animation

[light river]

I'm also overriding the animation data at creation with the raw animation. If I remove it it doesn't work at all... Curiouser and Curiouser.

[honest zenith]

can you guys please answer my question if you know

[indigo palm]

And the character mesh shares the same epic skeleton as the other animations?

Just because it uses an epic skeleton, doesn't mean it is using the same epic skeleton as your character mesh. If you got an animation pack from.tbe market place, you will still need to retarget the data I believe

Your question doesn't provide enough detail btw. "Can't use the animations" could mean many things, leaving us to guess

[honest zenith]

ok thanks but I am not sure how to retarget the data, can you provide detail?

[static falcon]

Just google it, plenty of guides even on epic's website

[pastel onyx]

Hello

I split my mesh into multiple parts, and while everything works as expected, the head keeps making it own bone and it messes up

animations and ragdolls

for now I just copy it in the anim blueprint, but this bugs me since when I ragdoll it just looks horrible, eyes/mouth/ears/hair/nose goes into a direction and the head in another

[light river]

What's the word for playing montages on a skeletal mesh without an animation blueprint? Should that be possible?

[light river]

Ok, it looks like if you want to use montages you better have an animation blueprint.

[sudden sedge]

I need to add a proper root bone to my mesh, is there a way to do that without completely screwing up all my ABPs and meshes?

[heavy kayak]

hey guys im having a majoy problem ive bee n trying to solve it for the last 6 hours T.T......
im new to UE4 and learning by tutorials and reading etcetc...

and i just bought a asset "base male" but i just cant get this sucker to use any annimations !

anyone got a few minutes to help me id be greateful!

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

this is the asset

Fully rigged and game ready Human Base Male character.

so i rigged it to the default mannequin that has the base annimations if i understand it but i just cant get it to work

[light river]

@heavy kayakFirst make a copy of your project. Then delete the Base Male's skeleton and replace it with the ALS one. See if that works.

But make a backup because if it doesn't... things are hard to fix.

[heavy kayak]

hm the ALS is the default one you mean or ?

how do i make a copy of the project and make it outside the project ? if i use "save as" it just creates another "level" inside the project if i understand correclty

[light river]

@heavy kayakJust copy and paste the whole directory.

Also, I have a ton of windows open, so be sure to mention my nick.

[tall knoll]

I'm using modular mesh for my first person animations.
I have separate meshes for Arm and Gun but with the same skeleton, I set arm as MasterPose of my Gun but animation only effects Arm.

what I have fount is master component only update bones effected by its mesh . is there any flag, config for that ?

[heavy kayak]

hey guys ive tried solving this for over 20 hours now

i cant get my fucking charachter to show annimations

anyone got a few minutes to help me

[light river]

That's a big subject. It's tough to help.

Are you using animations or montages?

Do you have your animation slot in your animation blueprint? Do the names of the slot match with the animBP and montage?

If you are doing something else, it's tough to say what might be wrong.

[ashen junco]

Is ther a way to set newly created keyframe in sequencer to have weighted tangents?

[karmic rapids]

@heavy kayak doesn't it already come with animations ? Do those animations work? Which animations don't work? What do you mean by don't work? Don't play or don't look right? Or messed up in some way? Any screenshots you can provide can help describe the problem much better than a few sentences.

[heavy kayak]

Nothing works, il send a gif sec

[karmic rapids]

@tall knoll why would you make a gun into a skeletal mesh? It should be a static mesh because it doesn't need to bend like a human body or a bendy thing

[tall knoll]

@karmic rapids solved the problem. it was not my assets, and the gun has bolt, magazine, .. that needs animation

the master mesh should update all the bones

[karmic rapids]

You can do that with a static mesh for the gun, another for the bolt, another for the magazine and then stick em ina blueprint

and run a timeline

make the bolt and magazines child componetns of the gun component

When reloading, start the timeline, when the timeline is finished you call an event that says you've finished reloading

The timeline can be as long as you like

[karmic rapids]

A youtube vid would be better 🙂

[heavy kayak]

@karmic rapidshttps://gyazo.com/2c8dbb42222a4aa779ce82c4ce3f5768

i dnno how ot do a youtube vid lol x)

[karmic rapids]

Looks like you dont have an animation blueprint assigned to your skeletal mesh

Does it?

