it really does the thing i need

I just need to connect somethng to "T" in interpolate i think

But i don't really understand what can i use

[nimble torrent]

Have you tried just putting in a number?

Like - 5?

[limpid zenith]

Yeah, does not work, it breaks the arm

[nimble torrent]

What does it do instead of work?

[limpid zenith]

It lifts the arm up

[nimble torrent]

Interesting.

I'm trying to open the game engine, 'cause I don't really know how they've implemented interpolation in control rig.

[barren fiber]

aye guys, ik bones important even if we could do the same with vb?

virtual bones should run on the Animation Thread or nah

[limpid zenith]

Okey

[limpid zenith]

The first pic is how it supposed to look, the second is with the inreplotation

[nimble torrent]

Hey! It's backrooms guy!

[limpid zenith]

xD

[nimble torrent]

Oooh. OK, I think I get what interpolate does now.

If you put in 1.0 - I think it's going to be on the wall.

And if you put in 0.0, I think it will be unaffected by the sphere test.

I think it's just a lerp.

(which is a linear interpolation)

[limpid zenith]

Okey, so it is not good for this, yeah?

[nimble torrent]

Well - kind of.

In your animation graph, you could pipe in a 'interpolate to wall' float value, that you change over time.

And then you could use that property_ as 'T' in your interpolation node.

So when they get close to a wall, you could start increasing that value from 0-1.

And the arms would gradually reach out to the wall.

[limpid zenith]

Uhhh, nah, i tried using values from anim bp and transfering them to CR and it broke my project

[nimble torrent]

Well. That's kind of your only option.

If you want to use this control rig graph.

You need to get a value in over time.

And Control Rig doesn't really use time the way that other objects do.

It's goal is to solve the correct pose.

Based on it's current values.

[limpid zenith]

Hm, i really want it to be a one time bug, if it was, then yeah, i think this is good idea

[nimble torrent]

Definitely save and commit to whatever version control system you have - so if it does break things, you can recover.

[limpid zenith]

Yeah, i will try now

Okey, so whats the idea?

[nimble torrent]

That said - you can do this in the animation blueprint using this node:

And it would probably be considerably easier and more performant.

[limpid zenith]

I don't really want to redo all this...

[nimble torrent]

OK, well - then you would create a variable on your control rig of type float. Do you know how to do that?

[limpid zenith]

So i think i want to try idea with updating the float value

[limpid zenith]

Why on cr?

[nimble torrent]

Because you want to use it in your CR.

You're going to set it from your animation blueprint.

[limpid zenith]

Oh, yeah, i am stupid

Yeah

I did)

[nimble torrent]

Hurrah!

OK, so - wait - does this control rig do anything else, or is it just the arm?

[limpid zenith]

Just arms

[nimble torrent]

Well, you might be able to get away with just using the alpha value of that control rig node.

Because it will ramp the influence of the control rig on and off.

[limpid zenith]

Okey

[nimble torrent]

Also - I suspect that there will be an issue with using the sphere test inside the control rig, because it definitely appears to me that your animation blueprint (and the character) do not know when the character should be reaching with it's arms.

Is that correct?

Is the only place where the character knows that it is trying to reach with it's arms inside the control rig?

[limpid zenith]

Yeah

But i have not gotten any issues with that, i have used it in players legs too, and all works fine

[nimble torrent]

OK. So that makes this method largely unworkable. Because the plan is to go:

Hey! I am trying to reach out with my arms. I am going to gradually ramp on the effect of the IK over time.

But if it doesn't know when it should do that - it can't begin the ramp on.

[limpid zenith]

Yeah, now i understand

Hm

[nimble torrent]

Now, hypothetically, it would be technically possible to do this entirely in control rig, using delta time.

But this is very much not at all how I would do it.

[limpid zenith]

Yeah, i also thought of that, but i could not make it work

[limpid zenith]

The difference is that you are smarter then me, and you would not use it there, but i am not smart so it is not a problem really 🙂

[limpid zenith]

If you have an idea how it can be done, it would be great

[nimble torrent]

So you could do a structure like this:

You branch off whether the sphere test collides.

So while the sphere test is true, you accumulate value to 'ReachToWall' at a speed controlled by 'SpeedOfReach'.

You then put ReachToWall into the 'T' value of your interpolate node.

[limpid zenith]

Okey, but when do i put this branch, after the ik or before?

[nimble torrent]

It kind of doesn't matter.

