animation

[nimble torrent]

That's one way, but it binds the animation notify very hard to your class.

You could also make a generic animation notify, and in your Animation BP you could create an event dispatcher. When the animation BP gets the animation notify, it can emit the event that your character can bind too.

[night rover]

I don't see a problem with it, we can make use of inheritance and just use generic class

the base character will always exist, so just make the function there.

also it's a custom notify for a reason

[nimble torrent]

The advantage of using events is that the emitter class doesn't have to know about the existence of anything that reacts to it. As a general rule, it's a good idea to keep your classes from directly referencing each other as much as possible.

You can't always do it, but when you can, it tends to be good policy and make refactoring a lot easier.

Your way will work, and it might just be personal preference, but I've found I have less issues when I do it without direct references.

[night rover]

I would probably consider dispatcher if I am doing something that multiple class that doesn;t share the same base class need to listen for the event

but for playing a sound tied to the character, I wouldn't think too much

earlier suggestion to use interface....

that's counter intuitive imo

you don't need interface when you just want to communicate to a class

but I do agree, it always depend on the context

I wouldn't always do it the same way for every case

[nimble torrent]

Hey Sacrellaty. Your problem is probably a result of having some bad scale values when you import your objects.

Try using this video. It should be able to help you out: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YbWfoyf4MqI&t=1039s

[night rover]

but in a case of playing foot step sound in a character, I would just pair the custom notify with my base class

[shell matrix]

Hey everyone, I have the simplest most weird issue I’ve encountered thus far. I created a custom C++ class to re-produce Lyra’s Custom Anim Instance and extend it once I got the base implementation working with the GameplayTagPropertyMap. This all works and appears in class defaults, however, once I add a variable and compile and save, it asks me to Apply my changes, so it won’t be applied to the single preview anim instance only. I select apply and it asks me to compile, I compile and it asks me to apply again in an endless loop, if I start the editor at this point, crash. Has anyone ran into this issue before? I’m thinking it just some generic issue or mistake I made preventing the anim instance from compiling or applying changes?

[echo finch]

Hey guys is it possible to blend this 2 animations in montage? I tried to google it but people usually use sequencer

[naive mountain]

Reverse & crop the first animation

I have a few short animations that are reversed and used in montages to round out some rough looking animations

Just the first 10-20 frames it looks like

[deft furnace]

Still trying to make that flying combo work, not having any luck.

[lethal hill]

Hi, when i use the Anim Dynamics node, my mesh decreases drastically

[lethal blaze]

hi there - i'm trying to learn a bit about pose drivers for some pauldron movement i'm doing

this solo driven pose option would make it so only the pauldron moves with the poses correct?

[vivid pollen]

I'm having an issue when I tic enable root motion and force foot lock in my animation sequence, the character ends up waddling. Animation sequence looks fine unchecked but the character doesn't stay stationary. (NSFW)

[nimble torrent]

You say 'doesn't stay stationary' and then show us a video of the character staying stationary?

I am confused, I admit.

Also - brave lads, carrying around swords while unencumbered to that degree.

[nimble torrent]

I've never ticked that option before, but the description suggests that it only manipulates curve data if ticked, and doesn't modify any joints.

[nimble torrent]

When you say 'increases dramatically' do you mean that it gets bigger?

[vivid pollen]

It doesn't stay stationary UNCHECKED. I think it's pretty clear.

[lethal blaze]

a shoot so if the curve data is also moving the arms from a-pose to t-pose, it won't isolate the pauldron right?

[nimble torrent]

Not inside a single montage. You can blend animations in the animation blueprint.

[nimble torrent]

Not to me. I still have no idea what you're talking about. What behavior do you expect?

I saw several animation problems in that video, but I don't know which one you're talking about.

[vivid pollen]

@nimble torrent The waddling is my current issue cause I ticked the forced foot lock and enable root motion. It doesn't waddle when I have them UNCHECKED.

how else am I suppose to explain it?

[nimble torrent]

To clarify. You want to drive the Pose Driver using the arm, but not apply poses to the arm bones, right? I think you want to use 'Only Drive Selected Bones' and the 'Only Drive Bones' list.

If you check 'Only Drive Selected Bones' only the bones in the 'Only Drive Bones' list will be affected. So you could put just your pauldron in that list, and everything else will be unaffected.

[lethal hill]

decreases*, gets much smaller

[nimble torrent]

When you say 'waddling' what do you mean? Your character appears to hover in the air while crouching, you have another identical character playing the crouch walk animation, you have weird blending going on all over the place... it's kind of a mess if I'm being honest.

[nimble torrent]

You probably have a scale problem. Did you import this character from Blender?

[lethal hill]

yess

[lethal blaze]

golly you are truly such a life savor @nimble torrent i really hope karma pays it forward to you in a big way

quietly seeing you put hours into helping folks

[nimble torrent]

If you open the skeleton file, and click on the root node, do you have a weird scale value?

[nimble torrent]

What happened when you changed the character to flying?

[lethal hill]

19

[vivid pollen]

The crouch animation is glitching out when I don't have the root and foot lock enabled in the animation sequence but when I have it checked it does the waddle from the pivot point where the pelvis is where I posted the first video.

[nimble torrent]

This might be a silly question, but have you closed Unreal, compiled it offline, and reopened it?

[nimble torrent]

Yeah, that's probably the source of your problem.

Blender and Unreal argue about what a unit means a lot!

Try using this video. It should be able to help you out: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YbWfoyf4MqI&t=1039s

[lethal hill]

thankssssssssss

[nimble torrent]

OK, yeah, that definitely looks like a problem. When you say 'waddle from the pivot point' do you mean 'they hover in the air' or is there another problem?

Because they are hovering.

[vivid pollen]

@nimble torrent correct

The character doesn't hoover when I have them UNCHECKED but glitches out.

[nimble torrent]

OK, umm - weird question, where is your root normally? Is it on the floor?

[vivid pollen]

um

[nimble torrent]

The root node of your skeleton?

[vivid pollen]

@nimble torrent does that matter if I'm using the re targeting feature?

lemme check

[nimble torrent]

Yes. It always matters.

[vivid pollen]

@nimble torrent So I think it's because I imported the skeleton mesh from Mixamo cause it's not the UE one. Is there a way to make a new root bone?

I think it thinks the root bone is at the hip and not the floor

[nimble torrent]

Oookay, yeah, that's where your problem is. You want to have a separate root bone on the floor.

Hmm. Personally, I would load the character into blender, and add the root there - but that's because I'm most comfortable with that pipeline.

You can edit skeletons inside of Unreal these days, but it's a very new feature, and I don't know how you to use it very well.

[vivid pollen]

I've had trouble exporting out the rig from Blender so I've been tinkering with the skeleton editor in UE since you can do it now.

I see. Thanks for the help.

[nimble torrent]

But yeah, that's where the problem is. You'll have to run the retarget again once you've added your new root (however you do it).

[solar totem]

I have an issue baking animations from Control Rig.
So I opened up an existing animation with Control Rig. This animation has root motion and it works perfectly.
In Control Rig, I see the animation and everything is fine.

Next, I bake the animation into an animation sequence.
I open up the Animation Sequence, set EnableRootMotion = true. Create an animation montage. Everything looks good so far. The animation looks as it should.

Then I add a Play Montage in my BP_ThirdPersonCharacter. Run in editor, play the montage. The root motion movement is correct. The upper body is correct. But the feet is not correct, it's stumbling.

It's very strange because the animation sequence/montage shows the feet animation correctly. But if you actually play it, it is incorrect.
Does anyone know why this is?

[nimble torrent]

My guess is the IK feet bones.

If your IK feet bones are not aligned to the feet in the animation sequence, you get a sliding behavior on the mannequin characters.

You can either run an animation modifier over your sequence (that's how I'd do it, I need to release an asset for that...) or you can try the fix here:

#animation message

Phantasy Wave's method fixes it at runtime, which will work, but may create some shenanigans later if you are doing anything custom with those bones in other animations.

[wispy tangle]

Hi. Do you guys know why in Motion Matching crouching without moving takes long time to happen? It is like stutters before commiting

[lusty venture]

hard to tell from a trailer but they look fully bespoke per item

it also isn't showing movement transitions into interacting with the objects

[nimble torrent]

Yeah, so it could be done in any animation software.

You could, but you could also animate them in Blender or Maya.

There isn't much of a difference.

[lusty venture]

to create the animations?

i wonder if they're doing any fun IK bits to get positions

[nimble torrent]

Motion matching is mostly good at matching motion. So what's probably happening is that it's trying to find a motion that would allow it to reach a pose - and you're missing that motion.

Do you have 'stand to crouch' animations for all your states?

You generally need transition animations or Motion Matching will struggle.

[wispy tangle]

Thank you for quick response.
Yes i have Stand to Crouch animation and from crouch to stand

it just waits for 1-2 sec to start playing stand to crouch animation to crouch

but no problem when in motion or getting up

[lusty venture]

now i'm more confused, do you mean just bringing up the pot and being able to rotate it?

[nimble torrent]

Yeah, that's generally the thing with Motion Matching, is that it is matching velocities so if your character is stationary, the only velocities it can match are the small movements in your idle.

So my guess is, it is having trouble finding it's way into the stand to crouch animation.

[lusty venture]

but in this video there's no hands?

[nimble torrent]

It's later in the video.

5:32 for me.

[lusty venture]

oh sorry

[wispy tangle]

got it thank you. I think getting velocity of bone or doing somethin with boolean. I will return once i find the solution 🙂

[lusty venture]

gotcha

it looks like it's lerping into a cutscene animation then lerping out

[viscid willow]

That looks like a bespoke animation ☝️ this

[nimble torrent]

Aligning animations relative to objects in the world can be done a variety of ways. Typically it involves attaching to a shared root object. So you have a cinematic origin, and the character animation, object placement, and object animation are all aligned to that root.

And then, as nat says, you align the character to that root before you play the animation.

It could be montage, the pot could be a scene object, it could be spawned and parented to the character, it could be a Smart Object - there are a variety of ways of doing it.

[viscid willow]

I would guess it's a montage and they're interpolating the character into the correct position when the animation begins. That is something that Motion Warping can achieve.

[nimble torrent]

What all the different ways of doing it share is that all the synchronized objects in the sequence share an origin, and you align all of them to the origin before you play the animation.

I haven't seen any tutorials or courses about world object interactions like this. Sorry. Anyone else seen anything?

Like - I've set things like this up a bunch of times, but it's always custom coded per project.

[misty dagger]

I've only seen a few for third person but they are all of the "interact with button type"

[lusty venture]

https://youtu.be/kBpX1YYp6rw

maybe something like this?

this person is using sequencer :)

https://youtu.be/SO2SqE_OueU

this one isn't first person but i'm sure the same principles and similar bps will apply

[nimble torrent]

This one's good for cameras, but doesn't have any object interaction.

[lusty venture]

damn

[nimble torrent]

This one doesn't even have character animations - it's just a cinematic camera movement.

Useful, but not what forbsd is looking for I don't think.

[solar totem]

Is there a way to check if the IK feet bones are aligned?

[nimble torrent]

If you open the animation in the animation viewer you should be able to just look at them.

If they're aligned, they'll move with the feet.

If they're not - they'll either be at the root or just sticking out in space somewhere.

[viscid willow]

Looking at that screenshot, it looks as though the IK bones arent animated in that particular sequence. Seems to be a common occurance with the ue5 mannequin.

[solar totem]

Hmm.. they seem to be correct

[nimble torrent]

That's looking at the animation baked to the control rig in sequencer.

That's not looking at the animation sequence itself in the animation viewer.

You should be able to see it by just double clicking on the animation sequence in the content browser.

(sadly, the names of the 'Anim Sequence Viewer' and the 'Sequencer' (that you use to create animations) are extremely similar and it makes talking about them really annoying!)

[viscid willow]

we have to go back to the old names, back to persona

[solar totem]

Ah, I see it
The ik_root_r is different from left (original) and right (exported baked animation sequence from sequencer)
So then.. baking from the sequencer does not save the ik data..

[nimble torrent]

It can. It depends on how your control rig is setup.

You could modify the control rig to put the IK root objects in the right place.

For some reason, Epic didn't do that for Manny and Quinn.

So - when you bake it, they don't get updated.

I had trouble with that. I think it only re-exports when you save the Sequencer sequence?

Something like that?

