animation

[barren fiber]

second

[worldly anvil]

Hello, does anyone know what On State Interrupt it's referring to? The only thing that mentions "Interrupt" is Transition Interrupt on the transition rule, but it doesn't seem to be what I'm looking for.

I need to call a function when the state machine deactivates my state

[acoustic flare]

Is there somebody that migrated the 5.7 GASP character to his own project? I tried to migrate it but I got these errors

[barren fiber]

if you open those it will tell you where it fails!

then you can see whats missing in your import

[barren fiber]

but tbh, learn from the sample project and try and replicate only as much as you need, the project is pretty nice but keep in mind it is more likely a technical demo which passes for a single player game if this is used by max 4 characters, if you need more then that, learn and nativize most of the functions.

[acoustic flare]

Strangly its one of the plugins debug function.

[acoustic flare]

I guess thats the right way that i should go

[radiant phoenix]

in GASP 5.7, is there a way to do a visual override for the character without using the GameAnimationWidget?

[velvet jasper]

Is that Main source build?
5.7 doesn't have that.

[granite gale]

hey there, my character keeps disapearing when an animation plays, it happens when is in an Animation blueprint

[worldly anvil]

5.5.4

[velvet jasper]

I guess they've scratched that idea or something.
Does the State exit work for you?

[velvet jasper]

Show your anim graph and screen recording.

[worldly anvil]

Sadly it doesn't, for some reason it doesn't get called. ADS loop can stay on for several seconds, but the StateExit doesn't seem to be called. I can double check that though

[granite gale]

Ok i can't do screen recordings but i figured out that it shrunk so much!?

[onyx nacelle]

hey guys, whats the best way to use PunchEnd Notify? I don't want my attacks to be interrupted by spamming the click button, however i do want the hit reacts to still interrupt any attack animations.

[velvet jasper]

What are you trying to implement in that case?

[velvet jasper]

Do you have any additive animation applied?

[granite gale]

Seeming as how i have no idea what that means, no. all i have is IK bones but it doesnt solve the fact that it shrinks

[velvet jasper]

At least, send a screenshot of your anim graph.

[barren fiber]

https://tenor.com/view/merry-christmas-happy-holidays-season's-greetings-may-your-day-be-filled-with-cheer-have-a-blessed-holiday-gif-1961631716816426768

[onyx nacelle]

can u show ur anim setup

[granite gale]

@onyx nacelle

[onyx nacelle]

u only have idle?

what happens when u start moving

[worldly anvil]

Set ADS boolean to false when it stops ADS'ing. There's ADS boolean to attempt start/stop ADS'ing, and there's one to know that the animation loop is running

[granite gale]

for now, i havent added the others yet!

[onyx nacelle]

is it this animation that makes it disappear or others?

[granite gale]

same problem with my bear trap i made

[velvet jasper]

What happens after the State Machine node?

[granite gale]

with the idle

[onyx nacelle]

do u not have a destroy actor by any chance in ur character bp after calling an anim?

[velvet jasper]

What's connected to your Output node in the main graph?

[barren fiber]

Merry Christmas everyone!, i actually need a refresher, using ragdoll physics i forgot on how to solve the root joint after sim, i remember there was an easy approach to solving but i dont remember honestly, im using mover and do have a ragdoll movement mode, i detach the skeletal mesh to not conflict with the phys simulated skm, looking inside the anim graph the pelvis when simulating is all over the place, simulating in component space sort of.

now for me im thinking of maybe creating an anim node, that takes x and y of the pelvis and do a trace to align it with the ground, in theory this shouldnt propagate if done carefully. maybe im overthinking it.

[granite gale]

nothing is in the event graph!

[barren fiber]

the reason i need the cs pose to line up is cause i feed the pose into the PH node to match and recover

[velvet jasper]

Main Anim Graph.

[onyx nacelle]

your state machine should be cached

and that should be driven in your output pose

[velvet jasper]

No, it's not necessary.

[granite gale]

just the state machine node

[onyx nacelle]

i find it easier to keep it tidy

[barren fiber]

caching is great, allows to implement lodding and other stuff which is highly suggested!

[onyx nacelle]

I'm no expert but the AnimBP shouldnt destroy your actor after an anim. Imo you should look into the BP for the actor or character to find why its disappearing.

I'm guessing theres a destroy actor somewhere that is triggered after an action or anim.

usually if ur animbp is wrong character just goes into T pose

[barren fiber]

additives can cause that

check your animation assets

this the most stable i got ragdoll to look in anim

but as you can tell the pelvis is fixed

[onyx nacelle]

do u want ur char to ragdoll always?

[barren fiber]

no

im testing

thats why its in that pose

[onyx nacelle]

so what you want ragdoll for? death? or falling?

[barren fiber]

falling, i need to be able to recover doing a PoseSearch

there is problems doing that tho

[onyx nacelle]

i have a ragdoll on death

but very simple setup

also for some reason my camera being pushed around idk if thats from collision

[barren fiber]

on your character collision config disable the camera channel

[onyx nacelle]

ah nice, thanks

[onyx nacelle]

maybe primasticadev can help? he has very similar ragdoll effect

when character falls or stumbles it ragdolls

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=46NfgXlnCzM

@barren fiber might be helpful

[barren fiber]

thats a little bit different

[velvet jasper]

Is the mesh playing the animation in ABP preview window or is it absent as well?

[velvet jasper]

I guess it depends on what you mean under "easy way".

I remember from Epic's livestream 8 or 9 years ago that they would just do the trace from pelvis and adjust the capsule location with the sweep, that was it.
Do you simulate the physics just by calling the Sim Phys function or you have Phys Anim component applied?

[velvet jasper]

Ah, wait, I see.
What do you have set here in Mesh Component settings?

[granite gale]

everything is working but its just microscopic

[barren fiber]

hehehehe

[radiant phoenix]

How can I set visual override on 5.7 GASP? As you can see I foudn this componenet which allows me to set it - however on play, it doesn't work

[barren fiber]

hehehe

hehehehhe

[barren fiber]

oh noooo

i missed that one

but is that related to cmc at all?

im using moverf

[barren fiber]

i sim the physics on the skeletal mesh, detach the component and have the capsule follow the components pelvis transform, with adjustments afterwards i reconstruct the pose in component &root space relative to the capsule which allows me to posematch that reliably

thats how mover side looks

[barren fiber]

that was enabled btw

although update kinematic from sim maybe?

but i wont go back now, since ive got it working

[velvet jasper]

Could it be that you’re using Blender and have exported the mesh and the animation with the wrong units setup?

[granite gale]

FIXED!!! turns out i had to rename my Armature!!

[velvet jasper]

You renamed your Armature node to something different than “Armature”?

[granite gale]

no it was done in blender, sorry about this 😭

[neat olive]

i am attempting again to migrate the updated UE 5.7 GASP to natively use a MetaHuman skeleton and mesh instead of live retargetting the UEFN Mannequin

i took my MetaHuman Mesh, edited the skeleton to add the missing bones from the UEFN Mannequin and then run retarget, but I'm missing something because the retargetted animation does nothing with the bones I added, they just stay at world origin... those bones are attach, lk_foot_l, ik_foot_r, ik_hand_root, ik_hand_gun, ik_hand_l, ik_hand_r.

anyone with some ideas on what to do? or want to make some quick cash and setup a proper UEFN Mannequin -> MetaHuman retargetter for me that includes those extra bones?

I think if I can get the proper retargetting config and get those bones moving as they should, then I will have GASP switched over to MetaHuman

just to explain why I'm doing this: live retargetting is fine and doesn't impact performance too much -- it's just the authoring of OTHER animations that's the reason I want to switch.. it's a huge frustration to author animations using the UEFN Mannequin that then get retargetted to my MetaHuman characters. It's taking way longer to nail the precision because of the difference in dimensions

[velvet jasper]

Auto-retargetter doesn't know anything about the auxiliary joints - you have to edit the retargeting assets and add them to Pin Bones op in Op Stack.

[neat olive]

ah, you think all of those bones just need to be pinned and that would be enough?

[velvet jasper]

Well, in case of "attach" that should be copied from the source as this is specifically keyframed bone.
The IK joints just contains the character's limb motion in the root space, so they need to be pinned to the target FK.

[neat olive]

ok sorry new-ish to retargetting in Unreal (plenty of experience in Maya/Houdini), so you're saying pin those IKs to the target FKs, and then what about "attach"? should it be part of the FK Chains like Root is?

also, thank you so much for helping out so much here, I really appreciate it

[velvet jasper]

Yeah, right, it could be retargeted as a single-node chain.

[neat olive]

i did this for pinning the ik bones

[velvet jasper]

Correct

[neat olive]

@velvet jasper I am definitely still doing something horrendously wrong. so close but so far haha

this is what my test metahuman skeletal mesh looks like with it's skeleton with the ik and attach bones added. but now i am confused that if i go to Skin -> Bind Skin and look at the bones I added, how am I getting what appears to be weight painting but then the bone has a note that says no vertices are weighted against it

[barren fiber]

dont reskin

just add the bones, they dont need to be weighted

this looks horrid 😄

[neat olive]

that's just the mocap skeletal mesh provided in the MetaHumans/Common folder, haha... I'm only using it for the initial retargetting because it's almost the same size as the UEFN Mannequin

[barren fiber]

doesnt the mocap one come with simplified skinning

no corrective bones

[neat olive]

ok well i haven't done anything yet, that was just what happened from copy and pasting the bones from the UEFN mannequin... maybe that's part of my problem? don't copy/paste the bones, just create them from scratch?

[velvet jasper]

Oh wait

Do the opposite.

Sorry, my bad.

[neat olive]

it actually use the same skeleton as a regular metahuman, I had to add the extra bones

[barren fiber]

honestly, what i recommend, its a one time setup, prep your main mesh properly your meta human one and add all the required bones for a game ready rig, then retarget adjust the posing in your retargeter to look natural, no matter the size of your skeleton it should work. then use these retargeted animations

inside your skeletal asset you can then configure how animations do affect your rig!

import one anim at a time, ive done this iteratively since the proportions of UEFN manny around neck regions etc are a bit wierd

[neat olive]

yeah, I mean my ultimate goal is to get GASP converted over to use MetaHumans natively, and then for my game I'm just going to have one male body and one female body for the two main characters... they will share GASP animations, and then have a small bit of differences with walking animations and such

[barren fiber]

yes

retarget those once to the humanoid rig and from there on it should be fine

new GASP animations that come can be retargeted afterwards using the same configured assets

i must add that after modifying the rig the pose drivers break so they need to fixed afterwards aswell

[neat olive]

awesome, thank you

[neat olive]

ok that is MUCH better, getting closer. now I still need to fix "attach", "ik_hand_root", and "ik_foot_root" not moving. do I maybe need to pin those to root?

once i get this working, i'll share it with anyone that wants it

[velvet jasper]

IK roots need to be pinned to the root bone, yes.

[barren fiber]

dont look like it

[velvet jasper]

fixed

[barren fiber]

seems like root motion is not being tracked

retargeted

[neat olive]

trying it now, thank you!

@barren fiber it's soooo dang close now. all that's going on now is that my ik_root_hand, ik_root_foot, and attach bones are not moving with the root, should i unpin those and do something with Root Motion with them as well?

@barren fiber and @velvet jasper it APPEARS to work correctly if I set have 4x Root Motions in the Op Stack

1. root to root
2. root to attach
3. root to ik_foot_root
4. root to ik_hand_root

it looks good but is it wrong? going to break somewhere down the line?

[velvet jasper]

Oh that's not how it's supposed to be set.

[neat olive]

glad I asked, haha

[velvet jasper]

Actually, the IK roots could be left as is, they would follow the root anyway because of the hierarchy.

"Attach" joint, as it is animated in the source, should be retargeted as a single-joint chain.

OR, in theory, you can add a secondary Pin Bones op, set the **attach **bone for both values and set the **source **as the skeleton to copy from.

[neat olive]

I'm not sure why my ik bones aren't just following the root though, they do if I use those Root Motions in the Op Stack, but dropping that since it's wrong...