[heavy kayak]

https://gyazo.com/52cd635fa7e634c9fc45aff183627e0b

https://gyazo.com/b8dc3c41171277673d5851643f60cac4

https://gyazo.com/48fde95a470c46297e5d05be644668c3

[karmic rapids]

ok open up the anim blueprint and click Skeleton at the top

Does it open the UE4 mannequin skeleton?

Hover your mouse over the button and note its path

[heavy kayak]

https://gyazo.com/e9c801ccdbca9ed779848938c968bbbb

the model i imported i had to "retarget"

[karmic rapids]

Open your skeletal mesh and then click Skeleton, is it the same skeleton as the anim bp one?

OK so you've rigged it

[heavy kayak]

aye

[karmic rapids]

Have you retargeted any anims yet?

[heavy kayak]

uhm, no :/ ?

[karmic rapids]

Thats what you have to do next

[heavy kayak]

following tutorials atm x)

oh oh wait

[karmic rapids]

Pick an anim like "idle" and right click it then choose retarget

[heavy kayak]

i have i think

in the content brower ?

browser Ä

[karmic rapids]

yes

Animations only work for a particular skeleton

if youw ant to use an animation for a different skeleton then you have to retarget an animation to the new skeleton

This creates a new animatino sequence that is linked to your new skeleton

[heavy kayak]

even tho theyre based ov same skeleton ?

[karmic rapids]

They might have the same name and bone structure but if they are in a different folder then theyre different skeletons

If they have the same bone structure then it makes the retargeting easy

Its ok to have multiple skeletons in your project

Just not hundreds

[heavy kayak]

hm

[karmic rapids]

There are some official UE4 videos on YT

about it

[heavy kayak]

so i have to do it with each annimation file seperetly or i can do them all at once ?

[karmic rapids]

just google animation retargeting

All at once

[heavy kayak]

on it

ok

[karmic rapids]

You probably have to retarget your anim bp as well

or just create a new one and when doing so, it will ask you for the skeleton to apply it to. Choose the skeleton used by your base male character

[heavy kayak]

well its rigged to the default maneqquin char

dose that matter ?

i figure i use the manequinn then ?

[karmic rapids]

Doesnt the base male char come with a sample project?

A sample map?

Level?

If it does then it should have an animbp all setup for you

[heavy kayak]

https://gyazo.com/d19dce70fcfe910c9dd55aa93dd44132

it says its "rigged to epic skeleton"

[karmic rapids]

Yeah but open up the skeletal mesh

The click on Skeleton at the top

Then

Then click on Browse

[heavy kayak]

https://gyazo.com/3660c843b5a640add560c01a474d7463

browse ?

[karmic rapids]

Is it showing you the same skeleton as provided by the Animation starter pack?

[heavy kayak]

cant find it

[karmic rapids]

OK click Animation button at top right

[heavy kayak]

https://gyazo.com/f182fd0f59a8312533752b78064a3464

[karmic rapids]

Now do you see Asset Browser in the bottom? Do those animations work?

