animation

[formal basin]

thats what i am looking for 😄

[formal basin]

it is these curves i am talking about

[nimble hatch]

grr... ok... Control Rig and the default Mannequin. Trying to make a rig for the leg(s). The issue is the thigh twist and calf twist are causing issues. Assuming I cant follow the ue4 training on this so far (none of it seems to show how to do this part, they focus on the arms) how would I make a basik forward IK solver and account for the twist bones?

something as basic as moving the knee and the thigh follows, or moving the foot and the calf and thigh follows

[ornate slate]

Hi everyone, i have a simple question and maybe someone can help me. I would like to know if there are any pattern/tool to animate static mesh in Unreal directly from BP (like Unity with Animation editor, where you can create simple animation and then with Animator make node and connect/blend those animation).

Here is an image of what i'm talking about.

[nimble hatch]

you can look into making sequencer animations

[ornate slate]

Hi, thank you for your reply, the problem is Sequencer Animations works only for element in scene and i cannot blend differente sequence animations, or at least this is what i know about it

[nimble hatch]

oh yeah sorry you also asked about static meshes. I dont think there is anything for SM

[ornate slate]

I enabled a experimental plugin in UE4 called Actor Sequence Animations that achieve what i'm trying to do but it crashes every time i add a new actor sequence component and is very limited

[nimble hatch]

what are you trying to do?

[ornate slate]

this is the component, similiar to Unity, in BP but if i try to play it, and play another everything crash

[nimble hatch]

i mean what is the goal here

[ornate slate]

A simple animation, like rotate a mesh, and maybe keep rotating it in loop, something like this

Or maybe rotate and scale a bit then move forward then scale again, stuff that i can of course code, but with anim will be faster to do

[nimble hatch]

you can do that with level sequences, you can convert it to a spawnable so it spawns in the mesh and then do the animation for example

I was able to use actor sequences to do basic stuff ,when does it crash for you?

[ornate slate]

Like i have a actor sequences playing in loop from begin play (moving one static mesh under the same BP), then on mouse click i tryied to play another actor sequences which was targetting another mesh (always under the same BP) and play scene freezes

[nimble hatch]

ah, so multiple actor sequence components on the same BP?

[ornate slate]

Yes, maybe this cause the issue, i'm thinking like in Unity, in this case i maybe need to use only one Actor Sequence at time for the entire BP

[nimble hatch]

maybe. I just tried it with 2 SM's and 2 actor sequence components in 1 bp. on play it would wait 2 seconds then play the first one, then wait 1 second and play the second. no issues here

actor sequence is defintely in a test phase for sure so it could definitely have issues 😦

I would say tho if you just need something to be animated dont give up on just a generic level sequence

[remote needle]

Hi,
So I have set up the controlls so that the mannequin can salute when pressing LB and RB together on a gamepad...

I also set this actor or with a collision box so that when the player enters the text becomes visible to salute with the buttons to press...

Can anyone please asdvise me how I can make it so that the player CAN NOT salute until it has entered this collision box?

[ornate slate]

Appreciate your help! Thank you for everything!

[nimble hatch]

when you detect the player has entered, let the player know they can salute? alternately have the salue input keys as part of the blueprint as an action that you enable when they enter it.

[remote needle]

so Make a CanSalute? boolean in the player and have the actor set it ?

[nimble hatch]

basically for the first a boolean that says "cansalute" that is false that you make true when they overlap and false when they end overlap and that boolean is tied to your event for your salute action

yep what you said, it might not be the best but it would work

[remote needle]

thank you @nimble hatch I will give it a try!

[formal basin]

anyone an idea how to make morph targets additive?

[remote needle]

@nimble hatch It works really well thank you!

[frosty sonnet]

Any way to Copy Virtual Bones to another skeleton? or alternatively Any way to combine 2 skeletons (1 with face bones, the other with virtual bones) into one skeleton with all the bones?

[shut kraken]

@remote needle what button do you want to press to salute (F I'm guessing lmao) and do you want that button to do many different things in many different contexts?

[remote needle]

@shut kraken thank you for offering to help!
I have managed to nail that mechanic for the time being and it seems to work nicely.
Making my way through a list of different things I wanted to implement in an upcoming project 🙂

[edgy token]

How does one use a different pose as a base for an animation while keeping the same general motion including rotation through an animBP?

[restive vortex]

Man, The new Property Access System is interesting albeit a bit cumbersome to work with. You kinda have to precalculate everything. Though I discovered you CAN call FAnimInstance proxy pure function and still be fast path, if you do access the same method through normal node it kicks you out of fast path (I mean the documentation pretty much says this but still 🙂 God I wish I could pass parameters though

[restive vortex]

Also can't use Native Getters, ugh

[uncut pawn]

Other than Mixamo, are there any other massive, free-to-use mocap libraries?

[old plinth]

Hi people, i have a custom event when my state is ffinished

problem is this event firing two times always

i don't know why? anybody has some idea? Is it depend of transition rule?

[cursive aspen]

What is the purpose for the different transform settings on the bones? I have noticed it when I retarget some animations they need to match but I don't know why.

[pure mica]

I'm not sure if this is a animation problem or code, but I am launching a character into the air in C++ using GetCharacterMovement()->Launch(LaunchVel); and it works great, unless I am playing an animation montage at the time, in which case it only launches straight upwards and only uses the .Z velocity? The animations are not set to use root motion.

[turbid dragon]

Hi Everyone, trying to solve a problem with the sequence recorder, where in the recording my character mesh is rotated by 90 degrees and has an offset on the Z Axis.

The character has a Genesis 8 skeleton from DAZ, so its skeleton has a root bone (read that without a root bone enabling its motion solves the issue).

The skeleton is retargeted to the standard ThirdPerson AnimBP and works 100% fine with all the included and custom animations I set up for it, just gets rotated in the recording.

[finite nimbus]

I have a Chest with an open and close animation.
What would be the best way to set it up so the player interactions trigger the animation?

1. Call Play Animation directly in the actor BP?
2. Setup an animation blueprint, state machine, etc?
3. Create a Montage and drive that?

[merry lynx]

Hi , can i bend a static mesh like a stick for example ?

Or should i add armatures to it and make bending animation outside?

Or should i do morphing targets outside then import them?

Whats the better workaround

[vapid ibex]

Um, how am I supposed to do IK towards a location/rotation of a bone from another cached pose?

I can't find a way to obtain a location/rotation of a specific bone from a cached pose

[stoic flume]

Are there any foreseeable problems I might run into with using an additive pose to adjust a locomotion blendspace?

I have a blendspace for the player character running with a spear, but I want to do a few adjustments to all of the poses (orient hands, straighten spine, adjust shoulders etc)

If I can just add 1 blend pose on top in the anim graph that would save a ton of time, but I'm worried about consequences down the line that I don't know about

[blazing swift]

There are 2 bones called IK footLR on the mannequin. What are these 2 bones for?

[blazing swift]

how do I setup foot locking with IK

[tiny flicker]

Guys, I'm trying to add two animation layer interfaces to my AnimBP. I can select the last layer, but if I switch to another, Ureal automatically switch to last and output error, that i'm not able to many of the same anim layers.

[tiny flicker]

Same thing in 4.26. Looks like Unreal does not allow to use multiple animBP layers? Is it a bug or limitation?

[cunning locust]

Heya, is there any updated tutorial on how to make control rigs?... in the demo isnt even the setup node like it was in the stream

[sharp gyro]

Same question I was about to ask.

[sharp gyro]

I just downloaded the demo project and copied the rig setup they have there

Then there's a 30 min inside unreal engine video on using control rig. He's quite fast but you should be able to pick up some things

It came out a few days ago in case you missed it

[cunning locust]

i did the same, but he explains that he used the setup first to get bone location before forwarding or backwarding

and in my project example is no setup, so i have to completly redo it^^

[sharp gyro]

You mean adding the controls and what not? I guess you'll have to do it from scratch.

By the way. General question here.
I'm working on a true fps setup for our game. The camera is parented to he head bone and I'm using aim offsets to drive camera rotation.
I want to reduce or completely eliminate headbobbing. Does anyone know any techniques for doing so? It must work in a multiplayer environment too.

I'm not very good at animation. I'm the programmer. So modifying the animation itself may be a little out of my reach. I'm hoping it'll be a last resort.

[cunning locust]

unparent the camera from the head

and parent it with the collision capsule

[sharp gyro]

I considered that option but it gets difficult to track the approximate position of the head when carrying out unexpected and complex movements like mantling and various root motion movements.

Imo, that setup is more complicated than a camera stabilization technique.

[remote needle]

I have an NPC mannequi I made into an actor with a colision box.
I have given it an anim BP.
in that BP is a state machine which makes it go from idle pose to praying animation.

It plays through the animations of the state machine when the player overlaps a collision box which lives in the actor NPC's BP.

it is all playing too fast though.
I believe a higher value in the play rate = slower animation correct ?

because I cant seem to slow them down.

[ripe gazelle]

yes ok

Thats the point where im at

oh

well, notify tick also gets mesh comp

oh ima try something

i see, understood.

Thanks, seems i need to take a step back again and digest it. in UE every thing has a similar thing and it confuses the hell out of me.

[ripe gazelle]

Is there a way to mirror an animation, so whatever right arm is doing is copied over to left arm

and vice versa

[shut kraken]

Parent camera to head bone but set its rotation manually based on whatever your aim rotation is.

So it will always be at the head location but it's rotation will always be exactly driven by the aim.

It'll still bob tho just in position only.

[sharp gyro]

Thank you. I'm trying out that method. Just need to tweak some things

[fleet marlin]

Hi, i purchased an animal asset, trying to make it work, im in the Idle/Run state ... i dont see any option like the one pointed at in the pic ! that is very confusing (4.26)

[ripe gazelle]

@fleet marlin look for the state machine that saves to that cache

[fleet marlin]

What does a state machine look like ?

[ripe gazelle]

it should be in the same space as what you linked

[fleet marlin]

I copied it from another project, dont know if that will work

nevermind, did not work

This is insane, i keep getting blockers all along my learning

[untold cosmos]

You can't just copy Use Cached Pose node from other project and expect it to work.

Btw, I noticed quite some time ago RandomSequencePlayer loops the animation it chooses forever, absolutely ignoring Max Loop Count. Checked the bug tracker, but it doesn't seem to bother anyone else despite this pretty much defeats the purpose of RandomSequencePlayer.

[vapid ibex]

Does anyone know why UE4 'normalized' my animation root translation? I wanted the world origin to be aligned with the player's aim

[spiral parcel]

Origin is probably best kept at root bone, or bottom of character

[vapid ibex]

I'm trying to place the origin on where the muzzle of my weapon would be, so I can rotate and translate it to align the animation with the muzzle transform the player is aiming at

I'm guessing my method might not be ideal, is there a better way?

[spiral parcel]

I would make the handle the origin of the weapon. That way, when you attach the weapon to a socket/bone, the handle is attached to that (hand) bone.

You will likely, have separate weapon and character exports, each with different origins. But for animation in Blender, you can attach a "temporary" weapon to the hand, so that you can preview what the firing animation will be like. I wouldn't animate movement on the weapon, only "local" animations like triggers, components moving, etc. And have the character's firing animation handle the weapon, as it would be attached to the hand in UE4

For aligning animation, make sure that your hand_r bone is pointing forward.

[vapid ibex]

Thanks for the reply!

[spiral parcel]

See how hand_r X axis is pointing forward, that's where your handle origin goes, and if your weapon is pointing forward, whatever the hand animation is, the weapon will follow.

