animation

[pastel spindle]

?

You just need it with the idle animations

So 9 animation for a single AimOffset, and you are fine

[real atlas]

so what happens when you run?

[pastel spindle]

You want to apply it when you run?

[real atlas]

it uses the head from idle animation?

[pastel spindle]

Well you can use the

[real atlas]

it needs to be everywhere!!!

[pastel spindle]

LayeredBoneBlend node

What it do is

Blend your animations by the layers

So

[real atlas]

im so lost

[pastel spindle]

Uh

I am 99% sure

even with run

its should be fine

with a normal AimOffset

(my animations looks really smooth with it)

[real atlas]

can I really not just have the arms and head point where your looking

[pastel spindle]

Hmmmmm I am kinda sure you could but not sure if that would looks nice

And that would be alot more work if ya dont know how to do it

Like

You need to know the bone transform, the animation space, component space,layered bone, weights

In UE4's animation there are 5-6 nodes, and functions you really want to know

[real atlas]

damn

[pastel spindle]

Additive animations, Layered Bone Animations, Blend Animations, Sync Animations, Sync Groups
Slot Animations, State Machine, Notify, State Notify

And setting up your blend spaces properly

(Like on the Movement Blendspace do not leave the Interpolation Weight on 0)

(Or its wont be smooth on sharp turns)

But in your case

I think he easiest would be to just do the 9 animation

I mean they are just basicly a pose

And make the AimOffset

[real atlas]

ok, so each one is just idle and looking in that direction right?

[pastel spindle]

yep

[real atlas]

ok...

[pastel spindle]

But if ya want the arms as well

Then make the arms point in that direction

[real atlas]

...

[pastel spindle]

Like wait

[real atlas]

yeah yeah yeah

oh god

what if...

[pastel spindle]

Like this

[real atlas]

well I need two lots in that case then one for idle with head following one for aiming

[pastel spindle]

Well you can just check the LayeredBone node its really not that hard just sounds hard 😄

And 1 would be enough

[real atlas]

wait a minute, surely if my player looks in the same direction at all times I would only need up and down???

instead of the others

[pastel spindle]

Yep

[real atlas]

oh ok

so I could literally make pointing up and pointing down then I could use them?

[pastel spindle]

Up down center

Up, Down, Cetner

Center*

so 3 overall

[real atlas]

oh yeah

wouldnt center just be idle?

[pastel spindle]

Yep

U right 😄

[real atlas]

cool

wait I don't need to do it for running do I?

uuhh well I'll have to do the whole damn body too

IHDFEJIOUH"DUIOUUUHHH this is SO CONFUSING

[pastel spindle]

You just need the idle

Its may be confussing but after you start using it

You will see its not that bad xd

[real atlas]

but I need to move the arms and body too!!!

and idle needs to be idle holding weapon surely?

[pastel spindle]

That would be the easiest

With holding wep

after that

[real atlas]

but

oh

so I could also have no weapon equipped and just move the head using the same anim?

[pastel spindle]

yep

Your anim graph

[real atlas]

ok...

[pastel spindle]

will look smth like this

This here means

If the "Enable Aim Offsets" are enabled, then use it, if nope then do not use it

and this node will be your survivor so you dont need to do that many animations

[real atlas]

so it could really look at any angle just from 3 positions?

[pastel spindle]

UUUUUUMMMM, didnt you said before you want to look up and down? 😄

I am really confused xd

If ya want to look left and right as well

Then its will be 9

If just up and down them 3

[real atlas]

sorry I meant any angle up/down

well thats cool

[pastel spindle]

For any angle up down you need 9

3 for every angle

so:

center, left, right, up, down,
left up, left down, right up, right down

From this 9 you can make any angle

Because UE4 can blend between them smoothly

will be back in 20 minutes

[real atlas]

ok

but as the character automatically always has its back to you I don't need turning

[pastel spindle]

well still need the same amout of animation 😄

[real atlas]

...

but he won't be able to twist...

he won't be able to look left or right on the spot

[pastel spindle]

just able to look forward?

And in that forward angle up and down,

[real atlas]

yeah

[pastel spindle]

if yes then 3 animatino xD

[real atlas]

the whole capsule component follows camera

[pastel spindle]

Ah see, well then just as you said

3 animations

center, up, down

[real atlas]

yeah made them

[pastel spindle]

Import them after that

[real atlas]

yeah theyre imported now...

[pastel spindle]

Umm open your animations and

fck my editor crashed 1 min xd

[real atlas]

lol

[pastel spindle]

select your

aim offset animations

right click, asset action, edit via matrix

[real atlas]

ok

[pastel spindle]

Select them go to the AdditiveSettings and set the Additive Anim ype to mesh Space

[real atlas]

then select skeleton?

wait no

ok I did what you said

[pastel spindle]

For

Base Pose Type (under Additive Anim Type)

Select the Center Idle

[real atlas]

?

all I got is skeleton reference pose and

selected animation scaled and selected animation frame

I assume its reference pose??? -_-

[pastel spindle]

Hnn

Select animation frame

Use the selected animation fram

[real atlas]

ok

[pastel spindle]

and select the idle center anim

(yep it a ref pose btw :D)

[real atlas]

what!? I swear you just said two different things

[pastel spindle]

Ah sorry I didnt mean to select the ref pose

Use the selected frame

[real atlas]

its gotta be one or the other

ok

[pastel spindle]

Sorry if I confuse u

😄

If you got them then go to the editor right click, animation, AimOffset 1D

[real atlas]

would base pose animation be where I choose idle centre?

[pastel spindle]

yep

[real atlas]

right I made an aim offset

put one in there

[pastel spindle]

set the axis setting like you can see it on left side

For -90 select the down, for 0 select the center, for 90 select the up

[real atlas]

ok

[pastel spindle]

if you got them, press shift to check and drag the aim offset to check if its looks fine

[real atlas]

what

[pastel spindle]

just press Shift on the

BlendSpace editor

and check if its looks fine

Fuu I am sure I would not be a good teacher xd

[real atlas]

idk thanks for trying

[pastel spindle]

😅

[real atlas]

oooooohhhh my god

the default view camera has now BROKEN cuz I tried to remove something that didnt work earlier

is there a way I can even reset an asset

please ffs there better be a way

[pastel spindle]

umm

auto save assets?

In your project folder

there is smth called auto save

you always can get them

[real atlas]

oh thank phuk I fixed it don't worry

[spare nebula]

https://streamable.com/k9r9b Anyone help me please

I don't know why this mesh is going down

@pastel spindle ?

[quartz cove]

Any 6+ month anim gurus with AI knowledge around here and want some $$$, check out #looking-for-talent

[pastel spindle]

Ah sorry I just was in shop

@spare nebula

[spare nebula]

Can you help me with this issue?

[pastel spindle]

Umm Can you send picts

From the 2 animation?

[spare nebula]

Which 2 animations? Idle and running?

[pastel spindle]

Yep

[spare nebula]

Okay hold on tight

[pastel spindle]

OH

Wiat

Wait

You run has RootMotion,

?

If yes, most likely that will be the problem

Your run*

@quartz cove Its such a pity I didnt do alot AI stuff in UE4 😦

But GL for the project man! 😃

[spare nebula]

Yeah It has root motion @pastel spindle

What's the solution here?

I'm using Mixamo but I've added root to every animation and mesh as well

[pastel spindle]

Weeeell

Did you add a root bone as well?

[spare nebula]

Yes

[pastel spindle]

And migrated the animation keys from hips to the root bone?

[spare nebula]

Yes

i tried all keys from hips to root as well as just "translate z"

both ways didn't work

[pastel spindle]

Is the idle a root motion as well?

[spare nebula]

Yes

[pastel spindle]

Give me a sec to check smth

(can you copy your animations [idle, run] and make them inplace to check if they will work like that?

[spare nebula]

I don't get it.

Like how?

[pastel spindle]

Wait

Did you checked the RootAnimation tick in the animation editor?

@spare nebula

[spare nebula]

Yes, I did.

[pastel spindle]

Just copy the animations, and disable it

Uh wait

Even if ya do that

Its wont work

Hmmm

[real atlas]

im really confused should I use a blendspace or aim offset

[spare nebula]

One thing I noticed, I don't remember why

[pastel spindle]

Aim Offset

[real atlas]

aim offset yeah

[spare nebula]

The keys from "Translate Y" of hips are pasted in "Translate Z" of root and "Translate Y" keys are all to 0.

My all imported animations are like that

[real atlas]

but how do I even put in the animations it says invalid

[pastel spindle]

Hmm

If you can send me

that 2 animation

I can check it

Or the mixamo link

to that 2 animation

is fine as well

its invalid

if you do not set them to mesh space additive

[spare nebula]

I'll send you both animations with root bone added. Good enough?

[pastel spindle]

(like when you did at bulk edit)

Yep that fine

[real atlas]

how do I put in the animations to the aim offset

[pastel spindle]

Open the animation
-Additive Anim Type -> Mesh Space
-Base Pose Type -> Seleced Animation

-Base Pose Type -> Selected Animation Frame*

[real atlas]

...

