to variables on the event graph
#animation
molten jewel
and you had a modify bone component node prior to anim dynamics that bound those saved transforms in
this might work
might want to init the transforms to ref space though on the event graph
honest bobcat
hi guys. I'm looking into making my character movement require a rotation. e.g. if character faces forward, and he then wants to move backwards, character will first rotate and only then start moving.
I know it can be done with root motion - but can it be done without it as well?
molten jewel
yes msh91 but would consider thinking about that in a less animation approach way
have you played gears of war?
honest bobcat
mm not really. Let me watch a video of it though
molten jewel
well the sprint button in gears only lets you move forward with slight turns
your options are basically: Limit the amount of turn when your moving fast or limit the travel speed based on angle between desired direction
both of these things, you'd want to handle in the pawn imo, not so much the animation end of things
imo, the player knowing they can't turn fast while moving tends to make more sense to the player
honest bobcat
I think I prefer the idea of limiting travel speed based on angle between desired direction. Not even sure how it would work the other way tbh.
molten jewel
imagine trying to change direction and it not changing direction because your moving too fast
vs
trying to change direction and stopping
honest bobcat
yeah but that doesn't make sense to me; not changing direction. I'm pressing backward while running forward and what happens then? nothing?
molten jewel
speaking more of the pressing forward and left at the same time scenario
honest bobcat
yeah but I'm hoping for a general solution rather than different for each "type"
I think the 2nd might work. I feel like I'm missing something though.
We are talking about movement like in Assassin creed, shadow of war, etc? (if you played those 2)
molten jewel
was kind of under the impression that this is a sprint mode or something. but if this is for sneaking and stuff too, where theres not a lot of locomotion to begin with, penalizing movement for turning around makes sense yea
honest bobcat
it's for everything yeah, not just sprint. There is also sprint, but I'm just talking about basic slow moving for now yeah
molten jewel
I do think its worth making the two work differently.
like it does sound like players would be driving a motorboat if they have to wait for the turns
if you tune it so the turns are so fast that it still feels responsive, that little bubble in thumb to movement may not be all that appreciated
but anyways,
again i wouldn't do this stuff in anim bp, you'd be better off doing turn handling in the actor/pawn
honest bobcat
"players would be driving a motorboat" - I don't really understand that?
"that little bubble in thumb to movement" - little bubble in thumb? is that a phrase?
honest bobcat
Also, you're saying I shouldn't do this in anim bp - but you're talking specifically without root motion right? I've seen it done with root motion, and it looks really good.
e.g. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QCA4ZQzFZ9s ( 0:11 - :13 has a good example of complete turn )
molten jewel
thats what i meant by bubble
honest bobcat
I'm still not entirely sure what you mean by "not appreciated". You mean they won't like to do a complete turn? yeah, most of these games are like that. The turns are slows, and if you just want to run far you're better doing small turns*
molten jewel
Yea i realize i got off topic talking about design decisions too, most games do not stop movement with thumb to turn around, they turn around as they walk.
as in they still have the side stepping animations, they just rotate the character to the direction they are heading as they are immediately heading that direction
they don't stop you in place to have your character turn around
and yea root motion is a decision you could go with
honest bobcat
sort of. When it's sideways your right, but when it's 180 degrees it's a complete stop (or at least feels like it)
molten jewel
nah theres back peddleing in those games you mentioned at least
honest bobcat
googling back peddling
molten jewel
you can commit to root motion but make sure you realize what a commitment it is
back peddling == backwards walking
honest bobcat
I tried it once, and it's too much for me as I don't have any animators
but generally speaking the result of root motion is what I would love to have
molten jewel
yea then you don't want to do it in pawn at all lol
and you just base all movement on animations
honest bobcat
"nah theres back peddleing in those games you mentioned at least". There isn't btw; not in the 2 games I mentioned anyway
well yeah but that's just root motion and I can't do it; in which case I can't just base my movements on animations
molten jewel
when you press back, you immediatley move backwards. it also turns the character around yes, but it leads me to believe there are walking backward animations.
also lock on
yea if you go root, go full root imo
but i wouldn't recommend it
honest bobcat
It's almost a year since I played my last AC game, but I'm pretty sure you're wrong. That is, you don't move backwards at all. Again, assuming 180 degrees change.
molten jewel
unless you have tons of animations
honest bobcat
Yeah as said I can't go root, no way.
So without root the best option is to limit the movement speed based on angle, right?
molten jewel
its not something i'd consider but it is how you would do what you've described
honest bobcat
What would you do then to get the desired result? root motion or not try to get that result at all?
molten jewel
tested quick
it is kinda silly because you turn around faster by swinging the stick around than just going directly opposite direction lol
but they do slow the turn speed way down when you are sprinting, and respond differently to a complete opposite direction
honest bobcat
how did you start the game, play it, record it, saved it, and uploaded - all of that together, so fast lol
and it's sort of silly, but I think the idea is to sort of "punish" you for trying to change your mind. Sort of trying to tell the player to stick with his own plan, his chosen direction.
Either way I like it ^^
molten jewel
I wouldn't have it animation driven, and i wouldn't penalize like shadow of war does either when moving at such slow paces. but i do think its right to treat the direcitonal change as a special case
yea if you swing the stick around though theres not really a penalty
its almost as if it treats crossing over the center of the stick special idk
honest bobcat
you're talking about game design though right? not technical details? (just to make sure I understand)
molten jewel
good news is its up to you haha, but yea again, still think it's something you should do in the pawn update and not so much the animations
honest bobcat
I'm actually gonna do it in the character movement component
molten jewel
idk what you mean by technical details
honest bobcat
but yeah, same as pawn and not animation
molten jewel
does that imply which will look best or perform better etc?
i don't really consider it that kind of a decision
honest bobcat
I guess yeah.
The game design is about what feels better, but I think it's different for every game (and game maker)
Anyway I'm gonna try that; thanks!
celest crane
Am I just being naive for thinking I can use an AimOffset blendspace for something like HitReacts?
Really its that I have something working with this, but I can only get it to loop forever or play once ever....trying to drive it with a bool doesnt seem to work
stoic remnant
Has something changed with Mixamo? its been awhile since i did this but i can not for the life of me get Mixamo animations to retarget on to anything else properly because of the lack of a root bone
molten jewel
Its always been like this rei
mixamo treats root bone like pelvis
best practice for me has been to make a separate version of the skeleton using all of mixamos specialized bone names with tip bones then running that through processing to get an output that is usable.
stoic remnant
There's away to retarget it properly in the engine with out the plugin
Iv done it before
Required adjusting the animation retarget settings for bones
I just can't remember how
molten jewel
i just use constraints in blender between the two skeletons to re-export but idk of any plugin solution
stoic remnant
theres a plugin on the marketplace that fixes the rootbone issue in 1 click
in engine
its 10/10
but i dont have 40$ for it
checking my old project on how i did the retarget atm
fricc failed to compile on 4.23, this is gonna be fun
molten jewel
making a separate version of the skeleton for mixamo.com can work out well though. just adding leaf bones on the finger tips, foot ball bones and top of head will improve the quality of the animations very much.
but nice on the plugin, doing it all in blender is a major pain lol
honest bobcat
I remember seeing in this channel not too long ago something about using velocity in the animation blueprint (and how you don't understand why people do that).
I was just gonna use it though. Any idea what it was or any reason why I shouldn't?
the movement component velocity, that is*
molten jewel
was probably me complaining about velocity to rotator?
or could have been me complaining about using vectorlengthsquared
lol
molten jewel
Yea, there just is this popular video out there that tells people to use vector length squared to convert velocity to speed. I think the intention was vector length 2D (just X and Y components)
vector length squared gets you speed
including falling / jumping
honest bobcat
well yeah that seems fairly straight forward hehe.