[vapid ibex]

Gotcha

My concern however is that I want the animation to place the weapon's muzzle where it logically is (it already has a muzzle transform where the bullets come out from, it's the animation's job to properly visualize it)

While still being able to create nice animations in blender (like idle animations)

This is what I'm struggling with atm

gfycat.com/WickedTheseAoudad

I tried to IK the right hand, it kinda works (the green line is the logical muzzle transform)

but I'm not exactly sure what to do with the left hand, or how I should be translating the animation so it aligns based on the camera's position/rotation

[spiral parcel]

Is this VR?

[vapid ibex]

It's not, just a standard FPS shooter

for reference, that GIF is the first person animation seen from a third person perspective

[spiral parcel]

You can probably move the muzzle in UE4 right? to align it to the mesh of the weapon?

[cunning locust]

fuck this control rig shit

[vapid ibex]

I can move the muzzle, it's an arrow component on my weapon actor
Might have misunderstood you though

[cunning locust]

no idea what to do anymore, i follow the tutorial i posted earlier but it always end up stretched like this

[spiral parcel]

As for the left hand there's a number of ways to do that, also a few tutorials on you tube. One way is to sync the animation of the left hand in Blender, with the weapon, so that the animation has the right position of the hand. The other option, is to use Anim blueprints to attach the left hand to a socket you can add to your weapon, where you want the left hand to be attached to.

(assuming your weapon is a skeletal mesh) if not, you can also use a Scene component and have that be the location you attach your hand_l to.

[vapid ibex]

I see, that's probably very robust

But I'm unsure how I'd be able to support other animations

Such as reloading, or sliding the left hand against the weapon

Like, I want my animation files to remain expressive

And still have a good aim offset :P

[spiral parcel]

Yeah, it's probably best to actually animate both hands for the particular weapon, this is some work, but it's the best result in the end

[vapid ibex]

I DO have an idea I'd very much like feedback on

I was entertaining the idea of having another invisible arms only mesh for FPS animations, that ticks/animates before the visible mesh does

So that I'd be able to query its hands' transforms using Get Bone Transform, and pass that in as IK targets for the visible mesh

(that visible mesh can be a first person mesh or a third person mesh)

The invisible mesh would be 'attached' to the camera at all times for correct alignment

Do you think that's a good idea?

[spiral parcel]

Sounds like an interesting experiment at least 🙂

[vapid ibex]

😅

[spiral parcel]

Another way to look at it, is that alot of times FPS games do weird tricks, and the FPS animation for hands and weapon can be quite different than TPS, and TPS is usually just an aproximation...

[vapid ibex]

aye

i'm trying to ugh, what's the phrase? Kill two birds with one stone?

[spiral parcel]

Yeah, I hear ya

[hearty siren]

Anyone knows where the following menu in the physics editor is supposed to be? In the documentation it says to just click on the background but that just makes the details panel blank. Any help?

[river briar]

I'm finding my montage never calls "on completed" etc

does anyone know how to get this to happen?

this is how my montage is set up, so its not looping

I have enable auto blend out enabled

[river briar]

Figured it out. If I'm skipping from attack1 -> my section named "end" it seems to break. Fixed it by removing the end section

[hearty siren]

I tried different versions of the engine and I can't see anything on the details panel of the physics editor, it's just empty. Anything I might be missing?

This is how it looks like when i have nothing selected

But this is what I should see:
https://docs.unrealengine.com/en-US/InteractiveExperiences/Physics/PhysicsAssetEditor/Reference/index.html

[vale inlet]

Hello, I'm wondering if i can get some help on an issue with my model deforming when it shouldn't be, It's only the Right ankle that messes up on a few animations.

[glossy grail]

I have a blender/ue4 question . I want to animate a robotic/mechanical arm. 1) Are bones required to animate something like this? and 2) If I am using bones, am I connecting all of the arm components together into one object, then using a rigid skinning or can I parent each section to each related bone?

And for that matter, am I better of just created the hierarchy in blender and animating such an object in UE4 with blueprints.

[mighty wedge]

So is it possible to get bone key frame data? similar to how blender does the curves for different bone angles positions etc?

this is all im seeing

[river briar]

anyone know how to stop the arm twist bones flopping about when ragdolling a character?

this is all I'm doing to ragdoll the character

I've set a bunch of constraints here

hmm actually I think its to do with the constraints

[static zodiac]

Is there a way to export the basic model and/or rig from Unreal Engine to blender at all? Just for animating it easier

[twilit tide]

Does someone know a software for making eplode animation exportables for Unreal engine?

The blender explode modifier can't export

[delicate junco]

Yeah use the "ue to rigify" addon https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9FjlgyuGhNo
Then you can put it back to unreal with the "sendtoue4" addon. Both are made by Epic, link of the repo in the vid above (you'll need to log in with an account linked to your Epic account or it will show a 404 error).
Tutorials can be found on the repo's wiki

@hearty siren you need to click on "physics" above

[pastel roost]

hey guys would love some help here. I have a simple skeletal mesh that is animating in sequencer. Its a shooting target that swings up as the camera moves past. im using "keep state" in sequencer to keep it in the final position but when i render it starts in the up position.

starts up

should start down

[minor lichen]

[X-posting from #virtual-production since I figured either of these might be channels where people might respond. Hope it's not a bother!]

Hi Unreal peeps 👋 . This might be a long shot but I was wondering if anyone in or around the Bay Area (California) has access to a motion capture suit (Rokoko, etc) that they would be willing to rent out or share for a period of time?

I don't currently have the funds to invest in one of these but would love to start generating some rough content for a prototype I'm working on that relies on the tech while I save money. I also would just love to get to test drive some of these things before I commit to purchasing one or another, since they're quite expensive.

If anyone has a connection for such a thing I would love to hear from you. Many thanks! 🙏

[ivory blaze]

Hello guys,
I'm using a hand that previously had a body, The problem is when I try to add a new bone as wrist after adding weights to vertices, they go to the original location when the hand had a body. any idea how to fix that?

[ripe gazelle]

can montages be used in statemachines just the same as regular animations ?

[left tusk]

hey there, is there a way to block/constrain rotation (X in bone space) of a specific bone using Two Bone IK ?

[misty dagger]

just my random anims

[nova stratus]

Is anyone familiar with Aim Offsets (AO)? I am having a problem I cant seem to solve.
When I place a sword aim idle in the AO slot the AO works correctly and rotates to the appropriate poses and direction as expected. But when we place the sword stab there its as if its not taking all the information from the spine and arms. It seems as if only the head and hand rotate the correct direction (rotation only). When facing in the BBR direction he should stab directly behind him and his hand goes of to the R instead of pointing the direction he is facing. This is most noticeable in the R direction, but in the L direction his arms are still not quite right either.

attached are images of what he should be doing vs what he is doing when attacking. the idle is fine, but when attaching is garbled.

Has anyone seen this issue before, any help will be appreciated.

[wicked forge]

Hi, I'm trying to get some mocap data from OptiTrack into UE4 and I'm nearly there. Only issue is that for some reason the arms and shoulders are rotated by 180 degrees or somethign

Is there an easy way to add an offset without modifying the whole skeleton?

Adding a Transform (Modify) Bone node in the AnimBP affects the bone's children as well

[fleet willow]

Is there smth like a switch on enum node to decide which animation should be returned ?

[fleet willow]

Seems like Blend Poses (TheEnumName) is the node i want

[left tusk]

I'm using TwoBoneIK to animate an arm using VR but I don't want one bone (lowerarm) to twist around it's own X axis. Is there a node for that ? Constraint, Bone Transform, look at, Apply Limits, none of them work.
Another way could be to have 2 lowerarm bones (one for the twist, one for the "main" lowerarm), but since the skeletal mesh root (the hand) drives the anim (2bone IK defines the shoulder position) both lowerarm bones would rotate the same way, I can't figure how to set one's rotation independent from root.

[misty dagger]

When having weapons for 3p animations, is it worth having a "weapon bone" coming from the root bone for animating the weapon, or is it better to have the weapon just attached to the hand? I'm asking as I might have a problem combining leg animations with upper body weapon animations, for 1p we have a weapon bone coming from the root for 1p animations, but for 3p the leg animations I think would override the upper body weapon bone animation, so i'm a bit stuck on the best way to go about this. Thanks!

[quartz heath]

https://youtu.be/otH47VuYLyc

Hey guys, I have a two bone IK for the left hand to follow the fore-grip handle, I update the position for the left hand every frame. However when I move the camera up/downwards the left hand lags behind. Do you have any idea how to fix it? I'm not too familiar with bone iks...

[vapid ibex]

Any nice way to rotate an animation around the world origin from within the animation BP?

[remote needle]

Hey guys,
Just starting a new third person project and I have purchased character from the market place.

I deleted its skeleton and replaced it with the base mannequin reference...

it all works well but the character is smaller, and has ended up floating as a result.

If I actually just pull the mesh down in the BP the character ends up clipping through the floor when it crouches.

I just was wonder if there is a better way to do this or should I just adjust all the animations manually to work with it ?

[vapid ibex]

Does anyone know why when exporting from blender, my mesh snaps back to world origin?

[vapid ibex]

Is there any way I can make these controls less confusing in blender?

Some perspectives are completely intolerable and I don't want to have to change my camera to find the right gizmo

[radiant phoenix]

Hide everything except the actual controllers

[vapid ibex]

Oh I should have mentioned, I am now manipulating the controllers

Maybe some kind of highlighting scheme?

[delicate junco]

You can use skeleton layers

Organize your bones in these then select if you want to display them. They'll be hidden otherwise

[night grail]

Hello there!
I'm new using Control Rig and I'm stuck doing something. Do you know where can I find a good tutorial/information about it?
I'm trying to move the 'body' of my character, depending on the legs movement and I'm kinda lost.
It's similar to this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y2WzNvJZk0E&t=1932s
Thank you in advance!

[vapid ibex]

Thank you 👍

[stone hound]

So, I have my main character that is player controlled and his root motion is working. And I have an NPC character with root motion animations as well. But, I cannot seem to get my NPC character to use root motion. I have enabled Root Motion for the animations, and ensured that "Root Motion from Montages Only" is enabled in the Defaults for it. Is there anything else that I could be missing?

I have the DefaultSlot setup in the npc's anim bp as well

nm, fixed it, I didn't have the right parent for my npc's blueprint essentially

[frosty sonnet]

So is there any way I can share a skeleton with both male and female meshes, but disable breast bones on male characters? or would it just be best to maintain seperate skeletons?

[stray grotto]

I am in love with Control rig 😄

[stray grotto]

you need to twist the spine based on the controller location

[night grail]

Yeah, that's what I understand I have to do, but which component I should use? I tried with Aim Math, but not doing it correctly I guess

[flat flame]

Anyone know how to export Morph (Target) animation to ue4 via Send to Unreal addon ?
If I export animation, I have only rig animation.

[blazing swift]

How can I get my root motion to plot a velocity on the curve ?

[stray grotto]

https://youtu.be/y2WzNvJZk0E?t=1934

They guy shows here how to move the body based on the legs.

32m12s

[night grail]

That's the video I attached in my question, and yes, he explained it but not in detail. I also tried what he did but no success. So I guess I will have to keep trying. thanks.

[ripe gazelle]

is it possible to mirror animations without mirroring the mesh

flip em

[cosmic delta]

Isn't possible to copy the rotation of the bones between two skeleton, even sharing same bones and structure? I mean that if I copy paste the bone rotation from one finger the value that paste seem almost random

[floral kite]

So I'm trying to retarget some animations from the UE4 mannequin, but am getting some distortions. Attached are photos of the character and skeleton I am trying to use as well as the distortion I am seeing after retargeting. Does anyone know how to fix this? (Also yes I know the character is copyrighted, but I'm just using it for learning retargeting)

[subtle tide]

I recently ran into this. The answer lies in the position of the bones in the skeleton you're importing, and then the paint weights.

[floral kite]

Would you be able to explain how to fix this (if fixable at all)? I'm not great with skeletons yet.