?

[pastel spindle]

Open the animation

You want to put into the aimoffset

[spare nebula]

@pastel spindle? Email? or how do i send you?

Drive?

[pastel spindle]

yep drive is fine

and you can just send me in pm

[spare nebula]

Cool

[real atlas]

ok

well I did what you said it still refuses to put the anims in

UUUUAARRGH

HEYULP

UUUUHHHH 😩

[nova hemlock]

maybe having to scale it is causing it to be off when im doing aim looking

[obtuse yoke]

Anyone knows how to make rootmotion for animation in level sequence?(已編輯)
It seems in level sequence/matinee ,animations with root offset can not be played with rootmotion
Solution in official tutorial video is quite dumb,which is to set the character's position at the first frame of the next animation
It needs you to scale the time bar very very much to hit a precise time,and still not accurate,which is very very not elegant and time costing and stupid and inaccurate.

[real atlas]

lol

[burnt rivet]

Is there anyone here good with rigging in 3ds max?

[real atlas]

I've got the hang of it in blender

[real atlas]

o fuk im really confused AGAIN

sooooo

I just make the 9 poses using the aiming pose

I'm using 9 now

[nova hemlock]

using the aim offset, when i look upwards, the camera jumps around. when i look down it's fine. I'm parented to the handr instead of the head though, want a more rigid aim

[real atlas]

please don't tell me that stuff now lol

I cant remember how I access variables from the animation blueprint in the third person blueprint

wait I swear you need a cast thingey

fuk idk

[misty dagger]

Hi, I heard about free plugin or other program for retargeting animation from Mixamo. Or maybe all stuff is paid? Can someone send me a link for free plugin or eventually tutorial how to retarget animations manualy?

[nova hemlock]

There's a way using Maya there is a link somewhere

No idea why mine is jittering around

[real atlas]

lol I made a funny thing by accident

when your ragdoll it still tries to play running animation if you press w a s or d and the only thing that moves is like the head, tail and one arm and it looks like hes trying to get up

[nova hemlock]

Maybe if I change mesh space to local space..

Ever see movie monkey bone

[real atlas]

ok so I set up the nine poses and in the preview it all works fine, but I just need to apply it now but im stuck with the blueprint

well any help???

[nova hemlock]

stuck with what blueprint

check this out, it's what i'm using

https://docs.unrealengine.com/latest/INT/Engine/Animation/AnimHowTo/AimOffset/03_ImplementingAimOffset/index.html

there are 4 pages or steps

[real atlas]

thanks - wait thats what I'm using and I got stuck

all I need to know is how to get the pitch and yaw variables into the thirdperson blueprint

UUUUHH

basically nothing on that page even works

[nova hemlock]

you add that into the animation blueprint

the 'finishing up'

[real atlas]

yeah but what the animation blueprint doesnt have anything in the event graph and I tried to recreate what that picture showed but half the stuff wasnt available

[nova hemlock]

using 4.18.2 ?

[real atlas]

yeah

its a blueprint I made

well I looked at the default animblueprint and it has some stuff but not much

[frosty peak]

Does anyone have experience using "Baking Pose when Removing Bones" ?
From https://docs.unrealengine.com/latest/INT/Support/Builds/ReleaseNotes/4_17/index.html

[modern kite]

https://streamable.com/13896

So....this is a little odd. So I'm setting up what's usually called a "Taunt" animation set, where an enemy will perform a taunt animation if they've successfully hit the player. The function itself works perfectly fine, but there's a bit of a weird animation bug I'm encountering with this. At the end of his taunt cycle in his blueprint, sometimes he'll linger on his taunting animations for alot longer than he should, instead of transitioning back to his normal running animation. Like, he'll resume his normal "Chase the Player" script, while still doing his taunting animations, resulting in him gliding on the floor for a second or two, before he transitions back to his normal run animation. It's very strange to me, as none of the other animations I've implemented have this transition problem. Here's video footage of the issue. I'll also post screenshots of the animation blueprint for the transition in a second.

https://gyazo.com/03415dc3cb8672972b6e0528e2f57169

The transition event from Taunt to Running.

[spring steeple]

as long as taunt is active(true) you cant transition, so either remove that or make sure that the AI waits until the taunt is done before chasing you again

[modern kite]

That's what I thought I did. And I can't remove the Taunt variable, cause then he won't do the animation at all.

https://gyazo.com/25fa06ad7aa1b43e4a936ade845354c2

https://gyazo.com/429012618ea20a9faccf8299928c7b55

The blueprint for the taunt.

The top is just to make sure his rotation is in order. (Had some rootmotion difficulties.) And the bottom is related to the actual animation.

[quartz cove]

Any good animation folks looking for some 💰 check out #looking-for-talent

[spring steeple]

you should look into anim notifys, they trigger a event based on where in the animation you are, so near the end you could add taunt end and based on that set Taunt to false

and start running

[nova hemlock]

odd, when i move to the upper dots/left/right upper, it plays through the aim animation as well as moving, so it appears to be jittering

when i move down/left/right/center, it aims with no problem

what did i do

[nova hemlock]

nm didn't delete the frames from one of the anim offsets

the other issue is, the camera is parented under the head. when i look around, the gun doesn't move in step with your looking. so it's not like a traditional FPS and kind of gives me motion sickness.. not expected result

when i'm looking straight up, the muzzle isn't pointing to the center of the screen

how can i fix that or reign it in

[nova hemlock]

where is setting so camera isn't showing the hollowed out portion of the head? want to see the lower body/arms/legs but when looking down i can see inside the torso

[real atlas]

I don't know anything about this but couldn't you keep editing the position in whatever you use to animate and keep moving it slightly till you get roughly the same offset in each of the nine positions?

[dire fable]

Who is the best animiator in the ue4 community who also understands the ue4 workflow to get them in there and hooked up?

[tender sigil]

Hello Dear All, Im super stuck and struggling since long time i need your ideas please ! As you can see i have small rope animation with line as anable in renderable, i need that as line because im attaching another object to it for sliding and following on the line, i cant bake animation line is vanishing. There should be some way to bring that line as mesh with own animation ! I already tried IK solves with bones but its horrible to use for such a accurite movements ! Any idea ?

[craggy glen]

Add more bones

Making parents

For a fluid Animation

Or if you have to import it in any Graphic Engine you could make it as flex rope

[nova hemlock]

can you create an animation from scratch in ue without having to go into blender or maya

[misty dagger]

Maybe someone use Mixamo Converter from Github? https://github.com/enziop/mixamo_converter

I have weird errors when I'm trying to convert animation

[misty dagger]

"AttributeError: 'NoneType' object has no attribute 'action'"

Maybe someone has the same problem?

[real atlas]

man how do you even put in a minus node

like minus health by

oops wrong server I guess

[echo drum]

Hi everyone. Anyone here good at animation blueprints with a blendspace? I have been having trouble getting animations to work the last few days. I am trying to get something similiar to the game Dreadnought. For instance, when you strafe up the ship should do a slight pitch animation. Strafe down would be a pitch down animation. I've tried setting it up but it never works. I don't know what I am doing. Here is what I have so far. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ie_WHQhxSRg

[raw dew]

Can anyone please recommend me some good material to learn MotionBuilder (for retargeting, merging some sequences, etc)?

[misty dagger]

Hi, I have moving animations, but is it a way to rework these animations to animations in place?

[raw dew]

@misty dagger You can disable the EnableRootMotion checkbox from your Animation Sequences (under "Root Motion" category)

[misty dagger]

@raw dew Hmm, maybe it's late, but I dont see it XD

ok, thx

I found it 😃

[raw dew]

@misty dagger Cool! 😃 Alternativelly, you can also disable root motion in your Animation Blueprint as well. In your properties panel, you can set "Root Motion Mode" to "Ignore Root Motion" or even "No Root Motion Extraction".

[misty dagger]

@raw dew -Thx for help 😃

[rustic tide]

"SOLVED I deleted all the stock walk/run anim and reimported and this solved the issue !!! I tried this already but for some reason it fixed the issue this time." Hello All! I am newish to UE4 and stuck. Basically I have 2 posses here the top being the TPS anims and the bot being the stock TPS run animation Blendspace. I am trying to blend posses by enum and the actual transition will fire and transition but when it transitions to the bottom Node "None" my character will not move through the level he will just animate running in place . My TPS "Rifle" enum moves through the level just fine. Can anyone think of anything I am doing wrong? I can post some BP's let me know which ones. Thank you!

[carmine cove]

Has anyone submitted characters/animations on the marketplace?

I'm looking for a standardization on Skeleton creation...whether the bones need to be rotated a certain way, characters need to be scaled before creating the animations, etc...