I was just gonna use it if for condition, if I should move or not.
hence squared seems fine for me?
honest bobcat
lol. I just imagined you coming over to my house like "I TOLD YOU TO NAME IT SQUARED! SQUARED I SAID!"
but cool thx
Just out of curiosity, what was the issue with rotator?
molten jewel
lol nah, its just something that confuses people is my issue with it. not a huge deal
when you have no velocity, standing still, the rotator is going to be 0,0,0 iirc
honest bobcat
what rotator are we even talking about? the last update rotation of movement component?
molten jewel
so if your heading 90 degerees west and stop its going to go 90...0
ah nah just ck was using GetVelocity -> Rotator to get movement rotation
honest bobcat
oh cool, got it. Thanks for explaining and the help again 🙂
btw, I went with limiting the velocity and so far it looks good ^^
molten jewel
theres no reason a stop should suggest the rotation changed is my issue with it.
cool cool
stoic remnant
fricc is wrong with my engine
watching people retarget mixamo fine on youtube, iv done it my self fine on youtube
but rn it aint working at all
honest bobcat
not sure what you're doing, but I played with mixamo long time ago and again this past month, and I believe it has changed.
Right now it doesn't have a single skeleton but multiple. I got 2 meshes and never managed to use them on a single skeleton.
molten jewel
They had different bone names?
atomic moat
Hey everyone, I'm quite new and seem to be missing something rather simple here and was wondering if anyone could offer some help please?
I have a rigged animation that i exported as fbx to ue4.23, I have a the mesh, skeleton and animation all present in ue. The animation plays in the preview, but I cannot figure out how to add it to character(or create animation) blueprint to play the animation while the character is moving?
atomic moat
thanks Pat
ive followed lots of written tutorials, tend to sttay away from the videos but ill give it a shot
and this will still be relevant to 4.22.3 right?
molten jewel
Just watch it the first time, don’t need to follow it
It mostly is yes
You’ll understand the way animations work with the graph this way
atomic moat
for sure, I havent seen it visualized yet, seems like a good video so far, thanks again!
misty dagger
@atomic moat Those tutorials were quite good:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YVC-DL9Ibf0
clever abyss
Is It possible to add multiple animations to level sequencer horizontally ?
copper dawn
Twitter
delicate locust
Need advice on something - imagine that you use root motion to climb up from a ledge on a platform, but the platform itself is moving downwards. Can I attach my character to the platform and have the root motion play relative to it, or will it ignore the location of the platform and climb too high?
Edit: I tried it, and it seems to work!
night musk
Hi can you help me with capture animation in UE4.. so i have car and recorded it with a sequence same i did with camera. but 2 problems. 1 wheels driving during the play but not in sequence. 2 when i capture(render) car totally stack and start to fall through ground. How to fix it ? thank you so much
tall holly
for root motion can a root bone be rotated in the animation?
restive yew
Of course
cedar sigil
im trying to use ik to make walking up and down stairs look good... does anyone know a good explanation about the concepts behind that? i can move the feet with IK, but that's about all i know. i know you need to lower the whole mesh somehow, but i dont know what maks sense there. also i dont know when you should turn off or lower the alpha of the ik as the character walks.
molten jewel
Dividual, i'd tend to recommend solutions that don't involve sweeping/line casts
if your game only has one very specific type of stairs you can make it look very good
if you were to additionally put in some rules of minimum distances between levels of steps you could also work off that information. such as floors of buildings needing to be in increments of 9 inches (seems standard) then you can also make assumptions here
but yea with epic skeleton the feek ik work like this:
root
-ik_foot_root
--ik_foot_l
--ik_foot_r
if you make a walking up stair animation. one could more or less make two float curves to control sticking one of the feet to a world position (as in, when the curve is 1.0, you retreive the last foot location and lock it until the curve is 0.0)
i tend to think it looks as good as casting and the inaccuracies/bugs aren't as bad as the line casting version
otherwise, just line cast from thigh bone to foot bone and twist pivot the pelvis in the animation so it looks more natural. with either approach, a moving floor gets complicated
cedar sigil
thanks @molten jewel
unfortunately, it needs to work on different types of stairs, and i dont even know the final meshes yet..
what does "twist pivot the pelvis" mean? :p
sorry, dont know much about animation.
i also asked my question here: https://answers.unrealengine.com/questions/938195/using-ik-for-walking-on-stairs.html
molten jewel
so if you imagine the knee bending
the axis the foot slides on would be from the hip to the heel or ball of foot most likely
so walking up stairs, if the pelvis slightly twists to keep hip position over the step the foot is on the foot is less likely to jump
using volumes to define information about the steps your on would be the ultimate approach to making very convincing steps
but its not so simple
cedar sigil
you mena rotate the pelvis around the z axis so the foward foot is more directly underneath that side of the pelvis?
molten jewel
yea, just so that the hip to foot trace clears the tip of the next stair while the foot is down
if your using your own animation rig there are other ways to accomplish this stuff and you don't really need the influences on the animation that way. such as actually defining bones for where to trace
overhead of a bone is kinda high though imo
most every node processes the entire list at some point
cedar sigil
currently im tracing down from the z of the middle of the character and the x/y of the foot bone. not using the ue4 mannequin skeleton, its a different one. doesnt have IK bones.
molten jewel
one trick
if your using Character
you can get the movement component off it, and inside it the result of the floor hit test is stored
so you can use that information instead of doing a second expensive capsule cast
cedar sigil
im doing two line casts.
molten jewel
you could then limit their length by that existing cast still
but yea whatever works really, its just the lip of the stairs that can be problematic
casting straight down anyways
cedar sigil
i did get some popping. best way i "fixed" that so far was by trying to just interpolate the z offset of the mesh. not great though
i actually do need to cast below the capsule of the character. so that the character mesh can stand on the lower step of the stairs, even if that's below where the capsule currently is. although i dont be using normal character movement anyway. but good to know about being able to get the floor result, thanks
molten jewel
yea, movement component in general should be something to check before running casts. if it doesn't think its grounded anyways
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OhmaHZnprl0 not stairs but just as an example of basing stuff off the ground result and curves
tender elm
hi guys
long time ago, i watched an Epic video where they record a pawn movement into an animation
can't remember how they do that
they control the pawn, go from one place to another, played an animation, and all the session was recorded in a single long animation
restive yew
Not sure if this is what you’re looking for https://docs.unrealengine.com/en-US/Engine/Sequencer/HowTo/SequenceRecorder/index.html
honest bobcat
When editing a montage - how can I scale the preview asset?
bronze cape
alrighty so i'm not an artist at all but i am very interested in the cloth simulation stuff. Lets say I have a character with a skirt that needs to have some physics (lag be hind the leading movement) but also hold it's shape (think ruby's battle skirt from RWBY) how would i need to set that up. What needs ot be done in the modeling software and what gets done in UE? Is cloth simulation the correct way to handle it or should i be using a different piece of the engine. Thanks a bunch
molten jewel
what software?
molten jewel
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zK580JmywZQ i've not seen this video but its blender
i believe they have in editor cloth tools now too but i've only debugged cloth after its been made
night musk
Hi can you help me with capture animation in UE4.. so i have car and recorded it with a sequence same i did with camera. but 2 problems. 1 wheels driving during the play but not in sequence. 2 when i capture(render) car totally stack and start to fall through ground. How to fix it ? thank you so much
chrome mountain
Guyys please I need help
So I finally found a way to retarget ue4 mannequin animations to blender skeletons
And it works fine on individual animations but everytime I try to retarget the UE4 skeleton to another skeleton so it does it for all the animations the engine finishes the process then crashes
delicate junco
@bronze cape There are different approaches. For example Square Enix modeled clothes with straight shapes rigged with some bones and these bones were used by the Crystal/Luminous engine at runtime to make cloth simulation
You can use the same approach in Unreal using Anim Dynamics or this plugin https://github.com/pafuhana1213/KawaiiPhysics/blob/master/README_en.md
Another approach by Koei Tecmo was to use driver meshes, which were simplified shapes with some control points used to influence some cloth areas and simulate physic behavior
In Unreal you can use Anim Dynamics, rigid bodies and the plugin above for some quick setup wiht low cost. For more accurate results though cloth/physic assets will probably be necesary though
chrome mountain
Please can anyone help me
molten jewel
@chrome mountain what version
frosty berry
could someone help me retarget a skeleton/animation? i have a humanoid model with a skeleton that i want to be playable with the mannequin animations but i can’t get it to work right, it just stays in the a pose.