[subtle tide]

I personally can't help help, I just know that I was having these issues when I was given a replacement for the UE4_Man. What my artist did to fix it was:

1. grab the UE4 mannekin
2. throw the .fbx into maya
3. copy the exact skeleton onto the new character in maya
4. auto rig the character in maya
5. imitate the paint weights shown on the UE4 mannekin onto the new character as closely as possible
6. re-export the .fbx

I dragged it in, told it to use the UE4 mannekin skeleton, and it worked.

First thing I would try is attempting to match the location of each bone in the A-pose to the ue4 skelly

BUT I am not an animator, I actually came here to ask a question and happened to see your post 😂

[ripe gazelle]

Whats it called when i constrain a chain of bones so it gives me handles to pull

so i can adjust the animation?

[floral kite]

Thanks I'll give it a shot. I'm not an animator either lol

[keen yacht]

guys im in big trouble, i imported a animation from Maximo and it changed my whole skeleton and ALL my animations are now broken and its missing bones n stuff.... how can i fix this? it sin this weird pose now and all the bones have other names

i get this too

[torn tendon]

I doubt I will get an answer, but... Why Animation Scaled retarget option would not work? It is the same as Animation even tho, both skeletons have different translation for that bone.

[vapid ibex]

Does anyone know how I can snap this bone to world origin in blender, including rotation? It's really close to it and I could put it in there by manually rotating the gizmos, but it wouldn't be as accurate

With it selected I can reposition it through this button, but it won't set rotation which is my main concern

[delicate junco]

You can reset the rotation using ALT-R

[vapid ibex]

Aye but like, pressing ALT+R resets the bone's rotation local to the parent bone, while I need it to be global

aka be parallel to the global X axis, or Y/Z, it doesn't really matter as long as it's reset

[delicate junco]

Oh ok

What you could do is uh

Go to edit mode

Select your bone

Press N

You'll get the transform panel

Then copy two of the positions (X,Y or Y,Z or X,Z from the head to the tail)

So they'll get aligned hence zero ing the rotation

[vapid ibex]

Correct me if I'm wrong, but if I then move the hand, it'd change that default orientation, right?

What I mean is, um

[delicate junco]

Yeah changes in edit mode will change the rest pose, you don't want that ?

[vapid ibex]

What I want to achieve is this workflow: Pose the hand so that it's nicely gripping whatever weapon mesh I'm working with (which will affect child bones), and only then pose the grip bone so it has a zero rotation/position

That way, if I add the weapon attachment socket onto the grip bone, the weapon will always be correctly aligned in UE4

This is needed for the type of setup I'm using for FPS animations (I think)

[delicate junco]

Yeah it looks like there's no way to display the global coordinates in pose mode, which would solve your issue directly since you'd just have to zero out the rotation. But I can only get coordinates in local space in that mode, wonder if a script could be done for that real quick

Since it'd just boil down to accumulate the local space transforms of the parents to get the global space one. I'll take a look this evening and ping you if I find a solution

[vapid ibex]

Oh wow, that would be amazingly helpful, I genuinely appreciate your help 😍, no matter whether you manage to find a script or not!

[floral kite]

Does anyone know if I can use the ue4 mannequin on a custom mesh? If so how would I do that?

[vapid ibex]

@delicate junco I just found a way! :D I used a limit rotation bone constraint and set in the values I wanted until I got my target rotation, and then I did Ctrl+A -> Apply Visual Transform to Pose and deleted the constraint

[delicate junco]

@vapid ibex Ok I found a solution I think :
-first move the bone at the center using shift-S -> to Cursor
-add a random object in the scene (a cube for ex)
-go back to pose mode, add a bone constraint "copy rotation" to your bone and select the object you just added as the parent. That should zero out the rotation.
-then with your bone selected just press CTLR-> and "apply visual transform". Once it's done you can delete the constraint and the cube

[vapid ibex]

Lmao

We got nearly the same approach with almost the same timing, awesome

Yours is infact neater, because I can just use the weapon mesh, that's neat!

[delicate junco]

Nice !

[pine star]

do you need to add new bones for jiggle psyiques or can you just use existing chest or thigh bones for such whilst they still work like moving limb bones o.o
and do you need to weight paint bones to apply jiggle psyiques to them lol
or does unreal let you bypass weight painting those bones for jiggle use

[edgy crane]

Hello I have a problem. I have 2 plugins, the first plugin is "First Person Story Adventure" and the second one is "Custom Movement". I want to make the ladder with the first person story adventure skeleton, but its not working. Any idea on how to fix this?

[delicate junco]

It's going to depend on what solution you're going to use to simulate the bones, there are quite a few out there like Rigid bodies, animdynamics etc

But usually these parts have dedicated bones, for example for a ponytail you'd make a bone chain that would be stay "stiff" while the model is keyframed and then you declare each bone as physics in unreal to simulate them at runtime

But yeah weight painting will be necessary, otherwise the bones will move nothing

[shut kraken]

Is using animotify for timing of things (hit point, backswing, etc) good practice or should I do my timing of actions separately??

[ancient valley]

Hello!

I have a problem with some of my animations
I don't know if it is because of the IK's or the offset but I basically want them to work as supposed to
I actually retargeted the anims and it is working great, it is just about making it work with the current animation system
When I disable the IK's, my animations are working as attended but then I cannot edit the weapon position when FPS or ADS

https://streamable.com/m2qqmg

As you can see, the weapon goes sideways when reloading / sprinting / other stuff

And if I move my socket rotation, it moves the problem as well

It is like the animations behave like there were no offset whatsoever

[delicate junco]

animNotifies should be used for anything that's driven by the animation itself. So for example for fighting games when hitboxes activate/deactivate, when to spawn a particle effect, sound etc

[shut kraken]

Cool, just checking. I know it's a handy source of truth for timing but wanted to make sure I wouldn't have weird interactions with LOD and relevancy etc.

[ancient valley]

The only way that it is working properly is by disabling the IK's, then the weapon behaves properly but then I cannot edit the weapon XZ for FPS and ADS

[delicate junco]

Ah yeah I don't have much experience with that. But I'd say they should be ok for most stuff, Epic apparently use them quite a bit.

Also if possible try to make them in C++ instead of BP if you use custom ones. Kaos made a few benchmarks at the time showing that it's much faster to process #cpp message

[tropic basin]

Hey does anyone know how to get als to work with physics blended animations? Whenever physics sims are enabled the character barely moves, and goes soooo slow. Found the friction curves, disabled them, and added physics materials to the scene but still not working right..
Any ideas?

[shut kraken]

Why would the AI have any interaction with the animation physics blend at all? Shouldn't it just be driving a capsule around and playing montages the same way a player would?

[vapid ibex]

Is there any way to blend between two poses like a 'Third Person Pose' and a 'Weapon Handling Pose' using inverse kinematics? Something that will take the Third Person's hands and IK them towards the hands location of the weapon handling pose?

[tropic basin]

No my bad not ai. ALSv4

I wanna build off it using physics blends to get more dynamic collision reaction and fatigue animation results

But it's not set up to play nice and I'm wondering if anyone has an idea what the issue is

[shut kraken]

@vapid ibex wouldn't you just take the weapon handling pose, and use the hand transforms as the ik target?

Where are the hands preik? Just t posing like a boss?

[vapid ibex]

Yes! That's what I want, but how do I implement it?

The hands are in the correct position on the weapon handling pose, and they are, yes, in some arbitrary pose on the third person pose

[vapid ibex]

So like, yeah, uhm. If you know how to do this.. that would be brilliant 😅

Hmm, the upper pose is the third person one, and the weapon handling one is the bottom one

Maybe I can solve this with root->hands virtual bones?

[cunning locust]

is there a way to flip keyframes in seuqncer?

[winged portal]

Hi! i'm trying to import some animations from mixamo to use with the base mannequin. i'm following some tutorials and when i'm importing the animation, i'm missing the options "Skeletal mesh" and "import skeletal mesh".
I'm importing the same file type as in the tutorials (recent tutorials)
anyone have any idea of why?

[tropic basin]

@cunning locust don't think unreal has an invert feature for that

[pine star]

can i use a bone in the meshes moving thigh bone for jiggle psyiques

like their breast bone for breast psyiques

thigh bone for thigh jiggle

or do i have to setup another bone specifically for that

[winged portal]

whatever gives the most jiggle is the best option

[pine star]

so you can use the thigh bone itself for jiggle as well as normal leg functions? o.o

;O;

[tropic basin]

@winged portal should you use a bone for muscle jiggle? Never tried it but woulda thought a shape key or something cuz its more of a soft body thing

[winged portal]

i have no idea, i was just joking jaja

[tropic basin]

Haha idk either.. seems like an expensive detail to worry about unless your doing something where your gonna see it clearly.. but cloths and faces use shape keys to deform geometry, so I'd assume you'd use them for muscle jiggle

[winged portal]

Just in case anyone have problems retargeting animations from mixamo to ue4, this one is extremely simple and works like a charm.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UoGdTouVeRs

[delicate junco]

#animation message

[short cape]

Err I'm trying to work through the Control Rig project and when I click on the mannequin control rig the project ends up crashing. Has this happened to anyone else? Any solutions? ;p ❤️

[steel coyote]

Hi! I can't read curve values from the morph targets of my mesh. The animation is playing on the sequencer. Reading the values on tick when the sequencer is rolling returns 0. Any leads?

[dusky swift]

So, i want to edit the mannequins animation set, i export the idle animation from the 3d player template and send it to blender. I use ue4 to rigify and the model and bones just disappear. I don't get it, i followed epicgames instructions to get it to work. I'm at a loss and i've only just started with ue4.

Whenever i edit the animations and re-import them into ue4 they break a bunch of stuff about the mesh thats already there, or tell me theres bones that are in the animation, but not in the ue4 mannequin which is weird because it's lying to me.

[tropic basin]

@dusky swift I just use the mr.manniquin plug in.. it's free and set up for ue4

[dusky swift]

Sounds interesting, thank you i'll look that up in a minute. Managed to get the ue4 to rigify thing to work using just the skeletal mesh, even tho according to epics tutorial i should've been able to set it up on a skeletal mesh with an animation attached.

Going to see if i can make a rough anim an move it into ue4 without any big errors.

[tropic basin]

Yeah I just turn the plugin on in blender, it loads the Mannequin with the ue4 skeleton. Unparent the armature from the mesh. Reposition it on my mesh, parent it and whatever animations you make should work perfectly

[hollow panther]

Hey, everyone enabling root motion stops root from moving. When I don't enable it animation works just fine.(Character moving forwards) But when I enable it character just stays in place. I use frank fighting RPG asset and the animations I'm talking about supposedly have Root Motion.

BTW animations are attack animations.

BTW enabling process root motion makes it work in anim montage but not in game

Update: Using them Animation Blueprint makes them work but if I use them as montages in normal BP they don't work.

[high widget]

I hope not to be in the wrong place
I'm having weird issues when importing fbx from blender, in particular it's like bones are rotated

This is the result

They share the same skeleton

[mystic pine]

Hey guys, any idea of what can be causing this stretching in Control Rig? Im new to rigging in general but I have the same ik setup in the dcc tool that I used to setup the bones without issues :/

[vapid ibex]

is there a way to evaluate bone animations without a mesh, to retrieve resulting socket transforms?

[brazen wharf]

is there any way to assign a new skeleton to a skeletalMesh which has different bone names?

the current and the new skeleton are both set up as humanoid rig with their bones mapped, however unreal can't figure out how to map the bones when i choose assign new skeleton on the skeletalMesh

while it works fine for retargeting -.-

[tropic basin]

@brazen wharf do you have different animations set up that work on the new skeleton?