[vast trellis]

I have a grip socket on a right hand, how can I get the coords for a mirror of it on the left hand? there doesn't seem to be a simple 180 flip of one of the euler rotation coordinates or anything

[earnest adder]

hey Im probably in the wrong area but I just wanted to ask. I have a character with a working anim blueprint. I been having issues where I needed to create a player controller which I did. Now my character moves but the anim doesn't work. ny ideas?

[spring steeple]

is your AnimBP set on the Mesh in your CharacterBP?

[earnest adder]

yes

[spring steeple]

you are stuck in Tpose?

[earnest adder]

no the pose is fine just not triggering the walking animation

[spring steeple]

the node where you set the speed in Anim BP, try setting a breakpoint or use print string node to see if its working correct

[earnest adder]

ok ill try

Inside the anim i have a climb animation which works. I think it may have something to do with the scripting

[spring steeple]

you have a whole AnimBP for idle or is that only a bad name?

maybe have a look at the third person template animBP its a good base

[earnest adder]

its just a bad name. it includes walk

[vast garnet]

do you actually set your speed/velocity value in AnimBP's EventGraph? And use such value in AnimBP's Anim Graph with BlendSpace node (do you have one for your Idle-To-Walk blending?) ?

[misty dagger]

Hi, my character can walk/run and crounch. I want to add animation where he's reloading. I don't know how to add animation of reloading so that this animation can't be break when my character crounching/rising? I didn't find any tutoiral how to make it, but I'm trying to find something helpful.

[vast garnet]

@misty dagger , check this https://docs.unrealengine.com/latest/INT/Engine/Animation/AnimHowTo/AdditiveAnimations/index.html

[misty dagger]

@vast garnet Thx, i'll check it.

[misty dagger]

@vast garnet Hmm, It doesn't work. Maybe, I broke something. Is somewhere a video tutorial how to do it?

[vast garnet]

I dont know about video tutorials, but this one should help you for sure. Double check everything.

[misty dagger]

Ok, but are you sure that it's possible to create Animation Montage where my character reloading while rising from crounch to standing position?

[vast garnet]

Yes, you can choose bones which will be affected by your Anim Montage, so it will only affect hands in your case, rest bones continue playing underlying animation

[misty dagger]

Ok, great. So, I'm going to work 😃

[misty dagger]

Is a way to preview Montage Animation?

[vast garnet]

if you open AnimMontage asset it should play animation itself. Not sure if you can preview possible blending results. If you can see your reload animation after double click on AnimMontage, rest should depend on your blending setup: in Animation Blueprint you can play/stop Montages in Event Graph and in Anim Graph you should use "Layered blend per bone" node to blend base animation (idle/walk or something) with AnimMontage animation.

affected bones should be set in "Layered blend per bone" node properties

[misty dagger]

Yeah, I tried bones Spine1 or LeftArm and RightArm. But still it doesn't work. My reload animation isn't played.

[vast garnet]

you play your AnimMontage in Event Graph (in character's AnimBlueprint)?

[misty dagger]

hey

i added an animation on a object, when fbx export i did click on animation and bake all frames.

now when i import it to UE4.. it shows no animation

It's a part of my event graph

I don't play Montage in my character BP. It's anim BP

[vast garnet]

@misty dagger i usually import skeleton with rest pose + mesh as singe fbx and animations (export skeleton with frames only) as separated fbx files and it works for me.

[misty dagger]

i dont have a skeleton

its just movement of whol object

[vast garnet]

@misty dagger try to preview your AnimBlueprint execution while play-in-editor (eject from actor and choose it in "Preview Instance" list in Blueprint editor). Is MontagePlay actually executed?

[stiff thunder]

not sure if UE4 supports vertex anims

[vast garnet]

@misty dagger you should use MorphTarget animations then

[misty dagger]

why not?

i saw many baked water simulations..

and this is only idle animation

im not talking about character

its a floating stone

[stiff thunder]

i'd animate that with bp's

[misty dagger]

nah

thats extra work

its possible i did it once

[vast garnet]

@misty dagger its possible by using MorphTargets for sure, here is an option to import them when you import your fbx file. Not sure how to make them and export in your modelling software tho.

[misty dagger]

i want to hold this small and clean

ok i will look for that

@vast garnet Montage isn't executed...

*MontagePlay

[vast garnet]

@misty dagger but now you can see your execution flow and know where its stuck?

[misty dagger]

Second branch always return false

Yeah, but this BP is probably correct. I think that my anim graph or sth is broken

[vast garnet]

you checking if your montage is already playing before play it first time?

sure it wont play at all 😃

(regarding to your screenshot you trying to play reload montage only if its already playing)

[misty dagger]

My montage is playing in Animation, but isn't playing in Anim Preview or in Game

[vast garnet]

you can try to change last branch and trigger Montage Play from False output instead of True

[misty dagger]

Yeah, but why it works? 😃

But he's reloading twice 😛

[vast garnet]

before you blueprint was like "my reload animations is playing already? if yes (true) when play it again!"

why its reloading twice is another question, must be something with your "Is Reloading" variable

rework your blueprint logic to be sure that you will trigger reload animation only once

[misty dagger]

Ok, I analyse my BP. But I have another question. How can I add now e.g. throwing grenade with Anim Montage?

[vast garnet]

same way, make new Anim Montage with throw animation and so on

play it when needed

[misty dagger]

Ok, but how to link it with reloading in ANim Graph?

[vast garnet]

they both can use same so called "Slot", in that case you wont even need to change your Anim Graph, just be sure that you wont Play reload and throw montages at the same time

actually its all covered in tutorial

[misty dagger]

what is wong with animation export haha

it just detached every edge and vertex

and normals are broken too

how can this happen?

@vast garnet You are great. Thanks for help 😃

[vast garnet]

@misty dagger not sure, i only exported my MorphTargets from Blender and they worked fine. But I never really dig into it yet, just made few tests.

[misty dagger]

was thinking its that

but its not this setting 😛

fixed

[vast garnet]

yeah, i just made another test mesh to check it in 4.18.2, seems like its still working fine 🐢
just need to import as skeletal mesh without any skeleton and check import morph targets. Then all morph target "keys" should appear on "mesh" tab in persona window.

[vast trellis]

Anyone know the right twist corrective node settings for the standard mannequin?

I'm doing some hand IK stuff and want to keep the twists working

[wise spoke]

hi guys, how would you go to launch a character onto the player like in this short video?
Actually not exactly like in the video, because in it, it just look at the player then trigger an animation that jumps forward. What i would like, is to have a target Location and launch the character towards it.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=35Dtpbl2cls
YouTube

[vast garnet]

you can rotate actor to target and apply velocity (blueprints or c++) to it and play some attack animation at the same time. Or try to use root motion animation for your leap strike instead of applying velocity by code. In general your question is more about game mechanics than animations.

[carmine cove]

What are the ik_* bones used for on the Unreal Mannequin?

I don't see them being referenced in the default ThirdPersonCharacter class

[vast garnet]

in general they should be used to prevent foot-floor intersections, but im not sure if its setup this way by default

[carmine cove]

We're looking to set-up an 'interaction' bone for including items in animations... is there a best practice for this?

[vast garnet]

you can add "socket" to any bone and attach other actors to it

[carmine cove]

The problem is this won't allow precise item manipulation throughout the animation

Socket would be great for something like a grenade pouch or back holster

We're looking to do things like screw in lightbulbs

Where the item would shift around the hand throughout the animation

[hasty pivot]

Hello unreal community ive got a expensive problem. Ive buyed a animation pack which is called oriental sword animation set and a combat system. When i retarget the animations to my skeleton they all are wrapped up but when i retarget them to my standart skeleton its all right anyone have suggestions and can give assistance?

[wise spoke]

@vast garnet thank you for responding, I asked on blueprint they sent me to physics, I decided to ask on Ai, I've been sent here, and now I'm sent to Game mechanics, it's like the administration 😆
I'm joking, thanks, I'll look at root motion, don't know much about it, I've heard it a lot but I don't have any idea of what it is

[carmine cove]

Root motion is moving the collider of the mesh along with the mesh

As opposed to the mesh being translated without the collider

You can toggle it on/off in the animation sequence

[vast garnet]

@carmine cove uhm, im not really sure what is the best way for you, i guess it depends on real use case, maybe its easier to separate animations, one is for hand and another is for lightbulb-like object and play they at the same time to make an illusion

[carmine cove]

But then i'll have to make a skeletal mesh out of every interactable item in the game

[hasty pivot]

@carmine cove any suggestiom to my problem?

[carmine cove]

You need to provide more info

[hasty pivot]

Which info?

[vast garnet]

@hasty pivot , it seems like your Base Pose is different from standart skeleton, you should fix it in Retarget Manager for your skeleton to be closer to default one.

@carmine cove you can try to workaround with actor-object rotations and translations or in some cases you can use morph targets (but in that case UE will generate "empty" skeletons for your meshes and treat them as skeletal meshes)

[carmine cove]

Still, i'll end up with 50-100 useless skeletons

Is this the best practice?