[viscid willow]

IMO it would have been a bit more accessible to have built the IK steup for the legs with virtual bones, so it doesnt rely on baked animation data for the legs. I've seen a lot of people posting about similar issues here. Makes it difficult to use custom anims.

[nimble torrent]

I think they predate virtual bones.

Like - they could have been updated to use virtual bones, but then anyone using the old system would find it broken.

So - toss up.

[viscid willow]

vb's were around in UE4

[nimble torrent]

Ah! My bad! I definitely thought they were newer than that.

Unfortunately no. You can use a custom animation notify for it, but you need to code that yourself.

The kind of thing you're trying to do does typically require some leg work when it comes to coding.

[viscid willow]

they were certainly much less stable back then so i dont blame anyone for not working with them 😅 add one > crash, remove one > crash, managed to add one > congrats corrupted skeleton is your prize

[nimble torrent]

Oh no!

That's where the custom coding comes in.

Are you reparenting the object then removing it's transform?

You have to null out it's transform when you parent to the characters object bone or it will keep it's old transform and that is probably way off in the world space somewhere, resulting it in appearing 2000 uu away.

[viscid willow]

despite that, i love virtual bones lol

[nimble torrent]

Are you 1000% certain that you have a bone called 'Weapon_R'?

Just to keep you on your toes.

Gotta stay sharp!

[nimble torrent]

Yeah, that's probably collision. You might want to turn off collision during the animation and turn it back on at the end.

Often collision gets in the way of cinematics and cinematic adjacent things.

[sleek burrow]

How can I blend two animations, using AActor as parent?
I know this is really weird setup, but I need to sample skeleton information for niagara and it includes collision
And with collision enabled, the collision setups of ACharacter blocks particle so I'm currently tryint to stick to AActor as parent
Thanks in advance!

[sleek burrow]

nvm, found the solution!

[lethal blaze]

hi again - so i'm slowly figuring out how to use pose drivers and i have the up and down rotations looking okay for this pauldron

the issue im having is the roll rotation of the arm. would i want to just lock the pauldrons roll rotation to the arms?

[viscid willow]

I would suggest having a listen to this section of this video: https://youtu.be/Oe7fYS9qxmk?si=aiTXktQDR-wZFCiZ&t=1765

I have certainly built pose drivers by posing the arms at incremental angles of rotation which had mixed results, but what jeremiah explains is that you want definite poses as much as you can.

One way to solve the Roll is to look into Twist Correctives, which can be used for shoulder pads to counter the rotation of the upper arm, so that the shoulder pad maintains more of it's position on the top of the shoulder rather than rotating back and forward with the roll of the arm.

[lethal blaze]

thank you so much Battz! your last recommendation was huge for me as well

[viscid willow]

no problem, happy to help. Pauldrons are a tricky one for sure, so keen to know how you get on

[lethal blaze]

will let you know! its tricky too because we're rigging it for live mocap :p

[viscid willow]

https://tenor.com/view/yeonjun-txt-gif-20047074

[lusty venture]

you poor thing 🥲

would love to know how you go with that, with mocap we've found pose drivers can be a bit broken because of the way that the mocap data drives the rotations differently to keyframing which can be a bit cleaner

[lethal blaze]

yeah it's a whole box of worms that i'm frankly terrified of

[viscid willow]

took me a bit to find it but there's also this resource: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GB6qNAXUyX0

[lethal blaze]

not that headline 😭

thank you so much for sharing this. watching now!

[viscid willow]

It's unfortunately true, but they look so cool so we keep adding them, some good info, Matt Lake is very clever

[lusty venture]

matt lake!!!!!!!!!

[lethal blaze]

watching this and thinking about the blizz team trying to handle their giant wow shoulderpads

[nimble torrent]

And that... blends two animations together? Wild!

[sleek burrow]

It works for me... I'm only using idle animation and walking animation, not that complicated one, no need to micro control things

[sharp linden]

Trying to troubleshoot the aim constraint in Control Rig and noticed that it flips the original location of controller being targeted and I don't understand why...

[ashen junco]

Change the aim and up axis. You have to trial and error on this one

[sharp linden]

As usual, I'm an idiot, switched the right and left poles 🤣

Goddamn I finally managed to make something decent, 3 weeks of torture lol

[deft furnace]

Well, for a start when I changed it to flying, my character wouldn't fall down, it would instead just walk in the air and refuse to come down, I was unable to jump after jumping the first time due to being in the air.

Then when I try to attack, the animations that are used are my ground attack animations, not my air animations.

[dire thorn]

Hey guys, trying to figure out how ''play montage'' works in BP. Trying to get a book to open and play multiple animations in succesion. But it seems to be only playing the first animation and not the rest. Where am I messing up?

[viscid willow]

When you say only playing the first animation, do you mean it's only playing the first section/sequence in the montage you have there?

[analog sand]

Is there any easy way to add a montage notifier to a large amount of animations at once? It doesn't particularly matter where it goes just that they all have the same name

[dire thorn]

Yes indeed, I figured out that I was not setting up the montage sections properly. Got so far that it plays the full animation. Now I'm trying to figure out how to tell the animation that it finished. Assuming I have to use Notifies for this.. Just not sure how as I'm looping the ''closed & open'' state.

[dire thorn]

Any clue how I could use the notify ''Book_Open''.. to tell my BP that the book is indeed open?

[fathom bluff]

@dire thorn in anim BP when you get the notify send and interface event to the playerthat sets the bool

[dire thorn]

Cheers!

[dire thorn]

Uhm, what would I set the Object of the cast to? I'm using a seperate BP to catch the Notify which it does. But I need it to send a message to the book in order to change the bool?

[fathom bluff]

mesh comp

get owner

@dire thorn

[dire thorn]

Aaahh like that, dang I was trying to figure out where to find the Mesh component specifically. Thanks very much!

[fathom bluff]

Do this 🙂

@dire thorn glad to have helped 🍻

[dire thorn]

God I'm so confused. Trying to not let animations trigger if they are not done yet. But I keep ending up making a loop somehow. Can't seem to reset the Do Once properly.

Problem i'm facing, while using the anim montage to loop ''closed'' ''opening'' ''open'' ''closing'' ''closed''.

[fathom bluff]

your not resetting them?

oh

one sec

@dire thorn

this is just setting the bool based off start sections though

@dire thorn I would do something likethis

bottom ongoing should be true sorry

[dire thorn]

Problem is that I cannot acces ''On Completed'' or ''On Blend Out'' as I use the loops inside of the Montage. So they never actually finish, just go into looping states

[fathom bluff]

why not use just an Open to closed animation without the sections? and use a timeline to play from start or end / reversed?

[dire thorn]

Yeah might be more performant tbh.. Not sure how montages eat resources if they are left in loop like that

Just wanted to use montages so i can more easily alter the animations as neccesary

Is it possible to tell montages to keep the final frame of the animation as ''hold''? So it does not revert to the first frame?

[dire thorn]

Hmmm.. Cant get it to pause the animation properly. I guess I could fake it by playing a animation after the montage with it being open and holding.

Oh goodness, that even breaks the montage somehow haha

[analog sand]

Is there a way I can preview an animation in-game other than just having it pre-baked or pointing a camera at a hidden dummy playing the animation?

IE: Like a tooltip you hover over and then it shows what the animation looks like

[glossy grail]

I am dealing with a very specific, and what I would have thought straightforward, setup, but I have been pulling my hair out for days. I have 2 armatures animated in blender each with multiple actions. When I go to export them and leave 'all actions' checked for export, I get a massive set of permutations on import in unreal between all actions and all meshes. So....

Mesh1_Mesh1Animation1
Mesh1_Mesh1Animation2
Mesh1_Mesh1Animation3
Mesh2_MeshAnimation1
Mesh2_MeshAnimation2
Mesh2_MeshAnimation3
(and here is where it goes south)
Mesh1_Mesh2Animation1
Mesh1_Mesh2Animation2....etc. So it enumerating all combinations even though those actions are relevant to those meshes.

If I uncheck 'all actions' on export, I only get the currently assigned action, which doesn't help either. My goal is to get each mesh and its respective animations so I can cleanly switch between them in unreal. Does this all sound familiar?

[lost nacelle]

Hey all, I'm brand new to animation in UE and just can't find exactly what I (think) need from these tutorials

How do I show the control rig of an asset model? How do I even know if it has one?

I know that I could make one with the Control Rig Blueprint, but...

[ashen junco]

Control Rig for animating isn't necessarily tied to a skeletal mesh, it just need to have the bone the CR uses.
https://dev.epicgames.com/documentation/en-us/unreal-engine/control-rig-in-unreal-engine

To have the control rig showing in editor viewport, you have to have the CR track in a Sequencer, inside any skeletal mesh track. Skeletal Mesh may also assign an animating control rig on per asset basis, so that it automatically creates the CR track along with itself in Sequencer.

[lost nacelle]

Oh sweet gods 😰

Thanks a lot, some more reading hours to go

[lost nacelle]

Yep, definitely have to make a CR.
Good way to learn I guess

Thanks again

[ashen junco]

If you're in 5.4, you can use Modular Control Rig to speed up CR making a bit
https://dev.epicgames.com/community/learning/tutorials/Dd31/unreal-engine-modular-control-rig-rigging-with-modules

[lost nacelle]

Ohhh I'll try that too, thanks.
I was already doing the FK rig

I need to animate a snake, so, what about something like this?
Edit: not working, "Source and target pin types are not compatible" (what I did with the CR is probably not correct anyways)

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

[naive mountain]

you can achieve this via scripting

[naive mountain]

See if there are export options for animation only, or avoid exporting the mesh. you just need 1 skeletal mesh & the various animations.

[hallow pier]

hey guys having some trouble here. Relativly new to UE as far as IK and Animation. Im trying to set up an aim offset for a first person character as well as a IK based ADS . Ive got them both working independently no problem my issue comes up when im in ADS and looking up and down. Im not sure if its the way ive set up the character or something im missing as far as adding or using the Aim offset value with the ik ads. Its pretty rough right now as ive just been roughing out the character and seeing what i need for animaitons and what i can do with IK. Heres whats happening video attached. I have the camera attached to the head socket. And the weapon attached to the hand socket. Rig was done in blender. if anyone can help itd be really appreciated .

[glossy grail]

That is a good idea. I will see what that gets me.

[dire crag]

Hello i have question, how can i make it so my virtual bone follows the mesh? I have a crouch animation, when i play that one the virtual bone does not follow

This is what happens :

[nimble torrent]

If you double click on an animation sequence, it should open the Animation Sequence Viewer. Does that not work for you?

[nimble torrent]

Montages are not really designed to handle this kind of scenario. You probably want to use a state machine, which is really good at exactly this kind of thing, as this was precisely what they were designed to do.

[nimble torrent]

This is one of many reasons it's quite common and recommended to not have a full body character for a first person game. Often - the character in a first person game is just a camera with a pair of arms attached, and sometimes an independent leg model if you really need one for a specific reason.

Full body awareness is never worth the cost in terms of complexity.

But as for the specific problem, I think the issue is that the individual rotations of the spine and neck bones are accumulating an error as you apply the aim offset to the spine bones. I think you have to compute the camera transform independent of the spine - but that might cause order of operations stuttering.

[nimble torrent]

If you explain your use-case, there is probably a better tool than using a montage as a marker. Have you considered Anim Metadata?

[pastel roost]

I'm trying to use an On State Fully Blended In function to call a function/event on the owning actor of the anim instance, but it's not working. I don't animate often so I'm not sure if I'm approaching this correctly.

[nimble torrent]

What does it do instead of work?

[pastel roost]

Tells me trying to call any other function or event is not thread-safe.

[nimble torrent]

It probably isn't!

What are you trying to do in your function that you're calling?

[pastel roost]

I'm trying to trigger the death of the actor once the state machine has finished.

[nimble torrent]

Ah, OK. Hmm - well, there's a couple of ways of communicating between the thread-safe and un-thread-safe worlds.

One is to set a value on the animation instance, like a boolean called 'ShouldDie' and the actor can check that value to see if it should die.

Or, if you don't want to add to tick, I'm pretty sure EventDispatchers are safe.

So you could create an EventDispatcher on your animationBP called 'AnimationDeathEvent', and then have your actor subscribe to that and call it's own death function when that event is triggered.

And in the animation BP, emit the event when the character finishes their death animation.

[pastel roost]

Looks like event dispatchers aren't safe either unfortunately.