molten jewel
Did you set up all the bones?
frosty berry
ye
i set up a retargeting thing but it still won’t work
this is what i set up, i followed a guide on the unreal engine website
molten jewel
thats a skeleton tree yea, but did you set up the retargeting bones too?
where you assign the bones to the different bipedal related thing
molten jewel
yea but there is nothing in it
you want to select the numanoid rig
then bind in each bone
and try to align the two poses
@chrome mountain idk what version your on, but i tried debugging this issue before giving up. It does seem relevant to additive animations. Try turning additive animations off, then retarget
I first noticed this problem in 4.23 I think
frosty berry
@molten jewel got that, what should i do now?
molten jewel
save
and is your character posed the same way as mannequin or whatever the other character is?
frosty berry
somewhat
molten jewel
(A pose)
molten jewel
find an animation on another skeleton and right click to retarget
frosty berry
this?
molten jewel
yea
slate olive
@frosty berry uncheck show compatible and search for your skeleton
frosty berry
welp my thing just crashed cuz i ran out of vram
it has 8gb
wtf
uhhhhh thats not supposed to happen
and in the viewport during play it is still an a pose
frosty berry
well i fixed the viewport part but its still not supposed to be that lmao
frosty berry
should i retarget again?
molten jewel
@frosty berry what to the two characters look like side by side? Is one super small or something?
frosty berry
@molten jewel no i ended up getting it to work, i had a few bones in the wrong place during retargeting so everything got fucked up. fixed the bones, retargeted the animation blueprint again, set it to use it and it was perfectish lol
molten jewel
Perfectish is what one should shoot for
pine summit
Hi, could anyone help me out with a slight issue I have? I wanted to create a character BP to serve as base for all pawns, be it player characters or npcs but for some reason the animation blueprint updates for every single pawn not just the one controlled by the player (i.e. If I dodge they all do the dodge animation).
Is there any way to make it so only the character doing the action has its animations updated?
torn tendon
What's with the people there are tutz/docs all over the place for their question, then no even one "thanks" 🤔
pine summit
nvm, found it, it's because I was using get player character instead of try get pawn owner
honest bobcat
Any guidelines on when to use animation vs montage? for example for death?
restive yew
Old but it does a decent job of giving an examples of when to use it https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=fkbftFEEmx8
honest bobcat
cool ty
@restive yew Just finished it and it didn't really answer my question. I have 3 death animations depending on the situation.
I could use a death montage with 3 sections, with Play Montage node and give section name based on situation.
I could use a conduit of death when player isn't alive anymore, and 3 states depending on death.
grizzled basin
is there some way to tell when an animation is done blending? You have a hand down, when a bool is set the hand goes up to a certain position. Is there a way to know when it's done blending the two together and it's just running the target animation
honest bobcat
@grizzled basin not sure if it's what you're looking for, but when you play a montage you have various events such as On Blend Out and On Completed.
grizzled basin
it's not a montage, part of the animation blueprint
honest bobcat
I'm pretty sure there isn't an exposed way then. Perhaps if you go into the anim instance, find the details from c++, create a derived class and expose it..
grizzled basin
hmm okay thanks. That's alright I suppose.
mental badger
Yo, I need some advice. I have some issues with my aim offset. It works fine when standing (the weapon stays in basically the same position on the screen and attacks towards the same direction), however, when the player crouches, his spine bends which causes the weapon to go out of place. This is extra apparent when crouch walking (when walking, the spine bends even more). This is an issue because the player's attack will not hit in the right position where he is looking. Is there a solution to this problem that doesn't involve modifying the crouching spine to be straight up? https://youtu.be/oA7YE5w_mB8
molten jewel
@honest bobcat sounds like the point is you use the montage when you wnat more than just play the animation
don't think you need montage for death animations but I've never used mantages
tardy stag
Hey everyone, how do I "play" a blendspace on event? I would like to use a 1D blendspace like a montage and play it when the unit is hit. The float var is driven through a timeline. So far, so good, but I can't figure out how to "tell" the animBP that I want to play the blendspace. Any ideas? thanks
molten jewel
too many questions about montages, and I've got too little experience on them to answer. But outside of montages, the way to play something would be to allow its playback to happen using state machine or just blending
could you speak to what it is you have in a blendspace?
tardy stag
I've got two anims: 1. Idle 2. Hit. I'd use blendspaces since the trasition between anims is very easy to achieve
the var driving the blend is driven by a timeline which starts when actor is hit.
Gets set every tick of the timeline and grabbed by the animbp
the question is how do I tell the animbp that I want it to play... Only through state machine, where state=hit ->drives blendspace; and the bool is set by the event?
and turned off by notify...idk, it may work. Still feels a little clumsy
molten jewel
thats not really what blend spaces are for
tardy stag
I know
Still, can't find a better way of blending animations...
is there any way to blend animations for similar scenarios?
I'm sorry but my knowledge of animations is really narrow, and unfortunately, most help/tuts I can find keep on explaining the same things - those I already know.
Ok, it works with state machines+bool or enum or whatever, but it's kind of weird to control the timing, so montage works better 😛
honest bobcat
@molten jewel assuming I use the animation BP for death - how do I know when the animation is done so I can destroy the object?
honest bobcat
yeah I'm aware of them, but they seem a lot more complex than the alternative in this scenario.
The alternative being play montage => On Completed exec pin which is at the play montage node
tardy stag
did the montage play?
honest bobcat
it works with montages, I just wasn't sure if I should use montage or anim BP. We've talked about it before, seems like anim BP is a better fit for just playing death animation
but if I need to add a notify, handle it in animation blueprint, destroy vs dragging a pin from OnCompleted..
icy raft
Anyone know what happened to the Inertialization node?
tardy stag
I wouldn't worry ab. that tbh...You can do it either way
icy raft
honest bobcat
@tardy stag yeah I'm sure, I'm just trying to grasp a bit of when to use which one. I guess there's no good rule about it
tardy stag
but if you are using a montage, it needs to be registered in a slot in animbp anyway, so id just add an event on the anim asset, skip the slots, skip making the montage, all of that
honest bobcat
I need the slot anyway since I'm playing other montages
I don't need a special slot for it or something
tardy stag
I'm not sure, can't answer as to how "standard procedure" is, but I guess whatever goes faster and is not impacting performance - my kinda rule so far. I may be wrong, but so far it worked 😛
honest bobcat
mm is it though? same performance when using montage vs anim BP?
tardy stag
Not sure ab. that either. But it seems to me that whenever animbp "checks" for changes it also checks for each slot while the anim itself only fires the notify if any
But I'm 99.99% sure that the performance difference is negligible at most
I'd just go for whatever you feel is mainstream to what you've been doing so far...i mean, if you open ur project in 6 months, it's easy to look around and see how you did things. If you used predominantly notifies, go for that, if montages, go for that. It's what I usually do to streamline the workflow.
honest bobcat
cool got it. thanks!
restive yew
I usually use animation montage for death. I need to fire character specific events nor will there be any animations playing after the character dies anyway.
hollow latch
hi all, is there a way to do a "relevant anim time remaining" transition without losing fast path?
molten jewel
don't think so, would like to hear the official story on that one thouhg
hollow latch
thanks, kind of surprising though!
molten jewel
fast path with state machine is strange tbh.
wish it'd show a bolt for all things, not just those that take pins
misty dagger
what is the best way to seperate my upper body with my lower body when it comes to my sword swinging animation?
torn tendon
I would search first for merging animations aimoffsets, blend per bone and etc.
torn tendon
That quick even.
misty dagger
tru
it was something dumb i did
and i just tested it out to see if it would fix it and it did
short panther
hi is there a way to prevent cloth from going through my skeletal mesh?