[heavy kayak]

yeah

yepp

[karmic rapids]

ok now click Blueprint at top right

[heavy kayak]

its only showing the torso tho but it have seperat meshes for each part

https://gyazo.com/7a36c7c523cead47cb18485c5cf49bd2

[karmic rapids]

Thats where your problem is. your AnimGraph is only playing Idle

You want it to play other anims too

Click AnimGraph

at the top

[heavy kayak]

yeah ive made new BPs with anims on the mannequin that i though this one was going to play

ok

https://gyazo.com/90ee384c25e3a08fdffb45d46b5c2128

[karmic rapids]

As I suspected , you need to add stuff to the state machine

Open up the thirdperson anim bp that comes with the template

Copy the state machine from there to here

Also copy the stuff from the EventGraph to this EventGraph

that shoudl fix it

And take some courses in UE4

[heavy kayak]

ha im doing tutorials 24/7 and ive applied to game dec school x) working on it

ok im trying

[karmic rapids]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FDbpHamn2eY

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hRO82u1phyw&list=PLfQ3pODBwOcaV1TdnqNWLTJ4wiUzEvXis

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YVC-DL9Ibf0&list=PLVY28vBVN1W6doTzjgppORysPZp3HE-sQ

There is your homework for the next 3 months 🙂

Enjoy

[heavy kayak]

thanks 😛

copy pasting dont really work alot of errors :/

[karmic rapids]

Yes , you need to do the transitions manually by hand

click and drag from one state to the other, let go, select Create Transition

etc

[heavy kayak]

yeah on it

hmm still nothing tho...

[karmic rapids]

I recommend the youtube vids and the Online Learning section of the unreal engine website

Dont try to run before you can walk 🙂

But also, never give up, never surrender

[heavy kayak]

sigh... this is #¤¤"!%&¤#

yeah im only watching tutorials and learning that way but when im hitting a stop like this

it feels hopeless :/

[karmic rapids]

It does, same here. But then I go make a drink, and have a think, then come back later

[heavy kayak]

yeah well im at 24 hours with this B###

[karmic rapids]

is your animgraph identical to the thirdperson sample?

And your event graph too?

[heavy kayak]

ye

[karmic rapids]

The event graph pulls information such as speed from your character bp, the animgraph uses the speed and other info to change state, from idle to walk

etc

The transitions need to have logic to determine when the animgraph can change state from idle to walk

If you think its setup correctly then create some Print Strings nodes on your EventGraph and print out on the screen your characters speed every second

I like to debug using print string a lot

[heavy kayak]

yeah well the worst thing is it not even budging nothing

[karmic rapids]

Screenshot of animgraph

please

[heavy kayak]

https://gyazo.com/920f063a4ae5ae111fd282e30f8ed78f

?

[karmic rapids]

ok and a screenshot of inside the statemachine please

[heavy kayak]

https://gyazo.com/8ca4b27f93d730a710dbe621a20e145f

[karmic rapids]

ok and a screenshot of inside the Walking/running state please

[heavy kayak]

https://gyazo.com/01af73416b71299265862d1988d820d8

[karmic rapids]

ok replace the Men_BS with just the thirdperson run anim and hook it up to the Output

[heavy kayak]

https://gyazo.com/dbae13dd37d7421f2809ae92f04e3cfa

?

[karmic rapids]

go back to the previous screen and give me a screenshot of the inside of the transition from idle to walking/running

[heavy kayak]

https://gyazo.com/a790a28ce17aa04238cbb9d06f77628a

https://gyazo.com/051b4f83cca9a4a0966cd30d1e8311ae

[karmic rapids]

looks ok

go to your EventGraph and give me a screenshot of it

[heavy kayak]

https://gyazo.com/151ffbb3f19ee067c65b6bf7e1376685

[karmic rapids]

I use VectorLength but it should still be ok

however

add a print string to the end

connect the speed to the print string

[heavy kayak]

nothing

[karmic rapids]

both the execution pinand the green value

[heavy kayak]

oh'

[karmic rapids]

what does it print on the screen when you play?

[heavy kayak]

nothing

[karmic rapids]

as if its not even executing the Print String?