[nimble torrent]

That's interesting.

[tranquil lark]

Trying to get stride warping to work to fix my foot sliding but it doesn't seem to do much. From what I gather, I do have things set up correctly. I have seen others with this same setup and it worked for them. Not sure what I'm missing. I've also tried changing the ABP to accept root motion from everything - but when I do that, they don't move at all.

I know them snapping back is a sign of using a RM animation. But I would expect them to at least work with the stride warping part.

Also went through the docs here https://dev.epicgames.com/documentation/en-us/unreal-engine/pose-warping-in-unreal-engine?application_version=5.4

I'm using the UE5 manny skely

[nimble torrent]

Most of my work predates this stuff, but looking at the documentation it seems like you can bind to a variable inside a thread safe function.

So you could, I think, change the 'You'reDead' variable that way?

[nimble torrent]

I think your foot sliding is likely caused by the IK feet bones not being animated in your animation. Did you base your zombies off of Quinn or Manny?

[tranquil lark]

Manny

[nimble torrent]

OK, so Manny and Quinn have IK feet bones, and have an IK solver in their animation BP that aligns the feet to the bone.

If your animation does not have those IK bones animated (and most store bought animations do not) then you get the skiing behavior you're seeing.

[tranquil lark]

The animation is from a pack admittingly. I retargeted from UE4 manny to UE5 manny.

[pastel roost]

Right, but then how do I tell the owning blueprint that? Do I have to check the variable on tick somewhere?

[tranquil lark]

Got it. So it is because the animation isn't animating the correct bone most likely. So, I reckon, if I could figure out a way around that, it would. Otherwise I guess I'll have to animate by hand. Which...uhhh - is definitely not my forte 😅

[nimble torrent]

You could, yeah. I think there might be a way to bind to a function, but I'm unfortunately not an expert on that.

[nimble torrent]

You could also try the fix described here:

#animation message

It requires a small modification to the control rig for Manny.

[tranquil lark]

I cannot read that, lol

[nimble torrent]

It is not without possible consequences, if you want to manipulate those feet bones externally - this will clobber that.

[tranquil lark]

Why do people use their phone to take a picture when windows has a snipping feature

[nimble torrent]

Read that conversation. The first image is very zoomed out, but Phantasy Weave does walk Kamron through the process.

[nimble torrent]

Looking into this further, it looks like direct thread-safe communication is impossible. You might consider using a custom animation notify, or reworking your design to not rely on the animation itself, and instead use a timer or some other method to determine when it is appropriate to invoke death.

[tranquil lark]

So is this supposed to be like, pretty in line with the heel itself? 🤔

[nimble torrent]

Yeah, the IK bones are supposed to match the position and rotation of the bone they reference. So IK_foot_left should follow the left foot, etc.

You can also correct them using an animation modifier (which is actually an animation post processing function that has a weird name).

[tranquil lark]

Why not just use the foot_l bone anyway? Animation wise - what is the advantage to having essentially a duplicate bone?

If it is supposed to match the position and rotation anyway

[nimble torrent]

By manipulating the position of the IK bones, you can modify the position of the legs by modifying the position of those IK bones. This lets you do things like account for slopes, or small variations in the terrain.

[tranquil lark]

What I'm asking is why couldn't you do that with the foot bone directly though

[nimble torrent]

Because the foot bone is the child of the leg. The advantage of the independent IK bone is that the whole can be moved. So if you want to account for a slope, you just rotate 'ik_feet' and the normal animation plays relative to the new rotation.

[tranquil lark]

Never messed with those and would they fix it pre or post animation though. Because wouldn't I need it to be pre?

[nimble torrent]

Post processing in terms of animation creation, not post processing in terms of runtime.

[tranquil lark]

So it is more to have something independent of the actual hierarchy, but still let you control said hierarchy.

[nimble torrent]

Animation modifiers let you move bones around, create curves and keys, etc.

[tranquil lark]

I'm listening

[nimble torrent]

Kind of.

[tranquil lark]

IK wise, I'm only really familiar with the the standard rig and then those effectors that you put in front of the knees and behind the elbows.

Anything else is big brain for me

[tranquil lark]

Is this something in UE or Blender?

[nimble torrent]

They're in UE, but they are not a frequently used or discussed feature.

[pastel roost]

Yeah the first thought I had was to just use a delay, but then I figured it would be more robust to have the anim bp tell the actor when it's finished. That was a couple hours ago, so I'm getting the sense that these state functions aren't meant for this. It seems that there is an older interface for hooking up events to the state machine but it has a "not recommended" message attached to it. It also doesn't seem to work for me.

[tranquil lark]

Quick look through https://docs.unrealengine.com/4.27/en-US/AnimatingObjects/SkeletalMeshAnimation/AnimModifiers/ and it looks like it is scripting for specific anim assets themselves

[nimble torrent]

They're very useful for things like creating curves for particular kinds of animations. Like, you can put an animation metadata object on your attack animations that triggers an Animation Modifier to generate a metadata value that represents the distance that the enemy travels in the attack animation before the impact frame, then use that to determine when to start triggering your attack animation so that the enemy doesn't run up to your player and then attack, instead they choose an attack animation and start attacking at the correct distance away.

Stuff like that.

I've also used them to generate a curve that represents a secondary turning pivot based on which foot is stationary - so that when the enemy turns towards the player, they turn around the foot that's on the floor.

That kind of thing.

[tranquil lark]

I don't know if I understand this example. That sounds like the job of the controller/BT/EQS to determine the correct attack to use.

[nimble torrent]

Right, but each attack might move a different distance forward.

How far does each attack move?

You can measure that using an Animation Modifier, and store that value in your animation metadata.

[tranquil lark]

🤔

So, animation is root motion animation. Use the modifier to get the start and end position of the character. This is something applicable to the asset itself. Then, from that - create a metadata object that holds this value. Then when going through your possible attacks, you read the distance value from the metadata object. Now, when the animation gets adjusted in the future, this value automatically fixes itself.

That sound about right?

[nimble torrent]

Yeah, though I used the animation notify for the impact to choose which frame to measure the distance traveled.

[tranquil lark]

I was just thinking of using that uhhh...feature they added in UE5 to pretty much make the "Batman glide towards enemy" combat

[nimble torrent]

I also generated a curve that represented the remaining distance to that impact frame, and then we used that curve in the tracking algorithm to determine how quickly we had to pivot.

A lot of what we were doing is unnecessary now because of the new Warping feature, which handles a lot of that for you.

[hallow pier]

thanks for the input . i just always felt it odd for the player to look down and not see legs. I didnt think of just using a set of legs seperatly from the main character just for lower body animations. I do have a question if you dont mind. i did do and swap out the full body to an arm only model. How would you go about rotating the mesh/camera and not the capsule ? id like to set up code based animations for that.

[nimble torrent]

You create an independent camera, and parent the arm meshes to them.

[tranquil lark]

So I can adjust the ik bone to match the position and the rotation throughout the entire animation through the use of the modifiers?

[nimble torrent]

Yeah, I keep meaning to make an asset on the marketplace specifically for this, because your problem comes up in this chat at least once a day.

[hallow pier]

thats what i have but the capsule still rotates. would i need to not use a character movement component. nothing seems to unlink the capsule from the mesh within

[tranquil lark]

I'll take a dive into this. Appreciate the info. Animation part is definitely one of my weak points of UE. Like, I can get by - but makin' things look good....

[nimble torrent]

That's very odd. I mean - you do need a character movement component if you're using a pawn, as the character movement component is what translates the controls into movements in most cases.

I recommend looking at the First Person template for the engine, it has a character setup this way.

[hallow pier]

thats what i started with. an all i did was swap the mesh . ill have to go back and take a look thru it again and see whats differnt. thanks

[analog sand]

I meant like making it visible to the player during gameplay

[analog sand]

I just have attack animations that start in one direction and end in another and I'm using that as a variable to operate a lot of stuff so I need it to switch when the attack is played

[nimble torrent]

You're using what as a variable?

[analog sand]

The directions

[nimble torrent]

You're probably better off using animation metadata then. It's much more flexible, easier to use, and can be read directly from the sequence rather than having to sort through it's animation notifies.

[nimble torrent]

You want an animation to be visible to the player... but you don't want it on a character?

I don't understand at all.

In what context do you want the animation to be visible?

[analog sand]

As in a preview, I'm making a combo builder so I want the player to be able to see what the animation they're picking looks like without making the player do said attack

I know this can be achieved by just pointing a camera at a hidden dummy to play but I didn't know if there was a more streamlined solution

[nimble torrent]

No, I don't think so. You'd usually use a dummy character.

When you say 'making the player do said attack' do you mean 'making the player actually press the button in order for the attack to happen' or do you mean 'cause the players character to display the animation'?

[analog sand]

The latter

[nimble torrent]

Then yeah, you use a dummy.

I mean - you hypothetically could render the animations and then play them back as movies - but there's really no point in doing it that way.

[viscid willow]

Out of curiosity, when you say metadata do you mean like custom animation curves?

[nimble torrent]

No, I mean the class literally called 'Anim Meta Data'.

You can define your own data storage class that descends from Anim Meta Data, and then you can attach it to any animation sequence and store arbitrary data on it.

[viscid willow]

ohh interesting

[nimble torrent]

The metadata classes can be read, edited, and added by Anim Modifiers - which makes them useful when combined. You can add an Anim Metadata class as a tag to tell the Anim Modifier to run particular behaviors on it.

That's how the 'How far until you hit' value was done. The Anim Modifier only tested animations with that specific metadata on it, which flagged them as attacks.

Or... no - it was the presence of the 'Activate Hurtbox' animation notifiy, and then I added the Anim Metadata, and did the calculations.

[viscid willow]

oh okay, sorry is that part of the conversation above?

[nimble torrent]

I did mention how I used Animation Modifiers above, yeah.

[viscid willow]

I'll have a read, I saw metadata and got interested thanks

i've used modifiers to do simple things like place footstep notifies, but ive never gone into metadata so i'm curious

[nimble torrent]

They can be used for some really cool stuff.

[viscid willow]

Ahh one of our programmers implemented something similar on a previous project.

That's really cool.

So in your distance to hit example you measure the root motion up until the "hit box activate" notify is triggered and write that value to the metadata so each attack knows how far it should travel to hit the target?

[nimble torrent]

Yep!

[viscid willow]

https://tenor.com/view/spiderman-very-cool-gif-13199129

In the case of the foot pivot are you comparing the foot position against something to determine that it is stationary? Like the height of the foot from the ground to determine that it's planted?

And then the pivot would be handled at the character movement level, right? Pivoting the character capsule around the determined foot

[nimble torrent]

Yeah! That's totally it!

The first thing to test for footsteps is that the foot isn't moving over time? So you calculate the velocity of the foot, which gives you periods of stillness, and then check if the foot is close to the ground during that period.

Foot placement stuff can get really complicated if you decide to care about it.

[viscid willow]

ah neat, yeah in the times I've tried to calculate it I often end up with data that isnt quite representative of what's actually happening, I think primarily because I was doing one of those two things you mention there. Like I would only check distance to the ground so that would be fine but something like a walk brushes the feet so close to the ground that it gives similar data to if the foot was actually planted

[nimble torrent]

Aw, yeah. I definitely got some garbage values out sometimes too.

[lethal blaze]

taking a quick break from the pauldron haha - im using transform offsets to drive some arm correctives on realtime mocap - i was wondering if there are some other tools at my disposal to help prevent some additional clipping these nodes don't seem capable of solving - would setting up some ik help with this?

i was thinking of maybe using spherical pose readers to rotate the arms out when facing too far inward but i fear thats overly complex

[gentle kestrel]

Does anyone know what happened to Attribute Curves since UE5.2?

In 5.2 I could import an FBX character which had custom attributes associated with the root bone, and these attributes would appear as curves on the skeleton.

However, in 5.3 and 5.4 when importing the same FBX file, I do not get these custom attribute curves on the skeleton. I only get the morph and material curves.

Is this bugged in 5.3 and 5.4 or is it by design?

Thanks

[spare pulsar]

has anyone worked with Accurig?

[dire thorn]

Is there a simple way to reverse animations? I kinda assumed inverting the Rate Scale would be easiest.. but does not work like that.

[humble hare]

has anyone tried using the quest 2 (or any VR headset) to get some mocap data for use in animation inside unreal?