But you need to branch off of the sphere test.

[limpid zenith]

Okey, give me a sec to do all this

[nimble torrent]

You also probably want to be storing the transform value of the sphere collision in a variable, so when you blend off after the sphere test fails, you still have a value to blend too.

(basically, right now, as soon as the sphere test fails, there's nothing to interpolate too, so you can't have the arms retract slowly - they will snap off immediately unless you store the transform value)

[limpid zenith]

Yeah, okey

[proven depot]

Hey guys, I'm having this weird issue with anim montages where they don't seem to blend correctly in 5.4. In past versions, this weird flickering of the raised pose of the guns when switching weapons didn't happen. The way I'm doing the switching is by destroying the currently equipped weapon and then playing an anim montage with the blend in time set to 0, which worked perfectly fine in past versions but now does this for some reason. Any ideas on how to fix it? Thanks in advance for the help!

[limpid zenith]

Like this?

And then i use interpolate as i did before and use ReachToWall as "T"

Wow, that works perfectly, you are a true genius!

Thanks a lot for help!

[nimble torrent]

Yay! I'm glad it worked!

[limpid zenith]

Btw, while you are here (i am sorry for bothering you this much), do you know how can i get my player skeletal mesh from T-pose to A-pose in ue?

Because in blender all bones from my skeletal mesh are broken on import

[nimble torrent]

My guess with this is that the 'replace weapon' event is happening one frame, and then there's a delay on the montage for some reason.

My recommendation would be to hide the weapon immediately when you switch, and then only show it when the montage starts.

[nimble torrent]

They're not broken those are probably correct, but what they are is not aligned in the way that blender aligns bones when you are creating bones. So they look funny, but they should work fine.

[limpid zenith]

No, they are also displaced from where they should be

[proven depot]

Ok yeah I'll try that, thanks!

[limpid zenith]

Sec, let me send screenshot

[nimble torrent]

That is interesting.

Unusual too.

[limpid zenith]

In ue all is good btw

[nimble torrent]

Why were you exporting the bones and the mesh separately?

[limpid zenith]

And other skeletal meshes exports fine

[nimble torrent]

Surely they're exported together?

And where is your original mesh file? Couldn't you make changes inside that?

[limpid zenith]

I am not

[proven depot]

Ok I think that did actually work, not sure why but it did so thanks 😂

[nimble torrent]

No problem! I had to deal with a lot of weird inventory bullshit in my time, and sometimes you just gotta control when you hide and show things!

[limpid zenith]

Hm, let me check

Uhmmm

It is not better xD

Let me check .blend file

[limpid zenith]

Hm, when i import from blender to .fbx it makes this to my bones, am i missing something in export settings?

[nimble torrent]

What happens if you pose the character in blender?

Because it really does look like the characters bones are probably in the correct place.

[nimble torrent]

Does the mesh have the armature modifier?

[limpid zenith]

Yeah, just did it

[nimble torrent]

Just did it?

[limpid zenith]

And it does not work

[nimble torrent]

It should import with it.

[limpid zenith]

Wdym?

[nimble torrent]

If you're importing a mesh that has skinning data, that mesh should come in with the armature modifier on it.

So when you export an fbx file from unreal for a skeletal mesh - that fbx file should contain both the bones and the mesh, and the mesh should have vertex groups for the bone weights, and the mesh should also have the armature modifier pointing the mesh to the armature.

If it doesn't - something very odd is going on.

[limpid zenith]

This model is from other guy in .blend

[nimble torrent]

I don't understand.

[limpid zenith]

Okey, let's start from scratch

Firstly my bones are not connected to mesh in blender

As you can see on screenshot

[nimble torrent]

Sure, I'm not sure how you got that scene though.

How did you get that scene?

[limpid zenith]

What do you mean by "scene"?

[nimble torrent]

Scene = what is currently open in blender.

[limpid zenith]

I just used pose mode and rotated arm bone

[nimble torrent]

So I don't know if you imported the skeleton and the mesh separately.

If you imported them together.

If you're using the blend file you got from wherever you got the asset from.

I don't know what's going on.

So... I dunno!

[limpid zenith]

No, i just usen .blend file i downloaded from scetchfab

And it has all you can see on screen

[nimble torrent]

OK, well - that's odd. I would expect a file that does not have the armature setup, and does not have the skeleton assigned, and has no vertex weights to not work in unreal.

So the fact that you have it working in unreal is odd.

And surprising!