[hasty pivot]

@vast garnet how can i fix it?

[carmine cove]

Make sure they look the same when you retarget @hasty pivot

^retargeting like this will cause problems

[hasty pivot]

Oh can say for sure that they are the same..

Maybe it is because my skeleton has some extra bones?

[carmine cove]

Usually doesn't cause problems. Why don't you take another look at your Humanoid rig settings in your retarget manager

[wise spoke]

@carmine cove when I add an input offset to my character, the collider isn't supposed to move along with it by default? Or maybe I have a wrong Idea of what a collider is. Is it the capsule component or the collision shapes? Or none of them?

[hasty pivot]

@carmine cove wait a moment i will provide some info soon (screenshots)

[carmine cove]

The capsule collider that defines your character's actual collision in the world. The mesh is centered in it usually. If you have an animation where the pelvis is translated far away from the root, then the mesh will leave the collision volume by default

Enabling root motion allows the animation to translate the Actor's transform

Look at the Animation level in Content Examples

[vast garnet]

@wise spoke , well your questions is really about everything at once. Attack process is moving actor object (monster) towards another actor object (player?), which can be done by rotating actor and applying velocity to make it jump forward. How long it will fly depends on gravity and initial force you apply. But it will only move object with default animation. Playing animation is another story and you should play it at time of applying force to object. To actually deal some damage you need to do some physics part, check collisions of those objects and reduce hit points of one of them. Video you linked showed how to use inverse kinematics technic to keep monster's legs above ground (its more about procedural animations than anything else). To make it all actually happen you need some AI for monster. :D
Soooo thats why everyone sent you to another channel to ask your question.

[carmine cove]

@vast garnet Have you ever seen an interaction implementation with grip bones as children of the hand bone?

The the animator can just create the animation using the mesh needed, and we can unattach the mesh at a specific time in the animation using a notify

[hasty pivot]

well i think i found the issue...the neck was already wrapped up..

what a fantastic pack

[wise spoke]

@vast garnet ahaha! such a complete anwer here, thanks 👍 I'll dig into it. For the moment, I have the actual animation, the Ai stuff, it was just the launching stuff that I was stuck on. I think the launch vector with some maths behid to calculate the force to reach the distance is the way to go. Thanks again guys!

[hasty pivot]

@carmine cove

[carmine cove]

The sarcasm runs deep

[vast garnet]

@carmine cove if its really just lightbulbs maybe you still can attach them to sockets and make blueprint-driven animation for attached actor 🤔 you can change transform (location rotation scale) of actor after you attach it to socket without changing socket's transform. But its sounds tricky if you need many different animations i guess. If its just few animations with many similar "items" you can think in that direction tho.

@hasty pivot it seems like mannequins neck screwed too 😐 if so its not about base pose

or at least you need base pose they was used, not ue mannequin's one

[hasty pivot]

@vast garnet yeah so it means that my pack is completly broken

i will contanct the creator

[carmine cove]

Or you can manually unscrew the neck in the retargeting base pose

[hasty pivot]

ok sorry for asking this over and over but how can i do this?@carmine cove

[vast trellis]

back to my question on twist bones, I was able to at least find some info on how much twist should be applied:

https://answers.unrealengine.com/questions/111599/art-trouble-testing-the-forearm-roll.html

I tried using the constraint animation node copying only X rotation for the hand onto the wrist bone
and it looks ok, but at some point the rotation seems to fall over a 360threhold and things suddenly twist the opposite way into a sausage shape. Is X rotation the last euler angle to be applied ? =/

[tacit pilot]

I have added a Cine camera into my level and I'm wondering how I can capture all the BP functionaly, animations, lights effects, etc without having to add each object into the sequencer and configuring all the anims, etc. Any advice?

[vast trellis]

actually the constraint node isn't enough, it copys 100% of X rotation and I need something that only copies 50%

[vast trellis]

the only way I can figure out to do it is maybe: virtual bone in same space as forearm twist bone, constrain node to X only (will do a 100% constraint), copy delta bone from that virtual bone to forearm twist, alpha pin .5

is there an easier way? otherwise I may just make an anim node in c++ that does the same as copy bone delta but allows masking by axis

ah just found "bone driven controller", will experiment with that

that worked, bone driven controller, source component set to rotation x, destination rotation set to x only, alpha .5, modification mode replace component

[carmine cove]

@hasty pivot Change the pose, then you can view it and modify it at the bottom here

[misty dagger]

@vast garnet Now, I'm trying to remove reapeting animation of throwing a grenade, but it's weird. My animation lasts 3.3s. If i give animation 3s then bot executes animation once, if i give him 3.1-3.3s then he executes animation twice. Why? 😃

[vast trellis]

I think I need to change the replace component to be maybe add to ref pose, because animations are going to have some twist baked in and my IK applies on top of that

[carmine cove]

@misty dagger Make sure that you uncheck Loop Animation

[vast trellis]

replace component with alpha .5 would blend with that animation baked value

[misty dagger]

@carmine cove But, I didn't add this animations to anim graph. They're Montage Animations.

So I don't see this property.

[carmine cove]

Then screenshot how you're playing them

[hasty pivot]

@carmine cove can you give me values for the bind pose? so that i know how i correct this crazy neck

[misty dagger]

Now, reloding variable is unused. It was for transitions in anim graph.

[carmine cove]

@hasty pivot Try rotating it 360 degrees

@misty dagger If bReloading is always false it'll continually loop the reloading animation

[misty dagger]

But animation lasts 3.3. When i set deley 3.3 it launch animation twice

[carmine cove]

This is not a good way to implement this

[misty dagger]

So i decrease to 3, but i think that the end of animation is cropped

Ok, so what is a good way? 😃

[carmine cove]

You should use Notifies instead

Or the Anim Graph with a state-diagram

For instance, this could be a notify like "Reloaded"

Then you do everything you need to do here

[misty dagger]

what is a state-diagram?

it's a normal animation graph?

or sth else?

[carmine cove]

Yea, the StateMachine

[misty dagger]

Ok, but I can't add reloading to this graph, becaouse I want to reloading while rising/crounching

so Mao said me that Montage Animations is the best way to do it

[carmine cove]

You can do it however you like, but you should still be using Notifies to perform events based off where they happen in the animation, not arbitrary delays

[misty dagger]

Ok, thanks for help. Now, I'm trying to implement animations with notifyes. This notifies should be places in animation not in Montage Animation

yes?

[carmine cove]

I don't have a ton of experience with montages, but i imagine they'll still be triggered in the montage

[misty dagger]

Ok, I can add notify to animation (it works), but I don't know how to add notify to Animation Montage

Ok, I found it 😃

It's late for me XD

@kindred urchin Thx for help. You're great 😃

[misty dagger]

Eh... I have still this problem in Animation Montage. When I add notify on the end, it never fire... So now, I set this notify on 3s, not 3.3s

[carmine cove]

How are you testing to see if it fired

[misty dagger]

I launch my game, and I'm trying reload. So, my character reloading endless if it's set more than 3s

If is's set on 3s it works perfect

But, You can see that animation lasts 3.3s, not 3s.

[carmine cove]

hook up a print message to the notify to see if it fires

[misty dagger]

If i set to 3.3s it never fires

[hasty pivot]

Dont get me wrong guys but ue4's saving is a real shit with animations..i repaired a animation saved it opened it 1 sec after closing it and all was how it was before i modified it wtf

@carmine cove

[fresh tangle]

Hey, does anyone know what to do with problems like this (not my video, same problem):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=44&v=o4qO-PLwjd8

My actor is set to rotate around its own axis, when it hits -90 or 90 it will freak out and start snapping..

seems like I hit gimbal lock or something, just not sure if there's an easy fix or not

[hot crescent]

Hi i was going through this livestream: https://youtu.be/N1tDjbFXeOo but the UI in 4.18 is so different and confusing and i would like some help.

where can i find this:

[vast garnet]

@misty dagger , try to play AnimMontage from your game logic. You can play it from character blueprint or c++ based on some events like "ran out of ammo and tried to shoot" or "reload button pressed and ammo isnt full". AnimMontage is just a tool to easily blend few animations together, but you are not forced to play them from AnimBP.

@Iby#3980 its in Physics Asset. You should open it (usually created by UE once you import skeletal mesh, but you can create new one by right click on skeletal mesh asset), select one of capsules and assign it to Profile (create new one if needed), then Physical Animation settings show up in Details panel.

[vast garnet]

@fresh tangle not sure about video you gave, but i just tried to rotate default cube from its Event Tick and it seems fine 😐 https://i.imgur.com/7C5WWrh.png (in my case it jumps from +180 to -180 and loop continues smoothly)

[misty dagger]

@vast garnet Thx for answer, maybe later I'll try it. But now I have more serious problem 😃 I want to implement a parkour animation for my characters. But this animation is from Mixamo and is not in place. How should I implement this kind of jumping? Should I disable player input and try implement script which fluently transform the capsule of my character with animation? Or it's better way to do it? Now, my capsule is staying before the obstacle and animation is going out of capsule. Later mesh character is returning to the capsule so, it looks very weird and unrealistic.