I have both a Root and an Attach chain set in both the metahuman the UEFN IK setup, then in the Retargeter I have the FK Chains setup as in the 2nd pic

[velvet jasper]

Technically, you don't need a Root chain as you have Root Motion op that does the proper root motion retargeting.
As for the attach one, you don't have the translation mode set.

[neat olive]

ok i'll try removing the Root chain, and ahhh ok on the Attach one

[neat olive]

this seems like a dumb question, but all the other chains as setup by Epic don't have translation modes either -- in the case of "attach" would I want Globally Scaled?

[velvet jasper]

Because they're set of joints that rotate - arms, legs, spine, etc.
The attach joint is a **single **techincal joint that has a **translation **animation first and foremost.
As for the mode, I don't think it would matter much as there's no data it could operate with to apply the corrective math.
Personally I'd just pick "one-to-one".

[neat olive]

got it, that makes sense. i set Rotation Mode to "One to One" and Translation Mode to "None"?

I'm getting strange issues now the ik bones sticking way out in front of the skeleton and the attach bone never moving. ugh. sorry to keep going back and forth folks. I definitely want to share this work on GitHub or something. it's a hassle to get it figured out

[velvet jasper]

I just explained that you need to have your translation mode set.

Have you changed the "skeleton to copy from" in the IK Pin node?
If so, revert that.

[barren fiber]

oh no:D

do 10x

make super sticky

[neat olive]

sorry, I was assuming you meant the Rotation Mode since Translation Mode doesn't have "One To One". see pics

and the other pic is what my Pin Bones setup looks like currently? i need to change that?

[velvet jasper]

"Absolute", yeah.

Pin setup is correct.

[neat olive]

and leave Rotation Set to One to One or put it back to None?

thanks to both of you so much for all this help, i'm 100% putting this up on GitHub when it's all together

[velvet jasper]

Doesn't matter.

[neat olive]

ok awesome, so that fixes the attach bone, now just need to fix the ik_hand_root, ik_foot_root, etc... those are sticking out from from the body and not actually pinning to the exact location of the bones they are supposed to be pinned to

[velvet jasper]

Show your Op Stack once again.

[neat olive]

result looks like this right now: root, attach, ik_hand_root, and ik_foot_root are all moving correctly it seems, but not the children of the ik root bones

[velvet jasper]

Pin Bones should be the last operation.

Movement from Root Motion right now additionaly might drive those IK joints after they are pinned.

[neat olive]

i just thought about that 2 seconds before you posted, i thought "ah, surely I need to order this stack"

it LOOKS perfect now. i hope it is. i'm going to try to retarget all 1,400 animations from GASP to the medium normal weight MetaHuman. if it all goes well, I'll post it on GitHub. @velvet jasper and @barren fiber I'll give both of you a big thank you in the project. Especially you Dan, you're so amazing, dude

thank you so much, this has been incredible

i'll let you know how it goes

[neat olive]

@velvet jasper and @barren fiber -- it's ALMOST there. Looks like maybe still an issue with the "attach" bone or something causing the mantling to look a bit weird and then the traversal climbing is busted. I'm digging around trying to figure out what happened. any ideas?

here's an unlisted YouTube I just uploaded of what I'm seeing:
https://youtu.be/T-OPZEGOU00

[neat olive]

seems to be some sort of issue with the attach bone, it's not behaving like it did in the original

[neat olive]

i got it looking like the original by removing "attach" from the Retarget FK Chains, and then adding another Pin Bones to the Op Stack with it coping the "attach" bone from the source skeleton.

so that's giving a correct looking result on that one animation (still need to retarget all the others again), but is it a correct/good solution?

[velvet jasper]

Yup. What’s your concern?

[velvet jasper]

Are you sure that this boolean should be controlled by animation?
I’d say that’s more character input related.

[worldly anvil]

In fact there's 2 booleans for it. One saying that player is holding the button, and the other saying that all blends have finished, so ADS is actually running

[neat olive]

It turned out ok, I was just hesitant about knowing if what I did was correct, but it seems like it was. I got everything retargetted and it's almost correct, the only noticeable issue now is that the legs kind of jitter weirdly when running. i'm trying to figure that out. i'm about 99% of the way there now

[neat olive]

so here's one idea -- if I were to just keep the UEFN Mannequin and do live retargetting in GASP like normal -- is it possible to CONDITIONALLY do live retargetting per animation based on the current character skeleton and the source skeleton of the animation?

The Pose Search Schemas can take multiple skeletons, can I just add my MetaHuman skeleton in there and then somehow in the Generic Retargetter blueprint, I just test to see IF retargetting needs to even happen?

That would solve my overall problem in a more scalable way with a lot less complexity...I could keep the UEFN Mannequin for GASP animations that get live retargetted and then author my other animations per character using their respective MetaHuman skeleton and have the setup avoid live retargetting those specific animations

[dapper thistle]

I'm having trouble with POSE search not finding the Turninplace database asset even though it's selected in the chooser in my GASP project. Does anyone know why?

[opal sun]

Not sure this is the right place to ask but have the mannequins always been facing Y-Forward? I thought things needed to be X-Forward when you imported them. I ask because I made a character in blender facing X positive, imported it and everything is fine but this small difference between the mannequins and mine has me second guessing...

[sterile heath]

Hi everyone, I am struggling to fix an issue in UE5 and I was wondering if anyone has any idea on how to fix it.
I have made a double barrel shotgun and animations for it, the shells are a part of the rig.
For some reason the imported animations keep the shells in the rig "t-pose" even though if I preview my fbx in an empty Maya scene - they are animated. I tried removing animation compression and this gave me no results.
Scale is also correct, it is scaled exactly to the human mannequin character.
I also tried nuclear option - reimporting everything from scratch - no avail.
Sorry if this is a wrong channel to ask, but any help is appreciated

[barren fiber]

hey need help finding reference footage i saw on YT shorts, it was bodycam footage of a man getting shot, what made it different from some of the others was the man kept standing up after being shot and after a couple seconds standing he fell. this is related to my work on ragdolls and making them feel alive this is why im gathering reference to study/research how the human body reacts under certain conditions controlled or uncontrolled. thank you, send this to the dms if you can dont share it here!

[barren fiber]

for weapon models your root would usually be where it is going to be attached. you shooting yourself in the back. you not exporting the root bone right?

[sterile heath]

I am, you can see it going bottom left on the Maya screenshot. Actual animation works fine, just shells for some reason are not animating

[barren fiber]

yep still, the root bone would typically be your attachment point

your case gun rig base

[sterile heath]

Yep, that is how I have it set up and that part works

[barren fiber]

havent touched maya in awhile, for exporting animations i dont remember

your issue only happing inside unreal or other dccs aswell??

[sterile heath]

What's dccs?

[barren fiber]

Maya, Blender whatever

[sterile heath]

I only tested in unreal, I could try importing to blender, but I don't know blender good enough

Animation is fine in maya

Also the shells are skinned to said bones, I can wiggle them in unreal

Also that happens to the trigger, but I don't care much about the trigger since you can't see it

Animation is baked in the fbx, when I import it to Maya it shows a key every frame for the shells

[velvet jasper]

Toggle on "Use T0 as Ref Pose" option during import.
That way UE would use the zero frame as the ref pose instead of the ref pose stored in the mesh data in your DCC.

[sterile heath]

Animation import or skeletal mesh?

[velvet jasper]

Ah, wait, you don't even have the animation data.

[sterile heath]

Sorry, I'm quite new to this, what do you mean?

I have a mesh skinned and imported as skeletal mesh, with skeleton that seems like has all the necessary bones and weights assigned. Then I made an animation, actually two, an Idle and a recoil from a shot. Both of them imported as animations, they work mostly but not the shells, on both of them

Also a trigger on the recoil/shot animation is not animated, I don't have it animated on idle obviously but I can test that too

[velvet jasper]

Can you check in the asset preview window, if you select the shell joints in the Skeleton Tree tab:
a) Do they move in the imported animation?
b) Do they move by manually dragging the gizmo when selected?

[sterile heath]

They don't move in the imported animation. As they should be slotted in the barrels. They move if I move the bones in the sk preview

[velvet jasper]

I think it might be related to the namespace.

Can you show me how your skeleton looks in UE?

[sterile heath]

Oh, I have never considered that

[velvet jasper]

What's the hierarchy?

[sterile heath]

The namespace problem, I have not checked for that

[velvet jasper]

Technically, IIRC UE removes the namespaces during FBX import but I'm not 100% sure.

[sterile heath]

The tree om UE

[velvet jasper]

Yeah, and your animation file contains the namespaces prefix. UE might fail to map the joints.

[sterile heath]

here is me wiggling the shells

Is it export settings in maya?

Here are the FBXs if that helps

[velvet jasper]

Yeah, I guess you have to remove the namespace usage from the loaded reference in your Maya animation scene.

[sterile heath]

how do you see the namespace? Asking to learn 😄

[velvet jasper]

You see the difference

[sterile heath]

yep!

[neat olive]

riffing off of what i posted earlier about conditionally applying/changing live retargetting in GASP, is there a good approach to get both the skeleton for the current animation and the skeleton of the current mesh in an animation blueprint?

I've figured out how to change the retarget setup on demand as a test, now I'm diving into how to change the live retarget setup based on the skeleton of the animation... since the pose search schemas can support multiple skeletons

[velvet jasper]

Hyperlink to Compatible Skeletons feature docs
https://dev.epicgames.com/documentation/en-us/unreal-engine/skeletons-in-unreal-engine#compatible-skeletons

[sterile heath]

I merged with the root, re-exported, same result, I dont know what to think at this point

[velvet jasper]

How does the resulted FBX look?

[sterile heath]

let me try

[neat olive]

that's REALLY interesting, thank you. i'm looking it over

[velvet jasper]

Could you drop it once more?

[sterile heath]

yep

it now matches with the names in the SK

[velvet jasper]

Ah, yeah

Well, you have a name clash here - meshes are named the same as joints.

[sterile heath]

is that a thing?

[velvet jasper]

Yup.

[sterile heath]

Thats crazy!

[velvet jasper]

I mean, It's logical.
UE reads the fbx, sees the node named Trigger, tries to match it with the joint, fails to do that as it's the mesh information, ignores the rest.

Naming convention is important.

You probably have some info regarding the import process in the UE's Output Log.

[sterile heath]

I renamed meshes, reimported the animations as new assets and it worked

I see you are in the housemarque, if you ever visit Stockholm - I buy you a beer!

no seriously thank you, if I had any hair left I would be pulling them out right now

[velvet jasper]

Glad to help.

[radiant phoenix]

I have this stuttering issue with GASP 5.7 & networking. It wasn't here, but was somehow introduced. I went back to a previoud build and the lag isn't present - so I thought it was how I added my custom characters. But no, I re-added them onto the older project and there was no lag. Anyone have any clue what I did to cause this?

[next python]

Is this actually evaluating bones each frame? are these budgeted/interpolating? What drives smoothing here? What net mode is this?

does "the older project" have identical settings?

[radiant phoenix]

I went through and checked stuff, and found the culprit. I just need to assess and see if I can resolve this. I changed the statetree for the AI.

[spare adder]

does this mean that it just overrides everything with the single frame idle pose anim? Is this like a snapshot? How do I make or select that single frame exactly? From sequencer? Is there any tut you know of that shows this by chance; it's quite hard to find this as the results are usually some generic popular tutorial that's unrelated.

Additionally (for anyone reading), I had my sequence editor open with the manni in the viewport and accidentally pressed CTRL+R. It removed the manni, I dunno where it went - I didn't save but reopening the editor did nothing, it's just gone.

[worldly anvil]

Hello, I'm having a lot of issues with using aim offset in combination with other animations. On its own, it works fine-ish, but the moment I introduce new animations, it looks wrong. I was looking for how people go about fixing these issues, and decided to look at Lyra, but realised that it has literally the same problem. Notice that the reload animation by default moves the left arm towards the hip to take the clip out of thin air; when looking up, the arm will move the same relative direction, so when the player is looking up, the arm will go not down, but in front. Same thing with looking completely down -- the arm will go behind the character.