I have no idea how that could have happened.

[limpid zenith]

Nonono

It is different things, thats the things

fk

xD

i am confusing you

Sorry

Just forget about all other stff in unreal for now

I used before .glb file and it was another thing

Now i use .blend

I have not use it in ue

Okey, i figured this, i have created the pose i need

So now i just don't understand how to properly export it in ue, because it exportes with mesh and all stuff as bones

[nimble torrent]

I recommend watching this video:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YbWfoyf4MqI

[limpid zenith]

So, i have done the pose and set it as rest pose, am i missing something in export to .FBX settings?

[limpid zenith]

Oh, i will now, thanks!

[nimble torrent]

For changing the rest pose:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=766q97OHy1E

[limpid zenith]

Yeah, i did it, thanks!)

Okey, my issue does not mentioned in this video

Let me explain again but i will try to make it clear

In blender i have setup pose, mesh, bones and all other stuff, i then export it in .FBX and when i import it in ue, it makes my bones grayed out and creates new bones with names of parts of mesh (on screenshot of blender you can see them in armature), what can it be? @nimble torrent

[naive carbon]

Hey, does anyone know if it's possible to "extend" the animation graphic of a Child Animation Blueprint? Or can I edit just the animations that the existing graphics are using?

[opal jay]

im using animbp template but its not playing, am i doing something wrong?

[nimble torrent]

Animation BP templates appear extremely underbaked. If your variable is empty (which it probably is) the template can't display it.

[hollow axle]

I am trying to edit an animation but I notice if I move the skelaton and go check my other animations the changes are there too

[nimble torrent]

What do you mean by 'animation graphic'?

[hollow axle]

how can I edit just 1

[nimble torrent]

To edit an animation you want to either reimport your animation from wherever you created it (like Maya and Blender) after editing it in that software.

[naive carbon]

this

[nimble torrent]

Or you can create a control rig for your character in unreal, and use the control rig and the Sequencer to edit the animation. This is not noticeably easier than doing it in a DCC, but may be an option if you want to stay entirely in unreal.

[nimble torrent]

Oh you mean the graph. I thought you meant the mesh or something. No, you can't modify the animation graph in a child blueprint.

You could swap out dynamic graph elements - like linked anim layers, but you cannot edit the graph itself.

[hollow axle]

@nimble torrent do I need the UE5 skelaton? or can I do it in the UE4 skelaton/

[nimble torrent]

You can do it with whatever skeleton you want - but you need to create a control rig, or use an existing control rig you got from elsewhere.

The starter projects do contain complete control rigs, but they are quite complex.

[zealous abyss]

How can I fix this? My metahuman won't stop stretching

[nimble torrent]

So, I think you're trying to use the fk controls as IK controls.

Most of the controls appear to be working, it's just when you translate the circles around the arms that things break.

[viscid willow]

I'm sweating watching that video memory climb

https://tenor.com/view/dog-sweat-wipe-gif-11284331

[viscid willow]

Did you get help/an answer for this?

[past sandal]

hi guys, i ma new in animation system, i usually make static scene and level in ue5;
I need to improve my cultural background. So any advice from what i have to start to learn rootmotion ecc (tutorial, documentation...)? I would be very grateful 8) THANKS!!

[viscid willow]

There's the official documentation: https://dev.epicgames.com/documentation/en-us/unreal-engine/skeletal-mesh-animation-system-in-unreal-engine?application_version=5.3

And a variety of general "how to's": https://dev.epicgames.com/documentation/en-us/unreal-engine/animation-workflow-guides-and-examples-in-unreal-engine?application_version=5.3

I would recommend:

1. How to Get Animation Variables https://dev.epicgames.com/documentation/en-us/unreal-engine/how-to-get-animation-variables-in-animation-blueprints-in-unreal-engine?application_version=5.3
2. Locomotion Based Blending https://dev.epicgames.com/documentation/en-us/unreal-engine/locomotion-based-blending-in-unreal-engine?application_version=5.3
3. Using Layered Animations https://dev.epicgames.com/documentation/en-us/unreal-engine/using-layered-animations-in-unreal-engine?application_version=5.3

To get started.

[crude marsh]

I did not, going to poke around a bit more today to see if I can figure anything

[viscid willow]

Righto. I had thought it was perhaps an order of operations thing? It might not exactly "solve" what's happening but if the mesh visibility was disabled on spawn and then toggles on after the animation is initialised. Since you can still tick the bones while the mesh isn't visible.