[vast garnet]

not sure what is "this kind of jumping", but it sounds like you need to use so called root motion animation.

[misty dagger]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dzFYrr1gnq8&feature=youtu.be

I know that I'm not disable animation and it's looping, but problem is with correct jumpong.

[vast garnet]

i never used root motion animations myself, but try to open this animation asset and enable Force Root Lock option.

or try to enable "EnableRootMotion" (then it will apply movement to capsule purely based on played animation, so you should not manually apply force to make jump in that case)

if you decide to enable root motion, it might be harder to control things like "how high i should jump to pass over particular obstacle"

but again i didnt use root motion animations myself, and your looks like such animation for sure. So if enabling/disabling those options wont help you should read documentation about root motion.

[misty dagger]

But should I use function jump and stop jumping in my player BP?

[vast garnet]

depends on how you wanna control your jumping, if you are fine when its fully controlled by animation itself, you should just play animation, not apply force to actor by yourself. But its actually depends on how root bone animated in your case, to pass over obstacle it should move not only forward but also UP (on Z axis) to actually simulate jump.

its possible that your root bone animated only to move forward and not moving along Z axis, in that case you should apply some force to increase Speed along Z manually 🤔

[misty dagger]

Ok, I understand it. Thx, again for help 😃

I have animations from Mixamo and they have no root bones. Maybe it's the source of the problem.

[vast garnet]

but somehow its moved your mesh out of capsule, so here must be some kind of "root bone" (it may have different name)

[misty dagger]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ng9Muilrb2g

In this video I'm trying to set diffrent option and it never works 😦

https://forums.unrealengine.com/development-discussion/animation/1367624-root-motion-help-needed

I think , it's the same problem

Ok, mixamo animations have no root bone and it never works without retargeting 😦

[wise spoke]

Hello guys, what's the best way to play multiple Idle animation randomly? Is the solution here the best one? https://forums.unrealengine.com/development-discussion/animation/38593-multiple-idle-animations-animblueprint-issues

[misty dagger]

I think it's good. It works in my game very well 😃

[dark vortex]

I've imported an FBX animation, it works fine, but I'd like to be able to play just a range of the timeline/frames - do I need to make a new asset for this or do I need to just play the animation to a certain range?

[vast garnet]

@dark vortex you can import only range you need. If you planning to use both full and cut versions maybe you should play around notifications to stop animation before it ends. You also can start playing animation from desired point of time.

[dark vortex]

@vast garnet Thanks, I had tried doing that but is there a way to END the animation at a range too...it lets you add a pin for the start time but not end

I guess it's time I learned about notifies

[vast garnet]

have you tried to add Notify for your animation and stop playing on it?

[dark vortex]

doing that now....do I need TWO (one at beginning) or just the one?\

getting there

[vast garnet]

depends on what you wanna achieve, notifies will trigger Event on your character AnimBlueprint and you can do whatever you need once it triggered

right now you already can go to Event Graph and add node with your new EndOf... event

and stop playing animation or do something else

[dark vortex]

I think it's just a matter of making an Event based on the Stop Notify? and that event calls play the animation?

I'm assuming that's not right

particularly because itstill plays the whole thing

[vast garnet]

you trying to stop all animations at all? or just particular one

[dark vortex]

just this one

[spring steeple]

since it will be easier copy the animation and remove everything you dont need

[dark vortex]

It's an FBX that has a few animations, I want to separate them

[spring steeple]

than either in import option set animation length to set Range and set frame import range to the start/end of the animation you want

[dark vortex]

doesn't that overwrite the entiire animation?

I want to have a copy of it but I don't want to lose the import totally

[spring steeple]

or make a copy of the animation you have already imported and remove the frames before after

you can rename it

[dark vortex]

ah duh

I think that got it

Thanks, I'm sure I'll be back later

[vast garnet]

yeah you can just make different unreal assets with some cuts of initial packed animation fbx, both ways should work, just pick that fits better

but if you decide to go with notifications you should change state of your AnimBlueprint on notify event or you can play/stop your animation as AnimMontage

[dark vortex]

Yeah, I ended up making copies of the animation asset and reinmporting it with a different setrange

I imagine to make it appear in the game, would swap out the animation assets at the same world transfer?

[vast garnet]

depends on your goals, but i think you better to overview unreal animation system in general at this point to understand your possibilities

because here is many of them 😄

[dark vortex]

recommendations on what is best viewing? some livestreams assume too much

[vast garnet]

https://docs.unrealengine.com/latest/INT/Engine/Animation/Overview/index.html

as starting point, and then dig into sections that you more interested in at this point

[misty dagger]

What is it better? Using Play Animation Task in Behavior Tree or creating task with setting variable and changing state in animation graph.

[carmine cove]

The majority of the time you want your animations centralized in the animation blueprint

[ashen warren]

hi
my problem is, that i have dozens of fbx files, recorded with Ikenema Orion
now i should find a solution to compare these files with each other to find patterns and similarities in these animations, that i recorded

Does someone knows a software, where i can insert a setfile, that looks for similarities?

[vast garnet]

@ashen warren not sure about comparing one file to another, if you have a full loop in single fbx file you can try blender and motion capture addon (here is an overview tutorial series: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_VhbSrau-0c). I didnt use this particular addon but it seems capable of making loops from mocap data (in my case i used some simple addon to work with bvh format and looped with my own blender scripts and it took some time to make everything working). Oh and ye mocap tools usually made to work with bvh format, not fbx.

[stoic remnant]

Anyone on with good understanding of blending multi animation?

[vast garnet]

@stoic remnant check AnimMontage

or blendspace if its about something like "blend few movement animations" or aiming

[uneven sparrow]

hey guys! I have a problem that I can't figure out how to solve. I'm trying to create a fighting character in 3rd person. I have mapped a punch and kick to two buttons, now what I can't seem to figure out is how to not let another button press interrupt the first animation while it is being played. And second, how to create combos, like in Mortal Kombat/Street Fighter where giving an input of punch-punch-kick will play a completely different animation as compared to the base kick or punch animation.

[vast garnet]

@uneven sparrow its more about your game logic. Think about to centralize all input processing in place like player controller. In the end your logic should be like "player pressed some button, we should start playing punch/kick animation and prevent any further input in next 0.5 second", if its about making combos it might be reasonable not just ignore all input while playing animation, but remember last "punch/kick request" and perform it right after current animation (so it will be smooth from player's perspective).

[ashen warren]

@vast garnet the toll that im using to record is giving me fbx files, maybe i can convert them to bvh

[vast garnet]

@ashen warren maybe 🤔 anyway i cant give you more suggestions, i only played with public mocap animations and did everything in blender. It was possible to made everything work in ue4 but process was tricky.

[ashen warren]

Wirh ikenema orion its possible to capture fbx real time in unreal

[uneven sparrow]

@vast garnet Exactly, which is what I'm trying to figure out; how to get the game logic to prevent playing an animation before the currently playing animation finishes

[vast garnet]

@uneven sparrow since you know how long your animation lasts, you can remember time when it started and prevent new animations during that time in next input processing iterations. Well you can check if some particular animation is playing right now, but in that case you may end up with huuge list of checks.

[stoic remnant]

no im after blending anim layers over each other, controlls X sections of object

[vast garnet]

@ashen warren ok whatever, i just tried to use plugin that i mention above and it seems bugged (at least loop detection part, which is not even documented) 😦

[pastel spindle]

Guys

How can I make the Layered Blend Per Node

So they will just blend the hands of the blend pose and maintain the hips of the base pose?

What I using momently

BUT the problem is that its not just blending the hands but everything up to the hips

I want to maintain the pose of the hips etc, I just want to blend the hands (upperarm_l, upperarm_r)

[vast garnet]

@pastel spindle try to delete spine_01 from branch filters. And im not sure about your -5 Blend Depth for both upperams (should work as expected with default value).
https://i.imgur.com/b6eply4.png

[pastel spindle]

I tried it but then the arms wont move at all

I use -5 so I will recive the blend pose value alot nicer

buuuut will try it

[zenith lily]

hi, when i edit animation within the editor. the "pelvis" keeps on moving up. if i kept it that way, will there be any problem in future?

[copper dawn]

https://i.gyazo.com/0b8cada6d30bef046c7fbc5b30f06916.png how do I make this thing show all the frames instead of the first 88, even if I span it along three monitors it never passes 88 of em

[spring steeple]

mouse wheel?

[copper dawn]

thank you for that

< hasnt used persona in ages

[wise knoll]

Hey, anyone know how to change animation speed of 2 same animations within a blendspace?|
Like If I have walk animation two times in a single blendspace and want their speeds to be different

[vast garnet]

@wise knoll not sure about blendspace, but you can just make a copy of animation and increase Rate Scale of copy 🤔

@wise knoll oh wait it seems like you can just right click in blendspace on animation point and change rate there

https://i.imgur.com/8Pd2vSW.png

[wise knoll]

@vast garnet Hey thanks xD. Got it. It was in front of me and I didn't notice it before 😮

[wise knoll]

Hey is there any way I can start an animation from any state like in unity ? Like I want to play swim animation when it is in water without caring about what the previous animation was.