I have a character with some cloth elements to it and the cloth just goes through the body of my character
pine summit
I think you can widen the mesh's collision in the physics component
Though I'm can't check atm so I can't tell you how exactly
short panther
actually I have the collision volumes of the physics asset set
although im not sure if these are the correct ones
I just added shape to the bones of the leg of my character
and scaled them to fit but the cloth part still goes through the leg mesh
pine summit
Yes I believe those are the ones. Sadly it's not something I fiddled much yet so I can't help much beyond that
short panther
yeah ive been stuck on this part of my character development researches and there arent many posts about it online
thanks anyway
pine summit
Hope you find a solution
grizzled basin
What's the best way to keep the upper torso facing forward? I'm working on some strafing stuff, and the body is rotating too much. I'm using a layered blend per bone and having it on spine_01 with a depth of 3. The problem is, when the pelvis rotates as part of the legs, it's rotating the upper body anyway.
I'm in the process of looking for some decent side stepping strafing animations (rather than ones that fully turn the hips and just run sideways) but I'm looking to replicate the fortnite system here, where the upper body seems to stay locked forward, and the legs almost move independently (they use side stepping and I'm pretty sure 45 degree backpedals)
in that image he's running facing the side, when I'd like his upper body to be facing the camera.
delicate junco
@hollow latch I use anim notifies to avoid get time remaining, which destroys fast path
Basically I just put a notify when I want the transition to be made, it sets a boolean to true and I set it back to false when transition is done.
It introduces more booleans though but in my case I don't really care
I like the fact that it's easier to place a notify too visually
I had a whole explanation about this with pics but search function doesn't work unfortunately so can't find it
An example here
hollow latch
Nice, thanks!
chrome mountain
@grizzled basin why not use an aim offset instead
grizzled basin
I've been doing that, having issues with getting it to point in the right place, none of the calculations seem to be doing what they should for yaw and pitch. I've sort of got it figured out now with some duct tape.
barren cairn
is there some sort of compendium (like eXi's network compendium) for how UE4 animations work with all it's nitty gritty details?
are the pinned links the recommended learning resources for diving deeper into UE4 animations?
grizzled basin
@chrome mountain One issue I'm having is the pitch control. I need to blend per bone basedon spine_01, but the aim offset that I have for pointing down involves some pelvis rotation in order to tilt the body down for the aim.
This is how far it'll bend down with the blended animation
vs the aimset which allows the pelvis to rotate.
Unless there is a different spot I should be blending the bottom and top.
fresh sandal
Is there any way i can easily remove snapping from an animation after retargeting my skeleton to the epic skeleton? I'm not good at animating so not really sure what the problem is
mental badger
Anyone know how I can keep a weapon aim offset in the exact same position on screen regardless of player state (standing, crouching)?
It it typical to have separate aim offsets for standing and crouching?
wheat briar
https://youtu.be/bR190spUpvM
Animation gurus! Inertial blending (used in Gears 5 and supplied by The Coalition for distribution) is now a staple UE4 feature. Not the best example here, but there are some great tips available for making intertial blends look great (slightly shorten animations by removing the shared idle/other pose you usually have to use to get anims to blend seamlessly). I'm gonna be testing this out in my project next year and I'll report back (no anim stuff this month, got a bunch more that needs doing). Any thoughts on this from the pros tho?
chrome mountain
@grizzled basin can you send a screenshot of the setup of your aim offset
And your current aim setup
misty dagger
How does Two Bone IK transforms the "Effector Target Space" from World location to bone location when choosing the a bone?
For example, how can i do a bone space effector manually from a world location effector with bp code?
wheat briar
Found a presentation on it, too, for those interested:
https://www.gdcvault.com/play/1025331/Inertialization-High-Performance-Animation-Transitions
chrome mountain
@misty dagger please could you explain better
misty dagger
@chrome mountain Is it better now?
chrome mountain
Oh oh
I'm I'm coming
So if I explain it it's gonna be pretty long so instead can I send you a video link
Or guide you along the way
chrome mountain
@misty dagger
misty dagger
@chrome mountain Good one, is it that much code to do that
still lark
@wheat briar looks like the presenter did a similar talk at siggraph2017:
https://youtu.be/fcIGRsn1XzE
wheat briar
@still lark nice!
chrome mountain
@misty dagger if you plan to do it with c++ then I'm sorry IDK c++ at all only blueprints
misty dagger
no bp
grizzled basin
@chrome mountain sure, aimoffset is simple, just an up down left right aim off set from -90 to 90
blend is done like this.
The main issue that I can see is that the animations I have use the pelvis as part of their rotation but it's not available since the locomotion needs that.
I don't think I could properly blend the legs without the pelvis.
and I've run prints, i'm getting the correct value for pitch, the problem is it just can't bend down that far because of the blend.
maybe I need to edit the poses to drop the arms down more or something
chrome mountain
@grizzled basin try setting mesh space rotation on the layer blend per bone and see if that helps. It helped me with some pistol animations
What I mean is in the layer blend per bone set mesh space rotation to true
grizzled basin
ahha
yes if I set that and change it to 90, it bends right down
thanks
at least in preview
let me try in the actual game
grizzled basin
One issue I have with pitch is trying to figure out where I should calculate it from
I have a similar set up to fortnite with a third person off set camera
chrome mountain
So do I
grizzled basin
so where do you calculate your pitch delta from?
for my yaw delta, I attached an arrow component to the pelvis and then I calculate based on the different between where his waist is pointing and where the camera impacts the game world. That seems to give me the yaw that I want.
chrome mountain
I find the delta between the control rotation and actor rotation
grizzled basin
I tried that, like they have in their demo explanation and that just was not working for me at all
chrome mountain
It's what I currently use
Along with some camera adjustments it works fine for me
grizzled basin
now that I've added mesh rotation though, let me try again and see
chrome mountain
Is your camera rig attached to the player ?
grizzled basin
camera is attached to a boom, and the camera is offset from the end of the boom to give the offset look
chrome mountain
Same with mine
grizzled basin
chrome mountain
Then at runtime based on the aim pitch value I alter the socket offset in the boom to keep the camera looking ok
grizzled basin
the camera itself is offset 60 y and 30 z
grizzled basin
should I move the boom instead?
chrome mountain
Depends on your setup
grizzled basin
boom is at 0,0,40
chrome mountain
I moved mine cus I couldn't figure out any other way to do it
Mines at the eye height of the character
Just at his eyes
grizzled basin
okay let me try that
how much to the right did you offset the camera?