How does one go about making it go roughly to the pocket? I thought about setting up some control rig similar to this video (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uuFWqFExlW4), but before diving into that I wanted to see how people usually go about it.

However, that's not the only issue I have with aim offset. When I change weapons (or removing them altogether), I have to change my AO as well. However, if my character ADS upwards, and then toggles to unarmed (or the other way around), then it's too bad. Right now my AO toggle is pretty simple. I only have 1 AO active at a time, so it doesn't interpolate between previous and next AO which obviously makes it hideous, but all things considered it doesn't sound like the transition is going to be even remotely good at sharp angles like this.

Does anyone else have that many issues with using AOs?

[worldly anvil]

Also I just realised that part of my awful transition is related to the fact that AO is using idle as the base pose, but I have an animation that plays for transitioning from one weapon to another, which makes it even worse. Looking at Lyra, it looks like they do transitions using montages instead of integrating them into ABP, which makes AO work immediately on top of idle instead of intermediate transition, I believe that should make the transition not to be hideous

[worldly anvil]

But looking more into Lyra I don't see how animation montages would help considering that they should be completely overriding the upper body shadowing idle pose the AO bases on top of. AO is applied after this section I posted

[prisma palm]

Honestly the exact question i came here to ask.

I can play the AO with the weapon, if i'm already playing the base weapon animation. can't manage to inject the transition dynamically from unarmed/weapon lowered to AO/ADS AO properly.

[worldly anvil]

The reload issue applies to more other cases like attacking. What I do is I put attack animation montage in UpperBody slot for it to blend with the locomotion, which then results into bad blending with AO on big angles. Maybe attack animations have to be additive for them to blend with AO nicely or something? I don't know

[velvet jasper]

What's your node order?

Like "Locomotion Cache -> Montage Slot Node -> Aim Offset"

[worldly anvil]

Yes

btw I use fabrik here because otherwise the gun that I attach to ik_hand_r would fly across different poses on interpolation, that's another issue I had with using AO, so I ended up doing this which fixed that

[velvet jasper]

Does your AO poses move the IK's aswell?

Ah yeah, they do, otherwise the gun wouldn't move.

[worldly anvil]

Yes, it does, since I apply FABRIK to ik_hand_gun and ik_hand_l based on hand_r and hand_l after AO

[prisma palm]

Looking at Lyra, the anim-layer method does seem more logical for upper-body animation/montage/AO blending, rather than having a switch on enum or any similar simplified methods.
Is it more favorable than a chooser table? A chooser table could output a struct with the relevant data per weapon type.

[worldly anvil]

https://github.com/Vaei/LocoTips/wiki/Anim-Layers

[velvet jasper]

I'd suggest to move IK solving before the Aim Offset, so AO processing wouldn't affect IK joints placement, or rather keep the IK solving correctly and apply the adjustments to the final pose.

[primal venture]

Hi! is there any way to edit the animation rate scale using a curve in a montage?

im trying to add some wait time in the middle of a heavy attack animation but couldnt figure it out

[worldly anvil]

The IK solving is meant to solve issues to ik_hand_gun introduced by AO due to the lack of bone structure on the ik_hand_gun, which makes it linearly interpolate from two points with no IK.

Running the IK before AO would result into just moving the ik_hand_gun a little bit based on that vector and rotator used for procedural animations.

My AO animations drive the ik_hand_gun and ik_hand_r for it to look correct in different poses, so AO will always affect IK joints.

or rather keep the IK solving correctly and apply the adjustments to the final pose.
I didn't get this bit though. Can you elaborate?

[worldly anvil]

The IK solving is meant to solve issues to ik_hand_gun introduced by AO due to the lack of bone structure on the ik_hand_gun, which makes it linearly interpolate from two points with no IK.
I'm referring to this

[velvet jasper]

Animation Montage, TimeStretchCurve.

[prisma palm]

I remembered seeing this from Vaei a few months back and lost the link, i'll look into it thanks!

[idle maple]

Hi!
I was actually attaching the weapon to the character using a socket. I used a Locator in Maya and exported it to Unreal so it can have a socket location to attach a weapon at. So basically this is meant for animations where the axe only needs to follow the socket its attached to but my animator said to make the weapon animate nice, Unreal needs to play the animation of the axe as well. This makes things complicated - first to attach a weapon to a socket and then playing the axe animation on top of character's. Isn't it better to get te axe and character in a single mesh?

[idle maple]

with weapon attached and no axe animation

with weapon attached and axe animated

[primal venture]

Just saw it thankss

[velvet jasper]

Axe animation should come from the character’s weapon joint. That way the only thing would be left is to simply attach the mesh.

If the character is supposed to carry the weapon all the time, technically, these meshes could be merged, like the character can contain the weapon and you hide and show the weapon joint when needed.

[velvet jasper]

I see, you have a bit non-standard setup.

Technically, the weapon needs to be attached to the character's hand.
It could be a socket, but much better to have an actual joint or virtual bone, as you can manipulate with their transforms.

"ik_hand_gun" joint is basically a convenient origin point for controlling both of the hands simultaneously.
It's not supposed to be used to represent any visual stuff. You use it for the skeletal control, not for the actual in-game attachment.
And you won't need to worry about the weapon "falling out of the hand" because it would follow the hand by default.

[worldly anvil]

Interesting, I didn't know any better, so that's why I ended up doing what I've done.

Do you have anything to read about virtual bones? I haven't seen anyone talking about them. I've seen Lyra using them, but that's it.

I don't want to attach to hand_r because I might want to take my hand off the gun, and I don't want the gun to follow the hand in that case.

However, I don't think that attaching my gun to something else is going to fix other things, but I'm interested in learning how to properly attach the weapon with some flexibility in mind

[velvet jasper]

take my hand off the gun
Where the gun would go in that case?

[worldly anvil]

It might be held by the left arm for a few seconds

[velvet jasper]

I'll refer to offical docs, as usual:
https://dev.epicgames.com/documentation/en-us/unreal-engine/virtual-bones-in-unreal-engine

[worldly anvil]

Oh, thank you 😄

However, what do you think about other issues?

[velvet jasper]

Other issues like what? Like switching the holding hand?

[worldly anvil]

Switching, reloading and attacking. @prisma palm mentioned that as well -- switching from ADS back to normal, or switching between weapons results into bad blending

[velvet jasper]

Here's a clip on how the AO/IK nodes order affects the final pose:

There's two preview assets attached to the character for visualization - one to the FK hand, other to "ik_hand_gun".

[worldly anvil]

I see. However, the issue isn't caused purely due to IK. If I remove all IK from my ABP, it'll still have most of the problems. If you look at Lyra example, I don't think they have any IK for hands going on there, but you see that the reloading is off when the player isn't looking forward

[velvet jasper]

Here's a quick simulation setup I've did.

[velvet jasper]

Here I have the Idle sequence player, which then gets cached and feed into the Layered Blend node.
After that, there's two montage slot nodes, where DefaultSlot have highest priority.
Pistol Shooting animation is Mesh Space Additive, because I want to add it on top of the Idle (e.g. locomotion). Playing Additive animation through a montage slot node is enough, no need for Apply Additive node.
Then, there's sub-graph with FABRIK nodes, Aim Offset Player node and Inertialization node.

[velvet jasper]

I have a custom event which simulates the weapon switching, where I stop the current running montages, trigger the DefaultSlot montage and after 0.25 delay (montage blend in time), I change the Idle anim asset and AO asset.
The respective anim graph nodes uses the Anim Node Function called on update, which detects the change of the asset variable and blends in to the new one through inertial blend.

Now thinking about it again, since we have a delay, the asset blending is not important for the Idle animation (it'd be hidden under the playing montage) but required for Aim Offset switching as otherwise you'd see a pop.

[worldly anvil]

Pistol Shooting animation is Mesh Space Additive, because I want to add it on top of the Idle (e.g. locomotion).
What about the base pose type? Is it Skeleton Reference Pose or what?

What slot do you play Pistol Shooting in? ActionUpperBody? Can you show the LayeredBlendByBone settings?

What do you enable Inertialization on? I haven't used it much, so I don't have the feeling or the right understand on what should/should not use it.

Interesting setup, I'll try that in combination with virtual bones and see how it works on my end

[velvet jasper]

In case of the shooting animation, the zero frame from the animation itself was enough as it matches the idle pose.

Just ActionSlot. I think the setup is a bit confusing, but I just wanted to show that you can simply play additive animations through the montage nodes.

Docs on what is the inertialization:
https://dev.epicgames.com/documentation/en-us/unreal-engine/animation-blueprint-blend-nodes-in-unreal-engine#inertialization

[worldly anvil]

What do you attach the weapon to though? You don't do that on ik_hand_r, but you don't do that on hand_r either since it's in the hand, not inside the hand. I guess you have a socket for it? But what about having different weapons? How do you handle that?

[barren fiber]

hehehehe

[velvet jasper]

I've added the "weapon" joint to the right hand bone through the skeletal editor.
Re-oriented the joint so it would match the defaults Y+ forward, X+ side.
Inside the ABP, I've manually modified the transforms to get the correct's gun placement.

Different weapons means different joint transforms. How you gonna provide it, that’s up to you.
Ideally, you’d pose the weapon during animation process, so the weapon position would store in the character animations.

[idle maple]

yoooo Dan! Thanks man! It did work. Cheers!

[velvet jasper]

In case you wonder what does the scale do, it's just a hacky way to hide and show the weapon.

[worldly anvil]

Makes sense, thank you

[barren fiber]

why not use the leg ik node to solve ik?, even for hands

id try it it really gives good results

[velvet jasper]

Because that's what I've used.

[barren fiber]

why are you so defensive always

why not use leg ik, was not like, heey this guy using fabrik, more like try it out

or maybe there is a reason you choose not to

trying to find out

[prisma palm]

This was very informative! Thanks Dan.

[velvet jasper]

There was no reason, I simply didn’t use that node.

Yeah, using single Leg IK node would give the same result but easier to setup, right.
But in the context of my original message that changes nothing. That’s it.

[solemn vector]

is there a way for character to move with along the blenders root ? instead of snapping back

[velvet jasper]

Do you want your character to stay within the capsule or you want to drive the capsule with the stop drag?

[solemn vector]

to move this much forward when stopping

or as much as i set in blender

so i guess the second option

[velvet jasper]

Well, if you want to 100% follow the root motion, you'd have to pick "Root motion from Everything" mode in your anim class and turn on root motion for the stopping anim.
Or trigger the stop animation through the anim montage instead.

If you need a bit more flexible solution, you need to turn on "Force Root Lock" as well on your anim asset, then add Offset Root Bone at the end of your anim graph.
This node would still extract the root motion and interpolate the offset between the actual character location and root motion animation.
After that, adjust your CMC settings to kinda replicate that drag.

[barren fiber]

if this is GASP and using mover you can decide when to extract root motion using curves in your animations

start stops pivots blend in rootmotion and you get a nice feel

it depends on how you want to approach it really, ive seen cases where a start stop would trigger a montage, to get the steps in and mitigate foot sliding.

[solemn vector]

this seems a bit advanced ?

[solemn vector]

thank you for this, I will look into it

[solemn vector]

Whats a GASP btw xD sorry for these rookie questions

[barren fiber]

Gameplay Animation Sample Project. thats what youtube calls it and everyone just goes with it

Epics MM sample project

the parkour one

[solemn vector]

naaah, mine is just a locomotion ive got from FAB, as well as my own animations

tho i will look into his channel !

[solemn vector]

That being said, do attack animations that move you forward have this ?

[velvet jasper]

Usually, the attacks are being triggered through montages and have the root motion applied that way, since getting the root motion from montages only is the default option.