[heavy kayak]

ye

[karmic rapids]

Put another print string just before the sequence that prints "hello"

If that doesnt print on screen then you're looking at the wrong blueprint

[heavy kayak]

ok it shows nothing so wrong print then i suppose

[karmic rapids]

open your basemale skeletal mesh

then click on Blueprint button at the top

sorry, I mean the Animation button at the top

[heavy kayak]

ThirdpersonAnimBp shows Hello

[karmic rapids]

no actually i was right first time, the Blueprint button

[heavy kayak]

huh

[karmic rapids]

nevermind

Give me a screenshot of your World Settings

with the game mode area expanded

[heavy kayak]

https://gyazo.com/baf10e45ad4061acf8628326bccfcf6d

[karmic rapids]

can you select thirdpersongame mode?

in the gamemode override

then for the Default Pawn Class choose your new character's bp

[heavy kayak]

ok

no difference

[karmic rapids]

delete the character from your World Outliner

[heavy kayak]

Ok then ?

[whole sphinx]

Hello guys,

I'm looking into procedural animation, and IK Solver, looking for advice.
Right now i just built a "spider like" physique, allowing player to walk on walls (See picture).

With some ray, sphere sweep i determine mesh position, on what wall he stick, etc etc...

It's working well but i'm looking for another solutions, just to see, is there a IK plugin solution to solve mesh position, working with wall, ceil...

[karmic rapids]

Retest

then if still not working , in World Settings, click the magnifying glass next to your Default Pawn Class

to locate the character bp

Then open that character bp

Click on its Mesh component

In the Details pane double click the Skeletal Mesh

Then click Blueprint at top right corner

Now youre in the corret AnimBP for the pawn class used by your game

Oopen its EventGraph and connect a new Print String to On Begin Play. Click Play and it shoudl print that on screen

if it does print on screen then the rest should work

Check its Anim Graph is setup etc

[heavy kayak]

ok gimme a while dinner etc X)

[karmic rapids]

I'm not very familiar with IK sorry

Hopefully someone else can help

[whole sphinx]

Thanks to have tried at least !

[spare pulsar]

hey guys, is there a way to record a video using the perspective camera ?

[karmic rapids]

Yes , investigate the Sequencer component https://docs.unrealengine.com/en-US/AnimatingObjects/Sequencer/index.html

[spare pulsar]

the problem is i'm trying to add the perspective camera

not a new cine cam

[worthy thicket]

Hi @valid marsh I can try to answer your question here.

[valid marsh]

Yeah pls

[worthy thicket]

Okay

Your question:

[valid marsh]

Idk how I can repair this problem

[worthy thicket]

have a problem I have a ready-made character with animations but want to change the msh but keep the animations but when I change the mesh the skeleton is also gone what is animated how can I avoid making a new animation

Lets clean this up:

"i have a problem" - Okay.

[valid marsh]

yes

[worthy thicket]

"I have a ready made character with animations. I want to change the Mesh, but keep the Animations."

[valid marsh]

yeah

[worthy thicket]

What Skeleton Asset is your "Ready Made Character" using?

What is the name of the Skeleton Asset:

You can see the name of the Skeleton, your Character Mesh is using, by opening up the Skeletal Mesh Asset and looking in the Details panel on the Left:

[valid marsh]

it is from the packet Strike A Pose Pack A_Clap03 the name of the animation is A_Aim01

[worthy thicket]

Okay.

[valid marsh]

that would be from the current one that I no longer want to have that I want to replace

[worthy thicket]

It's from the Strike A Pose Content Pack.

Can we do Voice Chat? 🙂

it's much much easier to show you.

[valid marsh]

yes

but talking is not easy for me

yk?

[worthy thicket]

That's fine.

[valid marsh]

ok

[worthy thicket]

Join me in Feedback and Support

[heavy kayak]

@karmic rapidsok it displayed the text and im checking the anim graph it looks correct, however the variables "speed" & "Direction" are Floating, shouldent they be integer maybe that can be it ?