60 feels like it's about the right spot to put the camera similar to fortnite
grizzled basin
okay, so you put the camera boom to the height of the eyes and then offset the camera itself by 25? Let me put that with their control rotation/actor rotation calculation and see if it works or not
how long was your boom? default was 300 for TPS, but I dropped it to 200
chrome mountain
that wasnt all i did
i also modified the boom socket offset based on the pitch so the camera was always at the eye height
mines at 150
but i might change it though
grizzled basin
he looks about right now
I like the 60 offset better than 25 though at least at 200 boom length
that's with 60 offset on the camera
chrome mountain
if you need help with making sure the camera is always at his eye height just hit me up
and yeah that looks good
grizzled basin
my camera seems to be staying directly behind the head
chrome mountain
i mean like when you look directly down or up the camera isnt always above the weapon or facing where the head is facing
grizzled basin
I'm not quite sure I follow. Do you have an example? Is that the way it is in fortnite? Let me fire it up
chrome mountain
lol calm down
notice how when i look completely up or down the camera is still at a reasonable position instead of being obstructed by the player
grizzled basin
ah I see, when you rotate, you add some offset to get the body out of the way?
chrome mountain
yes
grizzled basin
What I'm working on will be more of a corridor setup, so I don't know how much up and down there will be, but if I make larger open rooms, then it might come in handy
chrome mountain
ohhh nice
grizzled basin
so what did you do, just lerp the camera position based on the current pitch?
chrome mountain
Yup
Bro sorry but please can we pick this up later
It's like 2AM here and I gotta go jogging later
Just know I used a map function to set the values
I mapped 90 and -90 to my offset max and offset min
grizzled basin
no worries man, thanks for the help!
heavy needle
hey guys, is there a way in unreal to constrain the hand to the grip? https://gyazo.com/84c9e173141521e08d968aad5ac5314f
pure kettle
@short panther. Did you read this already? https://forums.unrealengine.com/development-discussion/animation/116207-is-there-a-documentation-tutorial-for-the-4-16-built-in-cloth-system/page2
short panther
I did try to do this I made a new cloth after editing my physics asset and the cloth still goes through the capsules I added @pure kettle
worldly ruin
Hi all! I'm having an issue with sequencer. After the sequence/cinematic is finished, my character' hairs/clothes are moving crazy right after the sequence ends. (first frames after the sequence)
Is there a way to control this? Thanks!
molten heron
Is it just me, or inertial blending doesn't work well in most of situations?
or I'm doing something wrong probably.
I just tested it in advanced locomotion assets, I couldn't get the results that I expected
pure kettle
@short panther i was having issues with it too. I redesigned my cloth (in my case a cape) so when its worn there is more spacing between character and the cloth plus I started weights after the trouble area...
honest bobcat
Is there a way to use a random animation sequence (with chances, like the random sequence player node) inside a blend space 1d?
winter ginkgo
Yo guys! I'm sick of using marketplace characters for my games so i'm setting out to make my own (VR). I want to build of an anatomically correct skeleton (Similar to what stress level zero did) and I want to start rigging. Should I add a bone to every vertebrae or just do the 3 or so like most standard character models have?
https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/491347948895076354/653823564876742677/unknown.png
bronze osprey
use unreal rig
winter ginkgo
whats that and where would i find that
bronze osprey
the rig all unreal skeletons use
strong turret
What are people using now instead of Ikinema?
dark belfry
Hi unreal pros; I'm trying to figure out why my collision overlap set up isn't triggering. Here is a picture of the event bps and here are the state machines. I'm gunna crunch away again tomorrow on it. Just wondering if anyone had ideas on what i should do. Thanks a million!
statemachines
molten jewel
@heavy needle how is your gun attached? -- use ik_gun_root, and then ik_hand_l and ik_hand_r with two bone ik node.
You'll need to make sure that these bones in the animations are stuck to the fk bones they represent.
@honest bobcat no way to do that but a simple blend node would let you fade in some random sequence
if your using state machine its the same process wit the sink node in the state
but found using cached poses that get requested in states is handy
@winter ginkgo you have a max of somewhere like 250 bones
that you can animate
likely are going to have to have some bending in the spine
you don't need to use epic skeleton, but if your using maya you should.
if your using maya https://www.jeremyernst.com/devblog
if your using blender, wouldn't worry about matching epic skeleton until later (if ever) since its fairly simple to reorient bones at free will
@dark belfry duhnno how relevant the animations are to collision overlaps. that sort of stuff should be in the character blueprint
and ddubbs, not sure what ikinema is
molten jewel
yea, its a quality node.
torn tendon
@molten jewel IKinema is (was) animation solver middleware. Quite popular. Recently Apple bought them though ✝️
@strong turret There is Anomotion, but it looks dead as fish too, then I think there were one-two mp assets, but... no clue really.
molten jewel
hm, setting simulated fraction to non zero but non 1 will do this but idk if i'd recommend it. there are issues with it
molten heron
@dark belfry it just works
dark belfry
@molten jewel thanks. I'll make the changes. I hope that's what the problem is.
normal dust
Hello :D
So i just tried to Import my Blender Skeleton mesh into the Unreal engine but for some reason the Engine adds a Bone to my first bone and names it to what i named my First bone, so the names get really strange
what do i need to do that it doesn't create its own Root bone
late dawn
what's the editor wide setting to not reset level sequences when they've stopped playing???
normal dust
In Blender:
- Red Arrow: My first Bone called "Spine"
- Blue Arrow: Second Bine called "Belly"
- Light Blue Arrow: Not there
In UE 4.23: - Red Arrow: Second Bone Called: "Belly"
- Blue Arrow: Third Bone
- Light Blue Arrow: Fist Bone Called: "Spine"
molten jewel
@normal dust this is the root bone to pelvis. It’s important to note how maya draws bones. Maya draws bones as a connection from parent to itself. Unreal draws bones the exact same way. Blender draws bones as Y axis forward only.
When you export the FBX the armature object itself acts as the root bone. This is why the root bone name is that of the armature object. And why it’s a good idea to name the armature object “root”
All your bones are theoretically the same between packages it’s just the way they are drawn. Blender is very much alone in the way it draws bones
If you want to get a better idea of what I mean. Import mannequin to blender. You’ll see the bones point int all kinds of directions but it is accurate to how ue4 displays the axes if you look at the colors
Y forward is not a thing in maya . It’s just a line more or less
normal dust
so what do i need to avoid that extra Bone in UE?
I created a extra bone myself that goes to the Origin but that didn't help
molten jewel
Reread what I wrote
The armature will be the root bone
If you’ve got another root bone in the armature, don’t
normal dust
Yes and i named my Amature "root" but from root to my First bone is another bone
delicate junco
Locate your Blender FBX exporter script ( something like addons\io_scene_fbx\export_fbx_bin.py ). Open it, comment out the code below. After that, your skeleton should export without the extra bone created. If root motion still won't work, it is likely one of the settings you set in the Unreal Editor.
empty_key = data_empties[ob_obj]
connections.append((b"OO", get_fbx_uuid_from_key(empty_key), ob_obj.fbx_uuid, None))```
To comment just put # in front of each lineBlender adds a bone with the name of your armature when exporting to fbx, doing the above prevents it
This is what I do, you can also use Pat's solution ofc
molten jewel
Can you get it to not add a bone when you import though? Lol
delicate junco
What do you mean ? When importing in Blender or UE4 ?
normal dust
So i tried Dimy's solution...
Now my "root" bone is gone..
but the Extra bone that goes to the Origin is still there
delicate junco
are you allowed to send your blend file ? If so send it to me in PM, I could take a quick look
Oh wait, which blender version do you use though ?
Cause I'm still on 2.79b
normal dust
From:
- Root
- Generated Bone
- MyFirstBone
To:
-Generated Bone - MyFirstBone
What i want: - Root
- MyFirstBone
Version 2.80
delicate junco
To me it seems that you don't have a root bone in your blender armature so UE4 assume spine is and treats it as such
Hum yeah I can't take a look at it then
show me a screen shot of your bone hierarchy in Blender (only the beginning)
normal dust
delicate junco
Yeah you don't have a root bone, here's an my hierarchy for example
So basically just add a bone at the feet of your character, name it root and make it the parent of your spine bone
Should work after that
normal dust
Jeah i tried adding a root bone before Spine but same result
delicate junco
Could you try adding it and showing me the hierarchy again ? Just to make sure
delicate junco
What bugs me a bit is that all my bone info is under Pose contrary to you but that may be a change in 2.8.