[solemn vector]

I see, need to look into it then

[barren fiber]

oh no

its not a youtube channel

https://www.fab.com/listings/880e319a-a59e-4ed2-b268-b32dac7fa016

[solemn vector]

Huh,its free

[barren fiber]

yea

[final orchid]

ok in game animation sample project we have a beautiful turn in place setup but want it to qwork like that of the lyra project is there a way to configire it like that with out writing the entire lyras turn in place system
by lyra style i meant if rotation exceeds certain threshold then then instead of accumulate rotate in that direction as per controller rotation yaw
tried using brach in the function get rotation Mode to return relase if yaw. abs more than 85 but character animation does not behave like that

[solemn vector]

i did the root motion from everything, works kinda fine, except that my char sometimes repeats the animations 2 to 5 times and keeps slidding forward

although im not holding any keys

[velvet jasper]

Well, what's your transition logic?

Is the sequence player set to non loop?

[west harbor]

Holy

[west harbor]

Thats a lot

[velvet jasper]

I mean, what's the logic to go out of stopping state?

[solemn vector]

what do you mean

if i dont do anything it should go to idle

[velvet jasper]

What’s inside here?

The condition to go to idle

[solemn vector]

Sidepane:

inside

[velvet jasper]

And what’s inside the transition from stop to start moving?

[solemn vector]

L and R are the same

[velvet jasper]

Try running Rewind Debugger and see what kind of transitions triggers during stopping.

I wonder if the root motion requests acceleration.

[solemn vector]

i guess stop moving part

[velvet jasper]

How do you get acceleration?

[solemn vector]

perhaps this

[velvet jasper]

How do you set that variable?

[solemn vector]

what do you mean ? in the variable panel on the left

[velvet jasper]

What makes this boolean go true?

[solemn vector]

This is stop to move

[velvet jasper]

Yeah, how does the blueprint know when you accelerate?

[solemn vector]

from Event Graph

perhaps something here

[velvet jasper]

If you disable the transition from stopping to starting, would it still keep triggering the stop anim?

[solemn vector]

yeah

[velvet jasper]

Idle to StartMoving is using the acceleration as well, right?

[solemn vector]

yeah

[velvet jasper]

If you print string the acceleration value, is it non-zero during the stop animation?

[solemn vector]

wait hol up

i just saw a Complier result

[velvet jasper]

Result?

[solemn vector]

aaand nwm lmao

its said this

this was on loop, but it still doesnt work

[velvet jasper]

Record your character with Rewind Debugger, switch to recorded data, then go to your ABP, pick your PIE character as the preview instance in the right upper corner, scrub the frames and watch live what’s going on inside the state machine.

[solemn vector]

what do you mean by switch to recorded data

just this ?

[velvet jasper]

Yeah, when you eject out of player and pause the PIE

[solemn vector]

now all of the sudden my char doenst loop

bu he doesnt move forward with the frame

[solemn vector]

would it be better to use "key" within the animation sequence ?

[velvet jasper]

Key?

[solemn vector]

top right

[velvet jasper]

Use for what?

[solemn vector]

To move the root on animation end

[velvet jasper]

You already have the root bone animated. Where and why would you add an additional keyframes?

[solemn vector]

Im just thinking how to overcome this

[velvet jasper]

Try setting the transition blend times to 0, see if it would make the character to move that way.

[solemn vector]

nope, still the same

[velvet jasper]

How does it look?

[solemn vector]

still slidding for no reason

want me to record ?

[velvet jasper]

So it’s sliding.

Have you turned off root motion?

[solemn vector]

its supposed to slide forward a bit, but then stop

[solemn vector]

in this vid, after the repetetive slides, im not clicking anything

[velvet jasper]

I think it’s the transition loop - the moment it blends to idle, it thinks the character accelerates but doesn’t move, so it goes straight to stopping state.

Do you have auto-blend set for other states?

[solemn vector]

pretty much the same on everything

[velvet jasper]

Why 0,5?

[solemn vector]

i was playing around with them

[solemn vector]

if i increase to 1 sec, he still moves forward, only by cutting up the animation

[barren fiber]

🤣

My man

When transitioning out you still got acceleration so your logic things retriggers this state

Basically , stop blend stop blend

When PIE open the anim instance on a second window next to it at the state machine section, you know how to debug animation graphs?

[solemn vector]

no ☠️

guess i need to figure it out

[barren fiber]

You can also get your animtime through transition and drive the blend

But first lets figure out debugging

In top of the screen there is a drop down, black box, says something like preview instance

After pressing play

Btw pressing shift f1

You go back to your anim instance and set the preview instance

Then node links(white connections will glow up wherever it passes through)

[barren fiber]

Next time, maybe you catch me in one of the voice channels, im on there alot i can help you out with a couple things, i think what your doing anyways goes in the wrong direction

[solemn vector]

ok cool, will do

how come tho

[tidal moon]

hello, animators! I am not an animator but I would like your input on how you would 'equip' this backpack? Because right now, we pick up the backpack using a timeline and a socket from mannys rig. when it works it works great, but sometimes it bugs out.

In short what I'm doing using blueprints:
Disabling collisions. Timeline movement. Attach Actor to Component (Backpack socket).

How would you guys do this? Precomputed animation? If so, like, how?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6PxbVsocwXA

[fleet sable]

Hi. I'm polishing my AnimBlendSpace3D. Can you provide the animations you used for your demonstration? I can't find any that clearly demonstrate the concept.

More precisely, both free and well-demonstrated*.

[velvet jasper]

I'm not Drizzyyy, but as a suggestion, Paragon characters have animations for going uphill/downhill.

[barren fiber]

Hey, Sorry the Animations i used were purchased on Fab

[barren fiber]

This seems like a good idea

[fleet sable]

That was the first thing that came to mind, but I couldn't find them in the search. I'll double-check, thanks.

[barren fiber]

i love questions such as these and love solving stuff like this, but the only thing here we have to work with is a cube, only reasonable place that would be, would be the hands.
if you do have a proper backpack rig you can get fancy,
without having done the above yet, this is how i would solve it.
cause principally a backpack is nothing more then another actor we interact with.
similar to a handshake or traversal actions, warping characters to the correct positions is where we usually start, from there, once the scene is settled where interaction becomes connected, its time to solve the equipment, based on how smooth you may want this to be you may want to be working in multiple spaces but you dont have to.
you could use something similar to a sync transform which exists on your characters rig, that way you can match and check the backpack transform according relative to your character.
from there you play a synchronised sequence, in component space, the backpack skeletal mesh is attached to your character. so this anim plays in root space and should start at the pickup location. after that synchronised anim, you want the backpack to follow the leader pose, similar goes for the other way around.

[fast dew]

any ABP experts in the house? I'm trying to do a simple root bone counter rotation so the character's capsule can rotate freely and the mesh appears 'locked' in place but I'm getting a weird (and very subtle) sway as the capsule rotates, almost as if the counter rotation is lagging behind by a frame. Is there some standard way to set this up that I'm missing? i've tried adding a tick prerequisite to make the CMC tick before the mesh/ABP but I can't get it to work

[velvet jasper]

May I ask you why the Offset Root Bone node didn’t work for you?

[fast dew]

I've tried the offset root bone node with it set to accumulate, setting the bone transform, and using the rotate root node, all 3 have the same effect, and they all lag behind in the exact same way.

[velvet jasper]

Could you show how it looks and what’s your character BP setup?

[barren fiber]

offset root bone node, without controlling the solve is pretty useless

i personally dont use it but its a great node

if you want to see whats going on aswell youd check the debug

where red is your capsules forward and blue the offset

try with a pose to get a feel for it

incase too, you dont know how to enable debug a.AnimNode.OffsetRootBone.Debug 1

[limber veldt]

yeah , let me have a try

Why I can't see my root bone debug shape🧐

[barren fiber]

you press `

then the command above

the one below esc on american keyboards

[limber veldt]

I have enabled they

[barren fiber]

not working?

[limber veldt]

yes , didn't show up

[barren fiber]

that is pretty wierd

in animgraph viewport does it look like that?

[barren fiber]

also back to this here, i know the issue i played a little with it

[limber veldt]

mine dosen't have animgraph

[barren fiber]

zero out the root motion infront of it

[barren fiber]

nono you do

thats where you put the node in

on the left side you see your character

[limber veldt]

ohh, sorry , mine have animgraph

[barren fiber]

does this one here work for you?: ShowDebug ANIMATION 1

[barren fiber]

feed local pose into your animgraph

connect it to CR

also you dont need override root motion

im pretty positive your CR doesnt output any

[limber veldt]

it shows up now

[barren fiber]

there we go!

[limber veldt]

yeah , thanks , i try to understand better with my case , locomotion + mover on my character

[barren fiber]

no worries happy holidays!

btw do you have a background in coding?

[limber veldt]

Happy new year!🎉

[limber veldt]

do you mean c++ ?

[barren fiber]

yea

[limber veldt]

I am used to be an embedded software engineer for 10years

[barren fiber]

thats great to hear how is your math skills, especially 3D, trigonometry?

[limber veldt]

I think it's ok to me for 3D , trigonometry , i just have a bit confused about martix math

If I get confused, I can use the Livelink component to simulate some 3D mathematical operations.

[barren fiber]

oh okay thats nothing to worry about, it becomes quite simple once you understand the conversions into different opperating spaces

you interested in TA or more gameplay and animation is a side thing to solve to get the game going?

[limber veldt]

yeah , i spent a lot time to understand the whole UnrealEngine system

[barren fiber]

that means generalist or do you thrive to become a tech-anim

oh okay 😄

well to me its everything

[limber veldt]

sorry , i have to delete my words😅

[barren fiber]

its okay im not offended in any way

TA's i meet nowadays are becoming worse and worse by the minute not understanding core concepts anymore

thats partly epics fault and their big anim eco system

[limber veldt]

I am learning anim now , i don't know much it so far😅

[barren fiber]

for me i wanted to point out to you, that CR is a bad way to solve procedural adjustments, its not a shippable solution for games and introduces alot of issues, fidelity wise, swimming delays and runs poorly.

i wanted to suggest solving this in an anim node i highly do recommend that

[limber veldt]

gotcha , i know about CR setup, but haven't do lots testing for combining CR+Animgraph yet

[barren fiber]

stat anim 1 shows the performance of the CR

id check according to your budget if this works out for you

[limber veldt]

OK， i will learn more cvar when i play more with animgraph

[next python]

just use animation insights and actually profile it in unreal insights imo... the work is generally not even on the game thread so a stat output will not really show what is happening

also with CR I would say I find the cost of initializing them is a concern as well

[barren fiber]

thats what i do

stat anim works well for quickies and is reliable, most of the anim features i build i use cycle counters

[barren fiber]

i think its singlethreaded aswell

i sure do hope that witcher doesnt release using CR, given it was a tech demo i dont think they will

[next python]

good news is you can use unreal insights to verify this as well... but yeah the initialization afaik happens on the gamethread. I don't know if it's something that can be safely done in a task or not

[barren fiber]

all i can tell is that 81 animnodes performing footplacement runs like that

cr:

second worse in anim graphs that really do kill performance, is any layered blend node

especially if parent spaces are important

this is still pretty high old values, this is anim

[barren fiber]

way to high

that is without cr btw

[barren fiber]

perform anim eval btw

better yet, this is how it should look:

[next python]

use a profiler that shows the actual critical path to render the frame + tick

[barren fiber]

not this:

[next python]

enable task,cpu and animation tracing in insights

[barren fiber]

i know

that would be post

[barren fiber]

not many know how to use insights, so stat anim is a first step

[tidal moon]

ok yeah, I think you are on to something here. The Component space. I changed the programming so it takes TWO socket inputs now, not just ONE (start + end position are now both sockets from manny) so it should work, and it does. now I can spin around as much as I want without it bugging out, because the Start and End are based on the characters rig, not like, some other value. thanks

[median notch]

Does anyone have any idea how to make root motion to work on a metahuman or if it´s even a metahuman related issue? In the first part of the video root motion is enabled and in the last part it is disabled. In the blueprints I play the attack montage and the metahuman Body component is connected to it.

The problem being the capsule does not move with the animation.

[velvet jasper]

What’s your character BP hierarchy?

[median notch]

Like this

[barren fiber]

is the body the mesh being animated? or the mesh?

also every anim you have that has root motion enabled force the root to be locked

[barren fiber]

instead of this being body

change the mesh to be your body!

and attach all other components to the main mesh

[median notch]

So I make the Body the child of the Mesh?