[storm idol]

Can anyone tell me why when i have this control rig node here the blend space doesnt work?
in my CR im controlling 1 bone based on the movement of the actor, which is why im setting things here, but everything else is standard stuff

[last pelican]

Hey all! Looking for a character animator (preferably stylized animation) that works with Unreal engine. I'm an animator myself an thinking of pivoting towards realtime / game anim and was hoping I could have a chat with somebody who made the same switch. thanks 🙂

[sick lance]

So any time I make a new animation sequence and then use it for a montage, it plays rotated 90 degrees to the right unless I use additive animations in the sequence, which at least faces the right way but butchers the result in other ways? It happened when I animated with the third person template's control rig and then retargetted to the FPS arms and when I set up a modular control rig for the fps template arms.

I have a few guesses about what I should do and what's wrong, since the modular rig seems to be facing Y while the default character is facing X, but I'd hate to wander in the dark here and not make any progress.

[viscid cairn]

Hi, how's everything going? I was wondering if someone could help me with this. I'm working on making a Metahuman stay in an idle state, and when a key is pressed, it plays an animation. To achieve this, I'm using a montage and an animation blueprint. The system works well, but the issue I'm facing is that every time the montage is triggered, the Metahuman's head separates from the body for a second before returning to its place. Also I am making this for a quest 3 i don´t know if this information is useful or not.

[snow shell]

I have weird jittering when my montage is blending out. The Montage has 2 Animation Sequences in it, the first one is attack with root motion, the second is the idle without root motion. I just use a simple PlayMontageAndWait blueprint node inside the gameplay ability class.

[pastel roost]

@nimble torrent In case you're interested, the thread-safe functions I was trying to use were introduced in 5.3, and I was trying to use them because there's now a warning to not use the older anim state custom events/notifies. As you found out, they simply don't have the same functionality. The older method is exactly what I needed. I made a little writeup on the forums: https://forums.unrealengine.com/t/ue-5-3-animation-blueprint-the-recommended-approach-is-to-use-the-anim-node-function-versions/1298379/5?u=twads9816

[nimble torrent]

Ah! Thanks for writing that up! That's useful to know!

[sick lance]

Is the optimal solution for fixing the facing of animations made in Unreal really just to export it, delete the original, and reimport it with -90 on the Z rotation?

Cuz it works, but it feels very stupid.

[untold flume]

why does my animation glitch out like this everytime it loops? it looks fine when its in sequencer

[sick lance]

Hm. Kind of looks like it wants to be turned 90 degrees?

[untold flume]

that seems to have fixed it, i had the skeleton in sequencer turned 90 degrees and i put it back to 0, thank you

[dire crag]

Guys am i right with the assumption that pretty much the whole tutorials you can find on youtube are nothing more than lyra reversed and nobody came up with his own idea? I was looking for 8 Way directional movement and it seems the only asset you can get is lyra copy paste

[nimble torrent]

You don't have to delete the original, you can reimport over top of it.

You can also modify them in the Sequencer, using the automatic IK control rig.

[nimble torrent]

I haven't seen any locomotion system tutorials that I'd recommend unfortunately.

[sick lance]

Reimporting when it wasn't imported to begin with didn't give me the option to adjust the rotation, if I'm not mistaken.

[nimble torrent]

It's not something that is done on reimport, I meant you could change the rotation in blender or maya, and reimport that.

[lost nacelle]

Can't seem to find a solution to now being able to import an Alembic animation.
Anyone has experience with this?

[nimble torrent]

That said, hypothetically you could just load the animation back into sequencer, rotate the root, and you should be good.

[lost nacelle]

Whatever I choose in the importer window it'll work for nothing (I always deactivate the Flat checkbox)

[topaz narwhal]

https://www.unrealengine.com/marketplace/en-US/product/game-animation-sample

be ready for 3 million games of parkour

[nimble torrent]

I mean - parkour is cool.

So this is not that bad.

[topaz narwhal]

the season of horror games has finished

[topaz narwhal]

I will make one for sure lol

[sick lance]

Ah, yeah. I was talking about doing it with Unreal only. Export it, delete it, and then import the exported file with adjustments to the Z rotation without having to open anything else.
But if you can do it that easily in the sequencer then that's my answer, no need for the song and dance.

[pastel roost]

I spoke too soon. You can do the same thing in anim transitions, so I imagine that's preferred method.

However, I realized that this isn't what I needed lol.

[nimble torrent]

That is usually how things work out.

"Aha! I have finally figured out how to do This Thing after long hours of work and reading the Tomes of Forbidden Knowledge... of course now that I've done that I realize I need to do something else entirely!"

[fathom bluff]

still better than 3 million games with ALS

curious why the new mannequin tho

[nimble torrent]

Manny and Quinn have a lot of complicated systems running on them that tend to confuse newbies.

We get two to three people in here a day with some variation of "I'm using Manny and/or Quinn wrong!"

[pastel roost]

Yup. It helps if you like to dig into this stuff (I'm one of those people). Hopefully the findings help someone else.

[fathom bluff]

Still seem to have acceleration issues in the starts

This demo sure feels like a level up in quality, Lyra level. The "Generic" retargetter is intriguing

[topaz narwhal]

Is awesome, some times, very few if forced a lot, some leg pass through the other, there is no crouching yet or sprinting, but there is "running" or "walking" mode.

it could make useless tone of tutorials on vaulting mantling etc

useless* = only for people who want to go deeper to understand how is made

[pastel roost]

Is there a way to add some random variation to an animation? I have a simple animation where my bones rotate and scale up, and I want to randomly change how much they rotate.

[topaz narwhal]

in your Anim Blueprint you can add a node called Modify Bone

I just set up this in a project last days

[winged portal]

Hi!

Does anyone know why the animation is not reproducing?

The node gets triggered, but the animation doesn't happen. Same with some others, it either doesn't play or plays a few frames and ends

AnimBP is default

[topaz narwhal]

from my BP_Character, using an interface, I get from mesh the Anim Instance and from there the custom interface function I did, so depending my character I trigger or not some specific rotations. In your case you can just add some random rotation in the Modify Bone node

[topaz narwhal]

the montage in edit mode doesnt play, or Unreal when in Play mode doesnt trigger the montage?

[winged portal]

On edit mode it plays okey, it doesn't play when i trigger the montage on the pawn in play

[topaz narwhal]

could be that the Anim Montage node needs "Mesh" (the skeletal mesh that you wants to paly the anim) as target?

I dont know this from memory

[winged portal]

hmmm still not playing

it's getting interrupted, but i'm not sure what is interrupting it

[nimble torrent]

Are you using montages for anything else?

Montages in the same montage group overwrite each other.

You need to create a new group if you want to run them simultaneously.

[winged portal]

no, it's all default, only movement

and this montage that i'm trying to manually trigger

[fathom bluff]

LOL why is Epic lying?

The animation sample does not have 500 animations 😅

i count 373

[dire crag]

Im going to see whats inside and hopefully rip out some basic 8 way directional movement anims, the other questio nis how tf i get out the hyperactivity out of them because i assume this is some fortnite ahdh stuff

[fathom bluff]

hyper activity?

[dire crag]

yes i assume they will be absolutely janky and fast paced

like most stuff on mixamo

[fathom bluff]

they seem normal in the preview

[nimble torrent]

Curious, what does your animation node graph look like?

[fathom bluff]

But the anims are pretty long

[winged portal]

it's the default one

i'm moving the same animation to another project, to check if the problem is the animation. But no matter what animation i play

it seems to get interrupted

[nimble torrent]

So that's the update function, what about the animation graph?

[dire crag]

OMFG its 1000x worse than i thought, its absolute jank like your character is drunk wtf 😂

[winged portal]

This one?

[nimble torrent]

No, that's the state machine.

Specifically, I want to see the Slot node!

Where the montages would come through.

[fathom bluff]

ohh you ment the start stops

[winged portal]

So, this is the slot for the montage

[nimble torrent]

No, sorry. That's the montage itself. Could I see the slot node in the animation graph? It should be somewhere near the Output Pose.

[fathom bluff]

@winged portal

[dire crag]

yes its a huge problem since i wanted to use this for True First Person, with all that wobble its not usable, not even the running anim, even i detached the camera from the mesh

[winged portal]

This one?

[nimble torrent]

Ah, well I think we've found your problem.

[fathom bluff]

😉

[nimble torrent]

You need that 'DefaultSlot' node that rastodm just posted.

You should route your state machine into that, and then that into Output Pose.

[winged portal]

ohh i think i get it

the movement animations are working okey because they are based on speed

but when i play a custom in a specific slot, the slot is not being taken into account

[nimble torrent]

Not quite. Montages do not display in the graph without a slot node.

That's how they get played on the character.

[fathom bluff]

you will find that issue with most start and stops, honestly i dont think starts and stops are typically used with true first person because of the head movement in general. If they are.. custom camera rigs are normally required to Interp / smooth out the bobbing

[nimble torrent]

Montage slot nodes play the montage animation if there is a montage being played in the slot, otherwise they just pass through the pose that they are linked too.

[pastel roost]

Is there a way to get the position/time a sequence is at in the anim graph?

[nimble torrent]

I think the only place it's easily accessible is inside the transition logic of a transition node.

However, if you're trying to do that - chances are there is a much better way of doing whatever you're actually trying to use that for.

What are you planning on using that data for?

[dire crag]

I got rid of the bob completely by using virtual bones in my project, but the problem that persists is if you have strafe movement it leads to slight direction changes in the camera, meaning you have small amounts of stutter if the anim kicks in and also resets

I just quickly made the sample pack tfp, oh my god 😄

[pastel roost]

I'm trying to randomly scale how much a bone rotates in an animation.

[nimble torrent]

Can I ask for what purpose?

[winged portal]

So should i create a new state machine and assign it the slot?

[nimble torrent]

No, you should just put the slot node between your state machine and the output pose.

Just link the state machine to the slot node.

[pastel roost]

just to add visual variation

[nimble torrent]

And the slot node to the output pose.

[fathom bluff]

have you tried camera rot lag?

[winged portal]

That did it, thanks!

[nimble torrent]

An unusual task. What kind of animations are you doing this for? Machinery?

[nimble torrent]

Hurrah!

[pastel roost]

a plant growth animation

rotating leaves

[nimble torrent]

Ahh

So, for me - I would probably do this with a blend space.

So I'd have a small rotation version, and a large rotation version, and I'd put them in a blendspace, and then I'd pick a random float value and plug that into the blendspace.

So my leaf would then would have a random rotation within a range.

[fathom bluff]

@nimble torrent what are your thoughts on motion matching? compared to other animation methods?

[nimble torrent]

It's amazing for locomotion!

It is almost useless for anything else.

[fathom bluff]

like weapon states?

[nimble torrent]

If your weapon states affect your locomotion - it's great!

[fathom bluff]

or, other movement. climbing, swimming

[nimble torrent]

Those also work, but they tend to be either more abstract (swimming) or require a lot of post processing corrections (climbing) so it tends to be less useful in those cases.

[fathom bluff]

Yea ive been hesitant to use it because i feel like its restricted to base locomotion. As well as it being locked to 5.4 since its still unstable

[dire crag]

Has someone a tip on how to implement a simple strafing animation? (Left+Right Movement) that is not completely shaking the mesh every time it changes from walking to strafing?

otherwise im going to go normal first person because im really fed up at this point with animations constantly being a annoyance for the player in first person

Or i rule out directional movement and only use forward movement

[nimble torrent]

I would always recommend, if you're making a first person game - do not attach the camera to the character. Attach the character to the camera.

Body awareness is basically never worth the cost of developing it.

People look down once, go 'Wow!' and then do not look down again.

[pastel roost]

Looks like I'm getting some quaternion/rotation flipping when using a blend space, any idea how to solve that?

[fathom bluff]

😮 oh.. figured out the Retargetter setup

https://youtu.be/dfHJMjuub_c?si=T7KpEBExmgKCiVTW

[viscid willow]

The promised day has arrived 🙌 super keen to try out the new sample project

[surreal grove]

Solid!!

I want a breakfall roll like in ALS 😋

[viscid willow]

Is there a warning saying that state events/transition events are deprecated? I seem to remember seeing that or someone mentioning it.

Is that what those ⚠️ icons are?

[pastel roost]

They haven't exactly been deprecated yet. This is the warning.