[misty dagger]

is it preferred to use the ART toolset or is it just as good to make your own rig to animate?

also is it a good workflow to take the Epic skeleton and create a new rig from that?

[vast garnet]

@wise knoll you can setup state machine and switch from Idle/Run Blendspace to Swimming Blendspace based on current character state (add some boolean to represent swimming state and set it to True when character is in water, then check it in your state machine rule).

@misty dagger its up to you really, engine not tied to default skeleton. But if you plan to buy animations or character meshes you may expect them to be prepared for default skeleton (still can retarget animations in-engine if general bone-set is equivalent).

[misty dagger]

thank you @vast garnet

I don't plan on buying other animations

would prefer to make my own. in this case it looks like a self made rig would be ok

[vast garnet]

yeah you should be completely fine with your own assets

[misty dagger]

I see a lot of skeletons for UE4 with a bone at the origin, is this essential?

I know UE uses the origin as the root when importing, so does a bone have to be there also?

[vast garnet]

such bone might be useful for root motion animations (so you have a root bone which only changing its location and engine can catch that location changes and try to apply the same movement to actual character)

i never used it in practice but still keep root bone at origin just in case 😅

[misty dagger]

thanks! I wont be using root motion but I will try to keep a bone at the root regardless

[sinful smelt]

Hello ! Any one know how to use animset animations in blender with IK to easely modify it please ? If yes please contact me, thanks

IK like these ones i mean

[copper dawn]

I really need to practice animation (3dsmax), mainly animating objects (vfx) along splines.
been looking/googling for some good tutorials for it but most only handle the basic teapot along a spline. anybody know of a better tutorial for it? would be really appreciated. even more appreciated if someone could tutor me for a few hours but thats a longshot.

[sudden sedge]

spline deform?

@copper dawn just use path deform

there's also animation->constraints->path constraint

if you want to deviate from the path, you can then set up an animation layer

bah

https://i.imgur.com/c4K4gYl.gif

you can even animate entire characters with splines

you just need to set up helpers and have those follow the splines

[sudden sedge]

pm me if you have any more questions and I'll see if I can answer them

[copper dawn]

thats all stuff I know, I am mainly looking for advanced features and ways that make implementing the principles of animation easier.

[misty dagger]

A good software for animation for free

,?

[wise knoll]

@vast garnet the problem is that I have multiple states like Simple motions with IDle, Crouch state, Jump state, Magic Casting state, Bow equip state etc. That's Why I am asking if there's any way my player can use swim animation moving from any animation above when in water without pointing all of them to swim animation.

[vast garnet]

@wise knoll but how its possible that you will be in (for example) crouch and swim state at the same time? 🤔 If you disable crouch state and anable swim state it should be fine i guess? So you disable crouch -> it will transite to idle or something, then it notice that swimming state is active and switch from idle to swim.

@misty dagger blender.org

[wise knoll]

@vast garnet I meant I want to move from crouch state to swimming state and from Idle to swimming and from fighting state to swimming state and .......... 😅

There is one feature in unity where you can move to the animation from any state if the condition is true

[vast garnet]

i got you but didnt it happen if you just set your crouch or whatever boolean to false and swimming one to true?

and link everything to idle

not everything to everything

[wise knoll]

But I have multiple IDLE states :/

[vast garnet]

you can change idle animations in single state

[wise knoll]

Well I guess I got you . Before moving to swimming animation I should Move to default IDle animation

[spring steeple]

you could also put your state machine into a state machine and switch on the outer to swiming

[wise knoll]

I can have multiple state machines?

[spring steeple]

yeah

[vast garnet]

@wise knoll someone linked there a thread about changing idle animations one after another, take a look:
https://forums.unrealengine.com/development-discussion/animation/38593-multiple-idle-animations-animblueprint-issues?p=400435#post400435
You can do this in single idle state in your state machine.

[sly isle]

hello

[wise knoll]

My system is like this 😅 . Am I going right?

[vast garnet]

@wise knoll also about your "bow equip" (and similar) animation, im not sure if you wanna have additional state in state machine for them, take a look on anim montages. They can help you to combine your current animation (idle or something) with bow equipment or spell casting or something, blenging different animations together per-bone.

[wise knoll]

Simple motions, Casting Motions, Bow Motions and crouch thing all contains a blendspace

[vast garnet]

bruteforce 😄

[wise knoll]

bruteforce? 😮

[vast garnet]

i think you really might be interesting in anim montages to avoid such state machine cobweb

well your way should work too, but it seems overly complicated

[wise knoll]

Actually i started unreal from new year only 😅
It seems I need to learn a lot than I expected

[spring steeple]

you could also switch blends space this way

[vast garnet]

@sly isle hello

[wise knoll]

And where will we store the state machines

in the same graph?

[sly isle]

@vast garnet thanks bro

[spring steeple]

you can keep a simpler state machine when on state handles more sub states that are mostly the same, like a idle/run blendspace for bow/noBow you could simple replace the blendspace inside the idle/run state

[misty dagger]

I see a lot of tutorials using nice lowpoly perfect quad models to rig but how the hell do you take a model with loads of cloth from Marvelous designer that has been decimated, and rig that?

Are decimated triangles fine for rigging and animating?

Or is it essential to do a full retopo over whatever decimated cloth model you have?

[vast garnet]

@misty dagger you can rig and animate triangles just as quads.

triangles cause problems when you need to use some subdivision surface modifiers. Its easier to work with quads in general in modelling tools. But thats it, when it comes to low level its all triangles anyway.

[misty dagger]

thanks @vast garnet

[sudden sedge]

state machines seems like a lot of unnecessary extra work

I suppose there's a lot more features

aim matrixes are super annoying to set up

[potent current]

anyone have insight what's the best way to deal with IK bones when retargeting animation?

my IK bones were animated to follow another bone, but after retarget, they no longer match the bone they are suppose to follow

[gritty jay]

A Neural Network is evolving with a Genetic Algorithm for physically controlling the right arm of the Mannequin and place it above his head.

The mannequin learns how to counter the force of the shots so he can keep the balance of his right arm.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mvs4qfgR-eI

[solid nova]

What would be the best method for making cars drive pass a street on a loop?

[hollow summit]

I want to use multiple characters using the same skeleton without replicating assets to fix this issue ( skeleton retarget ). Is there a way to fix this in Maya or something?

[misty dagger]

Is it a common thing to export the UE mannequin and then delete the mesh and skin your own model to the skeleton left behind if you want to be consistent with other UE animations?

Also how do games deal with many different character skins like Fortnite? do they all have to be individually skinned one by one? that sounds like a nightmare

[tiny mirage]

So I'm having an issue where I want to retarget the animation blueprint from the AI behavior tool kit to some low poly meshes from synty studios. What I did was take all of the meshes and assign them to one skeleton which has all the same bone groups that the synty models need. Then I went to the ai behavior toolkit anim bp and clicked duplicate and retarget and selected the skeleton for the synty mesh. It worked for the most part, but now the character meshes get really skinny and deform in weird ways. Did i miss a step? I vaguely remember having to make some sort of skeleton map for retargetting in the other times I've done similar things.

[sudden sedge]

@solid nova just an animation

[solid nova]

Yeah i got it working

i made the animation in c4d insteadf

and just imported it

[swift widget]

Hi, I was wondering if somebody knows how to archive this tipe of face animation in Unreal Engine?

https://youtu.be/xoHH0tRHXIk?t=2m25s

I want to archive a sort of improved but PS1 looking game....

I know how to archive that in blender by bones as a "Driver" but in Unreal Engine 4 how?

I'd appreciate any help cheers

[vast garnet]

@swift widget morph targets. Called Shape Keys in Blender ("Data" tab). During import into UE you should enable Morph Targets checkbox. Works only with skeletal meshes, after import can be found in Persona window at right side.

https://i.imgur.com/OmAHd04.png

you can combine different keys at the same time to get desired shape of character face. For example one key will affect only left eyebrow and nothing else. Easily can have bunch of keys for different mouth shapes and so on.