[barren fiber]

also check your LODSync after and replace refs

[barren fiber]

you delete it

and change the mesh to use your body

this is my hiarchy

Mesh is my body(should be yours too)

[fickle canyon]

Is there a way to import animation of skeletal meshes made from a static mesh, for example a card. I need to import it to play with a meta human

[median notch]

Does the hierarchy look correct now? How would I put the clothes on there? Now the mesh has only the arms and legs. Also I´m assuming I have to do something in these settings in the LODSync like you said?

[barren fiber]

yea!

put mesh here

Mesh*

bottom aswell

Mesh instead of body

[barren fiber]

it should play your montage now right?

[barren fiber]

????

[median notch]

It plays buut the capsule still doesn´t move. Also I put the clothes on him but the clothes stay still during the attack and then all the body parts go out of sync..

[barren fiber]

in your construction script

you do this here

[median notch]

I also acknowledge it is difficult to give a definitive answer without seeing all of my blueprint structure so I appreciate your help.

[barren fiber]

and then we going to check 2 more things, animation root motion enabled and force root lock

and in the ABP

[median notch]

Is that something that should exist already or something you make?

This is what it´s like now

[barren fiber]

you make that

[barren fiber]

meta human actor is not a good start aswell

[fickle canyon]

Yeah, I'm using a single static mesh/ made a skeleton out of it to play with the Metahuman, but there's issue with the animations of the card when imporing to Unreal,
The animation for the card are made in Maya/Blender
there's issues when importing it to Unreal

[median notch]

Alright. Do you know any place where to research all this stuff you told me and specifically animating on metahumans? The official metahuman documentation is a bit lacking in my opinion.

[fickle canyon]

I'm exploring the Internet...

[barren fiber]

what card?

[barren fiber]

not really any general animation applications apply to all, meta humans dont need special handling

[median notch]

Gotcha, so just the capsule not moving thing is specific to metahumans. All works fine on the manny.

[barren fiber]

shouldnt be too

if you hop into the chat we can have a quick look

[median notch]

sure I´d appreciate that

[wraith violet]

is someone able to help me over screenshare with setting up something in Cascadeur?

[sleek crystal]

Anyone have any advice on the best way to tweak an animation after retargeting? Its a stylized character im targeting too and i just want to slighty tweak some of the movements

[spare pulsar]

Hi

does anyone know why my mesh disappears when I drop the rig in the level?

[hollow mesa]

Hola, I wanted to get some different perspective on a problem I'm having and how to potentially solve it in a different way.

I'm currently building a project that uses static meshes attached to bones on the base Manny rig to represent parts of the body to achieve a purposely lowfi aesthetic and speed up asset production as I can't stand weight painting. However, the Manny skeleton has realistic proportions and I'm trying to stylise the characters a little more.

As a result I need to shorten some of the bones in the skeleton. I've been using the Transform (Modify) Bone node in my animBP to reduce the bone scale on the z axis, however there's two side effects that I need to remedy.

1. All subsequent bones in the bone chain are ALSO rescaled, is there a way to ONLY scale the specified bone?

2. The static meshes are also scaling to the bone sizes

Is there an easier way to do what I'm trying to do, or a way to fix the two issues I'm running into?

[velvet jasper]

Control Rig could be utilized for changing the bone scale without affecting the children joints.
But that would also mean that if you scale the length of the bone that way, the rest won't squash and stretch accordingly, so you'd need to solve it manually by offseting the child joint with propagation (this is just a toggle) to children joints.
At least, that's the way that comes into my mind currently.

Attached components would inherit the scale of the joints.

[velvet jasper]

Does the rig work in Control Rig Editor?
When you drop it to the level, is the mesh getting teleported to world's zero coordinates? I see that your gizmo is really far away.

[velvet jasper]

What kind of tweaks are you talking about?
You either could apply the changes directly to the Anim Sequence assets by adding the additive keys to the joints or bake your animation to Control Rig (your proper own or rudimentary built-in FK Control Rig), do the changes in the sequencer, bake the result back into Anim Sequence asset.

Actually, the baking is not even required, if you create a driving Level Sequence for your Anim Sequence - that way any changes that you do in the sequence, would automatically be distributed to the linked Anim Sequence.

Here's how this option looks in Anim Sequencer Viewer.

[hollow mesa]

Thankyou I'll try and have a play with that tomorrow!

[worldly anvil]

Hello, I think I've replicated the setup that you've shown. It seems to work fine for shooting, but it causes issues with something more complex like punches. I made animation sequences to be additive with mesh space on top of first frame of the fist stance idle animation. Do you have any suggestion on what I could do for punches? I couldn't get reload to work either, it's roughly the same way it was, except that now I also get noodle wrists

Also, what do you do with animations that you use in ActionSlot? Do you make them additive as well or what?

[velvet jasper]

Could you show your skeleton hierarchy?

[worldly anvil]

Sure, there's nothing particular though. Right now I'm attaching the weapon to a socket on hand_r as I'm waiting for the artist to come back after holidays to add the bone. I've added virtual bones to check them out, but I haven't applied them yet as I'm trying to figure out this first

[velvet jasper]

Seems to me that something is odd with the twist joints.

I mean, the anim logic seems correct, it's just the skeleton that breaks.

If you turn off the IK solving, would it make it look better?

[worldly anvil]

I have no IK solving atm, I removed it to minimize the setup

If I remove AO, the noodle arms are gone though

[velvet jasper]

Interesting. Could you the AO preview and the poses it uses?

[worldly anvil]

Sure

[velvet jasper]

Does the shown montages go through the Layered Blend node?
If so, what's the settings of it?

[worldly anvil]

It goes through it, yes. It's playing on UpperBody

[velvet jasper]

A sidenote - I'd make everything from "spine_03" to have 1.0 weight.

[worldly anvil]

Will do

I believe I was copying some of Lyra setup, so that's kinda why I went for it

[velvet jasper]

To be honest, I don't see much issues with the setup.
I'd advise to debug the twistjoints.

[barren fiber]

there is multiple ways to blend a chain of bones

either make them iterate through parentspace or component space

[worldly anvil]

wdym?

[worldly anvil]

What are you referring to specifically?

[worldly anvil]

I did MeshSpaceRotationBlend because I had issues with rotation when blending with crouching and some actions like punching

[barren fiber]

yea

this then will align no matter what parent bones are doing

and is cheaper to run

[worldly anvil]

Welp, sadly the problem appears when I plug in AO, blending upper and lower body doesn't cause any issues unless I AO

[velvet jasper]

I can replicate that issue on my end, investigating...

[worldly anvil]

Perfect 🙏

[velvet jasper]

The layered blend has nothing to do with it.

[barren fiber]

whats the issue?

oh it goes up

[worldly anvil]

Read the last 30 messages

[barren fiber]

i just watched the first video

oh simple

[worldly anvil]

It's correct that the character rotates left and right, it's a debug. What I'm saying is that the additive blending is off making my character wrists to become noodles

[barren fiber]

it makes sense

[worldly anvil]

What do you think? What's the problem?

[barren fiber]

i cant reconstruct, but in theory we are trying to achieve the same rotation as is in the animation in mesh space

your clav and upper arm are not

so the spaces get funky

[worldly anvil]

wdym?

[barren fiber]

give the clavicle and upperarm a weight of 1

[worldly anvil]

I tried that, but it didn't help

[barren fiber]

hop in public bool

lets have a look together

[barren fiber]

you can join too

sorry bout the sneak in

got an issue i cant solve, so i found one here 😄

[velvet jasper]

I'm gonna get some sleep then, you guys have fun.
Share the solution, if you get one.

[velvet jasper]

Weird solution but it works.

[worldly anvil]

Will try

[worldly anvil]

Hmm, it doesn't seem to change anything

[velvet jasper]

loweRarm

[worldly anvil]

(I have the inertialization outside)

Alright, that does seem to fix it. I'll check out the reload

[worldly anvil]

The reloading is still doing the same thing, e.g. the hand doesn't reach pelvis when it's looking anywhere but forward

[barren fiber]

yo

how you found my Linked?

is it on my discord?

it should not be, so if you can tell me how, i dont want people to find that here

[velvet jasper]

Just popped up on my feed.

[barren fiber]

oh okay, world small damn

[simple zinc]

Hey All - When retargeting and using Auto Generate Retargeter, where does it save the retargeting assets and under what naming convention as I can never find them. Or does it just create retargeting assets temporarily to retarget the anims?

[barren fiber]

it only saves if you check a box i believe and then you can set where to save it

[zinc skiff]

Ever since ue 5.6 updated the first person template

I am having trouble bringing back the floating arms first person models

I want to use a seperate mesh for lower torso and legs in first person

if there are ways to edit the default rig to only show arms/legs that comes with the sample, that'll help alot.

[sick glen]

Hi all. Anyone know the best vid/tutorial for being able to swap between different animation idles/etc. depending on what weapon you're using (rifle/pistol/etc.)? Animation states have changed since I last worked in it and there's SO MANY videos.

As in, is it best to swap between Animation Blue Prints? Or build more states into one BP?

[simple zinc]

Right, so I know I can save out the retargeter as you've highlighted, but I'm wondering what it does if you just export the animations. I'm trying to avoid it creating dozens of new retargeters each time I want to retarget a new animation. But I can't see where it's storing them so I'm guessing (and hoping) it only uses a retargeter temporarily and doesn't store a new one each time.

[barren fiber]

you can reuse the same retargeter assets

[spare pulsar]

yes the mesh goes to another location

it works in the editor

it also works fine in another level, but not in this one for some reason

[night ruin]

Hey all..just getting into animation. Made my first blendspace etc. Need to make two animation out of one... I need to use idle animation..then twist the spine left make animation, right make animation.. when I use create asset I dont know what option to use. I tried from pose, and the animation was one frame... not sure how to do this...any help would be awesome

[velvet jasper]

If you need like a straight guideline:

• Duplicate your idle animations two times, rename new assets accordingly.
• Open your asset, make sure your playhead is at zero frame, select and rotate your joint, press “Key” button at the upper toolbar, save.

This is a dirty but quick way to edit the assets.

Alternatively, you can edit your animations in the Sequencer by picking that option at the same Previewer toolbar.
You can either use rudimentary FK rig or your own proper rig if exists.
Created Level Sequence will be linked to the relative Anim Sequence, so any changes you would do there, will be pushed automatically to the linked asset.

[night ruin]

thanks man..just had a friend walk me through the FK rig ...man oh man, this taught me how I do not want to do this

[summer jewel]

My UE5.6 - anim layers simply don't work? A separate layer isn't added to my sequencer when adding a layer. what's going on

[pale kindle]

can anyone please share any good step by step animation blueprint guides (ideally from newbie up to intermediate) they've come across? thanks 🙂

[worldly anvil]

I tried to replicate your setup as closely as possible, but it's still bad. I have no idea why it might be happening. I tried to have the reloading animation as additive and not, but it's grabbing the clip from thin air regardless 😔

[velvet jasper]

It does the same in my original setup as well. Because AO obviously shifts the whole pose and the anim logic doesn’t know anything about that the hand should reach the pelvis for the clip.

The setup needs to be more advanced if it’s important to keep both AO and original hand placement for a moment.

I’ve fixed that on my end, will do a runthrough when I get to my PC.

[worldly anvil]

It looked like it's better on your end, maybe it just happened to do that at better angles or something like that. Also the interaction is always forward no matter the AO. Is there anything special about its setup?

I'll wait for the runthrough 🙏

[velvet jasper]

The interaction?

[worldly anvil]

The animation where the character presses something in front of them

[velvet jasper]

Yeah, that’s because of used AO asset - for unarmed state the AO just makes the character’s head look around mostly.
In my example I’m showing possible blending between the chosen AO assets.

[worldly anvil]

I see, makes sense

[spare pulsar]

sooo does anyone know why my mesh disappears?