You could call that from the ABP initialisation function.

[crude marsh]

Thanks, that's a good idea. I'll try it out. I also discovered on the Copy Pose from mesh node in the ABP Anim Graph, there's a setting in the details that is "Use Attached Parent", if toggled on seems to by default use the attached parent's pose if no copy pose is set, and so after spawn the first frame uses this (although can probably just use this without setting the pose directly anyways for my use case). Seems to work, with just some motion blur artifacts but much nicer

[viscid willow]

Oh cool, that's handy. Maybe a little vfx puff to hide the motion blur 😅 just wanted to add, your customisable character setup is really fun, it's been cool to follow!

[crude marsh]

Haha thanks! Did you see it on twitter? 👀 A little vfx is a great idea. Pleased to get this finally working with the body blends/bone scaling stuff now, looks great 😆

[viscid willow]

I did, it's very cool! Are you doing a mix of bone scale for proportions and blend shapes for body types?

[crude marsh]

Yep exactly, blendshapes for bigger more "artistic" changes, that I want to have specific art directed shapes (like shoulder/chest muscles, curvy hips, chest, etc), and then control rig that scales some bones up for like spine length, leg length, hip spacing, etc. Those two systems working together I think give really good results, but the downside is each peice of (deformable) equipment like shirts all need matching hierarchy, matching weights, and matching blends so takes a bit more time making things, and making sure things fit/sit right and don't clip, but I think the final look pays off :)

[viscid willow]

haha that's fantastic! I agree and for the amount of variety you're achieving it's really neat. With the bones scaling up, I assume you're scaling on one axis, the animation plays fine/as expected with those changes applied?

Also I see what you mean by the motion blur haha

[crude marsh]

Yep, for like the legs, in control rig I have one control that scales the bones up on one axis to make the legs longer, and then another control that scales on the other two axis to make them wider. Still working on figuring out animation though, there are some issues with IK currently that's next up on the todo list. My character holds a fishing rod, and so when arms are longer/shoulders are wider things aren't quite lining up but I have some ideas to try, is proving to be tricky though (esp since I'm an animation noob when it comes to this kind of stuff). Ik on the legs seems to work pretty well out of the box though even with different leg lengths, so I'm hopful it won't be toooo tough to get working with the hands

[viscid willow]

That's awesome.

Happy to help troubleshoot as I'm sure other people are too, this sort of thing is really fun. My first thought with the arms, because you're changing the length things like contacts will be subject to change, you might look to doing some space switching to find where the arm "should" be in a certain space and then correct the arm position with IK. I think that will only work within a reasonable range, those arms can get pretty long lol

[wheat charm]

Just one question that any advantage if make the skeletal mesh X front in Unreal? I know the axis system is a mess in Unreal like the persona editor only is Y front. But since the fact is there, anything good to make the skeletal mesh x front while importing?

AFAIK, most of DCC are Y front

Or Y-up probably

[ashen junco]

X forward only strictly necessary with vehicles and if you're using it with chaos vehicles
Otherwise characters can be Y forward

[wheat charm]

We don't have vehicles, but somehow it decides the character needs to be x front which I'm wondering any advantages. Because it is a pain to check the animation in persona like you have to rotate it manually everytime opening the editor

[ashen junco]

Check your import settings in editor, and export settings in your 3D software. Those are the common fail point for misaligned skelmeshes

[wheat charm]

I don't mean it is by mistake but the team decides to make it x front anyway. That's why I feel is it really necessary?

Since it is a pain to check EVERY animation later on.

[ashen junco]

Then yeah, inform your team that characters are Y forward.

[wheat charm]

Thanks. Lemme double check with them.

[brazen wharf]

for those working with the new modular control rigs... i have a lookAt Module, how would you guys make the selection for the solve root (e.g. spine1 or spine3)
separate connector or variable on the module?

i couldn't figure out yet how to add additional connectors (to a module), so maybe i didn't understand their purpose correct yet 🤷 nvm they're added in the hierarchy

[brazen wharf]

also anyone had the issue that control shapes draw way smaller in the Modular Rig than in the actual module?

[spring anvil]

on a high level, what would be a good way to get an IK target to move along a spline path?

or snap to a spline rather, so cant use timelines and such to set a transform

[blissful thicket]

I have an array with bone names and rot, loc and scale values by time. Does anyone know how to populate a UAnimSequence with this? The only ressources I can find online are from before ue5 (old way of implementation). Thanks in advance

[upbeat wave]

I am working on a fps multiplayer game and will go more into the animation part soon and I wonder if the proper way of doing this would be to have client-only fpp arms animations and then somehow sync these(somewhat) to the tpp animations and only have the latter replicated.