Looks good to me, export in fbx and show me the result in UE4
normal dust
root - Amature
RootBone - Generated
Spine - Was Rootbone
everything else is a mess or just a dot like pelvis_R
oh and the Spine bone is just gone
i really understand that unreal wants a Bone to the origin and yes let it may be generated.. BUT don't use my bone name and eat my First Bone..
delicate junco
You shouldn't have your armature name at the top, this is my exported hierarchy
Your first name should be "RootBone"
So you didn't edit the script well or saved it ?
You're using FBX right ?
delicate junco
Ah
normal dust
wanna see it with changed file ?
delicate junco
Yep
This should work, I helped people working with 2.8 and this workaround worked for them
normal dust
delicate junco
Still not working ?
I don't know then unfortunately, can't do much more without access to the blend file. This workflow works well for me so that's weird
normal dust
i can give you everything you need
delicate junco
Yeah but I don't have blender 2.8 yet as I said above lol
Are you sure it's not working though ? Did you try to rotate the bones a bit ?
As mentionned by Pat UE4 draws the bone from its parent to itself. Your spine bone is probably behaving the same as in Blender, it's just being represented differently
Ex : Spine character bone in Blender
Spine in UE4
molten jewel
Yeah maya and ue4 draw bones this way. Blender is alone in Y forward
But yea I meant ue4 fbx export and blender import. Imagine you gain a bone with your modification to the exporter in blender
normal dust
In Blender the connection bone is the 2.
In UE4 the connection Bone is the 3.
The red bone is Generated but with the name of my First
delicate junco
Ah I never tried UE4 to Blender @molten jewel so I don't know haha
I guess you could edit the script too if one is added
@normal dust It's not generated, it's using a different representation
Try rotating it in Blender and UE4
normal dust
and yes in blender and UE4 everything is connected to the 2. Bone but in ue4 it should be the 3.
dude
wait
molten jewel
Please reread what both of us said ryo
I would just be retyping what I’ve explained
delicate junco
Yeah your rig is fine, it's just that Blender and UE4 represent bones differently
My script edit wasn't even necessary in your case to begin with but it'll be useful if you do root motion
molten jewel
You can 💯 forget about the way bones are drawn in ue4 @normal dust it’s not worth anything. The bones are identical to blender beyond the armature being a root.
delicate junco
^
normal dust
so you mean in blender Bones Go Up and in unreal Down ??
delicate junco
(and the armature being root is getting rid of with the script edit)
normal dust
okay now i got it
molten jewel
Any animations you make will work exactly as expected
delicate junco
^
normal dust
Thanks guys now i understand that it is like that (well i don't like it at all)
molten jewel
good news is it makes no difference and your just seeing how bones work in maya
normal dust
but another question is: Why does UE 4.24 just crash if i try to import it there ?
molten jewel
speaking of retargeting?
molten jewel
hm can't say i have an idea of what thats about
scarlet spade
Hey just curious, I've got someone rigging a model and making anims, can I just bring that in engine, hook up in a new state machine and make work with my third person character logic?
molten jewel
haven't tried 4.24
normal dust
Well okay Sorry to wasted your time 😄 Thanks for the Help
molten jewel
never a time waste
glad you got an understanding
gibb0 if you use the same bone names and hierarchy yes
if the idea is to form it to an existing skeleton
scarlet spade
No, new skeleton and hierarchy, just copying the logic from my current state machine, putting it into a brand new state machine (pre much a copy) with the same logic and using that instead
delicate junco
I'm still on 4.22 so not sure unfortunately
normal dust
if it is just a diffrent View.. why do i get additional bones ?!
molten jewel
gibb0 reason for new skeleton?
scarlet spade
I know it's a dumb question, but just want to get extra confirmation
Just easier I guess for the guy to animate it
molten jewel
ryo again, bones are lines from the parent to the bone start in ue4 and maya
normal dust
i have a Head Bone and a Head Bone_end
scarlet spade
Tried to retarget the mesh in engine but didn't work
molten jewel
these are leaf bones
delicate junco
Maybe when you exported you chose the "add leaf bone"
molten jewel
turn them off in exporter options
normal dust
is it just to display where it end or another bone ?
delicate junco
^
molten jewel
when you export in blender, do what dimy says
molten jewel
If your exporting for mixamo leave it on though haha (but yes 100% turn off to engine)
@scarlet spade skeleton files are only names and hierarchy
they don't hold any pose information
so you can share a skeleton file
and still retarget
normal dust
well now it looks like the ond Bones are completely missing but i think they are there
molten jewel
and just make override anim bps
delicate junco
They are here, just remember it's a different representation
normal dust
Okay Thanks alot Guys
scarlet spade
I tried to retarget the mesh in engine and it turned into this big mushed up thing
molten jewel
delete everything from project (that character wise) ryo and reimport
delicate junco
Refer to your hierachy on the left to make sure 😛
scarlet spade
I'll hop on ue4 and show what happens when I try to retarget the mesh
Hopefully someone can help me out, but if not it's all good
normal dust
what do you mean @molten jewel ?
molten jewel
if those leaflet bones exist ryo
after you reimport
but are greyed out
just deleted the skeleton and mesh from project and reimport
dark belfry
@molten jewel my predicament is that all my moves are wrestling moves. so my attacks are tackles that lead to a state machine. I'm in the character bp now. I'll enter my 5 tackles as attacks and create a boolean for on overlap. Gotta figure this out. I also use notifies in my state machines. Ok. I appreciate all the help.
normal dust
Its okay i have exactly the same bones in there as in blender
dark belfry
and guys my characters were made in blender so i know the issues. i turn off create leaf bones when i export. Smooth faces. and the skeleton has to be the first one. it can't be armature1 etc.
molten lodge
Folks - What do you reckon is the best usage case for Slots in animation montages?
Playing around with them - it seems like they're best used for variants of animations of the same length
But not things like, say, Standard action vs Faster elite action - probs would be better off using another montage for tha
dark belfry
also in your animations your scene must be scaled to 0.01 i believe
molten jewel
in blender you want start off with scene scale of metric and 0.01 yea
molten jewel
@dark belfry okay but you need to do this in the pawn bp
molten jewel
pawn/character bp
dark belfry
@molten jewel ok so the pawn bp is the character bp. ok got it. thank you
molten jewel
question though sirArmourAll
when you say overlap
what are you expecting
the physics asset?
dark belfry
@molten jewel so i want a state to play ideally
molten jewel
specifically by overlap what do you mean
the physic assets overlapping of two characters?
dark belfry
@molten jewel I have notifications to make a window of the attack time. when i play it. nothing happens when they collide.
molten jewel
@scarlet spade you must make sure the poses of the two retarget sources are similar. If you've got more bones between the joints than the source has, it might cause what you see there too. make sure all the bones you can populate in the retarget settings are populated. and match the poses as close as you can (a pose or whatever, they just need to be similar in the two).