[spare pulsar]

.

when I drop the rig into the level, my mesh is not there

[velvet jasper]

Here's the quick rundown on the additional setup I've did. At first, I'm showing the old setup, then the example of having IK solving after AO, then I'm adding additional nodes that makes the IK Post-solving works.

What I've added:

1. "Hand IK Retargeting" node takes care of readjusting the IK targets after AO processing.
2. "Layered Blend" node where I'm masking out whole left arm and slightly spine and head joints.
3. Two curves to the Reload animation for the node automation.

"AdjustLeftArm" does two things - turns off Left Arm IK and blends in the left arm animation before AO in the mesh space.
"HandFKWeight" changes the value of the Hand IK Retargeting parameter, that's responsible to favor which hand should be the lead for the IK readjustment.
During pulling the charging bolt, I'm making the left arm to be the lead as it gives a bit more precise result.

I'm not saying that this is the best setup, there are moments where the joints might look broken but this is a video game so I personally wouldn't worry much about that.

[velvet jasper]

It's really hard to say without the context.
It's unknown how does your rig work, what's the level you have, what have you done already trying to fix the issue.
Any additional details you could provide would be appreciated.

[spare pulsar]

I found the problem

I had a PCG volume in the level and for whatever reason, the mesh didnt want to enter the volume and was breaking lol

[worldly anvil]

Very interesting solution. I'll try it out soon, thank you for sharing

[spare pulsar]

Hi again

so I have a car with a control rig.
How can I expose the control rig in "game" ? So for example you can rotate the wheels of the car while the game is playing

[velvet jasper]

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

[odd token]

https://youtu.be/uefvEuoujfE?si=J9UYP_Kk6qPRbLFW

Check out my latest project

[spare pulsar]

I'm not very sure if I did it correctly

but I cannot see my rig yet

btw I don't want to have some variables, I wanna have the actual rig (shapes) show up on the car in game

is that possible

[simple zinc]

Well only if I export the retargeting assets. I’m trying to figure out if I just export the animations with auto generate retargeter does it create and save a new retargeter every time even for animations on the same skeletons?

[velvet jasper]

No, that's not possible out-of-box, as these control shapes are editor-only proxies.
With couple of console commands it is possible to make visible the Draw Debug functions (e.g. Draw Line, Draw Rectangle, etc.) but not the CR asset controls.

[spare pulsar]

hm. So any tips how to recreate that? Im building a car configurator and I wanted to use the rig controls to rotate the wheels etc

[velvet jasper]

I'd say that you'd have to build your own control system linked to the Control Rig's control transforms.
Some sort of external interactive visualiser that would drive the CR elements.
Unfortunately, there's no built-in functionality to simply get the CR's controls interactable in runtime, that has to be done manually.

Control Rig visual shapes could be used though, as it's originally a bunch of static meshes.
If you show the plugin content in the drop-down selector and search for "control rig" keyword, you'd see all the source shape meshes.

[misty dagger]

Hi, does someone have experience with xsens products and livelinking their motion capture suit?

[olive lily]

hello! i want to animate in blender using the manny rig. but my problem is if i move the gun IK it multiplies the movement since i want the hand IKs attached (child of constraint) to the magazine/grip but also keep the hierachy of the rig. how do i keep it from multiplying the movement?

[barren fiber]

getting there

[spare pulsar]

hello, my rig is not showing up when the mesh is inside a blueprint actor? on the front is a BP actor and in the back is just the skeletal mesh

how to make the rig work with the bp actor

[velvet jasper]

You won’t be able to see the rig controls if you’re using Control Rig Component.
They are only available if you’re working with the sequencer.

[spare pulsar]

so what do I have to do? I just want that when I drag the car to the level, it stands on the ground properly and the wheels react to it and can be rotated.
Right now this only happens if I directly drag the rig into the level, but not with the BP actor

I'm stuck

hmm actually I think it works, but only when play is activated

[velvet jasper]

Yeah, the rig itself would work during PIE/Simulate.

[spare pulsar]

but when I Drag and drop it, it doesn't align to the road with the wheels. I have ot move it up or down with the pivot

and then it sits properly

basically I just wanna drag the BP into the level, make it sit properly on the road, and expose some variables to rotate wheels etc

[velvet jasper]

That’s correct. Until you start the game, you’d just move the actor around.
You can turn on Surface Snapping.

[spare pulsar]

what I mean is the following

I drag and dropped and clicked play

but the rear wheels are still in the air

I have to use the pivot to drag the car down and then it sits properly

why are they not aligning when play is active

it only aligned now when I drag it down

[velvet jasper]

Does your CR have auto-aligning logic?

[spare pulsar]

hmm I don't think so

[velvet jasper]

Alternatively, in the BP itself move the CR component a bit lower down.

[spare pulsar]

which BP? I don't have a CR component in the car BP as you told me that I don't need it

it works if I drag the skeletal mesh down, if that's what you meant

or what if I simulate physics?

hmmm ok that actually will not work with the dragged down SK , because when I click play ( with the camera starting right in front of the car) you can see the car popping off the ground

[velvet jasper]

So you just dropping the mesh with ABP assigned that has CR node, correct?

[spare pulsar]

yes

[velvet jasper]

So it’s inside the BP actor.
Just dip down the mesh component relative to the root.

[spare pulsar]

this makes my front wheel stuck into the ground and when I click play, you can see the car wheels popping out of the ground

[spare pulsar]

I kinda fixed the issue by adjust the car position

and now I'm trying to make my variables work

and I'm close, but something is breaking

[velvet jasper]

BeginPlay triggers only once when the game is starting up.
You probably would want to update the variable on tick.

[spare pulsar]

I did

and it rotates

but it's glitching

[velvet jasper]

Glitching how?

[spare pulsar]

sorry for the phone capture, but I hope you can see 😄

not sure what is happening

[velvet jasper]

Yeah, that's correct behaviour.
As you're changing the value inside the details panel, it reinitiliaze the actor everytime you do the change.

As a workaround, you can create OnAnimInitialized event from skeletal mesh component events and hook it up to the update logic.
That way everytime you do the change, the values will be pushed each re-init.

[spare pulsar]

it is smoother now, but still it's like the whole mesh is glitching, not just the wheels

notice on the video how it's like the mesh is dripping down, if it makes sense

here check this

I also got plenty of those messages

[velvet jasper]

Unfortunately, this is an issue with all of the components that's been created inside the editor.

You'd need to have a custom C++ class and create the needed components from there.
Like, if you change your base BP class to "Character" and do the same update logic with referecing the built-in Mesh component, you won't have that issue.

[coarse sinew]

u are not showing everything, never seen something like that, what are u doing on the construction event?
it looks like something is fighting

[velvet jasper]

I’ve explained what’s going on - each value change in the details tab during PIE/Simulate causes the internal construction script to rerun, respawning all the defined components.
It won’t be a problem if the components are initialized through C++.

I’m not sure if that’s the intended engine behavior but it is what it is.

[scarlet mantle]

does anyone know why when I add a root additive animation to a sequence it replaces the existing root motion instead of adds to it?

it's definitely additive and other bones add, just not root

[warm harness]

Trying to recreate this if anyone wants to join https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bYmiwbO5icc

[worldly anvil]

I replicated your setup, and the arm movement works like a charm. However, I can't get the IK solving -- the hand is wrong on any yaw/pitch except 0.

That's the first time I see someone use HandIKRetargeting. I tried reading official docs, and found out that it shifts which arm dominates the IK solving. As I understood, it somehow moves ik_hand_r and ik_hand_l based on FK counterparts, and that will affect the FABRIK inputs that are there towards the end.

I see how it's supposed to help here, but I don't think that I see it doing anything. I would expect the weapon to follow the left arm more strictly to make sure that it puts the clip exactly in the magazine and grab the slide with precision, but it's very misaligned. Removing HandIKRetargeting doesn't seem to change anything visual either, so I feel like I got some part of the IK wrong. I don't remember you showing the FABRIK setups at any point, so I pretty much did the usual (screenshot).

Do you see anything wrong with the setup?

[spare pulsar]

what I'm trying to do is a pretty simple logic, I don't think I need to know C++ just to make a wheel rotation?

[spare pulsar]

I'm not using the construction script if thats what you mean, I'm doing the logic in the event graph and theres screenshots above of the nodes

[coarse sinew]

i tried to find the start of discussion, but could not, if this is true then ok, but i need to see it and also u are wrong, no c++ is required

[coarse sinew]

i tried to find where is the start of discussion and see what u are doing, but i just dont see where it is, what screenshots do you mean

[spare pulsar]

this is the logic in my car BP

and the wheels are turning, but it's like the whole car is shaking and glitching

while changing the value

and this is my anim bp

[velvet jasper]

Steps to replicate:

1. Create a Pawn BP
2. Add Skeletal Mesh Component with ABP assigned
3. Add a float variable and expose it
4. Drag the actor to the level
5. Start PIE/Simulate
6. Select the actor and try to change the value of the variable in the Details panel.

Now do the same with Character class, that already has the mesh component. Observe the difference.

[spare pulsar]

I wanna note that the end goal is to be able to change the value of that variable throught a widget

[velvet jasper]

That should be working just fine.

[coarse sinew]

yeah i have seen those, but i was talking about the rest, what is in the control rig, cuz what i see is some things fighting and that would most probably be in the rig

[spare pulsar]

Hmm... maybe am I doing something wrong with the widget then?

[spare pulsar]

is this what you ask for?

[velvet jasper]

What is wrong?

[spare pulsar]

it is not working when I'm moving the slider in the widget. Maybe i'm missing something

you gys will have a beer from me if we fix this, as I'm stuck on it for 2 days now lol

[coarse sinew]

not sure, but i see this is modular rig so this changes things

[spare pulsar]

what would change

[coarse sinew]

how it works vs manual rig
but i need to know more
why do you use modular rig?

[velvet jasper]

Control rig has nothing to do with this behavior.

[spare pulsar]

I just followed a tutorial on how to rig the car and used some plugins

[coarse sinew]

ok, so u dont know much about modular control rigs, if the setup is broken somewhere u would not even know?
but that is not the answer to the question, why do u want the modular rig. do u need it for some specific reason?

[spare pulsar]

yes, so the car interacts with the road and so I can animate it in future

the rig is working when i'm moving the controllers

[coarse sinew]

yeah, but i mean a specific reason it needs to be modular not regular
cuz i can tell it should just work, so either setup or even some bug
what ue version is this?

[spare pulsar]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rhLTYyn3_zI&list=PL2HKZ1kVaBXYUKQOPP6tKvWrpb6i1W9EA

5.6

and I followed this tutorial

[coarse sinew]

ok, i need a break, i will be back

[velvet jasper]

Is “Car Ref” valid in your widget?

[spare pulsar]

uhmm I'm not sure. I used a Is Valid node , but nothing changed if that's what you mean

[velvet jasper]

If you plug the Print String to false, would it trigger the printing?

[spare pulsar]

you mean "is not valid" right ? It doesn't print it

[velvet jasper]

Ah, plug the tick back.

[spare pulsar]

ok we have progress, the glitch from the car disappeared, and there is only a little bit happening of shaking happening with the wheel

let me show you

[velvet jasper]

FYI Win+Shift+R for screen recording

[spare pulsar]

I found the problem actually

there was some fighting happening from the Finterp node , but i disabled it

and it works perfect now

thank you very much !

[coarse sinew]

nice, great to hear
yeah, i didn't spot this, but FInterp is to interpolate things smoothly over time, but u set a constant 360 target, so rig was moving it to desired angle, but at the same time as this is rotation, FInterp was constantly trying to change it to 360, essentially rotate it to the same rotation, but fighting to do so along the way, thus those strange effects
if for any reason u would still want to use FInterp, u need to make it so its output is the only one controlling the rig variable for wheels

[jovial brook]

Hey I had a quick animation question regarding character animation. I have seen a lot of videos using upper body overlays like ALS, but then there is Lyra which switches linked layers with completely authored animations.

In production are both approaches viable? And is there common best practice/industry standard or does it come down to scope for number of weapons/stances, networking, & quality for choosing between the two?