Different set of animations for the different perspectives

[blissful thicket]

@upbeat wave it depends if you want to have the same animations for fpp and for tpp. Some games like DayZ or Arma have the same animations for both, partly because you can see your legs in fpp. But if you would like to have a simplified animation set for tpp (eg. less details in the reload animations), this would be the way

and the best way of doing it if you have two set of animations, the syncing that you mean can simply be done by having two seperate animation graphs and only replicating the tpp graph

[upbeat wave]

Will the aiming part be problematic to set up if the animations look quite different?
I am making all fpp animations myself and purchasing some mocapped tpp so they will still do the same thing but probably be quite different

[blissful thicket]

if you make 2 animation blueprints (sorry not graphs), they are completely independant so it should be no problem, they will just have a visual disparity between fpp and tpp but if you are ok with this, there is nothing to worry about + a lot of fps games do this

[upbeat wave]

okey, so I assume syncing this(aim up down and so on) will be quite doable then
Thank you for your help🙂

[blissful thicket]

yeah, it should be
You're welcome

[calm roost]

Guys, I have a problem while importing an animations. So I made a super basic idle animation for my character, which has nearly 50keys in total. But while importing it to unreal engine 4.27, it counts every frame possible as a keyframe. Which takes around 7400 keys. Why unreal does that? Is it because I am using outdated version while using current version in blender?

[golden arrow]

that is because unreal is reading interframes

try to bake it in 60 fps or 30

in blender

and then snap closest bone in ue

[mild granite]

Any animators who don't charge a lot?

@ashen junco 🤨

[native umbra]

what kind of animations? I'll DM you

--

I'm trying to figure out how to copy a bone location onto an IK bone in an animation in editor. Is there an easy way to do this via an anim modifier? I'd rather not pull this out into an external program

[nimble torrent]

Every day I learn something new. Animation modifiers look really helpful.

I was out here coding those in c++.

[native umbra]

Still very good, I'd buy a package of useful anim modifiers from the marketplace lol

[nimble torrent]

OK, here's a weird one. I think the Animation Modifier ui is bugged? I'm looking at one now, and the Details and Pallete panels will not display.

Oh, OK. Reloading the layout fixed it.

So that's odd.

[serene fiber]

can someone recommend some detailed tutorial when it comes to AimOffsets

[spiral edge]

I have an animation question about additive animations.
do they have to be based off the base pose to work properly?
like you can't just buy some reload animations and expect them to work with a base pose they are not associated with right?

[nimble torrent]

That's true, you can't assume that. Additive animations are always relative to something, either a pose or another animation.

Without the source animation - they are not useful.

[nimble torrent]

Sorry, I haven't seen a good tutorial on that.

[nimble torrent]

I've been playing around with them a little, and combined with Anim Metadata - these are really powerful.

[spiral edge]

thank you

thats very helpful

[serene fiber]

AO setup seems to be way too confusing.

[nimble torrent]

It does seem a bit baroque.

You've read the main docs on it, right?

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

On the first person game I worked on - we just used time control animations for this.

[serene fiber]

I'll take a look at this, thanks.

[past jungle]

hello wonderful people.
back once again with the same issue/shot ive been chasing now for a bit.
character animation that has a jitter/shake to it. Ive ruled out compression (viewing with no compression retains the jitter)
ruled out source animation (fbx generated from maya looks fine)
appears to be pretty classic precision/accumulation error.
i have isolated the source to 4 spine bones - if i remove the animation on these specific spine bones (its quite subtle movement, no shake/jitter in the keys themselves) everything is perfectly smooth again, but slightly off and doesnt match our simmed cloth/hair quite right

[nimble torrent]

This tingles my 'scale problem senses'. When you look at the root bone of your skeleton - are you sure you don't have a scale on it?

[past jungle]

checking now

[nimble torrent]

Oh, sorry - that was for Ben, not for you!

[past jungle]

oh lol my bad

my name is literally Ben HAHA

[nimble torrent]

Hah!

[past jungle]

also no scale on the root (had to check just in case)

[nimble torrent]

Always good to check.

Did you check the thing we looked at last time? The curves themselves?