[rough meteor]

hey guys, just a quick question in regards to pipeline to get animations into unreal. do i have to download some sort of mannequin rig somewhere to be able to animate in maya and get those anims into unreal mannequin? googled this for a bit but there doesn't seem to be a direct answer in regards to this

i probably did not search well enough

[ashen junco]

Never used Maya, but you could export the Manny from the third person template as FBX and start animating it.

Or you could assemble Control Rig (4.26+) and animate things in engine.

Also in Blender there's a tool called Mr Mannequin Tools, which provide complete Manny rig with controls.

[rough meteor]

ah so its not like a known feature, you need some third party tools to replicate the manny, and then you can export that data into unreal. think i understand, thank you!

[heavy kayak]

@karmic rapids i dont get it i did all you said no changes then i remopved all Bps and redid them all via a tutorial again and Still wont move a muscle >.>..... its impossible

[whole sphinx]

Is there a possibility to rotate Root bone on animgraph ? (I know rotate root bone node, but the issue is... we don't have access to roll for some reason)|
Also looking to apply an offset to root bone on animgraph (if this is possible)

Okay, just found transform bone, my bad for the stupid ask.

[devout dagger]

I have 2 state machines, one non-combat and another one is combat. I blend them via bool into final pose. Combat state machine needs to have 2 different locomotions, one is when AI attacks target and another one is when AI is in combat state, but not attacking anything (instead AI searches for lost target). Should I use Conduit to be able to use transition rules straight from the entry point ? Cuz if I just create 2 different sub-states from the entry point, there is no transition rules I can use to choose one of the other.

[median isle]

Hello, probably a begineer question but how can I make an animation loop from the end in UE4 (IE: I animated a 90 degree rotation and would like for it to make a continous rotation) -- edit: solved by building a rotator in the AnimBP

[real orchid]

hey folks. I'm having an issue triggering an animation loop from ending in a montage. I have a "wind up" animation section that loops while the player holds the button and then a swing section that should play immediately after the button is released. However the longer the player holds the button the shorter the swing section appears to be. The wind up animation is looping as I expect. I've attached an image showing how I trigger the next part of the animation. I cache this attack anim before I start playing this montage.

it feels like the entire montage is still running under the hood and when I trigger it to move on it's still on that initial timeline. I notice that it will "skip" forward depending on how long I've held the button for leading me to believe the montage's timeline itself is still progressing as the loop is occuring.

[heavy kayak]

https://gyazo.com/227b278564868e7c42e70b081841f452

Hi i have this Custom Charachters Bones "rigged to the mannequins Bones". and i had to attach it to the Charachter Mesh but why is it not merging or W/E anyone know ?

[karmic rapids]

You should add a skeleton notify to your looping section of the montage, then in the AnimBP's EventGraph right click and add an event, there should be the event with the same name as your notify there. Using that event you can check whether mouse button is released and if so call the MontageSetNextSection

Exiting a montage loop

[forest aurora]

Hey guys, i'm new here, just wanted to go back to unreal, start yesterday and today i found out that Fuse and Mixamo are kinda... dead.
What's the best alternative now for creating (fast and no super high res if possible) characters and have good (and plenty...) animations ready to use with them?

[ashen junco]

Thank Adobe for that. They already killed support for UE4 standard biped skeleton years ago.

The best alternative for Fuse is our own MetaHuman Creator (which can be downloaded in 1K or 2K texture resolution).
As for the animations, there are freebies every month in the marketplace, but chances are you missed them out at this point. But again, they're mostly compliant with UE4 standard biped skeleton so it's pretty much ready to use for other UE4 standard compliant biped characters.

[tawny void]

Hi im hoping i can find an answer here

whilke the skeleton tree for the character i made looks like this

the physics asset looks like this

I made the model in blender

id be happy with a solution in blender or in ue4, perhaps i could create more capsule components for all of the parts manually? im not sure how though

imported again and it looks like this

[runic sundial]

What are the reasons an animation montage might not play?