Search youtube for videos on to retarget if you haven't already and make sure your following all the steps
Okay
and on the notification sirArmourAll, what do you do to check overlap
dark belfry
@molten jewel well i had the "if actor overlaps other actor" in anim bp, then play boolean of notifiy
@molten jewel it didn't work but let me explain. i had attack windows as notifies and during that time i had the "if actor collides"
scarlet spade
@molten jewel I've tried to match everything up in the retarget settings to be pre much the same, but it still ends up with the same result
Is it just easier to make anims for that skeleton in blender
Import them in
Make a new state machine with the same logic
dark belfry
@molten jewel sorry "is overlapping actor"
scarlet spade
but use that skeleton and its anims instead
molten jewel
use logging to verify your "if actor overlaps other actor" is functional first if you haven't. If the issue is that it does work and its not firing as expected (as in the overlap does say there is something there but the animation does not switch) then we'll go from there
sorry "is overlapping actor"
gibb0 forget retargeting for a second
can the bone names be the same between the characters
are there no extra or fewer spine segments?
scarlet spade
I just did something and now all of my anims for the Ue4 mannequin
have been swapped with the mesh
in a t pose
and i have no clue
how to revert it
and its saved
😮
molten jewel
lol
dark belfry
@molten jewel thank you for your time. At first i had it using collision spheres but it gave me errors of empty while playing. Everytime it overlapped it produced an error saying the "value was nothing" on the component. so i switched it to actor and no more errors. but still not firing the animation
molten jewel
just to clarify sirArmourAll. if you print the result of the overlap check in your notify, it states there is an overlap but the animation does not play as expected yes?
dark belfry
@molten jewel I'll do the print and get back to you. thanks again
molten jewel
no problem
its easy to assume things work and run into issues so i'm just trying to avoid speculation
gibb0 relax a bit
your doing fine
scarlet spade
All of my anims are broken now and aren't working on the ue4 mannequin
scarlet spade
it automatically did
molten jewel
did you assign skeleton?
but yea do try closing editor and not saving even if it says it did auto save
scarlet spade
ye i tried to retarget it back to the ue4 man skel
but it just puts it
in the A/T pose thing
molten jewel
retarget isn't assign skeleton
if you overwote the original animations with a retarget of retarget thats not good
molten jewel
your good now then?
scarlet spade
no its not good
scarlet spade
ye
molten jewel
the skeleton for the animation points to your other skeleton now?
molten jewel
no sweat we can fix this
scarlet spade
panic deleted it b4
so it just comes up with the black screen on the thumbnail
for the animations
molten jewel
yea
so your new skeleton
are there animations that are actually made for it in the project?
not the ones that got swapped to it
scarlet spade
well i dont really care for the new skeleton or mesh rn
id rather
just get it back to the mannequin
and deal with that later
molten jewel
okay so what you do
well first
find the mannequin skeleton
open it up
and you see the mannequin yea?
scarlet spade
ye
molten jewel
when you open them up
and after that message (don't select any option on the message)
there should be a skeleton tab at the top and you mentioned it pointing to your new skeleton some how now?
dark belfry
@molten jewel so none of the attacks triggered the print string. i must have the logic wrong
molten jewel
either way.
select your new skeleton and delete it, BUT at the delete panel where it gives you replace with another asset select the mannequin skeleton.
sirArmourAll
please print in the false case there
false AND cast
molten jewel
you want to know if that niotify is even hitting
so don't print only when theres a good result
dark belfry
@molten jewel right. silly me. got it
molten jewel
its a common mistake no worries sir
gibb0 okay, in that case
if you select mannequine skeleton after hitting yes what happens?
(don't save anything again)
molten jewel
and no animation?
scarlet spade
no animation
molten jewel
okay
hm lol quite confused at what happened here
could you open the mannequin skeleton and screenshot its hierarchy
molten jewel
molten jewel
looks normal from what i can see there
delicate junco
@dark belfry I'd recommend you to use AnimNotifyState Blueprints if possible instead of tons of anim notify events in your event graph
Basically create a notify state BP
scarlet spade
then i must have retargeted it to the anim bp
molten jewel
gibb0, the mannequin anim bp is completely messed up right?
not the retargeted one but the original
scarlet spade
i think so
delicate junco
And on your anim/montage just use "add notify state" and put the beginning and the end borders
molten jewel
please check
scarlet spade
it works fine
like the logic
behind it is fine
but when i click on it
to retarget to the new skel
like it says
molten jewel
does the mannequin animate with it though gibb0
delicate junco
Also if possible cause your project seems quite advanced already use sub anim instance and cache pose nodes to make your state machine easier to read
dark belfry
@delicate junco thanks. and @molten jewel unreal crashed so i'm doing the print script again
delicate junco
a good ref (In JP but has a ton of images) is this presentation, start from slide 77 https://www.slideshare.net/EpicGamesJapan/ue4animation-blueprint
scarlet spade
when i launch the project
molten jewel
do you use source control gibb0?
scarlet spade
all of the animations
look like that
like the mesh that i had in b4
that i couldnt retarget
but when i click onthem
they just go black
whats source control
molten jewel
close the editor gibb0, make a copy of your project to a zip file
just in case we lose stuff trying to fix this
scarlet spade
im at the point
where im just going to
go to an older version of my project
copy all the logic i added in
and just
dark belfry
@delicate junco i'm completely new here. i have over 100 animations with notifies and states. I'll look into it
scarlet spade
try to salvage this
because its completely fucked
i cant think of anything to fix it
its just stuffed
molten jewel
if you've got a back up
- select your skeleton for your own mesh, delete it with replace! of mannequin skeleton.
- select the mesh that you see in those previews that isn't the mannequin with replace of the mannequin mesh
delicate junco
@dark belfry Yeah I know it can quickly scale up super quickly. I'm making a BTA style game (like platinum) and had to really think about how to make combos and such without having an unmanageable state machine
molten jewel
pitfall of notifies is that they are frame rate dependent too
delicate junco
I have some self contained structs that have hitbox info, particle effects, animation to play and such
molten jewel
but yea make sure your notify is firing at all sirArmourAll by printing something to log even if it fails
delicate junco
Oh yeah I'm going for a fixed 60 fps framerate to prevent it
dark belfry
@delicate junco @molten jewel true. I'm about to test it. and Dimy i'd like to see that game your working on
scarlet spade
im so done right now
was about to go to bed
now my whole project
is just fucked
along with all of the animations
delicate junco
Ah I'm still prototyping quite a lot, most of the work I did during the last months were on the core system, I'm pretty much done with it now though. My design philosophy was really inspired by Taura's speech on Nier Automata, with flags and props linked to each skill https://youtu.be/jKbH9i5axxU?t=151
I only use a placeholder character for now with little anims that I quickly make to test some logic and basic functionnality
scarlet spade
@molten jewel I, for some reason, had every animation I used backed up
I just imported it in
Well one, and it works
Could you help me
Set it back up if its not too much of a hassle?
Would really appreciate it
And now it crashes
I'm actually just done
dark belfry
@delicate junco nice. sounds great bro. @molten jewel so i got negatives on all the collisions. Another problem might be my array. I messed with changing characters and animbps and broke a couple iterations before. it seems like my character array might not be working. Several questions come up.
molten jewel
i'd highly recommend your character bp do this stuff if you can.
dark belfry
- do i make branches for each character. 2) is it possible to only have 1 anim bp?
molten jewel
as in
anim bp casts the owner to your character type and asks it to do the overlap checks, returning if it hit or what to do etc
but yea the issue of overlaps is a thing anyways.
imagine you'll want to know the direction to face and all that
dark belfry
@molten jewel thanks for the advice. Actually i put an extra back collision square on em. hoping to use that to trigger animations of back takes
@molten jewel Alright, i'm going to take that advice of doing the attacks in the character/pawn bp.