[past jungle]

yes and insanely there was a jitter on the curves, but only on some eye/face stuff. that was cleaned up in anim and the shot gone over with a fine toothed comb

and i have now isolated the source to these spine bones

which makes me think some kind of accumulation error thing

there is definitely no jitter on them, they have very few keys

[nimble torrent]

Having looked into this, it should be fairly simple. You need to accumulate the transform, as the transform values are given in local space, but there's a node called 'Find Both Path To Root' which gives you a bone's hierarchy which is obviously intended for just that.

[nimble torrent]

That's possible, but having accumulation errors on the spine is weird.

I would expect to see those on things further into the graph, like hands and fingers.

[past jungle]

its only affecting the head tilt as far as i can tell

but the source is definitely the spine animation (at least just deleting the keys on 4 spine bones fixes everything im seeing)

[nimble torrent]

Do you mean a spline like a world-space spline placed into a level, or a curve?

[nimble torrent]

How much jitter are you seeing?

I'm guessing it's subtle?

[past jungle]

its pretty subtle, it looks like stepping, just in a minor head tilt thats close to camera

and interpolation is linear, not step

[nimble torrent]

Could it be sampling mismatch somehow?

[past jungle]

i am not sure...everything is 24 fps in the show and havent seen this particular issue with other characters/shots yet

[nimble torrent]

Well - sorry. I'm not sure. If its only happening in one shot, what happens if you load the animation onto a different character?

Or into a different scene?

Does the error still appear?

At this point - I have no idea, but it being unique to this scenario seems odd.

[nimble torrent]

You're probably best using the FBX sdk and python to create an fbx file, and them importing that - rather than doing it in unreal.

Are you trying to do this at runtime?

[gaunt mantle]

Does anyone know the "correct" way to check if a UObject is valid in a threadsafe ABP? I'm currently using a pure thread-safe function that'll take a UObject, cast it to an Object, and return true if the cast is successful (and false if it fails)?

[spring anvil]

World placed spline, not a curve 🙂

[nimble torrent]

OK, well - you'd need a reference to the spline component, then you'd use 'Get Location at Time' to get a location, and feed that in as your IK target position.

[past jungle]

thanks man it is odd 😄 ill do what you mentioned and try a different character(s) didnt think of that

[spring anvil]

Will look in to that node, never heard of it. Thank you 🙂

[nimble torrent]

'Time' in this case meaning 'progress along the spline' - which is... weird. I never really understood why they called it that.

[spring anvil]

Would that use the ik target location, feed in to the get location at time node and then get a location back?

[nimble torrent]

No? You just put the time value in and get a translation value out.

Without any context of what you're actually doing with the spline - it makes it a bit tricky to figure out what you mean.

[spring anvil]

sorry, basically whenever the IK target gets close to the spline, it should snap and move along it.
A bit like an IK hand colliding against a wall and sliding along it instead of going through it. Not sure if that descibes it better.
Maybe a spline is not even the best approach

[nimble torrent]

Yeah, what is the character actually doing?

(splines do have a function called 'Find Location Closest To World Location' which would let you do what you want though)

[spring anvil]

That sounds pretty much ideal, will check that out!
My idea was having a puzzle where a hand is placed in a "niche" in the wall and player has to move along it, pushing a piece forwards to complete the puzzle. The niche is a spline shape-

[nimble torrent]

Hmm - sounds tricky!

[spring anvil]

yes, might be a bad idea in the first place 😄

[nimble torrent]

I'm still not entirely sure what it would look like, so I can't say - but it does sound a little complicated.

[serene fiber]

for first person projects, how would I approach creating the socket for the Gun, given that I am still using a fullbody mesh, and the camera is attached to the head bone?

like wouldnt the head socket ruin the aiming?

[nimble torrent]

Wuff - having a full body mesh for a first person character adds substantial complexity.

[serene fiber]

and how would I make the socket aim straight in the direction that the camera is facing? those 2 things are new to me

[nimble torrent]

I would always advise not doing that.

Nobody notices when it's there unless it's broken.

You get one second of someone looking down and going 'neat' at the cost of thousands of hours of unnecessary work.

[serene fiber]

so you are suggesting just the arms mesh for first person?

would the camera be attached still to the head socket or would it be just floating inside the BP. im guessing it wouldnt be attached either

it is strange that tutorials tell you to attach camera to the socket for first person projects,

[nimble torrent]

Yeah, I would always recommend the arms attached to the camera, and if you need legs at some point - do them separately.