[viscid willow]

Ah, that's it. Thanks for clarifying

[crystal furnace]

How do I export a Pose from Blender to Unreal? It's not an animation, and if it needs to be one how do I make it one

[viscid willow]

But the transition events don't have that recommendation, is that right?

[pastel roost]

Correct, and they work exactly the same way. I don't know if Epic's planning to do the same thing with those but seems like the preferred approach at the moment.

[viscid willow]

A pose would typically be an animation that is one frame long or frame 0 to frame 1 with each frame being the same.

Depending on what you're doing you can export your animation and convert it to a pose asset or right click on an animation in your abp and convert it to a single frame. You define the frame by setting a time (frame time) on the node

[viscid willow]

Good to know. Thanks for the info again 😅

[nimble torrent]

Not without seeing all the details of the project, sorry. It could be gimbal lock maybe, depending on your axis? It could be a lot of things.

[pastel roost]

Yeah that's what I suspected but then I reoriented the bones to simplify all the rotations and it still wasn't working.

[nimble torrent]

What kind of interpolation problems are you getting?

Have you played around with the triangulation stuff? Maybe the triangulation is off?

Try playing around with that and the 'Use Grid' option.

[pastel roost]

When the blend space value was not at one of the ends, the rotation value snapped some amount as the animated played through, around the middle. It looked like 90 or 180 degrees or so. I gave up on the approach, it isn't a battle worth fighting right now. It didn't even occur to me to check the blend space settings. 🥸 Eh, it's whatever.

[nimble torrent]

All right. Good luck.

[pastel roost]

Thanks for all the help today and yesterday though. You're very friendly and responsive, and it's people like you that I try to emulate when interacting with others here.

[nimble torrent]

[pastel anchor]

Does Unreal have a way to show what sequences are being blended in the animation debugger? Such as showing a list of all the blends and additives?

[nimble torrent]

More than looking at the animation blueprint connected to your test instance?

There's the console command for ' ShowDebug Animation ' which does give a lot of information.

Possibly not all the information you want though.

[pastel anchor]

That's a good start. Thanks!

[bitter shard]

Have you guys tried the MM sample? What do you think of it?

[lime bay]

Does anybody know how to export FBX animation FROM Unreal at 60fps? The export dialogue box does not seem to have an option for the frame rate.

[cunning locust]

did you do the same like me? duplicate the manny made retarget assets, then just use your model in it, and it works out of the box?^^

[fathom bluff]

well was a bit more work cuz of the synty model. it doesnt like live retargetting as much

i actually had to generate the rig for the UE4 synty mannequin and delete the extra finger changes. Auto align the bones. then it worked

as well as adding a tag and addition skeletal mesh in the Characters_All so i can use the swap

https://youtu.be/N44RmDbdrrc

[cunning locust]

why and where did you add a tag?

[fathom bluff]

In the GenericRetargetter ABP - you define the tag and the retargetter.
In the skeletal mesh of the character you give the skeletal mesh component a component tag

and why? so i can add the character in the swap all characters bp

[cunning locust]

but yo dont need to do that if you not wanna switch the character at all right? i just duplicated the widget for a character and added my dupli blueprint.

[fathom bluff]

no because your not using a different retargetter yours is already part of the system since your using ue4

[cunning locust]

i used a different retargeter, it still worked

but i did not use any tag

i had to make a retargeter for my own model

tomorrow i fiddle around with getting it into my game, and implement it into my current 20 fight animations .....

[fathom bluff]

nice

[barren fiber]

https://youtu.be/r-AsOWEFw28

all these motion matching speed runs hahaa

[small shale]

how responsive are controls?

[wheat charm]

It still has lots of problem for the parkour actions but the locomotion looks very nice.

[pastel anchor]

I wonder how the performance compares to Lyra animation.

[desert zenith]

question how do i define a bone in my rig to be the root bone?

[viscid willow]

The Root Bone by definition is the first bone in the skeleton hierarchy. Typically this bone would be at the origin and the rest of the character is a child of that bone. However, in the case of something like Mixamo, the Pelvis is the root bone, which causes a fair few issues when trying to retarget to the unreal skeleton.

[desert zenith]

right but it would seem that my root bone being named Root ends up not allowing root motion

so unsure if there's a way to allow unreal to recognize Root as root

without reimporting the entire skeleton

[viscid willow]

The name doesnt really have bearing on whether the bone is the root bone, you could theoretically call it anything.

Is there another bone above the root bone in your skeleton?

[desert zenith]

i guess skeleton?

but unsure if that was what unreal put

[viscid willow]

do you have a screenshot of your skeleton hierarchy?

[desert zenith]

getting one

[viscid willow]

The mannequin skeletons start with a root bone at 0,0,0, then the next bone in the animated hierarchy would be the pelvis, there are some IK root bones in there too

[desert zenith]

spine_001 would be the pelvis in this case

[viscid willow]

yeah so "Skeleton" will be your problem there. Because "Root" is not first, it is not a root bone, so any animation on "Root" is going to be relative to "Skeleton" and not considered root motion. I think that's gonna be a reimport I'm afraid 😔

Are you coming from Blender?

[desert zenith]

one point for unity it seems

[desert zenith]

yes

[viscid willow]

I'm working with unity right now and i dont know if I agree 😅 on the plus side, because your skeleton and root bone are probably in the same place you could most likely retarget your animation assets

[viscid willow]

did you happen to name your Armature object "skeleton"?

[desert zenith]

yes

[desert zenith]

right but this wasn't an issue with unity since i can define a root bone without relying on a hardcoded value

[viscid willow]

You'll want to keep the Armature object named "Armature", unreal will then know to ignore it on import

[desert zenith]

eye sea

[viscid willow]

just a fun blenderism

[desert zenith]

and should root still be root or can it be Root?

[viscid willow]

either is fine, the name doesnt matter so much, so long as it's the first bone in the hierarchy. All i would say is if you have a convention, stick to it. Caps or no caps haha

in case you run into issues: https://youtu.be/YbWfoyf4MqI?si=YHMo6C5uvbjXtzGc

[desert zenith]

i'll just do root cause i don't trust unreal engine

[viscid willow]

that's what this discord group is good for lol

[desert zenith]

yup

came in from unity to unreal just to see how good the engine is and to get something to motivate me to learn C++

[viscid willow]

You cooould try deleting the "skeleton" bone in the skeletal editor, i'm not sure how successful that would be since it's a very new editor https://dev.epicgames.com/community/learning/tutorials/0lpO/unreal-engine-skeletal-editor-usage-guide

[viscid willow]

while some things are different, I hope you find the animation tools are nice to use and very flexible, that's certainly been my experience in unity vs unreal when setting up any complex animation behaviour

There are some helpful people in this channel especially, if you have more questions

[desert zenith]

yeah i saw that, but it only works with rigs made with the unreal editor at least from what i'm seeing

cause i can't even rearrange the hierarchy

[desert zenith]

yeah it worked at least with getting rid of an extra parent bone

[viscid willow]

Nice! 🎉

[indigo sail]

[2024.06.13-10.08.18:451][981]LogWindows: Error: === Critical error: ===
[2024.06.13-10.08.18:451][981]LogWindows: Error:
[2024.06.13-10.08.18:451][981]LogWindows: Error: Assertion failed: !"Unimplemented function called" [File:D:\build++UE5\Sync\Engine\Plugins\Animation\PoseSearch\Source\Runtime\Private\PoseSearchHistory.cpp] [Line: 174]

hey guys my game is non stop crashing when i try to chnage walkk speed etc , max accerlations, and it seems to be a motion mathing plugin any idea?

[2024.06.13-10.08.18:451][981]LogWindows: Error:
[2024.06.13-10.08.18:451][981]LogWindows: Error: [Callstack] 0x000001d225539640 UnrealEditor-PoseSearch.dll!UnknownFunction []
[2024.06.13-10.08.18:451][981]LogWindows: Error: [Callstack] 0x000001d225530bef UnrealEditor-PoseSearch.dll!UnknownFunction []
[2024.06.13-10.08.18:451][981]LogWindows: Error: [Callstack] 0x000001d2254d4444 UnrealEditor-PoseSearch.dll!UnknownFunction []
[2024.06.13-10.08.18:451][981]LogWindows: Error: [Callstack] 0x000001d2254cfe98 UnrealEditor-PoseSearch.dll!UnknownFunction []
[2024.06.13-10.08.18:451][981]LogWindows: Error: [Callstack] 0x000001d2254ced6f UnrealEditor-PoseSearch.dll!UnknownFunction []
[2024.06.13-10.08.18:451][981]LogWindows: Error: [Callstack] 0x000001d22551973f UnrealEditor-PoseSearch.dll!UnknownFunction []
[2024.06.13-10.08.18:452][981]LogWindows: Error: [Callstack] 0x000001d225518278 UnrealEditor-PoseSearch.dll!UnknownFunction []
[2024.06.13-10.08.18:452][981]LogWindows: Error: [Callstack] 0x000001d22551a6a4 UnrealEditor-PoseSearch.dll!UnknownFunction []
[2024.06.13-10.08.18:452][981]LogWindows: Error: [Callstack] 0x000001d2254cab41 UnrealEditor-PoseSearch.dll!UnknownFunction []
[2024.06.13-10.08.18:452][981]LogWindows: Error: [Callstack] 0x000001d2254edee5 UnrealEditor-PoseSearch.dll!UnknownFunction []
[2024.06.13-10.08.18:452][981]LogWindows: Error: [Callstack] 0x000001d2254eb644 UnrealEditor-PoseSearch.dll!UnknownFunction []
[2024.06.13-10.08.18:452][981]LogWindows: Error: [Callstack] 0x000001d22554e167 UnrealEditor-PoseSearch.dll!UnknownFunction []
[2024.06.13-10.08.18:452][981]LogWindows: Error: [Callstack] 0x000001d2254f807c UnrealEditor-PoseSearch.dll!UnknownFunction []

[magic jungle]

Hello, I'm setting up this electric effect, and that spark ball is binded to a joint that's always facing the camera. I set up the joint to always look at the camera in the anim blueprint, but when I interact with the actor in-game, the logic is overridden with the actor's event graph and I can't copy and paste the logic from the anim blueprint animgraph into the actor event graph since some nodes aren't available in the actor event graph. How do I ensure this joint is always facing the camera no matter what?

This is the anim blueprint animgraph

This is the actor event graph

[small shale]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mhVp_cC9MLc

[gloomy pike]

do you guys know if animation blendspaces can be bad for performance? if so, what can I do to reduce a blendspace's impact on performance?

[barren fiber]

i remember blender automatically creates a root bone, havent used it in a while

[serene fiber]

nvm thats because of upperbody slot

[naive mountain]

🥳anyone have a list of anims?

[barren fiber]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jf3SkR1sOjo

[bold flame]

ue5 I love you but

if i hide something in the outliner, i do NOT want it rendered in the sequencer. and i don't think anybody does

[hallow pier]

anyone here good with ik that can take a look at an issue im having. im trying to get an ads system working using sockets , i had it working prior but when i made the transition over to a data table and multiple weapons i cannot get it to function right. I get a debug sphere to draw exactly where the socket is and save it as a variable , pass it to my animation bp and run a custom event to set the new variable it needs to be when i overlap the weapon for pick up in the character bp but once when i ads to apply the the new location and rotation its all wrong. ive been at it for like 3 days and cannot figure it out. really new to IK and animaiton in unreal. photo above is the attach to hand function that handles getting the weapon by name and setting the class of the child object.

that gets called by an interface when i overlap the weapon

first image sets the sockets location and rotation in animBp. second is also animBp setting location and rotation

[hollow moat]

Hi im trying to make it so the gun doesn't tilt while walking so i used a blend per bone node but it doesnt have any effect? Could i get some help please and thank you.

[analog jungle]

Hey guys I have a modular character I'm working on in 5.3 and for some reason the static pose looks distorted but when I play the game everything looks ok. When I open the same file in 5.4 the static pose looks ok but I did notice the Anim BP looks like this in5.3 When I play the idle animation just on the static mesh there's no distortion its only when I make a Blueprint for the character.

[nimble torrent]

Do you use a post processing animation blueprint? I know that Manny and Quinn use quite elaborate ones for deformation corrections.

[nimble torrent]

When you say 'doesn't have any effect' do you mean 'It changes something, but not what I want' or 'It changes nothing at all' or 'I can't figure out how to add it to the animation graph'?