[cosmic delta]

@brazen wharf most of the marketplace models (at least the ones I bought) can retarget with no problem any animation with UE skeleton but very few allow to change skeleton to the mesh and expect work flawlessly. My advice it's that you just retarget the animations and create child of your bp. If you have any animation just expose it as variable in main BP and change the character it'll be as easy as retarget animations and change the animation variables (if any).

[mystic pine]

As side note it seems to be just fine in the skeleton view. Not sure if the issue is in the dcc tool?

[atomic lodge]

I am trying to get the velocity of bones during ragdoll simulation. Is this the only solution to this?
https://docs.unrealengine.com/en-US/BlueprintAPI/Utilities/Animation/CalculateVelocityFromSockets/index.html
Would it be expensive to run this on tick for about 12 bones?

[floral kite]

Probably a dumb question but is it possible to swap an Animation BP while still using the same Character BP or are they dependent on one another?

[short cape]

Control Rigs aren't letting me create a blueprint graph even though the graph appears when I first create those rigs. Lol damn Control Rig is frustrating AF

[atomic lodge]

Probably like this? ****

[floral kite]

Thanks I'll give it a shot. I'm not really an animator so I've been trying to learn

[craggy knoll]

Is there an english tutorial on how you can retarget the Advanced Locomotion system animations on one of the Paragon Skeletons? Or any other custom Unreal Engine Skeleton Animation onto on of the Paragon Skeletons?

[tropic basin]

working on getting ALSv4 to work with physics blends on the animations? Whenever physics sims are enabled the character barely moves, and goes super slow. Found the friction curves, disabled them, and added physics materials to the scene but still not working right..
Any ideas?

[short cape]

Oh for the love of god, I had to right click a skeletal mesh and create a Control Rig blueprint that way to get the Rig Graph to finally appear. I'm just letting yall know ;p

[shut kraken]

Is the control rig good? Can it replace authoring animations in Blender or Maya?

[short cape]

I don't know yet. I really wish Epic would release much better documentation. I'm really unsatisfied with that live stream

[strong flame]

Hey all, does anyone know if Metahuman uses the UE4 skeleton pose and hierarchy (minus facial bones). I plan to use Metahumans for my project, but cannot export a fbx character to rig in Blender, it doesnt seem its supported right now?

This really puts my project on hold, anyone have input on this? Thanks!

[low lintel]

Hey can anyone answer a really specific questions lol

question*

Its about imported animations

Ive seen on youtube a lot of videos about remade mario 64 in unreal and Ive been looking fro hours and cant seem to find where the animations from mario 64 are located to download.

Can anyone help?

[flat sluice]

Hi there, dumb question. Is it possible for root motion to move a skeletal mesh that does not contain a character movement component?

When I enable "root motion lock", it walks in place

whereas if "root motion lock" is not enabled, it walks forward and the resets position upon looping of the animation

[ancient valley]

aaaaaaaaa someone send help !!!! I'm still stuck on this cries a lot

[ancient valley]

^

at this point i'm paying someone to solve this xD

[delicate junco]

Wish I could help but I never did IK in UE4 so far, only on the Blender side :/

[ancient valley]

rip 😦

[bronze osprey]

when goin FPS to 3rd person you usually change skel mesh and anim bp completely

[ancient valley]

I do indeed, but what is the point

[bronze osprey]

i thought the change was the problem

anyways the hand is not on the trigger and that should never happen

that should be the verry base , the rest pose

[ancient valley]

??

[bronze osprey]

any logic thats going over it would be cousing the problem

thats fps mode?

[ancient valley]

no no no

i'm only talking about 3rd person

for now

[bronze osprey]

and the gun is an object socketed to the hand or a bone?

[ancient valley]

yes, it has a socket on the mannequin skeleton

[bronze osprey]

the vid i watched the gun didnt follow the hand

[ancient valley]

https://streamable.com/pz9ia8

I fucked up the ik's so the problem was more clear to see

but this is what it gives when correct ik's are set

still doing this

what I tried, in the animbp i putted the hand transform after the locomotion, so that it takes all animations in it into account
cache the entire thing, do the transform, proceed as normal. but then it doesn't work either, hands doesn't move

[bronze osprey]

how does it look when it plays an anim asset for reload instead of the anim bp?

with all logic gone

[night grail]

Hello Guys! Regarding my question here, I found out that what I want to do is kinda find the least squares of the points where the foot is, so I can make the rotation of the body. But I think it's a bit tricky. Maybe there is an easier way. I will let you know in case I find something, maybe it's useful 🙂

[cursive aspen]

So what is the difference between an In-Place animation and a root motion animation? Does enabling root motion on an In-Place animation make it a root motion animation?

[cloud lodge]

no

RootMotion has a motion track baked in that moves the root of the skeleton during the animation

[ripe yew]

what's the fastest way to change animations axis?

From animations facing X axis to Y axis.

[dusky swift]

How come when i import this animation the feet break and rotate when in the original animation it was straight?

Everything else is fine, i re targeted literally everything to animation and the feet still go weird

[remote needle]

If anyone is familiar with UE to RIGIFY (Blender to unreal addon)
I have a couple of questions that puzzle me...

once I have edited the metarig etc... and have this result.
in control mode it doesn't have the animaion I imported it with anymore.

How can I make it play the animation again so that I can make changes to the animation ?

also I am noticing that as I mess with it, I am unintentionally making a list in the action editor name drop down.
some of these are ending up in unreal when I click 'send to unreal'
How can I stop this ?

Ill show a pic of my rig and a pic of the items being sent to unreal with each click...

Here is the list I somehow made in Blender (there shouldnt be this many in the drop down)

[craggy knoll]

I'm trying to use the Paragon Twinblast Character. I retargeted my used animations with the Twinblast skeleton and the Animations are looking good:

But when trying to use them in the Child Animation blueprint, this animation looks like this:

What am I missing? Why are the arms like that all of the sudden?

[sinful pond]

I don't suppose anyone knows of a tutorial that walks you through having a door opened by touching a button nearyby ? ;;

[delicate junco]

Look into trigger volumes https://docs.unrealengine.com/en-US/Basics/Actors/Triggers/index.html

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=veD-eAIaIBI

[tropic basin]

Isn't that like the 3rd example in the example content project?

[vapid ibex]

Is there any anim node that lets me copy bone transforms from one pose to another?

[stoic flume]

There's the copy bone node in the AnimGraph

might have to use that on each bone depending on what you need it for

[cosmic delta]

@craggy knoll You'll have an IK offset in your AnimBP (I think it's like a yellow rectangle with a lighting icon). In the animBP you'll be able to move it.

[craggy knoll]

Thx!

[austere isle]

Hi, I'm trying to export some mocap sequences OUT of ue4 with the preview mesh to do some fabric sims in Houdini, but can't get past the 60 second limit that it puts on the preview mesh asset it creates when i choose export asset>preview mesh. Does anyone know how to override this? some of my animation sequences are 300 seconds long.

[flat sluice]

Does movement via root motion require anything more than a skeletal mesh? does it need to have a character movement component?

[fleet willow]

Currently facing a problem with animations from mixamo.
When i try to import it with the skeletal mesh of my choice i'm getting this error here
Mesh contains Root bone as root but animation doesn't contain the root track.

Any idea how to fix this ? 😓

[fleet willow]

Fixed the problem by following this tutorial
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Komsb3itAIo

[pastel roost]

hello kings and queens. I have a weapon thats basically a grenade launcher and i want to animate the barrel rotating. then i realized that if I do that the rotation will snap back to rest pose after the anim plays, which would show on the texture. how would i get around that? heres the "arm cannon" for reference

[fleet willow]

I got here a weird bug in my BlendSpace.
The horizontal axis goes from -50 up to 50 (Rotation)
The vertical axis goes from -750 up to 750 (Speed depending on the direction)
The idle animation should be played if both values are 0.
But both are 0 and it still plays the walking backward animation(at 100%) which is placed at -375 speed and 0 rotation

[mortal lantern]

Hey guys I'm pretty new to animation in UE4. I am wanting to get into fighting game animations but I'm having trouble using the stock templates to do what I want. Are there any good fighting game templates similar to street fighter. or do you guys have any knowledge on how i could set something like that up? thanks

[uneven wigeon]

is there a way to do IK after certain amount of frames or time is played in animation? Like trigger IK function in the middle of the animation.

[left matrix]

@uneven wigeon Easiest way i'd know how to do that would be to use a socket (if needed) for whatever you need IK to function with, and do your actual switching in your animation package.

[uneven wigeon]

i know how do to IK. i just want to start IK at specific time of an animation

@left matrix

[left matrix]

@uneven wigeon I don't know how you're trying to use IK. That's why I'd recommend just doing your IK anims in your DCC of choice, and bake out your animations instead of timing it in UE4. Unless you need to control that time as a variable. By using a socket, you can create events based around it.

[uneven wigeon]

DCC?

[left matrix]

Digital Content Creation package. Maya, Blender, Max, etc...

idk the context you're trying to use so i'm just offering a suggestion based off the initial question.

[uneven wigeon]

well i need to use IK in unreal. For climbing things

What do you mean "By using a socket, you can create events based around it"

[left matrix]

Well i've never built a climbing system so perhaps i'm unsuited to help you.

you can assign a trigger volume to a socket

and use that to perceive a ledge to climb on, in this example.

But again, I'd defer to someone more knowledgeable on climbing mechanics. Best of luck.

[uneven wigeon]

👍

[frigid pendant]

is there a way to combine mixamo animations inside ue4?

just realised that having a few of these animations bloated the size of my project by quite a bit

Otherwise I will just combine them in blender.... but before I go through the hassle..

[golden arrow]

Hi guys! I would like to ask you masters if there is any way to change the retargeter options into an anim blueprint. I´m using optitrack systems in realtime to drive a couple of characters but the result is scaled bones, translations... etc etc. I would like to know if there is a way to clamp values. When i use transform modify bones looks that if affets to all the chain. Thanks a lot!!1

[remote needle]

Hey all,
If anyone here is familiar with UE to RIGIFY could you please @ me please
I would like to ask a couple of questions if you don't mind..

[bronze osprey]

@remote needle I import the skel mesh with auto allign bones on in blender

than on export i get a fresh skel w/o auto allign and i parent the mesh to the fresh skel with envelope weights

[remote needle]

@bronze osprey Hi,
I am very greateful that you spoke up,
Do you know if I can use this once I have set it up to adjust all the animations I send from unreal or would I have to set it up every time (edit metarig etc...) ?

[bronze osprey]

well i never used that rig myself really, i use the workflow i just mention

[remote needle]

Basically I just want to alter the animations from the starter pack to look more like my own characters animations.

[bronze osprey]

ahh ok, they are mocap anims tho they get 60 keys a sec for all bones so hard to alter

[remote needle]

So Its possible to just import the base mannequin and not even have to use rigify if I just auto align bones on the way into blender ?

[bronze osprey]

yea

u get decent results, the end bones sometimes are off and u have to set em right, and its not a 100% copy but that doesnt really matter

when u reparent back too the original skel with envelope weights it doesnt matter what the base rotation is\

[remote needle]

@bronze osprey the questions is, would the animations then made on that rig easily retarget onto the unreal skeleton when sent back into unreal ?

ahhh you kind of already answered that question..

[bronze osprey]

you dont even retarget, when you export the non auto allign you pick the skel you still have in unreal

[remote needle]

ok I think I am understading what you mean mostly...
Sorry to be a pain but how to I auto align on the import (moving the mannequin into blender) ?

[bronze osprey]

there is a checkbox on fbx import options

[wraith verge]

Hi, i sometimes get a crash, and seems its something with animation (i dont do anything specific while the crash, last time nothing)
https://pastebin.com/Fu4NkHtT
Anyone wanna take a look at it?