[prisma palm]

Is there a specific way to play a montage on a newly created slot? i think i'm missing something. The prints are printing and i can't move between the prints so i assume the montage is playing, but nothing is actually happening.

Nvm, it was a timing issue, had to play it after the AO layer.

[velvet jasper]

Hm, hard for me to say.
I see that the IK joint is going crazy.
Could you show me how you set the Hand IK Retargeting?
As for the FABRIK setup, it's the same on my end, except I solve from upperarm, not clavicle.

[worldly anvil]

I showed that on the video on 0:10, or you want to see something else?

[velvet jasper]

Ah, missed it for some reason. Yeah, looks fine.

[worldly anvil]

Making it persistently prefer left or right arm doesn't seem to affect anything either

So it feels that it must be the FABRIK somehow, there's no other IK going on

Actually though, there's one thing that might be relevant. Anytime I compile the ABP while having FABRIK selected it gives me an ensure. I should've mentioned it earlier

[2026.01.05-17.55.48:664][ 14]LogOutputDevice: Error: Ensure condition failed: InPose.GetPose().IsValidIndex(BoneReference.CachedCompactPoseIndex) [File:H:\UE\UE_5.5_Source\Engine\Source\Runtime\Engine\Public\Animation\BoneSocketReference.h] [Line: 232] 
Invalid Cached Pose : Name ik_hand_l(Bone Index (71), Cached (71))```

[velvet jasper]

From the previous clip, I see you’ve recreated my internal “Flip Flop State” bool that’s not needed for the setup at all, that was just my logic for state switching.
Your variable is set to false which means the IK is disabled by default.

[velvet jasper]

As for the ensure, that’s weird.
Could it be related to the debug view?

[worldly anvil]

I believe so since selecting FABRIK gives you a gizmo for effector transform

[worldly anvil]

I'll try removing it

[worldly anvil]

You're right, removing it does make it do some IK, but very incorrectly

IK bones seem to get resolved in a weird position. One thing to mention is that my animations are driving ik_hand_gun and ik_hand_l, so it might be related to that. ik_hand_gun is constrained to hand_r, ik_hand_r is constrained to weapon_r, ik_hand_l is constrained to hand_l.

Do you do the same with your animations?

[velvet jasper]

No, in my animations the IK joints were constrained to the FK counterparts.

[worldly anvil]

Which ones specifically?

[velvet jasper]

ik_hand_l -> hand_l

ik_hand_r -> hand_r

ik_hand_gun -> weapon_r

You can use Copy Bones AnimModifier and batch process the animations instead of doing this copying logic on the fly

[worldly anvil]

Interesting, in my head, despite the name, ik_hand_gun had to be where hand_r is due to hierarchy and how Lyra has its animations. I'll try CopyBones and see whether it's going to help

[sonic swift]

hey, does anyone know if i can force character to rotate according to movement input while in root motion animation? I made a quick 2 attack combo and it works by adding 1 to an array to play next animation in the same montage after hitting a notify in the animation but it keeps the rotation that the first animation started with. Any ideas? I could send the blueprint code if it was needed

[velvet jasper]

In the movement component, you can turn on and off the option “Allow Physics Rotation during Root Motion”.
That would allow any procedural capsule rotation to happen on top of the root motion.

[steep spade]

Hi Friends!

I have a "kick" animation, but my mesh snaps location during play montage. I think I've traced the issue to an offset root bone in the anim sequence.

I think what I need to do is somehow move that animation root pivot to be under the mesh, but I don't know how to do that.

Is this possible in-engine or if not can somebody walk me through the steps in blender, or recommend a tutorial? Heck, I'd be happy for recommended search terms.

[velvet jasper]

May I ask you what’s the source of that kick anim? Is it like comes bundled with the character or retargeted manually?

I mean, if you have access to the rig with this animation, it probably would be easier to fix it there.

[worldly anvil]

Hmm, I tried to copy the bones before resolving the IK. If I do that before LayeredBlendPerBone for reloading, the ik_hand_l flies away regardless. If I do that before FABRIK, it doesn't fly away like that, but it's still not doing the IK correctly 🤔

[steep spade]

@velvet jasper -
I'm learning mocap and recorded it myself. I can re-record it, but I would like to learn how to make these changes in post.

[velvet jasper]

Well, In your animation file apply the additive adjustment so the pelvis would be above the root bone, which is usually located at zero coordinates.

How to do that is up to your rig.

[steep spade]

I don't understand what you mean by "rig" exactly. I've imported an FBX into unreal and it created a Mesh, Sequence, Skeleton, and Phys Asset.

I retargeted the sequence to my cyclops skeleton.

Are you suggesting that I apply an additive within Unreal, or should this be done in Blender?

[velvet jasper]

So it is retargeted from some sort of proxy mesh.
You can generate the root motion during the retargeting, if you tweak the settings of Root Motion Op in Op Stack of your retargeter asset.

If you don’t have the retargeter asset, bring up the auto-retargeter menu and save Retarget Assets instead of just the animation.
Edit the resulted asset afterwards.

[velvet jasper]

If you want to follow my setup, I’d get rid of the Copy Bone nodes and bake the motion to the IK targets directly.
I don’t think those correctly work in your case.

I’ve suggested to apply the Anim Modifier to the animations specifically for that reason.

[worldly anvil]

Oh, I see. I'll try applying it through AnimModifier

Now that I'm thinking about it, how do you go about using AnimModifier for that? I haven't seen anyone moving bones using AnimModifier

I can extract bone transform at a given time using ExtractRootTrackTransform, but I don't see how I would move anything

[velvet jasper]

There’s build in modifier called Copy Bones where you define the bone pairs.
It’s the same logic as the Pin Bones op in the Retargeter.

[spare adder]

Are there any tutorials anyone knows of that goes over using the animation nodes in say, a control rig blueprint, to do IK? I only know of one, but it's very brief and specific to one thing and doesn't really explain much. Otherwise every other video is about setting up control rig instead of actually doing something with it to influence an existing animation for example.

[worldly anvil]

Nevermind, I see. So. I should add 3 pairs
hand_r, ik_hand_r
hand_l, ik_hand_l
weapon_r, ik_hand_gun?

[barren fiber]

hey there!, i usually dont recommend to try and do everything in Control Rig at all unless its not a feature already existing in engine provided an anim graph solution

[velvet jasper]

Yup.

[next python]

https://dev.epicgames.com/documentation/en-us/unreal-engine/rigging-with-control-rig-in-unreal-engine the official guides are pretty fleshed out here, albeit not in video form. There are many visual animations/etc too

and yeah I second the idea to consider if you actually need CR or not in a given anim graph... CR can be fairly expensive to init in my experience if you are targetting lower end hardware but profile first I suppose

[barren fiber]

for foot ik, there is the Footplacement node which does a pretty amazing job aligning characters to the ground, the leg ik is there to solve leg chains but aswell and i recommend can be used to drive arms aswell, provided you have ik bones to work with.

[next python]

unsure if they are talking about runtime stuff or retargetting or whatever that is called now (using control rig in the editor only to modify other assets or animate things in the editor)

[barren fiber]

yea, for animating inside unreal, id create a control rig, not runtime tho

[next python]

Control rig being the basis for UAF is a bit worrying considering how slow it is sometimes to init already but I assume it's not going to be doing as much with just typical blends

but I'm unsure if the CR vm is to blame or just some specific nodes

[barren fiber]

this im unsure about, you a well able to create something similar to traditional anim nodes in UAF called traits

[next python]

oh well, I guess I should follow my own advice and profile it when it comes to that 😛

[barren fiber]

but epic fully focusing on CR implementations

[next python]

I am going to bet that it will be a while before it gets feature parity with ye olden anim graphs but I'm not really using anything fancy personally

[barren fiber]

UAF right now, also dont feature physics

i hope their new CR physics is not the solution 😄

[worldly anvil]

Alright, that fixes it, thank you

[barren fiber]

as far as UAF goes the performance is great

[next python]

I haven't gotten a UAF workspace to not just instantly crash since I tried it last year so I am hesitant to bother with it until it's actually stable

I'm 100% fine with using relatively newer code features but binary assets and random changes never mix

[barren fiber]

which version you on?

i have a fix for that you can apply on main branch

[spare adder]

so in my case I'm trying to keep the arms/hands locked into one place. The idle/run/whatever animations are not stable at all, so in my limited experience I have only 2 options - one is to manually edit/recreate animations, but there are a bajillion and that may be way too much labour. The other is using control rig to force a pose blended with every animation. As I said, this is pretty much the first time I'm going into animation at this level so I have no idea about performance or any other way that may be better. The least work for the best result is of course the goal like anytime.

[next python]

5.7

[barren fiber]

you got access to source code?

[next python]

yes, I am on a full source build with angelscript modifications among other things I have added (hazelights scripting integration fork, not mine)

but I would be surprised if they had to touch anim code for their changes

[barren fiber]

okay then in EvaluationVM.cpp there is a check causing the crash.

epic is kinda slow pulling changes in but i send you the push request in your dms.

[next python]

adding one more blend is not a big deal here thankfully. The cost of animation graph work normally occurs on a task thread as well

[barren fiber]

this is if you want to start working with it, but there is no physics support whatsoever so i recommend staying in the regular anim framework

[next python]

that's fine by me because I don't use unreal physics right now (insanely weird project). Just having a way to edit a physics asset for the skeletal mesh is all I need and I don't think UAF changes how skeleton assets work (unsure)

[velvet jasper]

Funny that you can’t even access your control rig variables in the UAF graph.

[barren fiber]

in theory solving that issue you would fix your ik bones at your desired position then afterwards do a legik solve, to drive the armchain into said position. similar to how control rig has its controllers, in animgraph your controllers are the ik bones

[barren fiber]

you have to register your custom types with rigvm

[velvet jasper]

Register the float?

[barren fiber]

but yet havent used CR in UAF.

[barren fiber]

not sure what your inputs are

float should be supported

can you send a screenshot?

[velvet jasper]

If you go to input tab and try to expose the pins, it just doesn’t do it.
At least, in 5.7.

I’m not on my PC so I can’t send any materials.

[barren fiber]

yea ping me when you can provide a screenshot, it could be setup a bit differently in UAF, usually in Traits certain pins are hidden and need to be exposed in the node customization, but that said not sure how it is done since i don't work with CR's

but for custom structs and classes you want to access and work with you have to register them with the VM

[velvet jasper]

That I’m aware of, yeah.
In any case, UAF is pretty raw right now and I don’t see much of a point to go deep into that since the things would change anyway.
I’d wait for the official materials on that when it’s ready.

[barren fiber]

well for me i look into these systems, to follow the development allowing me to sort of progress with it, instead of waiting for it to fully release, that allows me to also provide input aswell as help out.

[velvet jasper]

Yeah, it’s fun.

[barren fiber]

yea 100%, it also comes with benefits helping here and there, you get to know more insight on internal projects aswell and what is planned for future engine releases and all i can say its about to get exciting, especially 5.6.

but then again also less exciting, cause the ultimate goal is a solution for everything so not really sure where TA jobs are going to be headed the coming years ahead

[spare adder]

see that's where I lost you, I both understand and don't understand what you said 🤣

[barren fiber]

sorry im an autistic typer

😄

if you want we can go through this some time in a vc if comfortable, but in theory you just drive your ik targets to the desired position in component space

left node you drive your ik target and in the right one you solve that chain!

[spare adder]

haha no I mean to say the whole contextual meaning that comes from experience. Since I've never done IK nodes, I dunno "which node comes where, how to place, what's the pattern" blah blah etc

[spare adder]

sure! Would be very appreciative if we can do that one of these days!

[barren fiber]

oh no usually i fail to explain stuff properly, could think that im an idiot, i connect the dots differently in my head trying to explain stuff to others is challenging for me. luckily im not a teacher :D. everybody would fail the exam.

do this do that, boom boom bow, ez, why you failed? 😄

[barren fiber]

sure can do!