[analog jungle]

no I'm just justing the defalut anim BP. I'm working on a pipeline to make characters for the marketplace and wanted to do a lot of test with the bones and skeleton before I finish the character just to makes sure everything works. What's strange to me is it looks ok in when I play in editor.

Also when i place the same BP in unreal 5.4 its not destoreted like that

[nimble torrent]

Hmm - the issue does seem very likely to be something to do with post processing. Like - you are displaying Quinn there and you don't have the typical post processing warning that you normally see for her.

So I suspect that would be the area I would focus my investigations if I were in your position.

[analog jungle]

ah ok thank you so much

[nimble torrent]

It's also possible it's just a display option or something? Sorry, it is very weird and I'm not really sure what's causing it.

If you start a new project, and you look at quinn, do you see that error?

[analog jungle]

yea when I play the game everything looks ok. so strange

but Epic will never accepted it if it looks like that when you place it in the edior i'm sure. Time put on the thinking cap. lol

[nimble torrent]

Yeah, if it was just the modular character I would say it's probably however you're assembling the modular character in the BP before game start - but you show it affecting quinn as well, which makes me suspect it's something to do with the post processing (maybe you have all post processing blueprints disabled?).

[nimble torrent]

Can I ask why you're not just adding sockets to your Weapon classes? This way seems unnecessarily elaborate.

[analog jungle]

ah I check that in the character BP right?

[nimble torrent]

I don't have unreal open, but I think it's on the skeletal mesh component.

Are you using the Leader Pose Component?

[analog jungle]

ah yes I am

[nimble torrent]

OK, the Leader Pose Component is odd in that it stops the evaluation of bones that are not within it's own skeleton.

So if you have additional twist bones or deformation bones, using the Leader Pose Component stops those from working.

So it could be related to that.

[analog jungle]

oh wow

ok I do some digging

[nimble torrent]

Yeah, the Leader Pose Component basically says "Hey - don't bother to evaluate that skeleton at all. I'm doing all the heavy lifting for that component."

This makes it very fast but also rather limited.

[nimble torrent]

Is there a reason you're using a joint and a texture and not using a billboard component?

[analog jungle]

hmm sorry i'm not sure what you mean. In the construction script?

[nimble torrent]

Not meant for you, that's aimed at GunyenTony.

[analog jungle]

god so much to lern lol

ah sorry lol

[nimble torrent]

I go through the backscroll and try to answer questions.

[magic jungle]

No, I think a billboard would probably work, but I figure that it would give me insight in terms of if I have to deal with setting up logic for eyes or heads pointing towards certain actors if I need to set such a thing up in the future anyway

Although, will a billboard work for non planar topology? The spark ball effect is textured on two cones and a plane

[hollow moat]

It changes nothing, i even tried to put a pistol animation and nothing happened.

[nimble torrent]

No, billboards are flat. In your case, it seems like using particles or something would probably be better, but who knows.

[nimble torrent]

Oh! Play Animation is clobbering your animation blueprint.

Play Animation replaces the animation blueprint which is why the look-at stops working when it is activated.

You want to use some other method of telling the animation blueprint to play an animation.

'Play Animation' is mostly useful for simple animated objects like fans and stuff.

[nimble torrent]

OK, when you say 'gun doesn't tilt' while walking' do you mean 'When I look down, I want the arms to stay forward'?

[fringe mist]

Hi everyone! Does anybody know, how to get Metahuman cards groom assets? Every time I download a model from MH Creator, some assets are missing: for instance hair groom asset with cards could be there, but cards for eyelashes, eyebrows, beard, etc do not exist. Any help highly appreciated. UE 5.3.2

[naive mountain]

Know any good Ledge Grabbing animations? If you jump across a gap and snag a ledge with your hands.

[nimble torrent]

@magic jungle - You probably want to look into 'Play Anim Montage' or 'Play Slot Animation As Dynamic Montage'. You need a Slot Node in your animation graph though, to make those work.

[analog jungle]

hey sorry I forgot to ask is it best to disable twist bones when I export my character to FBX?

[nimble torrent]

Ehh, probably as a best practice? You only want animated bones in your animations. Procedural bones should not be included.

[hollow moat]

In the video when your walking the gun goes to the side instead of staying straight.

[nimble torrent]

OK, I'm guessing you decided to attach your characters camera to the head bone of the character?

That tends to cause a lot of problems. People do it, but it is almost never worth the cost in complexity and effort.

[hollow moat]

Yes

Where would i put it then sorry im new to all of this still.

[nimble torrent]

There is a reason that the example first person character is a pair of arms attached to a camera.

[hollow moat]

But i want a full body

[nimble torrent]

Then you will fight that decision for the rest of production - and likely beyond, because it tends to be a constant source of bugs.

[hallow pier]

i am adding sockets to the weapon classes. they all have sockets for the sights.

[nimble torrent]

Then why not add one for the hands?

[hallow pier]

they all have root sockets that are aligned for the hand when attached

[nimble torrent]

Then what are you doing with the weird offset stuff that is causing whatever your bug is?

[hallow pier]

thats not the issue i can attach the weapon no problem . when i try to set my Ik position for the ads it doesnt go to the proper location for the sight socket

[nimble torrent]

When you say 'ads' do you mean 'advertisements'?

[hallow pier]

aim down sights

[nimble torrent]

OK.

[hallow pier]

those second images are in the animation graph to get the sight socket on the weapon from the weapon bp and get its relative location to set the hands to . the second is taking those locations and rotations to spply them to the Ik and move the hands for ADS . it works fine with a skeletal mesh attached to a hand socket directly but once i use my data table and load the actor into that socket i lose the proper transforms

[nimble torrent]

OK. I've got to go, so I can't dig into this. I am guessing it's probably just a math problem.

You've probably got a matrix multiplication out of order, or you're not taking into account the actors transform relative to your skeletal mesh components transform relative to the hand IK.

[hallow pier]

it works fine until i make it so the weapon isnt spawned on start

[hallow pier]

thanks anyways

[nimble torrent]

Are you sure that you're zeroing out the transform when you attach the weapon?

Like - you reparent the weapon to the character's bone - do you zero out the transform when you do that?

[hallow pier]

just set an empty value before reseting it ?

[wet sedge]

I was going to make animation, there is such a situation in my 3D design, how can I fix it?

[native umbra]

So I'm using a Spring Interpolate function in my control rig, but it's instantly interpolating no matter what values I use. It's acting as if it is not there. Is there something I need to do to fix that?

[naive herald]

Hey yall im super rough with animation stuff so i was wondering if anyone here could help me out i'm trying to make an effect similar to the one in the first couple seconds of this video: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1YB8z0lAmUuzsc-QkdtoW8aU63-Y2Zslc/view?usp=sharing where the character does a backwards motion before blending into the normal fowards animation.

My main struggle is getting that backwards animation to work. I can't tell if I need to rely on the characters orientation for the effect and have the animation going forwards, have the animation go backwards and use a blendspace with two versions of the forward animation or what. I've had a pretty rough day and my brain is out of sorts and I'm sure I'll wake up tommorow knowing what to do, but I really need a win today. Any help would be greatly appreciated

Feel free to @ me or even dm me, It would seriously make my day, even if you just want to say "Fuck you i hate frogs" atp its one of those days

[nimble torrent]

You want the actor to be directly aligned to the weapon bone of the character. How you do that, or in what order, doesn't matter - but you need it to do that. If you're still working on this, and still checking things, I would check the value of the transform of the weapon actor when you get the visual problem.

[nimble torrent]

You need to fix the weight painting quite a lot. Do you know how to do that?

[wet sedge]

I chose automatic adjustment from blender, I don't know exactly what kind of weight to apply because I think it will break when I throw unreal engine, but if it will solve my problem, I will learn.

[nimble torrent]

Unreal will not break weight painting. I recommend looking up how to do weight assignment in Blender - there are lots of tutorials about that.

[nimble torrent]

Is this happening when you render a movie or at all times? I've heard people talking about the interpolation stuff not interacting with the movie rendering pipeline properly.

[native umbra]

At all times unfortunately

[nimble torrent]

Even when you try it out in the control rig itself?

What about other simulation nodes like Verlet (Vector)?

[native umbra]

Let me check something else

im interpolating a quaternion so verlet is not possible it seems

[nimble torrent]

No, I just mean - what happens if you try any other simulation nodes?

If they work, you know the simulation system itself is not deactivated or broken.

And the problem is the Spring.

[native umbra]

Oh

Hmm, let me see what I might be able to add

would you have suggestions for what to modify so that I can tell?

[native umbra]

How can you tell if the simulation system is deactivated?

I have this working in an old project in 5.2, and now I'm using 5.4, but I'm doing it on the motion matching sample, so maybe there's something odd going on there

[nimble torrent]

It's possible!

The way I'd test if the simulations were working would be to just make two controls, and have one try to chase the other with Verlet (Vector), as that's the easiest to setup.

[native umbra]

Okay, I'll try that, thank you!

[nimble torrent]

I might also try making a new control rig, and seeing if a spring works in there, because I would not be surprised if there were Substantial Shenanigans going on in any Control Rig supplied by Epic.

They tend to get quite esoteric.

[dire crag]

Hello, can someone give me a tip how to handle the transition? My mind can't comprehend how to have the proper animation at 45 / -45 degrees , its always slowed down.

[naive herald]

if i could just get a google keyword on this, at least. Its not a turn in place but it looks like a similar technique, its not a traditional blendspace. I just need to figure out what the technique is thats used to play an animation while the character is turning towards input direction. Sorry for asking twice, gonna go have a nervous breakdown now. Thanks in advance

Edit: It was just a blendspace with the animation turned 180 degrees. That was it haha. Just that and one small animation in the middle with some tilt to it. Thanks for all the help guys

[idle wharf]

I want to get the world position of a bone in the control rig. But the To World node does not account for the rotation of the skeletal mesh so it's not the true world position.

I could pass the bone location from the actor blueprint but I would really like to know if there is any other way?

These two give the exact same vector when the actor is not rotated, but the 2nd node setup doesn't work when the actor is rotated

[dire crag]

oh my god i spent f**kin 6 hours to debug this, turns out its because mixamo anims don't work properly and play the animation backwards lol, at the end of a line it starts at 0 and progresses to 100 to the target not the other way around

[viscid willow]

It's a little difficult to understand what's going on, but it looks as though you're blending two locomotion cycles together which have different cycle lengths or start at different phases in the walk.

Typically when authoring a blend space you would want to ensure the cycle length and foot phasing is consistent across your sequences so they blend correctly. I made a post a while back about how I like to approach strafe blendspaces if you're interested in that: #animation message

[dire crag]

I noticed this ONLY happens with Mixamo animations (i uploaded manny, used the converter and inserted into UE). Its weird because as you can see the anim plays properly outside the range but not inside, so it means it goes from 0-100 instead of 100-0 when blending

You can see it gets progressively slower when i approach the node but plays at normal speed when outside

[viscid willow]

Where are you setting the -1.0 playrate? Depending on where this is being set might have different results in the blend space, can't say I've ever had anims playing backwards in a blend space to know 😅

[dire crag]

Im not setting any playrate, im keeping them how they come from mixamo and how they are in the sequencer

Someone actually had this problem too and he said :

Creating animation assets of default animations from preview mesh seemed to make this go away.

But i can't wrap my head around what he means with this

[viscid willow]

oh so you have exported the walk forward animation from mixamo, but backwards?

[dire crag]

It plays fine in sequencer but not fine in blendspace even no values are altered, the default UE anims play normal

You can see here that its the right speed in sequencer, right speed when OUTSIDE the blendspace keyframe but slowed down in between my run animation even at 99%

Oh actually im wrong, it also happens with default anims

[viscid willow]

I've not encountered this before. I suspect there is something in your blend space settings causing this.

If you make a fresh blend space and re-create this setup, without changing any settings, does the problem persist?

[dire crag]

Yep, just imported the same anims and same behavior

You can see how the other anims work fine, so i mean when you go outside the play area they play at full speed. But the mixamo one does play slowed INSIDE but normal speed outside.

[viscid willow]

Yeah this is a weird one.

The fact that your walk left animation is moving through space is certainly going to be an issue. Are these root motion animations? or a mix of root motion and non-root motion?

[dire crag]

I have root lock off for the anim in this example but its just because i forgot to turn it off at import, since its for testing only, the videos above were made with root lock on.