[bronze osprey]

yea

[remote needle]

Ill try it tyvm

[bronze osprey]

no w8

yea that1

[dusky ravine]

Guys i have a very beginner and basic question?
How can I create custom animations for ue4_mannequin ?

Ok nice ty

[quiet spruce]

i don't know if i should ask this in the blender discord or here but i decided to ask it here, in the animation both the pelvis and both the feet move https://gyazo.com/2e439bcdcedb74e49a6cc60c8e029f6f but after importing it to ue4 only the feet move why is this happening? https://gyazo.com/0ee043396a7f5918b8f4650e87a557c8

[winged portal]

Hi! anyone with experience on ALS? i'm trying to play one of my customs animations only from the hip up and i can't get the desired outcome

[tranquil drum]

i can't get the desired outcome

Which is what, exactly?

[winged portal]

So my animation is just a kame-hame-ha.
i can get it to play, no problem.
Now i want it to play only the upper part, so you can move while playing the upper-body animation.

I'm trying to use the layering overide group on the animation montage, but the hands move all weird

let me see if i can get a gif

[tranquil drum]

So my animation is just a kame-hame-ha

I have no idea what this is.

[winged portal]

Animation desired (only upper body part)

Animation I get when using layering group ArmL and ArmR

[tranquil drum]

First problem is you aren't playing the animation on the right arm

But it's still going to look bad, because that animation involves a lot more than just the right and left arms.

[winged portal]

is there any way to override the entired half upper body parts?

i was thinking on create a new group for my custom animations and blend that group with a cached vesion of the lower half of the body parts, but i'm not sure how to implement that on ALS

[tranquil drum]

You need to setup and use the upper body slot(it's in the list of layer names you can choose from in the montage)

[winged portal]

on the group slots?

[tranquil drum]

Yes.

[winged portal]

i'm only getting this posible slots

[tranquil drum]

You need to add an upper body slot on this skeleton's animation blueprint

[winged portal]

done

[tranquil drum]

Now you have to set up the upper body slot in your animation blueprint, specifying what "upper body" actually means. This video shows how to do it. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bU95pf5hTkI&list=PLK3jSrjUIizP3HUljXMkUiP5f0mXGVSUM&index=6

He's not using ALS, but when he gets to the cached pose part, you can do that just before the final pose in the animgraph

[winged portal]

oh just need to setup the cache on the final pose? great

i'm gonna try that

[tranquil drum]

I think (but am not sure) you can set it up in many different places on the anim graph. That space before the final pose is just a convenient place for testing.

[winged portal]

It kind of breaks it spine if i rotate the camera while playing the animation, but almost there

[tranquil drum]

On the layered blend node, did you check mesh space rotation blend?

[winged portal]

yes

[tranquil drum]

Try unchecking it

[winged portal]

it looks a lot better with Mesh Space Rotation unchecked, i just need to add the rotation of the head again so it looks to where the camera is pointing

[tranquil drum]

👍

[winged portal]

maybe with playing a litle bit with the layer setup i can get that, but this is already almost the desired outcome.
Thanks a lot!

[tranquil drum]

You're very welcome, glad it's working better.

[winged portal]

try to delete the animation from the montage and add it again, maybe you deleted a part without noticing

or check if you are not doing a zoom

[tiny mirage]

I have a full body IK set up for VR using ccdik and two bone nodes. I want to correct some elbow placement, but I'm not sure what the right way to go about it is. Could someone give me some pointers?

[vagrant shard]

Isn’t there a way to only allow an animation to play once within the animation’s settings

[pastel roost]

hi everyone im copying my question from a couple days ago in case someone new can help me out. I have a weapon thats basically a grenade launcher and i want to animate the barrel rotating. then i realized that if I do that the rotation will snap back to rest pose after the anim plays, which would show on the texture. how would i get around that? heres the "arm cannon" for reference

[velvet umbra]

I just started learning how animation works in unreal and I was wondering, inside an animation state, can I do something like a wildcard to choose what animation I want to use? for example I have 3 different Idle animations for different weapons the character will have... or do I need to set up separate states for different idle stances?

[stiff roost]

is there a way I can get my new .fbx animations into ue4 without using send2ue and without having to delete and reimport my skeleton? every online guide i've found is outdated

[tropic basin]

@stiff roost have you clicked on the documentation icon in middle of the starter level of the 3rd person template? Pretty sure they cover .fbx imports
https://docs.unrealengine.com/en-US/WorkingWithContent/Importing/FBX/BestPractices/index.html

[stiff roost]

oh, i just figured it out and it's the most unintuitive thing imaginable

you have to export the new .fbx with the animations you want to add to ue4, but you cannot use the same filename as the original

[tropic basin]

I guess that makes sense actually, but they should probably fix that and just handle the merging internally

[stiff roost]

left is the window you get if you try to reimport the original fbx, right is the window you get if you import a renamed fbx

just uncheck the import mesh option and select the skeleton to ""retarget"" it to

[tropic basin]

@stiff roost your just trying to import additional animations for a skeleton you already imported right?

Or do they need retargeted?

[stiff roost]

yes

[tropic basin]

Which one?

[stiff roost]

trying to import additional animations for a skeleton I already imported

[tropic basin]

Ok then you can import them directly into an animation sequence in the content browser

Like half way down the documentation in the link above is another link to importing animations and halfway down that page it covers importing individual animations

[stiff roost]

yes I tried that, the problem is you can't import the animation sequence if you simply overwrite your old .fbx with one that has new animations

it thinks you're only trying to import a skeletal mesh, so it doesn't give you the option to import animations

[tropic basin]

If your creating a new animation sequence and then importing animations into it using the content browser it should be asking you to select an existing skeleton to apply them to. Not overwriting anything

[stiff roost]

how do you create a new animation sequence? I don't see it in skeleton actions or in the advanced asset menu

duplicating an existing one worked, but there's no way to actually select which one you import into that animation sequence

i suppose if you exported and overwrote the fbx with just the animation you wanted it would work

[tropic basin]

I'm not at my computer right now but you should be able to click import on the content window and create a new animation sequence or sequences

[stiff roost]

your method is actually better because all my animations will have the same source file in the end

[tropic basin]

That's why I was confused that you had to give a new file name each time

Would get messy if your doing alot of animations

[stiff roost]

still, it's a strange workaround considering you can import a brand new fbx and get all the animations and skeletal meshes inside of it with one click

no idea why you can't just right click -> reimport to get the new ones

[tropic basin]

It's the method epic put in the documentation..

Gonna have to write them a ticket

[reef agate]

so metahumans Qs : /

Is the body ctrls checkbox broken in 4.26.1?

doesn't do what it should: hide / show controls

Also wondering, how do you location transform an IK effector? When I select the hand IK in the viewport it won't let me transform it

ah hmm

ya i dunno that's just gotta be broken

makes no sense that the checkbox is the Ctrl Name

[reef agate]

follow up, realized there's just a lil bug somewhere that you gotta check mark some stuff in sequencer first before it works in the widget

[misty dagger]

would anyone be able to help a noobie out with getting an animation pack to work on a mannequin

[mellow urchin]

hey anyone can give me some general tips in the sequenzer? x)
im just looking for how to
pack keyframes into stripts
AND OR
how to tell ue4 when to hold keyframes and when not to hold keyframes

learned how to creat my own control rig wich i want to animate and lets be honest the animation workflow in ue4 isnt quiet clear so i try to make some sense out of it

[tropic drift]

Hi, when I add a preview mesh to a socket, it doesn't show up in the editor /: can anyone help me? (:

[smoky shell]

I made a tool that automatically dumps an IK setup on either a mesh (+skeleton if it doesn't have it) or a skeleton + every compatible mesh

[simple arch]

Anyone know how to change the direction of the rootmotion?

[leaden onyx]

Hi 🙂
I'm currently trying to make use of the animations, my designer made for me.
Those are meant to be sitting down from the one side of the chair, facing the chair and standing up to the same side, facing the opposite direction.

I think I'm not familiar enough with the animation system to actually make it work. The character can sit down facing the chair and is then facing the table in front of the chair.
I still need a proper way to make sure, someone can stand next to the chair since the capsule didn't move.
But when the character stands up, my designer rotated the root bone in the first frame, so the character is facing the other direction after that, but the character doesn't rotate. just hanging in the air 😄 If i rotate the character manually, it works, but i need a delay of 0.0000001s otherwise the eye can see the rotation.

What am I doing wrong? How is it supposed to work with a goal like described?

[delicate junco]

Great job ! Started to use the utility widgets too, there are very convenient

[cunning locust]

someone know why the hell i cant accsess curves that i connected with my skeleton to control rig, in anim blueprints? my input and output just stay empty.

[ripe gazelle]

Am i stuck with an animation i bought or are there real options to improve them? Like adjust the width of a melee swing?

Or rather, what is the most straight forward solution to this?

[vapid ibex]

take my advice with a grain of salt because I'm a confirmed animation newb, but you should be able to export the animation into blender and edit stuff there, this could prove extremely difficult though, because it's likely you won't have control bone transforms / a nice rig to edit, I really don't know

explore this further, don't just accept the animation as it is

[ripe gazelle]

ait

[tropic basin]

@ripe gazelle @vapid ibex If you download the free mr.manniquin add on for blender it gives you a ue4 rig and Mannequin model in blender, so all you have to export/import is the animation fbx.
If your using a custom mesh then you can import that and parent it to ue4 skeleton to animate on the target mesh

[ripe gazelle]

Ok thanks!

[tropic basin]

The developer also has a bunch of tutorial videos where he explains the set up in detail incase your newer to animations

[cosmic delta]

How do you tune the target pose for the retarget?? It's already with the retargeting options right and same pose but I'm having a hard time to make perfect the retarget. It's between the UE mannequin and a couple of skeleton based but modified. I mean I get the animation almost equal but how the character it's holding a two hand weapon it's very hard let the position of the hands perfect. Please somebody help, I just need know how retarget without any flaw between two different skeleton with the retargeting options already right.

[misty dagger]

So all my animations are scaled correctly when I place them in world, I have all set to Mesh Space additive anim, base pose type skeleton reference and enable root motion on with force root lock: zero, when I try to put it all together in an anim BP the mesh just disappears

Each individual root motion animation works fine on its own its just in an anim BP I get this issue

Root motion setting in the anim BP doesnt seem to make a difference

[regal dawn]

Does anyone know how to use 3DS Max? Wanna make a toothpick roll over and fall animation

[misty dagger]

You may want to consider https://www.unrealengine.com/marketplace/en-US/product/animation-retarget-toolkit I am not affiliated with this toolkit. You need source and destination skeletons to be in identical pose. Because in a nutshell under the hood what's happening is copying of bone matrices. So stuff has to match, such as position, scale, rotation on bones. Someone please correct me if I am wrong

I know there are a lot of issues with blender fbx eport I am used to it. What is confusing is why my animations look perfect in all the individual animation editors, but when I try and put them in an anim BP my mesh goes to scale 0 looks like.

I would think there's some setting to make my anim BP display match my actual animations

[cosmic delta]

@misty dagger thanks for the answer, I bought that days ago and still lacks features for precise retarget like the ghost size or move camera to adjust the hands so it's useless to me right now. With patience, retargeting a couple of animations, I get somewhat acceptable, but it's a trial error process and the result it's far from perfect

[lucid slate]

Hi! Fps running animation how's look 😄

[young urchin]

Greetings. Is it common to use Bone translation in Skeletal animations?

[orchid saddle]

Hello! Complete newbie on the game dev here, I have a question regards AnimStarterPack.
Is it possible to extract character model from AnimStarterPack and build new characters on same skeleton to reuse same animations on those new characters?