Having full body awareness is just... it's so much work, and it does very very little for your game.

[raven flame]

Not sure if it's the right chat, but how do I modularize the skeleton mesh, so I can switch parts of the mesh for a equipment system?

[serene fiber]

any idea if firsst person view projects also use AimOffsets the same way? or its done via code somehow?

[nimble torrent]

Epic has a page on modular character systems, which will probably be useful for you:

https://dev.epicgames.com/documentation/en-us/unreal-engine/working-with-modular-characters-in-unreal-engine?application_version=5.3

[nimble torrent]

Generally no. Or... I mean - sometimes. They will often use them or similar things for their enemies.

[raven flame]

Ok, I'll check it out, thank you

[nimble torrent]

You typically also need a 'show caster mesh' that follows your main character and provides a plausible shadow for what your character is doing.

And those could end up using Aim Offsets.

[serene fiber]

as an example this guy uses it in animgraph code. he uses blendllayers per bone and then rotates the spine04 bones according to where the camera is looking exactly. but he is also using thirdperson view

https://youtu.be/3trRGScjFVg

i wonder if this would work with first person view

[nimble torrent]

I mean - it might if you're using a full body mesh.

But if not - you just... make the camera point where mouse points, and everything works with no effort.

[serene fiber]

ah right ... spines

would line tracing come from the camera or the weapon itself though?

its usually the camera that its coming from, rite?

[nimble torrent]

Usually the camera, yeah.

And often the arms and gun are rendered on a separate layer plate than the rest of the world, so they don't clip through things when you're close to them.

[serene fiber]

modular characters are not that much covered otherwise i would go with modular character pieces, but i assume creating animations for each of the body parts will be a pain. besides its underdocumented

[nimble torrent]

assume creating animations for each of the body parts will be a pain
You don't need to do that.

[serene fiber]

they would share all the same skeleton despite being different skeletal meshes?

[nimble torrent]

Often yeah, or they are very similar and can still work with the 'Copy Pose From Mesh' node.

[tranquil lark]

I thought UE didn't support that, which is why like every UE game does the trace to move the gun away from the wall

Its been years since I've looked

[blissful thicket]

Nope, I'm converting .anim files from unity over to unreal.
I've found a github projects that does it but only the gathering of values part works. I still have to figure out how to pass these values to a UanimSequence. I realised that I have to use an Animation Controller but now I'm stuck at the function AddBoneCurve always returning false (failing).

[lethal blaze]

Hi there - im using a spring controller on this bag and it's working okay, but when i squat it gets really jittery.

Has anyone experienced this before?

I often feel like im just arbitrarily tweaking numbers on the stiffness and dampening settings. is it possible having multiple filter channels affects this?

https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/1fgnt0ta5x4qr2pvt2gxm/2024-05-28-14-01-38.mkv?rlkey=ro8onq2y5yrwh0myuwmtq4n83&st=fk1dydax&dl=0

[primal sandal]

I have an animation that I want to be setting the 'time' or progress of every frame. its basically an animation that gets closer 100% complete the close the player is. but if the player doesn't move, the animation is frozen at whatever % complete is shuold be at. Does that make sense? How do I do that?

[serene fiber]

when it comes to skeletal mesh and its skeleton for first person arms, how can I change the mesh out for a custom one?

[serene fiber]

does anyone know how i can fix this error?

[viscid willow]

Check your additive animation settings on that sequence, you cant mix and match non-additive, local space and mesh space additives in one blend space.

[serene fiber]

im trying to setup AO but the animations dont want to go together tho they are named AO and ADS...

[viscid willow]

An aim offset is typically set up using Mesh Space additive animations. If you're adding all of the mesh space additives to one blend space then 👍

ADS, that would be Aim Down Sight? Just guessing but that sounds like it would be the animation which your aim offset is ADDED to, snd shouldn't be part of the blend space if that's the case.

[serene fiber]

uhh

im using A_Idle_<InsertGunNameHere> as the base inside the AimOffset file, then im trying to add A_AO_UP_<GunNameHere> to the AO file

both have additive anim type as Mesh Space and Base pose type as Selected Anim Frame

but it says it doesnt match existing samples

[viscid willow]

Is your Idle also Mesh Space Additive? If not it shouldnt be in the AO

[serene fiber]

I mean it wasnt at first. AO file wasnt either. none of them are

but they are named as AO and ADS in the filename