[viscid willow]

Are your animation sequences perhaps at different sample rates? one is 30fps another is 60fps? I'm not sure if this is the issue, just spitballing

[sacred whale]

Hey I'm having a pretty serious problem trying to get an animated camera from Blender into Unreal. I baked my animation and exported it as an fbx, however when I import it into unreal, the camera's rotational animations are the same for every frame of animation, which is not the case in the animation itself.

[sharp linden]

So I know that Copy Pose From Mesh is the main method of controlling mesh movements coming from parent. And it applies to bones. But I'm wondering if it's possible that it works with controls from Control Rig? Or if I will create a virtual bone in parent that matches bone of child being controlled?

[nimble torrent]

It does not copy controls, just bones - I wouldn't do your virtual bone plan either, instead - I would just drive whatever controls I wanted to do in the copying animation bp with animation data I already have.

[nimble torrent]

What happens if you reimport the fbx file with the camera back into Blender?

Do you get the rotation data?

[viscid willow]

Is that kind of animation is supported in Unreal? If you wanted to have an animated object like a camera that you want brought into unreal it would need to go through the skeletal system, right?

[sharp linden]

The reason I'm considering this option is because I want to be able to use control rig of parent in sequencer. But I guess the easiest option is just to add this bone in both meshes

[nimble torrent]

Really depends on what you're trying to do. What are you trying to do?

[nimble torrent]

Cameras are treated special. You can import a camera track from an fbx file directly into a camera track in Sequencer.

[sharp linden]

So I have shoulder pads which have their own skeleton. It is controlled by body skeleton (just like in metahuman head is controlled by body). I have aiming setup which should solve the majority of shoulder pads movements, but sometimes it needs manual tweaks and I want to make sure to control those through body

[nimble torrent]

It's how people do cinematics.

[viscid willow]

😮 i was unaware

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

[nimble torrent]

Why would you want a bone related to shoulder pads in the main body skeleton though. That really seems like something that should be exclusive to the shoulder pads skeleton.

[viscid willow]

but the same wouldnt be true if you wanted to do an animated gameplay camera? like some bespoke interaction that runs on a montage

[sharp linden]

That's in case if they go inside body and it's not something that you can easily control with constraints

[nimble torrent]

I think you're right about that. You would need to handle moving the camera with code / blueprints.

[nimble torrent]

What do you mean by 'they go inside body'?

[sharp linden]

Mesh intersection

[nimble torrent]

I'm not sure why would you think that adding a bone for controlling the shoulder bones to the main skeleton would prevent intersection.

What prevents intersection is... well... mostly nothing. Intersections almost always happen, but you can mitigate the worst of them by careful design, and if the design is bad, you usually can get away with some careful skinning and things like the Pose Driver.

[sharp linden]

Yeah, I guess Pose Drivers is an option in this case. Although from what I understand from perspective of technical animator that it's better to leave options for manual tweaking if necessary, but I guess with the fact that those are technically different skeletons it is not an easy option to add.

Also I wanted to say I really appreciate your insight you share all of the times, really thank you @nimble torrent

[nimble torrent]

👍

[nimble torrent]

What do you mean by 'manual tweaking'? Like - that's kind of what the pose driver is for.

[sharp linden]

Nono, I mean from the perspective of animating character with key frames, when you need to adjust control or bone position

At least that's the sentiment I have seen so far from technical animators that it should be the best approach

[nimble torrent]

Ooh, you mean in terms of allowing animators to specifically tweak the pauldrons? Hmm.

Tricky. If they're swappable clothing, and might not exist on a character at any given point - you probably can't do that, because you would need a duplicate for every body animation for every piece of clothing and that is wildly wasteful.

If they are what you might call 'integrated parts of the character' as in - they are never going to be without those pauldrons because they don't change clothes - then you could make a full childBP for that character, and include tweakable bones for the pauldrons.

So which approach you can afford to do really depends directly on your game design, what the character is and how they will be used.

[sharp linden]

In my case it is going to be integrated, yes. I think I will dive deeper in this option and see if I can add more control to childBP besides pose drivers, thank you!!

[nimble torrent]

You'll have to create copies of your animations. You'll probably want to do the dynamics for the pauldrons in a post-processing animBP.

[viscid willow]

seconded

[nimble torrent]

Thinking on this, technically you wouldn't need a copy of all your animations, you could just do one for the animations where you need custom controls for the pauldrons.

[lethal blaze]

the way i imagined doing it was evalutating live link frame on the event graph, getting the jaw drop data, then multiplying it there, and having that result get set as a variable

but im unsure how i would use that data over in the AnimGraph

[hallow elm]

Hi, I found bug
When you use "Blendspace Graph" in State machine, I don't know why but it stops working.

[feral aurora]

Hi guys, i want ask to you.
Previously i can setting anim asset with experimental vfx, but i can see in level sequencer.
Why it happen & how to solved this?

[reef meadow]

U should include niagara into lvl sequencer too if u wanna niagara appear

[feral aurora]

So what next the step if i want to see my anim asset with add adjust niagara in level sequencer?

[loud path]

Hi! In Unity there was a trigger variable to enter animation transition once in AnimBP , is there equivalent variable or method in UE?

[vapid flower]

hello guys i don't know what was happing

[median steppe]

How do i play a level sequence from C++?

[keen cape]

hi, how can I put a 'transitional animation' between 2 animation states in anim bp? for example stand up to crouch. One way I can think is that by putting just a 'bridge state' between the walking and crouching states but that would be messy

[dire crag]

Hey guys i need some help, im 2 days trying to make a basic 8 way locomotion system. I need anims for slow walk (300 u/s) , sprint (500 u/s). Every anim pack i found is either looking bad or not working properly. Can someone tell me where to get Anims that look good? I want it like they did in arma reforger.

The sidestrafing is what breaks most of the time, either too slow or too fast

[naive mountain]

Any great Ledge Grabbing animation packs out there? For example, 3rd person jump over chasm, grab ledge & pull up.

[dire crag]

Has someone experience on how to get a normal backwards walk with this setup? It breaks my strafe movement when i put it at 180 / - 180

[indigo sail]

hey guys i have a issue i have 1 montage system using upper body , and yet i have a combo montage system that i need to overite the other system when i need how would i do this?

[naive mountain]

You need an idle animation in the middle & potentially diagonal strafing animations

[dire crag]

I have the idle, i want to avoid using diagnonal strafing because i can't find any decent ones, the lyra are an absolute joke because they let the character walk from the left when strafing on both sides so the animations are not mirrored

The player is always crooked

It just looks wrong in thirdperson

And mixamo stuff does not really translate good imho, most of the stuff is plain junk

[dire crag]

Now im very satisfied, just one strafe anim to tweak and im done.

[covert orchid]

hi! anyone knows how can I fix this? because I thought of attaching it to the face, but then the 1st person camera would look weird, and I thought of just don't having the face in the metahuman, but then in the mirrors it would look very weird.

[bronze fable]

Anyone playing with the new Motion Matching stuff? I'm messing with the chooser tables and it looks like gameplay tags aren't working properly? Can anyone else confirm?

I cannot bind values to gameplay tags. I can bind to everything else just fine from what I can tell

[dire crag]

For anything you do with attaching to head, always remove the head for the player

(so visibily get rid of it)

[covert orchid]

but in the mirrors the player would look weird without the head no?

[nimble torrent]

This is one of many reasons mirrors are very rare in video games.

And often involve a lot of trickery and shenanigans.

[nimble torrent]

Do you mean that you have both an upper body montage system and a full body montage system that you want to use together?

[nimble torrent]

It is messy, and is also the way you do it. You can use automatic transitions on the transition state so that it changes state when the animation completes, but it is always a bit of a mess.

[nimble torrent]

Depends on if you want to create a level sequence in c++ , or just play one that's in the level. If you want to play one that's in the level, you just have to get the sequence (either from a property or iterating through the world) then just call Play?

Play Animation is really not the intended method of playing animations on meshes (yes, the name is confusing). It's typically used for mechanical objects like fans or doors.

To play an animation with blends and states - you want to create an animation blueprint.

If you want to play one-off animations in response to player actions, consider using the 'Montage' system.

[nimble torrent]

You would probably read the 'jaw open' curve with Get Curve Value and then multiply it and set it back with Set Curve Value.

Montages are another kind of asset that you create and then add sequences to that asset.

[lethal blaze]

oh let me try that sorry i deleted the bulk of my question:

"hi there - i am using livelink face to control some morph targets on my character - the problem is, i need the jaw to drop further. is there a way to add a multiplier to that morph target?
the way i imagined doing it was evalutating live link frame on the event graph, getting the jaw drop data, then multiplying it there, and having that result get set as a variable
but im unsure how i would use that data over in the AnimGraph"

[nimble torrent]

You can use 'Play Slot Animation As Dynamic Montage' without defining a montage asset - however, you still need an animation blueprint with a Montage Slot Node in it. The Montage is played into the slot node, which plays the animation into the graph.

[lethal blaze]

but it get curve value sounds right gonna try it

[nimble torrent]

👍

[lethal blaze]

would i be able to set curve value in the animgraph?

[nimble torrent]

Graph? No. But you can in the Update functions in the animation BP.

[lethal blaze]

gotcha so here's what's slightly confusing me

so here i have live link going into the output pose (with head rotation in that transform bone node)

[nimble torrent]

OK?

[lethal blaze]

i might struggle with how to phrase the question

[nimble torrent]

Neat! I didn't know you could get properties from livelink like that? That's cool.

Makes your job easier.

(and more likely to avoid frame-delay shenanigans)

[lethal blaze]

but what is confusing me is how i would say make the adds to say the JAW_DROP curve apply to that output pose

since it goes: live link data -> output pose

would i need to do a live link data -> blend -> output pose?

[nimble torrent]

The evaluation path is a little more complicated, but you have a good point.

Been a while since I played around with this stuff, I think there's a... yes, OK.

There is a node in the graph called 'Modify Curve'.

I haven't used that much - but that should do it.

[lethal blaze]

i think that's it!!

it even has an add apply mode

[nimble torrent]

You don't need to set the animation mode, and shouldn't because that resets the animation blueprint.

You need an animation blueprint class, and you need a slot node in the animation blueprint classes animation graph.

[lethal blaze]

@nimble torrent i seriously owe you a coffee or something

if anyone gives you flack in the server i'll hound em down for ya

[nimble torrent]

Hah!

Thanks Balrog.

: )

We always feel a little uncomfortable when we step outside of our area of expertise. I find that sensation gets worse, and I get worse at embracing the feeling of learning as I get better at things. The feeling of mastery becomes routine, and so it becomes very uncomfortable to find myself in an area of ignorance!

I really try to push against that feeling because, in the immortal words of Jake the Dog:

https://encrypted-tbn0.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcTBAg0lBu2M1Kb7e9f0SRhWD5-b9uA-deoSEg&s

[lethal blaze]

i tell myself that every day

that feeling is daunting at first but then you learn to love it

@viscid willow i also got the pauldron kinda working for realtime mocap
i'll try to record a video today. the trick was the pauldron was designed in a way to be less reliant on the shoulder than a normal shoulder pad would, so with some spherical pose readers and clever remaping of the bones it kinda looks not horrible

[nimble torrent]

Do you know what animation blueprints are and what they do?

Based on what you've shown, you have a character mesh that you want to play animation on, and then you want the character to blend back into an idle, right?

OK, so. You know what animation blueprints are and how they work ?

Why not just do it in sequencer from the start?

And that sucks! Having the parameters of a job changed on you after you've already agreed to the job blows chunks!

How so?

Oh, OK. So this one-off animation you want to use - you're actually going to play the game using a controller, then hit the button at the point where you want the character to do the action.

And you're going to record all of this, and then put that in sequencer to create a cinematic?

OK, can you open the BP they gave you and show me the animation graph?

That's interesting. So it's a very simple character, just capable of walking?

OK, in the graph, if you right click you'll get a list of nodes you can add. Type in 'DefaultSlot' and you'll get a Slot Node.

If you put that node between the state machine and the output pose - your montages will work.

(assuming you've set your montage to play to the DefaultSlot, if you chose FullBody or UpperBody or whatever, you can change which slot the node represents by clicking on the DefaultSlot node and modifying a property in the Details panel)

Hurrah!

No trouble! Glad to help!

Yes, but that is fussy. You would need to use animation notifies and you might have to custom code them.

The code wouldn't be complicated but the system of setting up a notify class might be more work than you want to dedicate to something that is ultimately just feeding a cinematic.