[dusk dove]

It's actually a combination of Morph Targets and multiple textures. For example the Model only knows "Mouth open" and "Mouth closed", but the textures have multiple variations of these

[merry rampart]

Hey mon amis. Anyone know a method to slow down time (time dilate) for only specific physics objects? ie. NOT global time dilation?
I have been trying to use Custom Time Dilation with specific targets but to no avail

[wise knoll]

@spring steeple Hey, I just saw your technique and it worked out pretty well. Thanks

[tiny mirage]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KLjTU0yKS00&feature=push-u-sub&attr_tag=TNGcuWz1TKd7hYUK-6

[sudden sedge]

UE4 animation blueprints kind of suck :X

can't reuse existing ones on characters with a different skeleton

or create children for different skeletons

[swift widget]

I know about the morph targets, but its not a mesh what I want to animate, is chage from a series of different mouths and eyes froom a single texture, here a tuto aboout how to do it in Blender (wich I believe its not posible in Unreal)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5NlvgMYZgaY&t=12s

I know there should be a way to archive that in Unreal engine, Ps1 and Nintendo 64 games featured that posibility agter all

[dapper trench]

@swift widget you can create a Texture Atlas, or a TileSet. Having all your mouths in one single texture file like he has and then adjust the UV coordinates on a "mouth plane" or even add the mouth ontop of the regular texture

https://answers.unrealengine.com/questions/228749/show-part-of-a-texture.html

But it might be easier to just create a bunch of "mouth" planes, and swap between them by hiding/unhiding the other ones

There is also a TetureCropping function, but not sure if it's the same thing

https://docs.unrealengine.com/latest/INT/Engine/Rendering/Materials/Functions/Reference/Texturing/index.html#texturecropping

[swift widget]

Wow! NICE!

now i just have to figure out how to animate that (wish there were a tutorial somewhere)

Thank you so much @dapper trench

I'll try my best to solve with that 😃

[dapper trench]

@swift widget Yeah, not sure how best to do it in UE4. I would say probably say look into Morpha Target animation a bit. Probably somethign to give you an idea, as Morph Targets are the same thing just for 3D, so keying them to different shapes constantly is probably the same idea

[swift widget]

i know, but you can't morph target a UV layout

or can we? 🤔

looking at Texture Atlas right now, and is usefull for texturing several objects with the same material but different textures stacked in the same texture

Wich is what i'm doing here by making a different UV layout for each rock...

Texture Atlas would be usefull to populate several ground textures in one texture to avoid having different images for grounds, in short One texture for several grounds

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7vAb988H12g

[dapper trench]

it should be pretty versatile for both. If you set it up to your mouth pieces, and then convert your tiling to parameters, you could then use code/blueprints to change the UV space dynamically

[swift widget]

but can't say it would be animated for constant blinking in an Animation Blueprint or sequence controled for a cinematic 🤔

Is it possible to use a 2D flipbook in 3D, so I'd do a flipbook animation per expresion and swap the material on demand (Like showing and hiding meshes as sugested before but with materials)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ii8JDJMJ3YU

[dapper trench]

No clue to be honest, never used FlipBooks

[tiny mirage]

@sudden sedge retargetting takes care of that pretty easily. As long as their is a similar bone hierarchy you can use the retarget manager to make sort of like a map of each skeleton for unreal to interpret when retargetting. Then you just play with the skeleton hierarchy itself after the retarget and in most cases setting the root to animation scaled and hips to animation instead of skeleton will apply the animation pretty well. Might have to do some minor key frame things if you do something like I did where I went from a 5 finger hand to a 3 finger hand, but honestly thats not even that big of a deal.

Theres some pretty nifty youtube tuts out there, though not many recents ones to cover the newer layout and features. Pipeline has improved a lot. Excited for 4.19

[sudden sedge]

some of the models have radically different skeletons

as they're creatures

@tiny mirage

Can't really retarget a deer to a bunny rabbit

[tiny mirage]

well what would those two things have in common that you would want to use?

[vast trellis]

@swift widget you can use animation notifies to set different values to swap to the different face flipbooks

the learning tab couch knight projects has some face flip book examples in the characters, though I don't know if any are driven with animations or if they use just blueprints manually

[swift widget]

learning tab? wich one? 🤔

[gritty jay]

Imagine that each mannequin has a fly on top of his head and is trying to get rid of it.

All animations are procedurally generated using Neural Networks.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zEK6Ahpqldo

[carmine cove]

I've watched all the videos on how to use Animation Montages, but i still don't see a good use case for them. Why wouldn't you just use a Layered Blend per Bone with a looping animation?

[delicate locust]

Montages can be triggered without extra variables, that's the biggest advantage I see. If your event graph is event driven, you can use montages as one-shot animations.
You could also be better off using the Play slot animation node in many cases, but you can only have one of those at a time. Montages let you play on several slots at a time

[stoic parcel]

hi

[gritty jay]

These Mannequins were evolved to reach the black spot above their heads.

Each Character has a Neural Network to control the virtual muscles of his right arm. All the calulations are done in real time.

https://youtu.be/rSscfbOJJD4

[misty dagger]

Anyone know a good tutorial on rigging a gun in Max? Watched 4 tutorials but they all do it differently

[hot crescent]

does UE4 accept 60 FPS animations? or is it capped at 30?

[swift widget]

It actually works as fast as you go

look at Doom for example, it goes as fast as 120fps in some machines

[sudden sedge]

@hot crescent you can use any fps animation, just set the rate scale accorindgly

1.0 = 30 fps, 2.0 = 60fps

[swift widget]

That is true if the source is 30 fps, if your source is 60 fps then 1.0 = 60 fps and 2.0 would be 120 fps

again, Unreal Engine acomodates your animation in timing, it goes as fast as he can, engine reads the source fps and acomodate it in time so you can have sources from different fps and i believe it should still work ^_^

[timid summit]

Hey, is there any way I can reverse an animation and apply it after itself

so I can loop it

within unreal

[swift widget]

there are several ways you can reverse a 3D anim. in Blender, Maya, 3Ds.... but not sure if UE4 could... its an engine that holds animation tools its no animation tool after all...

I would go back to the editing program, save a copy and reverse it

[timid summit]

😦

I am not familliar with any of those

Ok the reverse option doesnt play well as the character is clearly going backwards and its wired

https://www.mixamo.com/#/?page=1&query=wall+run

I need to be able to have control over this animations, meaning I want to split it to have part of the animation played when I enter a wall, then a looping one which is when I run on the wall, and then the end part

any pointers as how I can achieve this

[spring steeple]

so you want your current animation split in 3 parts?

[timid summit]

yeah, but I cant seem to be able to find a good middle segment to loop

[spring steeple]

copy it 2 times and than delete the frames you dont need

[timid summit]

yeah, i did that and then put it in a montage, reversing the second animation but it looks wired

[swift widget]

looks weird because every animation played backwards looks weird

you need a "walk-backwards animation"? make one or get one 😉

for refference; in Prince of Persia (Sands of Time Trilogy)
whenever you loop back in time, character didn't walk backwards... as time was beign reversed, animation was played backwards, look and feels odd at the begining but you get use to it

[timid summit]

I edited the running animation with keyframes

and made it into a wall run one

thanks for the help tho

[swift widget]

good to know 😃

[bleak flume]

Hi how do i make 2d texture eye blink?

I made this but it isn't smooth

I drew 3 pics and made a gif is it the best way ?

[bleak flume]

I think 4 pictures may do the job

[noble swan]

Hey guys, is there a way to do procedural squash / stretch animation on a static meshe inside a material?

[maiden totem]

I think you can get something like that with material tessellation and normals

[pastel spindle]

Guzys

How do I rig a wep properly in Maya?

I tried in Maya by Interact Skin Bindind

Binding*

But smhow dosnt feel right

:/

AHH

Nvm I am stupid to use interaction bind

[misty dagger]

if I have a full body +face animation, (everything in the skeleton) and I want to mute the face part. How would be a smart way to go about it?
I was thinking to use a layered blend per bone that blends back to a mesh-space static pose of a neutral face, and then specify all facial bones in the blend target list for the node.

would that be legit?

I have 92 bones directly under the head bone for the face. Would I need to then make 92 branch filter entries in the layered blend per bone node?

[lilac plank]

Hi! How do you typically make animations communicate with gameplay code? Say I want to make Overwatch's Doomfist's Seismic Slam ability, where he jumps off the ground, flies in the air, and then lands. What tells the animation when to do which of those things? I have so far used anim montages, and made the blueprint starting the montage send and get information from the animation blueprint and anim notifies. I seek other solutions since this has grown messy.

[raw dew]

@lilac plank I believe you could get some nice results with a mix of notifies (which you are using) and curves built into your animation sequences. They could tell you things like the pinnacle of the jump or the lowest part of it (hit the ground), acceleration, etc. Not sure if you need some sort of prediction (ie. "when/where the character will land"). Curves can help you with that too (with some kinematic equations).

[sudden sedge]

I'd say get the code done, then tell the animation when to transition

start -> peak -> fall -> land

[lilac plank]

Thank you @raw dew ! 😃

[misty dagger]

hey guys! i've got a bit of a dumb question -- if you animate a texture in blender (ie. an eye blinking), would that texture animation translate to unreal when you export it? or would it be better to do the animation within unreal itself?

i'm talking about literally uploading a couple of facial expression textures, and then changing the texture on the keyframe

[inner zephyr]

all tutorials online use the the "is falling" to make the jump animation trigger.... but i want to use "is falling" for the falling animation!!! is there another way to trigger the jump animation?