[wary crypt]

Yeah in some cases it might be beneficial to use "root motion" ie the translation and rotations of the root bone when making climbing animations for example. Root motion will make it so capsule moves according to animation

[wary crypt]

if skeleton is exactly the same (bindpose, joint numbers and joint names) than you can share skeletons between meshes. Otherwise retargeting might be a good idea

[orchid saddle]

Yeah, the idea was to keep it the same as possible for that reason, just as a start point to learn to make first custom assets without the need of making new animations for now. Thank you!

[fleet willow]

Is it just me or has UE kinda fucked up with the animation graph ?
Like i really try to make things looks nice, and it does look nice if you only have a handful of animation states, but having only a handful seems like a rare case

[quartz cove]

Are there are big Animation Communities? Especially ones that have job boards and such. Discord servers as well.

[bronze osprey]

11 second club

[bronze osprey]

dunno about the job board, but thats where the hip animators hang 😛

[delicate junco]

@willow garden The animstate server one is quite big (3000 members)
They have a "collaborate" channel but it's not for paid work http://www.animstate.com/community/
EDIT : Sorry, tagged the wrong Victor...

[winged portal]

Hi everyone! i'm using ALS and i already did some changes to play only the "upperBody" parts of some animations.
The problem i'm having is when i try to play a full body animation with "DefaultSlot".
here's a picture of the changes, anyone have any idea on how can i leave the setup to play both depending on the animation slot?

[delicate junco]

Nice, didn't know about this, thanks 👀

@quartz cove #animation message (tagged the wrong name...)

[bronze osprey]

np, its kinda cool to see how ppl make use of their 11 sec 😛

usually the top50 are all good to great 😛

[winged portal]

Got it working for both slots, it was actually really stupid -.-
just in case anyone needs

[delicate junco]

Yeah it can get messy very quickly. Some tricks to make it cleaner are putting some info for similar anims in montages, using sub anim instances and a few others node.
Some Epic Games Japan guy made a presentation about this, check from slide 77 to the end in particular. It's in japanese but there are a lot of screenshots so you can grab a thing or two https://www.slideshare.net/EpicGamesJapan/ue4animation-blueprint

[silent estuary]

#ue4-general message

please help^^

[delicate junco]

Your "set speed" node isn't connected in your screenshot

So your speed is always 0 most likely

[bronze osprey]

the anim graph and statemachine are not the same 😛

im not a great fan of the statemachine

i often handle my states elsewhere

[misty dagger]

Is there an animation guru who is able to provide me with some wisdom by chance whenever there not busy if such an animator exists (one that isn’t busy-me showing my appreciation for how difficult this craft is)

[silent estuary]

@delicate junco nothing happens when i connect it

This is what it's supposed to look like

And this is what I'm getting

[cosmic delta]

@misty dagger I finally solved it using IK in the hands. Thanks again!

[silent estuary]

wish someone would at least try to help me

[bronze osprey]

@silent estuary i think you want to just use the third person anim BP instead of making your own for now

just use complete default 3rd person and swap out the anims

[silent estuary]

ohh ok

ill see if i can figure that out lol, thank you

[bronze osprey]

R mouse the skeleton of the manneqin not the skel mesh, click create rig

now click the anim bp of the manny and R mouse retarget

[silent estuary]

where do i find the target?

[bronze osprey]

uncheck only compatible

[winged portal]

Hi everybody! does anyone know how to see what animation/montage is currently being played? i can't find any node for WICH one, only "IF" something is playing.

[silent estuary]

i don't see that option @bronze osprey

[bronze osprey]

i see it on ur screenshot

[silent estuary]

oh jk lol

i was looking at "View Options" lmao

what do i do with the animations?

[bronze osprey]

that looks kinda messed up

open this but for ur custom char

[silent estuary]

i figured it out

you're a life saver bro thank you!

[bronze osprey]

np

[floral kite]

Hey so I got an animation BP from the unreal marketplace and am using a character made in Fuse and rigged in Mixamo. My problem is that is seems like most of the blueprint no longer works after retargeting. The basic look and movement does work, but the shooting and reloading animations no longer seem to play. I will note I only retargeted the blueprint, not the individual animations, but it should have retargeted all needed animations, right? Does anyone know why this happens? Is the blueprint conflicting with the original animations?

[bronze osprey]

i think all should get retargeted

does it still shoot and the anim doesnt play?

[floral kite]

Yep

[bronze osprey]

should prolly be in ur anim bp than,. should open it up and check the shooting part, you should be able to simulate the shooting with the variable in the anim bp

[floral kite]

Ok thank you, I'll take a look and see if I can find what is wrong

[spark turtle]

hi everyone. I have a question regarding animation montages and playing sections from AActor class file in code. do I ask here, or the CPP channel

[cosmic delta]

@floral kite almost sure it'll be because the blueprint it's calling play montage or play animation with the animations fixed. To solve it just create montage variables, in any montage called that way, and change it in class default. Beware that you'll change the original BP so my advice it's, after all animations are called by variables to create a BP child. That way to change the character you just have to change the BP in world settings.

[cinder holly]

does anyone here know how to implement side scroll animations for moving in a 3d space?

[vapid ibex]

Does anyone know why retargetting between extremely similar skeletons usually results in these weird artifacts? https://gfycat.com/LegitimateGoldenAtlanticblackgoby

See how the fingers scaling are oddly 0 at times, and this is relatively a 'mild' artifacts, sometimes entire limbs just spazz to oblivion

is retargetting a destructive operation? It seems like it gets worse after several retargets...

[spiral parcel]

Is there a way to change the framerate of an animation asset in editor?

This animation is played at 29.25 and I'd like it to be 30 fps

[tropic basin]

@spiral parcel you can try to scale the playrate but ur better off re-importing with the right frame rate

[spiral parcel]

Thanks, although what I found is that the framerate changed because i edited the animation, and added or removed frames, the original animation was 30 fps, but it changed after, when I edited in UE editor...

But yeah, probably getting the assets ready out of UE4 would be better, I thought maybe there was a way to change fps in editor though. would have saved alot of time.

[tropic basin]

You can try to selecting all the keyframes in the sequence and scaling back up to 30 fps, but idk if unreal editor has that functionality

[spiral parcel]

Yeah, I've been going through the anims and noticed that any edited anims, for example even ones that are 1 frame long for aim space purposes have changed their framerate. It seems to affect all anims that have had frames added or removed in editor.

[silent estuary]

does anyone know how to make your character not rotate when using WASD keys for moving? I want him to just run backwards and sideways, not turn around. I have the camera parented to the character's head and I'm in Third Person Template doing an FPS.

[spiral parcel]

Basically I'm trying to synchronize character fire anims and weapon fire anims, and I was basing it on animation time, but I'll proably have to find a different method

[broken dirge]

Does anyone know how I can change the bone limit from 75 to at least 85 for android?

[blazing swift]

Is there a way to get Curve data at a specific frame ?

[tropic basin]

@blazing swift notifies?

[blazing swift]

Need it everyframe

[tropic basin]

Then you pry have to check every frame.. I'd try to just check every 5-10 frames for performance sake tho

[blazing swift]

The curve is driving animation

I'm trying to figure out Distance Matching. In the Paragon livestream Laurent uses the distance curve to drive animation.

Anyone have any success using the distance curve in the Paragon models to drive animation Successfully?

[blazing swift]

What's up with this??

At full speed, you can see the foot slide. At .2 (slomo .2) the foot is planted to the ground

[uncut pawn]

Does anyone know of some big motion capture libraries that have lots of animations for rifles, specifically?

Perhaps aside from Mixamo?

Open to any suggestions!

[brazen canopy]

Can anyone share some links to a good advanced animation tutorials? (anim bp)

And some procedural animation tutorials maybe if there is any

[bronze osprey]

a blendspace is procedural, so the third person template allready has procedural animations

its a hype term that says nothing 😛

should prolly watch a few of the paragon animation streams from epic for some semi advanced bp stuff

[regal parcel]

Classic procedural animation talk for Overgrowth https://youtu.be/LNidsMesxSE

[regal parcel]

No it’s not lmao

[bronze osprey]

it is, look up the definition

allmost everything in games is procedural

it reacts to input

[regal parcel]

Also check this playlist on procedural animation using UE control rig - https://youtube.com/c/AndiDev

[regal parcel]

Lol ok

Procedural animation uses code rather than data to define motion

[bronze osprey]

so any anim state is procedural

[bronze osprey]

if thats not a hype term i dont know what is :p

buzz word

[bronze osprey]

prolly depends on what everything is 😛

intended use is prolly to fix some problem they had in fortnite

in theory anything could be done with it

yea

its supposed to have lower VM overhead

so for me personally, i like how u can track flow more easy

like it matters what comes first and what comes after

its more easy to stack stuff and ut anim bp wil look cleaner

yea, but unreal viewport controlls are not super for keyframing rotations

also when u import an animation into unreal it gets interpolated for every frame, so it gets tricky to adj em

there is good points too, like scale in engine. direct test with game stuff

same physics as in engine

[brazen canopy]

Thanks for the links!

I have this kind of situation: One skeleton for multiple body types: Gnome, Human, Giant. They are all driven by the same anim bp but the animations were made mostly for human. Therefore there is some visual bugs when using for example rifle shoot animation on a giant (rifle supporting hand doesn't fits into a correct position on a different mesh). I wanted to look for a right way to solve this problem. Was thinking about adding socket to the weapon that will determine it's left supporting hand holding position and then add curve to this specific animations to detect if I need to use IK for placing the hand into it's socket position. But thought maybe there is a better more elegant way since we have control rig now (or maybe even something alse). Because it can be complex if we have different sockets for hand holding positions, for example for reloading, enraged shooting of just simple rifle hold animation

Probably this is a common situation so maybe someone knows where can I look into it. Some sample project maybe or video. The only thing that I've found is epic's video from unreal fest but it wasn't very detailed https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zwc9uuOYfFg

[bronze osprey]

its also verry dated now 😛

[brazen canopy]

Yep

[bronze osprey]

well the logic wil be the same , but CR changed a lot

[broken dirge]

Does anyone know how I can change the bone limit from 75 to at least 85 for android?

[inner meteor]

Hi all, I was wondering if anybody could help me out on a theoretical question : would you know if it is possible to dynamically add position/rotation/scale keyframes to the Sequencer outside of the UE editor (ie. in a standalone build).

What I mean by this is that if I have an object that moves in my scene, would it be possible to dynamically "add" it and keyframe its positions in an existing Level Sequence. The reason why I want to do this is because I want to play a Sequence backwards with any "new objects" added to it also playing their movement backwards.

[opaque stirrup]

I was thinking about trying to make a system to check animations against different body types, is there a way to check skeletal meshes against self intersection?

[bronze osprey]

physics bodies

[lilac island]

not sure if this is the right channel but i'm having a problem with animations not playing in level sequences, in my project i have made some cutscenes, when i trigger/play them after starting the game that first cutscene plays fine, but right after finishing it if i trigger other cutscene that one won't play my cutscene dedicated characters animations (they just A-pose), but if i play that same cutscene after starting the game it plays just fine

[pure mica]

Can anyone tell me if root motion only works on ACharacters? I have been using root motion fine with my enemy AI, but I've been trying to set up a simple object using AActor and I can't get root motion to work. I also just noticed if I simply drop a root motion animation into the scene, the root motion doesn't work and he animates on the spot. This is making me think I need a ACharacter for it to work?

[lilac island]

feel free to ping or pm me if you know anything about it, btw sorry about my english skills

[proud shard]

@misty dagger try to play with force front x axis under the miscellaneous of import settings

can anyone explain me when i would want to use animation layers (linked anim graph) in anim bp ? and what are the benefits ?

[vapid ibex]

Other than knowing they can be reused throughout several animation BPs, I would also love an explanation

[proud shard]

so if i am only one that working on animation side - there is no point on using it? it's kind of a more organization tool ?