Any way that you do it (you could change the parent of the weapon when you call the montage maybe?) would require some kind of custom code for reparenting the weapon to the characters hand.

[real orchid]

Hey folks I've been messing around with chooser since they highlighted them in the new motion matching setup. I'm a little confused as to the "intended use" of the evaluate chooser node.

The table being evaluated appears to be set at design time as a private parameter of the node on the node itself. How are we meant to data drive a setup like this? I would have expected to be able to pass this in as a parameter.

[nimble torrent]

You probably need an animation notify, because it's likely that you would want the change in parenting to happen at a specific moment in the animation, and not immediately.

You could maybe do it with timers?

Any way you do it, it's probably going to be a bit messy.

Do you have any technical support on this project? This is something that, as an animator, you would be justified in asking for a programmer to give you the animation notify for swapping the weapon.

A programmer can probably do it in ten minutes - but it's one of those things that would probably take you a long time, and your time is better spent on animating.

[nimble torrent]

Sorry darth! I personally haven't played around with these yet. We don't have many subject experts on choosers or motion matching at the moment. : (

[real orchid]

I've been messing around with them for a while and I really like how they're used but I'm a little confused as to their evaluation path and how to best fold them into data organization

I'm starting to think I'm going to have to figure out my own execution path in C and what they provide in BP isn't going to work at the moment for me

[nimble torrent]

Possibly!

Chances are though, if you have to start peeling them apart and rebuilding them - they're probably built for something other than what you think they're for.

Because if they were designed for what you think they're designed for - they'd be able to do it.

[real orchid]

I feel like the design intention is there the implemntion of this node is just kinda odd

It feels like this should be a latent action and this should be exposed as a pin as what it's doing is firing something off to a subsystem and waiting for a callback internally

this also appears to be the only BP exposed execution path at the moment

[nimble torrent]

Yeah? That's what choosers are.

They select something from a table based on criteria.

[real orchid]

yeah it's the way the table is handled in the retrieval path fro BP that's not super friendly to paramaterization

[nimble torrent]

But ... isn't the paramaterization done inside the table?

Like - isn't that the whole point?

[real orchid]

lets say that I have 10 enemies each with a different hit react table

I don't want to override GetHitReaction on each of their children in order to just replace that one noed

I just want to change a single data parameter

[nimble torrent]

But... I mean, couldn't you have one table and then have all their hit reactions in that table, and then have a 'EnemyType' enum in the table as part of the selector?

[real orchid]

memory

the cost of loading that table will become prohibative there is never a time when all reactions are needed

[nimble torrent]

Really? OK, if you're that memory constrained that a few additional hit reactions will put you over the limit, I guess that could be a problem.

[real orchid]

it's not a few

think in extremely content rich ways

where an enemy may have say 4 reactions per body type per magniture per direction

[nimble torrent]

Right, but each animation is what? 12 frames long? That's maybe 4kb per animation? You'd need several hundred enemy types to get above a few megs?

[real orchid]

yeah but also like

it escapes it's purpose at that point to be easier to design and uise

you lose encapsulation

[nimble torrent]

That's fair. If you want encapsulation - linked animation layers is probably the way to go.

Those can be swapped out by parameters.

[real orchid]

actually

that's a smart idea

I already link an anim layer per weapon style so I can have the anim bp hold the hit data

I already override a bunch of MM choosers that way

it's kinda gross but it's the fastest way I found to do it without writing my own stuff

[nimble torrent]

Once you start dealing with large amounts of assets - pretty much any way of dealing with it becomes kinda gross after a while.

[real orchid]

Yeah I'm like just early enough to want to still do a good job and not just let go

Thanks, been a fun talk

[nimble torrent]

👍

Good luck!

[real orchid]

How do I get linked anim layers on an anim instance

so lets say I wanted to provide the hit reactions in a function in my linked anim instance

oh I would just play it directly in the linked layer

duh

[lethal blaze]

@nimble torrent if i wanted to do a modify curve when the jaw is open x amount, i figured i'd get curve value in the event graph, setting it to a variable, and when that variable is over y amount it'll apply the curve modifier.

would i want to use blend pose by bool or is there a better bool based node i should be using?

[nimble torrent]

I think blend pose by bool would do it for you?

[lethal blaze]

i have no clue what it does i just see it used alot

cause would the blended pose of the modifier to overwrite the entire rig?

[nimble torrent]

Basically it blends between two poses based on a boolean variable as a switch.

In your case, because you're just deciding if you want to modify the curve or not, you could plug your test (Is curve value > the amount I care about) into the alpha of the Modify Curve node.

The alpha of a node determines how much of an effect it has.

"False" becomes 0.0, so if you plug False into the alpha it will turn the node off when it is false, and turn it on when it is true.

[lethal blaze]

oh woah you just blew my feable mind

that makes so much more sense

[lethal blaze]

like this

[nimble torrent]

That does not turn 'Jaw Alpha' off?

And also - technically, having a separate variable from 'Is Jaw Open Enough' isn't necessary.

Because if you just drag 'Is Jaw Open Enough' onto the Alpha pin it will create a Boolean to Float conversion.

And "False" converts to 0.0, and "True" converts to 1.0.

[lethal blaze]

oh wow i didn't know that

so no branch would be needed

[nimble torrent]

Nope!

[lethal blaze]

wowwww

golly you got me to learn twice!!

[nimble torrent]

👍

[lethal blaze]

i imagine this might make the jaw jump down a bit when the value is reached so may need to figure out some kind of curve unless i make the activation value super small

[nimble torrent]

Yeah, it probably will.

I was going to suggest creating a curve for this, if you need the amplification to ramp on and off.

[lethal blaze]

i thought about setting the jaw open amount to the alpha to kind of create a ramp

like the more the jaw opens, the more it gets affected

but that might be janky too

[nimble torrent]

You're probably going to have to play around with it a bit.

You could just try multiplying the incoming curve value by some modifier.

[lethal blaze]

that might do it

it already looks way better with the hard on / off so im happy

i'll be vtubing in no time thanks to you squish

[nimble torrent]

Eyy! Looking really cool!!

Nice job!

[real orchid]

@nimble torrent I'm not sure why they restricted access to these functions but this appears to be safe

    UFUNCTION(BlueprintPure)
    static UObject* EvaluateChooser (UChooserTable* ChooserTable, UObject* Context, TSubclassOf<UObject> TypeFilter)
        { return UChooserFunctionLibrary::EvaluateChooser(Context, ChooserTable, TypeFilter); } 

    UFUNCTION(BlueprintPure)
    static TArray<UObject*> EvaluateChooserAll (UChooserTable* ChooserTable, UObject* Context, TSubclassOf<UObject> TypeFilter)
        { return UChooserFunctionLibrary::EvaluateChooserMulti(Context, ChooserTable, TypeFilter); } ```

[lethal blaze]

for real you and batzz are the giants whose shoulders i selfishly scarmbled up to stand on

[nimble torrent]

Huh! Handy!

[real orchid]

Just in case anyone else shows up and asks about this

[nimble torrent]

It's useful to know!

[lethal blaze]

@nimble torrent i reckon doing it this way would give it a 20% boost regardless of how far the jaw is open

obviously at 0 it would be boosted by 0

since its adding the jaw amount by the amount x .2

[vital void]

Hey!

I've been trying to add a Control Rig with IK control to a mesh, however I'm having some issues. My first try was to use the Modular Rig, which works fine except for the Legs Pole Vectors. They are, for some reason, inverted between left and right leg.

After trying to change that and failing (because I can't open the modular rig as a blueprint for god knows why), I've decided that I'd create the Rig myself. Now however, instead of an issue with the PV, I'm having another with the IK for the leg. As you can see, the feet right after the leg bone is deformed.

Some additional information: the mesh is using the UE4 Mannequin skeleton and I made sure bone rotation are the same between them. Names are the same as well. I've tested the Modular Rig on the same Mannequin and it works fine.

And for the IK, I'm using the IKTwoBone function.

Do you have any clues on how to solve this?

On the pics, read IK instead of FK

[cunning locust]

just changed the parent class to the new one, and took the new skeleton, worked out of the box lol

,

i think i need to retarget the montages to the new skeleton to be perfekt, but otherwise seems fine, i just missed the climb settings

[nimble torrent]

It would actually reduce it to 20% of the original value. You want 1.2 to increase it by 20%.

[lethal blaze]

that's what i thought too at first but i have modify curve set to "Add" rather than blend

[nimble torrent]

Ah!

Oki!

[lethal blaze]

so it's adding 20% of the data to that same data

at least i think / hope!

i am not a smart man

[nimble torrent]

I think you're right!

[nimble torrent]

The modular control rig is highly specific about the orientations of all your bones. It is very tricky to use.

As for your specific problem with the leg, it's hard to say without seeing the skeleton hierarchy. If I had to guess, I'd say somewhere the FK controls are acquiring a rotation - but that's a holistic problem.

Are you reusing a control rig you got from somewhere or are you building this from scratch?

[vital void]

I figured the Modular was more headache than needed, hence the Control Rig. And I'm building it from scratch, following a few tutorials. The mesh in itself is one I bought on the marketplace and then edited. Is there anything I could share that could cue to the issue?

Edit: Maybe the issue is the primary Axis of the mesh. I'll edit it in blender and see if it leads to something.

[viscid willow]

https://tenor.com/view/txtreaction-bobatyunie-bobatyun-txt-enchanted-txt-vibing-gif-24915557

That's awesome

[nimble torrent]

Ok, so my question I suppose is "How are you creating and aligning the FK bones?" Because it seems likely that they're doing what they're supposed to do - they're just misaligned somehow.

[vital void]

So, apparently the solution was using ik_foot_l instead of just foot_l for the ik. I'm feeling stupid. Anyway... Thank you, @nimble torrent

[nimble torrent]

Ah!

👍

[vital void]

I guess that's a work around. Although I still think just foot_l should've worked as well

[indigo sail]

yes

i want the full montage body to take prio over upper body

[nimble torrent]

OK, do you want the full body and the upper body to be able to play at the same time?

To do that, you need two different Slot Groups.

And the two slot nodes in your animation graph.

[indigo sail]

uppder bordy is only for handcuff system, and full body is for all my combat animations

i broke my char and animation bp today i have to rewrite them xD

[nimble torrent]

Oh no!

[indigo sail]

is what i had , the blend pose was hooked in instead of the default slot

i tryed adding that default slot to blend pose that dint work

upper body took control still

it only worked when i set the animations to upper body slot

but ob some animations do 360 and look stupid 😛

[nimble torrent]

Everything needs to eventually get to the output pose. The way you're doing it, the only thing that would display would be the Default Slot, as that's the only thing plugged in.

[indigo sail]

yea ignore that

that was me ghetting the fully body to work 😛 instead of upper body taking full cont5rol

[indigo sail]

where would i need to add that full body slot

[nimble torrent]

Ok,in that graph you don't have a Default Slot node.

[indigo sail]

where would i need to add that full body slot to work in conjuction with the upper body slot but also overwrting the upper body

[nimble torrent]

Right before the output pose.

[lost verge]

Does anyone know how to set the blend in and blend out settings for a montage dynamically when called from BP?
I can set the blend in with "Montage play with blend settings" but I'm having trouble setting the blend out settings

[loud condor]

hey there, does anyone can find Copy Motion Node in AnimBP?

[dim rose]

A common approach is to use the Event Node (Event Node) and the Animation Status Machine Node (Anim State Machine Node) to trigger and control animation events. For example, you can use the Event Node to trigger an animation event, and then set the corresponding animation state in the Animation State Machine Node to replicate the motion.
Another approach is to use the Animation Component Node (Anim Component Node) and the Animation Blueprint Node (Anim Blueprint Node) to access and set the properties of the animation component. For example, you can use the Animation Component Node to obtain the status and parameters of the current animation component, and then set the corresponding animation status and parameters in the Animation Blueprint Node to replicate the movement.

[nova nexus]

hello guys quick question im trying to play 1 Anim montage then when finish play another one but everytime in between it snap back to the idle pose of my anim blueprint, why does it not play instantly ? im tryint to play with blend out setting i can't make it work

i used the pin on blend out and not on completed and it work

[crystal sigil]

lol thats exactly the question i was about to type 😄

[bold barn]

why nested chooser can't save when move to another location / duplicate? it break the motion matching demo when I try to move to another folder

[nova nexus]

glad i helped