molten jewel
its better to avoid an extremely heavy event graph on the anim bp for sure
but yea if notifies are what you want you just have to phone home to the pawn etc
delicate junco
Oh yeah last thing : don't use casts in the "Blueprint update animation event"
dark belfry
Excellent
molten jewel
how come dimy
delicate junco
Better cache the variable once and for all in the "blueprint initialize event' instead of casting every frame, here's a screen from joschyx21's game after I explained it to him
molten jewel
ah tbh though, holding the reference is probably slower than a single cast on update
both of these are very fast though
thing about references to things as variables on something else is garbage collection
both cast and garbage collection passes are so tiny performance-wise that you basically have to ignore the overhead
delicate junco
Yeah I'm not sure if that's worth it for a single cast but if you have tons of them it could be interesting I think. I remember @cloud lodge saying to avoid casting every frame
Ah that's interesting 👍
cloud lodge
i mean, holding a reference is slightly cheaper than casting, doing the stuff in c++ is even faster
molten jewel
hm yea, i mean cast is one of those things that gets more expensive the deeper number of classes it has to iterate back but even 25 classes to look up for a successful cast isn't bad
delicate junco
Yeah putting the logic in the animinstance and then doing only the state machine in BP is the best probably
cloud lodge
even animnotifies are better in native
molten jewel
my logic in saying it kaos is retrieval of the variable stored and the gc scan of the object are probably going to be more expensive than a fast cast
speaking in bp world yea
cloud lodge
bp world is slow
cloud lodge
but yeah, grabbing all logic is quicker in c++, Advanced Locomotion was using around .4ms standard
molten jewel
er three times
delicate junco
Oof
molten jewel
yea for sure, i just mean in bp world
cloud lodge
thats overall, including animation and player bp ticks
molten jewel
a cast node is not an expensive thing compared to any other node
cloud lodge
nope, but holding a pointer in c++ is different to blueprint
blueprint does additional things
molten jewel
they still imply overhead to gc
bp or c++
which is why you don't just have tons of references to references
because it makes the gc pass slower than it could be
delicate junco
Ok I had this misconception, I thought I heard it on the "advanced blueprint talk" but I probably didn't understand it well
cloud lodge
i mean, i prefer just to cast once, i hold references if i need to access the same stuff in different functions
if i only need to grab it once, i just cast
its dependant on situation
molten jewel
yea, again just think of gc like a circulatory system, having a reference to something is a vein that keeps it alive and a vein that needs blood pumping through it
avoiding a reference in place of a cast can be better for the health of the circulatory system if you think of it this way
even null references have to be checked for null, and thats really the level of optimization were talking about between variable and cast node
like both of these things, not heavy
delicate junco
Noted, thanks a lot ! 👍
@cloud lodge When you say AnimNotifies in native btw you mean just implementing their functions in C++ and then making AnimNotifies BP which inherit them right ?
cloud lodge
no i mean creating the notifies in c++ and using them from c++, you don't need to make a bp
delicate junco
You can place C++ notifies on anims ?
delicate junco
Ah ok nice
molten jewel
involves making your own UAnimInstance right?
delicate junco
His Uaniminstance would be for the event graph logic
cloud lodge
UAnimNotify and UAnimNotifyState
molten jewel
well the proxy used by the anim graph is serialized there afaik too
delicate junco
So yeah you put all the event graph in C++ in a custom UAnimInstance, make an AnimBP which inherits it and just make a state machine in the latter right ?
cloud lodge
for constantly firing notifies
i make them in c++
yeah animgraph in bp
eventgraph c++
for optimal performance
molten jewel
btw, its kind funny how much blank virtual call happesn right? lol
cloud lodge
uyeah
molten jewel
like all those Native update calls which 95 percent of people never ever use lol
delicate junco
Ok thanks, I'll do the same 👍
cloud lodge
things like FootStep animnotify, which fires frequently
should be in C++
notifies like exploded, which happens rarely can be BP
doesnt make sense to make it c++ if its only called once in a bluemoon
just additional stuff to compile 😄
molten jewel
personally, i think the notifies system is broken unless your fixed frame rate your better off just calculating such events with other logic
cloud lodge
i used notifies a lot
molten jewel
but yea definitely going to get better performance doing things natively
cloud lodge
never had issues with them
molten jewel
Timing wise they just can be extremely off
and transitions are hit or miss on them
so long as they are used for cosmetic things they work
delicate junco
I think Fortnite uses quite a lot of animNotifies
molten jewel
i'm sure they do yea
delicate junco
I remember reading there can be some issues if you put notifies at the really end of the anim
it's best to leave some space before apparently
cloud lodge
normally cause of the blends
normal blend out/in is .25
notifies inside this
can sometimes not fire
in montages btw
delicate junco
Oh yeah that may be it. Probably why I didn't have such issues since I put 0 almost everytime
molten jewel
ye thats why i tend to not use them
especially for things that are like do or die
but yea i expect fortnite to use pretty much all the features lol
delicate junco
I wish Fortnite had some AI, maybe we'd have some little improvements for that 🙃
delicate junco
Oh definitely
Make sure to grab these nodes btw https://twitter.com/CatherineCel/status/1167482530452451330
cloud lodge
fortnite does have AI
sequence loop feels wasted
there is already a decorator
to loop x amoujnt of times
restive yew
People may have forgotten that fortnight wasn’t originally a battle royale
molten jewel
I've yet to play it heh
dark belfry
@molten jewel you were right. had to set "isHitting" var in character/pawn bp. now it prints script positive on hit.
molten jewel
hooray
dark belfry
Thanks a million!🥂 🍻
dark belfry
btw using "instigator" as another character might have just saved me a ton of work
devout field
anyone good with blender and their bone system who wants to help me out
i don't usually touch 3d modelling and stuff so hoping someone can show me around on getting these bones setup
it's a simple cube guy so 'influence groups' should be simple enough is the theory
i'd imagine screen share / audio would be optimal rather than typing and screenshots so don't be shy
but for starters:
dark belfry
the legs are the wrong way. the tail of the bone is the joint. the head of the bone is the extrimity
also the shoulder should be tail then head and if you extrude from the head you get another head making a tail there to rotate
devout field
i see, so i should pay close attention to heads and tails
molten jewel
yea
dark belfry
yeah. it's that way in blender
molten jewel
blender is strange
head is the big part tail is the bottom but bones are parented relative to parents tail
but they rotate at the head
devout field
oh lol, good info
molten jewel
tail - head
is the y axis
it'll be - y axis when you import it into unreal
but x and z will be the same
because unreal is right handed
and blender is not
devout field
that's what im affraid of too
their axis setup versus UE, dang
molten jewel
its of little concern
dark belfry
i used blender to make my characters. it's no problem
molten jewel
they don't even have built in nodes for mirroring their own setup
yea y forward on bones isn't a huge deal
maya draws bones the same way as ue4 does, where the bones orientation is meaningless more or less
epic skeleton just does things in a way so that side mirroring works in a specific way.. but then go on to never use it so idk
dark belfry
i miss Maya. in a way. but love sculpting and baking in blender
maya is awesome for animation
molten jewel
i kinda hope they offer the option of using maya style bones in blender
but yea blender is soooo much better with scripting
and i like animating in it a lot
dark belfry
yeah. I still can't figure out influence objects in blender. Maya it's litterally a right click
molten jewel
constraints?
dark belfry
well, i mean you can literally make an object like a ball and put it in an arm as a bicep. then you can make it an influence object and the skin just conforms to it
i was able to to do this in maya like in 2008
molten jewel
ahh weight painting stuff yea idk how that works with influences
will say though that maya impresses me every time with how well it does shoulders and stuff
dark belfry
blender has a shrinkwrap option but it's just for looks, at least unless this new version last week changed something
molten jewel
yea i don't think shrinkwrap does vertex groups
dark belfry
after this project, i'll delve into more rigging in blender. i've seen pretty good stuff out there but i'd have to get the time
pine summit
Is there a way to update animations without having to reimport the fbx? It's kinda janky having to retry over and over until it actually imports all animations as it sometimes misses a couple
molten jewel
hmm dunno what you mean without reimport
are you exporting multiple in a single fbx or something?
pine summit
I added a mesh with animations and all, but every now and then I add new animations/tweak existing ones and thus need to update it on UE4 though I see no such option (there is reimport but all it does is reimport the mesh and skeleton, not add the new animations nor update existing ones
Only way I found to add new ones is to delete the skeletal mesh and reimport it again