[broken dirge]

Does anyone know how I can change the bone limit from 75 to at least 85 for android?

Or do I need to change the rig?

[spiral parcel]

How can I make an animation timeline scrubber snap to frames exactly, not inbetween frames, but always snap to frames, I find working with this thing so frustrating and imprecise, often I'm adding keyframes just a fraction away from other keyframes when I think I'm on top...

[proud shard]

i just right click the key and type exact value. would love to know if there is a better way

[spiral parcel]

That gave me an idea... apparently you can scrub this little number here

[tulip nacelle]

When using the "Look At" node in the AnimGraph, how do I show the debug visualization like in the documentation video?
https://docs.unrealengine.com/en-US/AnimatingObjects/SkeletalMeshAnimation/NodeReference/SkeletalControls/LookAt/index.html

[gritty brook]

Hey guys. Im trying to make a simple cloth simulation for wide loose pants. The problem is whenever my character does a quickmove or hard turn cloth phases through collision and its stuck between the legs. What would be the best way to approach cloth physics for game and nit make ti so reactive?

[tropic basin]

@gritty brook you could bake it into the animation with morph targets/ shape keys. Wouldn't be as dynamic but it shouldn't clip either

[young pine]

Hello guys. I'm having a problem with an animation imported from blender. I've created a FPS animation + weapon animation. At frame 16 for example, the hands are moving with the weapon. When I import in UE, the animation is happening on frame 16 for the hands, but for the weapon at frame 13. How can I solve this problem

Both hands and weapon animation should happen at frame 16

[left tusk]

Any of you already experienced a look at bone jittering ?

Target location is stable, defined in world space

I've got a Two Bone IK, a Look At on a bone and a second look at on another bone. This one jitters (the first doesn't).

When using both look at and look up axis, the jittering is smaller but still present

It jitters like it was a spring constraint or so

more chaotic frequency and with almost constant amplitude

[left tusk]

ok looks like the target was too close and results in jittering due to minime variations in the coordinates.

[white galleon]

hi everyone i have a question, ive had a camera shake working in my project for a while, and then suddenly its become very inconsistant, this includes every camera shake in the game

itll either not play or play weirdly

actually i now realize it happens when i spawn a lot of ai

why is this?

[young urchin]

Is that a bug?

Watcher says it's True all the time.

[bronze osprey]

think i seen the watch not update correctly B4 but not sure

there is an add pin node

that would make no sense on an OR node?

i dont think that OR does what we think it does 😛

ahh my mistake the pin is not for the exit

if its like 1 tick false u might not see it, but with the blend in and out you can see it on the node

[young urchin]

duh...is there a way to reset pose watch?

the red skeleton one (i've deleted the node with the eye, but skeleton still there)

[stoic cypress]

Weird question, I am currently using a screw and solidify modifier to make this sort of sci-fi weapon in Blender, are these supported at all in Unreal? I am new to animation, sorry

I have a feeling they are not, if not is there an alternate way that you can animate something like that?

[young urchin]

@stoic cypress no, modifiers are not supported at all

[stoic cypress]

Realised how stupid the question was once I read it, sorry 😅

[runic wren]

What is the best way to get animation caches, like vertex animation, into UE4?
I've tried the Alembic Geometry Cache, but the pivots & transform values, are always screwed up.

[young urchin]

@stoic cypress if you want to animate "thickness", you can use vertex animation, skeletal morphs (may have no bones), and alembic

1. vertex animation can be "pure" (depends on your skill in math and understanding how world position offset works) or
2. baked (you can bake vertex animation into texture and read it in ue4

alembic is most simple - bruteforce way...it just stores a bunch of meshes per each frame

skeletal morph is based on blending several predefined "targets" by weights

only alembic can have aniamtion that changes topology and amount of verts

[runic wren]

But how do you fix the issue with that Alembic Importer?

Nothing aligns, its flipped, rotated, random position, wrong pivot point, etc.

[young urchin]

well, i've tried to explode the teapot in 3ds max, then imported that explosion aniamtion, it was working fine for me

[runic wren]

something by itself, no big deal

But if you have an animated scene, and try to import the entire scene, you'll notice objects dont load in their correct places

I'm assuming the tea pot was a single object with vertex animation, right?

[young urchin]

@runic wren you need to read the Alembic page in docs, it has so much "warnings", especially "Geometry Cache (Experimental)" and "You can try out this Experimental feature, but we do not recommend shipping projects with it. "

[runic wren]

I'm aware of that warning, but I'm trying to use Unreal as a renderer, as an alternative to Vray, Octane, etc.

So, simply trying to bring scenes in, with animations. However, even with using Datasmith, its not coming in.

So, this is not meant for a playable video game, its for video only.

I know that the alembic format, specifically, can handle it, I've seen it done with an unofficial plugin for Unity.

But there is some translation issues with the current importer that Epic uses.

I don't have much control with the UI, that I can see, to fix the pivot, which is the worst part.

But the pivot is essential for alignment.

[young urchin]

well, i've said that i've imported the fracturing geometry, there was about 100 chunks animated, so if you follow the guidelines it should work

[runic wren]

but were the 100 chunks, separate meshes entirely with their own pivots?

Or were they exported as a single object

Cause the latter works fine already for me

[young urchin]

they were chunks in max ofc

[runic wren]

so, elements?

i dont know the term chunks, but that sounds like elements

[young urchin]

element = part of the same mesh? then no...they were separate meshes

[runic wren]

were all your pivots set to the same location?

what was hierarchy like?

like, any parenting/children.

[young urchin]

^ you mean this?

[runic wren]

yeah

that issue

[bronze osprey]

that teapot is broken 😛

[young urchin]

yeap, i need to find my ue4 file

it was...in 2016 jss

[bronze osprey]

i once imported an abc and it had somesort of error shader i never seen b4

also they really messed up in sequencer

[young urchin]

i don't like alembic...it's not game friendly

[bronze osprey]

its experimental

its really dope tho, but huge file size

[runic wren]

Yeah, I'm just trying to help traditional rendering* artists, bring their work into UE4, to use the renderer

Virtual production is an eventual goal after this hurdle.

[young urchin]

well, it does work

[runic wren]

that looks good

[bronze osprey]

if you can sync up the camera you can also use the render itself in flipbook

[runic wren]

I've already accepted, there wont be a simple export and import for an entire scene, there will be alot of manual work.

[bronze osprey]

both huge filesize

[runic wren]

But, the more seamless, the better

[young urchin]

btw, you can use skeletal baker

[runic wren]

What caused your issue before?

[young urchin]

so, this is how it was made in max

[bronze osprey]

there is also this new format for scenes. from pixar i think

[runic wren]

USD

[bronze osprey]

havent really tried it tho

[runic wren]

right?

[bronze osprey]

yea think so

[runic wren]

but does unreal support that?

[bronze osprey]

think so

but prolly not abc and skels

but i really have no clue

there is a whole bunch of plugins for convoluted importers 😛

there is gltf and datasmith gltf, both kinda borked

[young urchin]

@runic wren i cant remember it was almost 5 years ago...but i've just reimported that alembic file and it works

[bronze osprey]

@runic wren datasmith has its own importers right?

[runic wren]

its a plugin

[bitter citrus]

Does anyone know of a way to add missing bones to a skeletal mesh? By missing I mean that they are present in the skeleton asset, but the specific mesh didn't include them. This would apply to helper bones and IK bones most often. Just wanted to check there isn't a built-in way to do this before I spend time writing my own tool.

[somber urchin]

ok, so I suck at animating in UE4, is anyone able to help me figure out a simple solution to set up IK for a qudroped like this?
@ me if you have anything usefull, this has been annoying me for months

[tropic basin]

Could just use the power ik plug in.. it does tri and quad ik @somber urchin

[somber urchin]

where/how do I set that up?

[dusky void]

@somber urchin id be happy to walk you through the ik steps

[tropic basin]

Its in the unreal market place. https://www.unrealengine.com/marketplace/en-US/product/power-ik

Doc and tutorials links on the market place page

[somber urchin]

WOW thanks :D
this is what I've got so far

[dusky void]

the extent of Ik i can help with is blender though, im unsure how it will do when bringing into UE4

[somber urchin]

oh, ok I'm able to get it to work in blender as well its just UE4 handles stuff way differently

[dusky void]

ah alright. I wish you luck on your IK btw

oh btw how knowledgeable are you when it comes to animation montages?

[somber urchin]

didn't realize this was a market place item, I'm trying to see if I can get something working before I put to much money in it

[somber urchin]

not vary XD

[dusky void]

rip, im pulling out hair over a root motion issue

[tropic basin]

Bipedal ik isn't super hard. 3 and 4 gets tricky to make look right.. good luck tho

[dusky void]

@tropic basin how about you, got some experience with animation montages and root motions?

but hurt?

[somber urchin]

oh, I didn't realize this was free I'll probably try this out then

[dusky void]

I believe you've miss interpreted the intent of my message

[tropic basin]

Atleast to see how they did it

I know about root motion.. it's the alignment of the body with the ground that is tricky with more then two legs

[dusky void]

right, im having some trouble with some root motion, but im currently looking at one of the ue4 provided documents for more info

alot of people seem to have the issue as well but the fixes vary. So im kinda stuck trying to find a proper fix

[tropic basin]

What is wrong with it?

[dusky void]

well right now the root motion is nto doing its thing even though i have it checked

what im trying to figure out right now is what is causing the issue

[tropic basin]

You have a root motion track attached to the animation?

[dusky void]

im unsure what that is. right now im using the main 3rd person mannequin

with re-targeted animations

[tropic basin]

Ok.. it's not set up for root motion out of the box. You have to set it up in the anim BP

[dusky void]

are you available to call? Id be able to show you what I am working with at the moment

[tropic basin]

No I'm running errands atm.. you can watch this tut series tho and it should cover everything you need.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=QCA4ZQzFZ9s

[dusky void]

much apreciated

[tropic basin]

He knows more about it then me anyway

[dusky void]

Yeah i checked his stuff and others but to no avail. I test everything with root motion but when i press the input for the character to do his animation, the animation plays but the character does not move with it.

I am in dire need of help, ive been trying to fix this for about 6 hours

No root line though

This should be all the relevant information

Extra info: This animation is a retargeted one from a mixamo animation

[tropic basin]

@dusky void is it just that animation or is root motion not working at all?

[dusky void]

the animation works fine. the problem is the character not moving with the animation

I demonstrate that in the gif above

[tropic basin]

Right.. is it just that animation that the root isn't moving with or is root motion not working on any of the animations

[dusky void]

I tried creating a new project with a new animation and new re-targeting rig, but same result

[tropic basin]

So your running and other animations have root motion working?

[dusky void]

the red line indicator shows up for the original rig, but breaks when i turn on root motion. The original mixamo rig does not have a root bone, but from the videos ive watched, it should have no affect on the retargated animation root

since the maniquine has its own root

for the retargating second attempt i used this video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jzfZHBJCjfc&list=PLS0lGxMNXkUSxEkmlX1bHvbF48mdyxAy9&index=6

[tropic basin]

So your running and other animations have root motion working?

[dusky void]

the red line indicator on the running animation does not show up

this is not a retargated animation

[tropic basin]

Right.. so if you get root motion working on that first, you can more easily figure out what your missing on your retargeted animation

[dusky void]

im making a test now

[tropic basin]

And when it was retargeted it was given a root bone, so it shouldn't matter

[dusky void]

i tried a non retargated animation and it still does not work

btw i appreciate you taking the time to help

i am on UE4 Version 4.26.1

[tropic basin]

Np. Ok if it's not working on any of them you still don't have root motion set up..
You followed all 3 of the videos in the series link above?