[vestal thunder]

cant you link the jump to the jump button

[misty dagger]

if i remember correctly you would begin the jump animation when the character is falling, and then have the falling animation play when the jump animation is almost finished. or are you trying to do something different?

[main ferry]

Good morning. I'm searching for a solution and I'm trying to find what is possible with current systems in UE4. I need to make a system similar to humans fall flat where you can move your arms to grab walls. When you grab with one arm the rest of your body would ragdoll from that point and swing. If you wanted to raise your other arm awhile swinging you could and that limb would wake up from the ragdoll or be influenced on top of it.

I picture using a constrinat to attach the hand to a location in world, then setting all the bones to ragoll. I've found a node called something like -set all bones to ragdoll below this bone. This seems like it would work down the heirarchy - but a limb hand is already at the bottom

[inner zephyr]

@vestal thunder can i?

@misty dagger yea that's how the Epic team does it with the mannequin but as i am working with the Mixamo character i only have a complete jump animation so i need to make jump(space) only trigger the jump animation and if you are falling then trigger the "falling" animation

[solid nova]

yo

im trying to retarget an animation on a new skeleton

https://gyazo.com/b8deec34e6cecaa59ba18a5aaba131dc

but this just happens

when i apply the animation

the new animation

The pose of the two skeletons are as similar as i could get it

Does scale matter?

Cause hte new skeleton i have is waaay bigger

But on the retarget screen it doesnt show the scale really

[misty dagger]

i think scale does matter.. i'm no expert, but i would imagine that any change in the skeleton itself (ie. addition of joints, length of bones) would cause incompatibility issues. have you tried scaling it down to the original size and then applying the animation to see if it works?

[solid nova]

Thing is it is at the original size right now

I imported it from blender

Maybe i can scale it down in blender before i import it

But idk exactly how much i need to scale it down

[misty dagger]

do the two skeletons have their joints in the same places?

[solid nova]

Yeah

All the joints are matched up

When i say big

i mean its REALLY big

like a thousand times bigger then a chair

[misty dagger]

i feel like that could be the issue, because the screenshot you posted shows it being squeezed down

i would try scaling it down before importing just to see if it makes a difference

[solid nova]

Yeah

i think so too

its just the problem of knowing how much

to scale it down

[misty dagger]

well if it works on the original skeleton, then presumably you would want it scaled down until it matches the dimensions of that skeleton?

[solid nova]

Yeah but i mean like

In blender

it says 0.0.0

u know

cause its the original

so i dont have numbers to go after really

Same thing in unreal on the other skeleton

it says 0.0.0 on the axes

Since thats the default size

https://gyazo.com/d84b09cb3e21f4b1a2f8fbf5165d822f

okay got it much

closer now

[misty dagger]

i'm just trying to look up questions with similar issues.. some people are saying you're meant to reposition the scale to 1,1,1 before importing it, but i'm not sure why

honestly if it was me i would just keep making it smaller until the animation looks right, because i don't know any better

[solid nova]

Yeah im doing that right now

If exaclty the same thing happens

then ill know at least

its not the scale thats the problem

[misty dagger]

yeah true. though you said the bones were in the correct place right? it seems like most people have an issue with the bones being in the wrong place when they import

and if that's not the case with your model, i can't see what else it could be

[solid nova]

Yeah

https://gyazo.com/fd406800bce5e438404f48dcb01d1ff8

seems pretty good now

ima try it now

[misty dagger]

fingers crossed

[solid nova]

https://gyazo.com/f58e7ed0b10b9c23ec4777dffe4c0660

well fuck

its not even showing up now

omg

it worked tho!

Haha

https://gyazo.com/8b8342af653e14ae6b4d97ccd80706a7

Lets fuckin goooo

Finally

This has like halted my work for a few days

[misty dagger]

nice! i'm glad it worked out

[solid nova]

Yeah

thx for ur help

[misty dagger]

no problem, you did most of the work haha

at least now we both know that scale matters

[solid nova]

yo @misty dagger

https://gyazo.com/5d664339e5217566fea3f6941ae74e9f

https://gyazo.com/191c57610fc20242b74ca2ac816001ee

Which one do u think is the Root?

Nothing is actually called root here

[misty dagger]

is it not the one at the top of the chain?

[solid nova]

i think so

i just tried

auto mapping on it

and i choose that one

yo im trying to imprt animations from unity store

in to unreal

and for some reason the animation is not with it

They are fbx so

LIke its only skeleton, physics and meshes

[misty dagger]

hm i'm not sure if i can help there, i've never bought anything off the unity store. are you sure it was bundled with an animation? can you contact the seller?

have you tried importing the assets into a different program ie. blender?

[solid nova]

Oh ye

ive not

i can try it

weird

doesnt seem to work

it doesnt import anything in to blender

oh wait isnt there a walking animation

in unreal for free?

[merry rampart]

anyone have any tips for reducing alembic file sizes in blender???

[main ferry]

Does anyone know how to exclude certain bones during ragdoll? It seem,s that I can set bones beneath a certain parent to ragdoll. But what if I wanted to only ragdoll the legs of a character

[merry rampart]

Tyrant - I believe that would be in the physics assets

removing collision on certain collision volumes - or altering physics simulation from Kinematic to Simulation

stuff like that

there's also like a physics weight setting

[main ferry]

yeah IO'm trying to find the physics weight setting but I don't see it

[merry rampart]

so each collision volume can have individually contributed physics sim amounts

[main ferry]

You would set this per part on the physics asset right?

[merry rampart]

ya

[main ferry]

Hmm I can't find the physics weight parameter

[merry rampart]

I forget exac where. click on an individual collision thingy

k one sec ima check

just went thru this meself

[main ferry]

I think I found it

[merry rampart]

oh ok good

[main ferry]

So basically this works by setting a threshhold number right? So if I use the set all physics objects blend to 0.5 then anything with a higher threshhold doesn't simulate right?

[merry rampart]

umm

dont think so

may be wrong

in my experiments - it would mean that physics sim would take over an animation by .5 "weight"

[main ferry]

Ahh So setting it to 0 disbales the physics on it

[merry rampart]

so if character was walking say, then the animation would still be visible, but the head and stuff would bounce around a bit cause just 50% of physics is being acted upon

I think so

[solid nova]

Anyone know why some fbx dont have any animation with them?

Im download like free animations

and its just a mesh skeletal and physics assets

[merry rampart]

where did you download from

[solid nova]

https://mocaponline.com/products/free-mocap-animation-pack

got them from here

had exact same problem

with some animations from Unity store

Any idea why?

[solid nova]

https://gyazo.com/875e5a6eafb2806e4e7dde0bc1832038

How would i go about fixing this?

The hand is not in the right place

[sudden sedge]

did you bake animation on export?

[hot crescent]

I know this is a UE4 server but is it ok to talk about Maya here? i have an issue with maya but not sure how to fix it.

[sudden sedge]

what kind of issue? I'm familiar with maya

not an expert though

[main ferry]

Anyone know how to set physics weight on each physics asset body (each bone)?

[hot crescent]

This is the issue i'm having with maya 2018: http://g.recordit.co/6sMQdi7fYo.gif

is there a way to fix it?

[ocean ermine]

When you retarget an animation, is that new animation "attached" to the original one? i.e. if i migrate just the new animation, will it bring the original with it?

[maiden totem]

I don't think so? When I retarget an animation the option I'm given is "Retarget and duplicate"

[hollow summit]

Is having multiple skeletons (4-6) with similar animations weird or strange (retargeting)? or should I spent the extra mile to figure out how to unify all the skeletons together?

[hollow summit]

Side note: does anyone here know how to import a current skeleton/mesh and merge it with unreal engines mannequin?

[whole blaze]

that node is not working properly with morphs , i guess thats normal?

[solid nova]

Hey

I have these 2 models

in C4D

one has an animation

and the other one dont

they are the exact same skeleton

I move the animation from one to the other

and then exproted it as an FBX

In c4d the nimation and model is fine

But in Unreal the model is kinda fucked

The arm is in his back

and his feet are weird

Anyonw know why this would happen? Since its completely fine in c4D

[lavish plover]

@hollow summit It takes about 15 minutes to learn how to use the same skeleton on multiple characters (even ones with wildly different proportions, as long as the have the same bone heirarchy and names). Retargeting is sloppy and limiting.

https://docs.unrealengine.com/latest/INT/Engine/Animation/AnimationRetargeting/index.html

[solid nova]

https://gyazo.com/85c1808a39c5600d8aadf4eac4dbed4d

This should work right?

https://gyazo.com/3aa85182641948e20469ef2ac7d9a39a

the model on the right

is what happens when i apply the animations

[hollow summit]

@lavish plover I've done that before, hundreds of times... it's just these new Skeletons i'm using... they're giving me a hard time.

I'm tempted to just export them, and grab the mesh and re-create the whole skeleton to match UE4's skeleton structure...