[sonic swift]

That’s crazy, if it works I’d be saved this and only this was the reason I scrapped my previous project. Ima try it in a moment. Thank you in advance 🙏

[scarlet mantle]

gg

[sonic swift]

It works! Holy shit i didnt know there were things like that regarding animations, been looking everywhere. Just need to tweak it to not take input from movement while in some part of a notify maybe so that while wind up animation ill be able to rotate and while attacking i would not. It also fixed attack rotation while im locked on with my camera to target. You're a savior

[worldly anvil]

Get AIWaypointsComponent->YawToTarget using Property Access

Don't get AIWaypointsComponent to then get YawToTarget

[scarlet mantle]

that works for GET, but how can I SET the variable?

also my property is in my animation blueprint, so why is it complaining that it's not thread safe?

this seems too strict. is there no mechanism provided which can access object references from the animation thread?

ah, I can add AnimNotify events to sequences not just montages. that should work

[velvet jasper]

Is that kind of locking you want?

[spare adder]

pretty much, yeah! Just slightly more natural of course but I guess that's small adjustments later?

when I try to do it via keyframes, it's nearly impossible unless I remove ALL keys from everything, so there's clearly loads of IK going on that small adjustments get overridden more or less

[main iron]

I'm finding true first person is incredibly difficult to make work, I'm trying to play montages on the upper body when the spine bones are rotated to match my characters pitch

I really don't want to do FPS arms, how can I get a similar system to Dark and Darker

Right now I have a slot for full body, upper body, and each arm.

If I play the attack animations from the clavicle it's perfectly accurate to my crosshair. If I play from the spine_01 it gets messy and inaccurate the more I look up/down

Just thinking about it now, should I just play 2 anims, 1 on the spine_01 through spine-04 with a blendmask, then play the same animation on a branch filter at spine_05 so it maintains accuracy, is this crazy?

[velvet jasper]

What kind of animation assets you have? What you're trying to blend together?

[main iron]

I'm making my own in place animations for medieval weapon attacks, sword/mace/magic staff

I basically want the accuracy of pixel perfect FPS arms with full body true first person 1 mesh

[velvet jasper]

About the FP accuracy - here's the old gif from Crysis 2.
What they do there is that they have the 1P animset running on top of 3P animset. The spine joint is being rotated around the FP camera pivot.
Basically, they constrain the upperbody to the first person perspective, allowing to have a traditional FP anim setup and, if needed, blend to full body contextual animations.

[main iron]

At that point I should probably just use 2 meshes

I plan on having mirrors/water reflection

[velvet jasper]

You can decide what should render where.
If you use the new First Person Rendering system, it automatically sets some rendering parameters, such as "Only Owner See".

[main iron]

Yeah I think games that I thought were true first person aren't.

Like Cs2 for example, and now I'm thinking Dark and Darker isn't either

I should 100% look into 2 meshes

[velvet jasper]

CS2 you mean Counter-Strike 2?
No, that's still using separate FP mesh rendering.

[main iron]

Ok, I'll definitely be doing a lot more research in that direction

Thank you

[velvet jasper]

From recent, BF6 also has a separate FP body mesh rendering.
You'll see a difference between FP animations and the shadow dropping from the character.

[main iron]

That's what I was trying to avoid, but I may not be experienced enough to pull it off yet

[worldly anvil]

Speaking of FP and TP -- I use flying hands for FP and full body for TP, however, I want my TP to cast hidden shadow so that FP would see a shadow of their character, not the hands. The problem though is that FP hands orbit around camera, they end up inside TP mesh causing them to have contact shadow with it on sharp angles like when player looks down. For now I disabled TP shadows for FP, but I'd like to have it for consistency. How do you go about it?

[velvet jasper]

Well, It's hard to say for me right now. I guess that depends on the setup.
Here's the very basic setup I've just did:

FP mesh and the camera marked for First Person rendering

[worldly anvil]

Just tried to enable shadow on 3P, and the problem is kinda gone. Previously I had no AO, so the character would be always looking straight forward, but now it's mending as the camera goes up/down.

I'm not using First Person rendering for most FP things because it's not fixing clipping with objects, so I'm using a material function that does a little bit of WPO to put arms (and anything player is holding) above everything.

Previously I was using FP rendering, but it still suffered from the same problem at the time. Using that material function to affect WPO made it even worse, so I disabled hidden shadows at that moment

[sonic swift]

@velvet jasper Hey, sorry for troubling you again but you seem well aware of whats ue5 capable of. Im having another issue with animations. I had to enable layered blend per bone so that i could get the healing animation to work while walking but other animations like my attack animations are also layered and that makes it so no matter what i do only the upper body moves while the "attack" or my "dodge" animations. I would need to have the healing to be set as layered and the other ones not set.

im sure it has something to do with slots and it happens since all my anims are in default slot but i dont know how to fix it

maybe another animation blueprint?

[velvet jasper]

If I understand you correctly, you want to have some animations to be played on upperbody, some on fullbody, correct?

[sonic swift]

exactly, i could send a vid of what i mean

[velvet jasper]

https://dev.epicgames.com/documentation/en-us/unreal-engine/animation-slots-in-unreal-engine

[sonic swift]

will the content of the link fix my issue?

or at least help me fix it

oh yeah, adding a new slot, or just using the fullbody that already exists right?

[velvet jasper]

Yup.

[sonic swift]

thats really helpful, thank you then. Hope it works

[velvet jasper]

Clipping the objects could be fixed by reducing First Person Scale on the camera.

[gloomy bronze]

I'm doing a retarget of a run anim in Anim Starter between UE4 and UE5 skeletons and I see the neck of the UE5 skeleton (soldier in green gear) is sketching out more than the base anim in UE4 skeleton. At least to my eyes. I'm assuming that this is normal because UE5 has two more spines and one extra neck bones?

[velvet jasper]

Looks fine to me, judging by the screenshot.

[white flower]

So this is me just learning more of Unreal Animation, especially in 5.7 with the new foliage system which is awesome. QUESTINO: How can I made my wind blowing in the trees look more smooth in the Output Rendering settings. It looks a little choppy/stop motiony. I rendered both at 24 and 60 and this was the 60 version....Granted I did slow it down a bit in the sequencer, but even when I render a normal scene the trees blowing still look choppy.

[vague osprey]

I seem to have hit a brick wall with this, it seems that using Sequence Evaluator node breaks the transition blending. See the Video. I am going from Stop(Distanced Match Sequence Evaluator) to Start, and instead of blending from Stop to Start it Snapps to start (See how to Arm Snaps).

Any Idea why this could be happening? Also attaching Code for Function bindings to Sequence Evaluator Node where distance matching happens.

[barren fiber]

!!!!!!!! YEAAAAA!!!!!!!!!

[barren fiber]

two windows and debug

[velvet jasper]

This looks like #materials question as what you're asking is mostly about the tech art.

[velvet jasper]

What is "ShouldMove" condition? "Acceleration > 0"?

[vague osprey]

Here, as you can see the transition is smoothing on the Debug View but If the Stop has Sequence Evaluator then snapping happens, If I switch to using normal Sequence Player for Stop it blends smoothly but I do need distance matching so Seq Eval it is.

[vague osprey]

Correct that bool is exactly the same as what you get with default 3rd Person Template iirc.

[velvet jasper]

So the condition to Stop is !ShouldMove, right?

[vague osprey]

Yes

conditions isn't the issue I think cus it all works fine if no Sequence Eval is involved. As soon as some state wants to blend from a state that uses sequence eval the problem occurs, you can repo it urself if you want.

[velvet jasper]

Try disabling Sync Grouping.

[vague osprey]

I added Sync groups in hopes to fix this problem, but I guess let me try disabling them again

Yup No luck, also disabled Stride Warping still no luck

[velvet jasper]

On both?

[vague osprey]

yes

[velvet jasper]

How does the Rewind Debugger look though?

[green token]

Does anyone know any good resources for learning animating in first person, with both a first person and multiplayer mesh? 💀 I'm not finding very much
I'm particularly struggling with equipping weapons that appear in the first person mesh hand AND the multiplayer meshs 🤔 Atm i have a misaligned stick
And i just wonder about animating in both first and third person in general

[scarlet mantle]

those two things are completely separate, you could only replicate enough information to let the clients know that a player is holding a certain weapon and that it is firing or not. you need to do the animation completely separately from first person arms. unless you want to do true first person, or aim for a kind of hybrid where they share the same skeletal mesh. but one advantage of first person arms is that they are traditionally higher up so they are in the fov when compared to third person arms

[green token]

Id like the hybrid really 👀 player animations being similar on both meshes will be really important for the game
And hybrid lets me make changes which make it look fluid af in the pov right

My problem atm is that with my current system, im spawning a weapon actor and attaching it to the owning players mesh component 🤔
Its attached to the third person mesh, which isn't quite aligned with the first person mesh (which isn't a problem except that when the player moves, the weapons isn't perfectly synced in the pov)
It ofc looks completely fine for another player though

[scarlet mantle]

what do you mean "isn't perfectly synced"

[next python]

look into only owner see and owner no see

this will let you control if the mesh is rendered based on the scenes view target (which is awlays the pawn while possessing them in a typical game setup)

so for example the first person should only be visible to the "owner" here

note the term owner here really means if it's attached to smoething locally viewed or not really, not the replication owner

[spare adder]

so, what was your solution in this? Place a new control for the arms in front of the char in control rig and then logic somewhere else to follow this location?

[scarlet mantle]

it looks to me like inverse kinematics using a target for each hand, and having it adjust the arm bones automatically to match the fixed hands. there are quite few youtube tutorials about it around

[green token]

Ive realised that the way im spawning the weapon is probably the culprit? I spawn an actor and attach it to the player mesh 🤔
Might I need to alter the actor settings somehow?

[spare adder]

Yea I'm thinking similarly. Could you link me one of these tutorials? It's weirdly hard to find a good one (as described in my original message way above)

[scarlet mantle]

https://www.google.com/search?q=unreal+5.6+ik+hands+holding+gun&rlz=1C1CHBF_enNZ980NZ980&oq=unreal+5.6+ik+hands+holding+gun&gs_lcrp=EgZjaHJvbWUyBggAEEUYOdIBCDk2NzhqMGo3qAIAsAIA&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8

[barren fiber]

apart from the transitioning logic which appears fine, btw was you able to fix it?

i saw you using an inertial blend node, using that normal blends will upruptly blend so that is something you should look into

i also do recommend the dead blending node over inertialization which does a great job for locomotion setups and is cheaper to process its pretty much the same thing just blending differently.

on the side note, montages also allow to be blended that way

[spare adder]

again, for a noob level, these tutorials aren't quite enough. I've seen some of them already and they're either doing something different or they just run through nodes like diarrhoea and only experienced animators "get it". What @velvet jasper did in that video he posted, that's basically all I need to know 😛

[balmy condor]

Hello, I have been trying to layer some animations in sequencer. The animations in question, are exported from Maya and are localised to certain areas of the skeleton, things like head moves and gestures, but I want to be able to combine these with walking and locomotion animations.

I tried following this guide, but I cannot get the secondary animation to work with the assigned slot I created.

https://forums.unrealengine.com/t/is-it-possible-to-use-multiple-animation-slots-in-sequencer-to-layer-animations/427244/4

I feel like I am close, but if there are any ideas on how to achieve this desired result, please share
Epic Developer Community Forums
Is it possible to use multiple animation slots in sequencer to laye...
If you just simply want to have multiple animations overlapping and blending among them, that’s a “default behavior” of Sequencer. All you need to do is to adjust each weight of animation track. And, my post was to describe how to blend animations as filtering specific body parts in Sequencer. One thing that I’m not clear with your qu...
Is it possible to use multiple animation slots in sequencer to laye...

[raw pilot]

Bro this a detailed work issue

[raw pilot]

But you can Dm @balmy condor

[velvet jasper]

Sorry for a late reply.
My solution doesn't involve Control Rig, this is just Anim Graph setup.

[raw pilot]

Hey everyone! I’m a game developer working on gameplay systems, AI, animation, and optimization. I specialize in bug fixing and problem solving. If you’re stuck on an issue, I can help fix it.or teach you how to overcome it yourself. Just DM me with your problem.