[dusky void]

a i did not notice the series. Il watch the 2 others now

in his second part he presses process root motion, but i dont have that...

i found the button

when i click process root motion, there is no visible change

the original mixamo animation has the root line

but it breaks when i lcikc root motion on it

[tropic basin]

You have to enable root motion in the asset details of the animation sequence and in the animation BP

[dusky void]

i have

[tropic basin]

I'm not sure why it's not working for you then

[dusky void]

i found someone who fixed theirs but i cant make heds or tales on what their fix was

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

thoughts?

[tropic basin]

He added the root track manually

[dusky void]

hmmm

let me know if you are ever avalable to video call

[tropic basin]

Your dive animation has a root motion track right? Like its not an in place animation

[dusky void]

it has a drive yes

let me download another animation for fun

[tropic basin]

If it has a root motion track then that isn't your issue

Just try to get root motion working on another animation and then try to replicate it on the mixamo one

[dusky void]

so the root works on the new animation on the mixamo rig, but the moment i pout it on the mannequin it does not show the red line

the problem has to do with the mannequin

most likely

hopefully this might help

im just sending his bones to see if thats the issue

[tropic basin]

No everything looks fine.. I'm really not sure why it's not working for you.. try restarting your engine

[dusky void]

il try

is it the version perhaps?

still nothing

[tropic basin]

Nah root motion is very common.. there would be alot more ppl with issues making posts about it, if it were a version bug

[dusky void]

im at a loss right now, anything else we could try?

[placid fossil]

I cannot for the life of me resolve this stupid issue and could really use some guidance https://forums.unrealengine.com/development-discussion/animation/1873917-neck-issues-w-retargeting-using-cc3-moveit

[somber urchin]

jesus christ leaf bones are a nightmare, how do people deal with this?

[analog pollen]

how to not have leaf bones? or how to use them

[somber urchin]

just they way we have to deal with blender files to import to UE4

[analog pollen]

you can use presets which i use to not keep checking it off for its just one click export

[somber urchin]

fuckin hell I'm so god damn angery cause it took me way to long to get to here, and its all because of leaf bones, can't we just import .blend?
https://gyazo.com/c7a6b6be3f7668bb3d331eb1303f34a4

[cosmic delta]

There's an easy way to retarget a male skeleton to a female? For a great sword animation the only way I found to do it right was using IK, with animation notifies that enable and disable it but I'm working now with a more twisted animation set and I'll need several IK positions, and modify all animations. There must be an easy way, but I can't find it. Maybe with the new control rig but there's almost no info about it... Thanks in advance.

[neon plank]

anyone have idea if it's possible to map mocap real-time data from app like this to rigged 3D model facial animation inside UE 4? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RTn3qus_V5I

[tropic basin]

@neon plank not inside unreal, but you can do it in blender and import the animation.

[bronze osprey]

d:\animations

you could stuff em all in 1 blend file tho

i think u can pick em with the action editor

[neon plank]

they're using a live link and unl.uckily it's unavailable for android

[runic cloak]

Hello .. i didnt arrive to make something ... explain : I have a "Drone" Character from SKeletal mesh and Pawn class with some animations .. Open / Close / Idle / LookAround and i have make a BP-Drone for define it . Secondly i have made a BP-AnimationBluperint from the Class Animation .. And i didnt arrive to find how launch animations from the BP Animation ..

I have make a Variable in my BP-Drone Blueprint "DroneControlled" exposed as public . And i was imagining that i could receive or monitor this variable in BP-Animation to launch the differents animations state depending on the status of the Drone Controled or Not by the character ...

But didnt arrive to understand from where i have to launch my animations ..

I want that when the Pawn Character is controlling the drone .. it launch the animation "Open" on the drone for example

and when the character not control the drone .. the animation swith for example on idle ...

or closed

[hollow axle]

can someone tell me why one of my animations has like the moving balls going t hrough the wires and the other one does not ? I am having animation issues and I need to know if this might be the reason

[cosmic delta]

@misty dagger thanks for the answer, then I'm afraid I can't use this animation set with a female mesh. It's a twinblade driven by the IK bones, the animations are amazing but the size must be the same, that or use a lot of IKs and animation notifies to move the weapon and hands,but that's too much work for one animation set.

[cosmic delta]

@misty dagger thanks, I thought too that maybe with the control rig that kind of things can be achieved but it's very hard to find info about this tool

[placid fossil]

Can anyone possibly help me figure out why the neck gets jacked up https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w4l8MXC1h1U

[cosmic delta]

@misty dagger I'll try to understand something about the control rig, many thanks

[dusky void]

I'm having a little issue where the I cannot regain control after the animation end and the character remains frozen for half a second and then I gain control. Where would i got to adjust this?

[wise apex]

is there any way i can find out which bones are missing?

[river timber]

Is there any other documentation for the different parts of the animation systems I'm finding it hard to trouble shoot various issues. I spent 6 hours over 3 days fixing a custom idle animation. @lofty marlin made a awesome multiplayer doc that helped me a lot, is there something like that for the animation systems?

[normal bramble]

can I have an animation sequence created in a blueprint that I can play? I don't want to animate actors, I just want to set up an actor with static mesh components and animate them.

ah, found the sequencer panel

how do you stop it being blank?

aha, actor sequence component

success

[upbeat valley]

Does anyone know anything about Animation Control Rig? I’m trying to set up one in Unreal 4.26.1, and have had success before. However, something is going wrong when I attach a Basic IK node. The bones seem to get all twisted or inverted. I’m starting to think maybe it’s something about how the actual skeletal mesh is set up? But I have done all the clearing & resetting I can think to do in Maya before I exported. Anyone have some wisdom on this?
The two images I’m posting are with the Pole Vector connected (and all the other IKs connected; they’re all messed up) and with the Pole Vector unconnected (but the only IK that’s connected is the left arm).

[normal bramble]

how do you get the length of an actor animation sequence?

it has an "end time" but the outputs are a bit bizarre

[lofty marlin]

You should be able to math it out with that

[normal bramble]

I am not sure what I'm looking at tbh

[lofty marlin]

FrameRate should be clear or

[normal bramble]

it is

[lofty marlin]

And frame is the number of the last frame

[normal bramble]

doesn't tell me how long it is

aah, I see

that's not hard then

[lofty marlin]

Should be at least

Depends one what you need that for

You can jump to the end of a sequence or listen to the finished event

[normal bramble]

so what's a numerator and a denominator?

I just want the run-time of the total animation

[lofty marlin]

It's just the two values of a division i would guess

3 / 5
3 is called the numerator
5 is called the denominator

That's more generic math knowledge though

I know i mathed it out once via the end time node cause I wanted to set a timer or so with it

Should be possible

[misty dagger]

Hey guys!
i'll need help
I'm following this tutorial:https://youtu.be/XhIeEEKcpQ4, and i need to know how to fix the ragdoll

[normal bramble]

gotcha

[normal bramble]

looks like actor sequences aren't usable yet

editor doesn't support them enough to create the actual animation

I thought they'd been in for a few releases now

yeah they're like two years old

[dusky void]

I'm having an issue with a small delay after the animation, before you can walk again. It doesn't just go from rolling to walking, there like half a second of just standing there. how do you suggest I go about fixing this?

[tropic basin]

@dusky void looks like your transitioning to idle before running again

How'd you fix your root motion btw?

[dusky void]

i found an app that absically gave me an asset of the manaquin to drop into mixamo and to also fix the animations

il link the video if you want

[dusky void]

also how would i go about fixing that?

[tropic basin]

You have to check the state and transition straight from standing up into the run without idling first

[dusky void]

would that be in the animgraph?

[tropic basin]

Yeah

[dusky void]

want a photo of my idle run blendspace?

im unsure how to make that transition. im currently learning as I go

il do some digging into animation transitions and come back if I have any more questions

[split mirage]

Hey Hello, I have a little question is it possible to invoke Linked Anim Instance using Variable ?

[dusky void]

@tropic basin so ive looked a little more into it, but im unsure where to shove it since my walk and ide are in the same character blend. where would i do the transition from roll to walk

[tropic basin]

You can.. that way he'll take a step everytime he ends the jump and only transition to idle if there is no player input

[dusky void]

I understand that. What im having a hard time wrapping my head around is where to insert this transition.

Is it in the area shown in the second image?

[tropic basin]

I believe so..

[dusky void]

https://answers.unrealengine.com/questions/168301/view.html i found this forum post, so im looking through this atm

[tropic basin]

You see in the screen shot in the post how they have the jump and walk loops end with idle.. thats the transition you need to fix. You need to set it up so you can go from jump end straight to walk if the player is still moving

[dusky void]

if you look at the first image of the two above, i currently have the idle and walk together through a bland space. how would i separate them, while still keeping the blendspace?

it was set up this way with the default mannequin

[tropic basin]

Yeah but the Mannequin doesn't dive like that. He's standing up when he lands so there isn't much of a transition time involved..
Your animation takes and extra second to get back to the idle pose

[dusky void]

hmm, i apologies, im having a hard time understanding this system. but il get it at some point. Thank you for being patient with me

[tropic basin]

Here this dude covers anim state machines at 25:35 or so.. https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=Eh-ONuMYADA

[dusky void]

il take a look

[trail mesa]

Has anyone used "Strider animation warping?"

trying to get a better idea of what it does

[tropic basin]

It let's you make adjustments to the mesh bone orientations at runtime.. adjust how far apart the feet land while walking, running, sprinting, or add straffing or leaning.. but its procedurally added to you base animation @trail mesa

[trail mesa]

so how helpful is it really

i heard its a way around having 8 way movement animations

which is what I was somewhat interested in

[tropic basin]

Yeah.. you have one walk loop and you make adjustments at run time to get the other animations I mentioned..
Its a handful of nodes you can use in BP but they are C++ based obviously, so it depends how good the documentation is

[trail mesa]

ok thanks

[dusky void]

yup im still very lost

[wise apex]

any suggestions for free unreal mannequin animations you can get?

especially looking for something that has animated hands becuase im trying to check if ive placed the skeleton right in the hands

the free ones on the marketplace dont have any hand animation

[wary pier]

Hi all! I have a slight problem with lip sync animations and ALS (Advanced Locomotion System). Our lip sync animations are created outside of UE as fbx's, and in UE they run in a state machine. The screenshot more or less shows the setup, although I can explain it more if needed. The system works quite nicely, but when ALS character maneuvers and uses montage sequences , the state machine is reseted. I guess that's default behaviour by UE. I just need to try to re-sync the lipsync anims with the audio when that happens. However, the lip sync state seems to get retriggered quite randomly also when the character is doing nothing, and I'm not sure what happens there and why.

My qustion is: Am I doing a right thing when using state machine for lip sync anim sequences, or is there a better way? Thanks for any tips!

[random hatch]

HI! Is there a Tutorial how to make ai use the turn animations?

[spark crow]

Hi guys! I've been searching for an answer for quite some time now and so I came here to ask. I'm setting up my character with corrective blendshapes and corrective joints inside UE 4.26.1 project (character assembled in Maya). To make corrections work I'm trying to use the Pose Driver node in Anim Blueprint that is set as character's mesh Post Process Blueprint. Back in Maya I've created an animation where I keyed the poses I need to correct the way they should be, imported it into the engine and made a pose asset from it. But here is the deal: when I check the poses inside pose asset everything is fine: all the joints work fine and all the corrective morphs I use work fine as well. But when I try to set up a pose driver node - the morphs wont work. For more information please see my screenshot. My question is: why wont they work and how do I make them work? Thanks in advance.

[split mirage]

Hey Hello, I have a little question is it possible to invoke Linked Anim Instance using a variable ?

[odd sapphire]

Hey, anyone know how FInterpTo InterpSpeed ties to interpolation time?
I want it to take exact amount of seconds to interpolate from 0 to 1, but no idea how to calculate interp speed for each tick for that