Missing default slot nevermind

[tawny void]

improvements are made but there still isnt that many compared to the bones

[lyric cairn]

I exported my character mesh to blender and back into ue4 but when I retarget (or automatically assign) it back to the original skeleton the animations are all messed up. If I import it with a new skeleton and retarget the animations they work fine. What is going on here?

I've set up the retarget rig to humanoid and verified all the bones are the same

[real orchid]

@karmic rapids I tried the skeleton notify method and I am seeing the same behavior. The longer I hold the chamber state the further ahead the animation skips when I set the next section. Here's a picture of my asset setup

here's where I catch the notify in the skeleton and try and set the next section. I've tried catching all over but it always seems to behave the same way. Like the montage itself is still progressing towards its ending as the looping section is playing

if I release the button immediately before the animation would hit the looping section it plays exactly as I would expect

[real orchid]

oh jeez well for anyone idk looking at this once you start slicing those anim segments in the sub 1 frame area transitioning out of them is just odd

I widened the window on the prototype anim and it just worked!

[lapis talon]

Hey has anyone bought the dragon ik plugin? Is it only used in blueprints, or does it also have nodes in the Control Rig plugin like powerik and fbik do?

[karmic rapids]

Blender changes the bone rolls a bit (bone rotation along the bone axis) which messes up retargeted animations. I recommend buying a Blender addon that exports to UE4 near perfectly. https://blendermarket.com/products/auto-rig-pro

[static falcon]

Has anyone used kinect with unreal engine anytime recently

[lyric cairn]

How do I use this with a character that already has bones? ie unreal mannequin

[spiral parcel]

Any tips for how solve this elbow issue for this aimspace? I am using FABRIK for left hand IK to make it stick to a socket on the weapon model. But due to some angles the weapon is at and the model animation, it tends to create these jerky bends when looking down...

[ashen junco]

I guess consider moving the weapon more up a bit?

[spiral parcel]

You know, that would probably be the most sensible answer, and I'm just trying to hard to find some other programatic fix...

[spiral parcel]

On the other hand, CCDIK does have rotation limiters for joints which seems to solve the poping issue, but has other limitations; I can't use the rotation of the target left hand socket...

[frosty sonnet]

Hey! So how in the hell do I make multiple transition rules like this??!!

Ive tried duplicating, pasteing, there seems to be no option

[spiral parcel]

Two bone IK with just a bit of stretching seems more precise than CCDIK and doesn't pop joints like FABRIK

However it does mangle things quite badly in this view... no silver bullet I guess

[runic sundial]

Can you use a blend space as part of an animation montage, I suppose not?

[vital needle]

I'm also aware you can use procedural animation with varying success -- but this seems to have a lot to do with the type of character you are animating. For example, robots may be more appropriate to procedurally animate whereas blendspace-based animations are generally more believable, especially with IK added on

[placid ermine]

Hi i hope i am writing to the right place... in my project currently i try to merge Als with the Superhero flight animation pack... so far i retargeted all the animation put the right movement inputs in my character Bp ..but at the anim Blueprint i have some problem i think it is with the saved cache poses.. the Superhero Animation Bp has a few ow these, and when i try to compile my anim Bp this error shows up : " Failed to find index for saved pose node while building ordered pose list." i think it must be some error with the order of the cache process..but i am not sure and couldnt find any clue about it .. maybe here someone had the same problem before..heres a screenshot about the issue... also i know i kind a massacred the Als Anim BP but it works without the flying components :))

[snow lotus]

Hi. I'm using a BlendSpace for Walk, Run + strafing on my Character. The blendspace is working great if I'm not using the mouse when walking backwards. When I walk backwards and using the mouse pitch/Look up at the same time I get some shaky movements. Has anyone seen this before? Is there anything I can do?

[heavy kayak]

hey guys, Question

https://gyazo.com/3a0bf52fdfd8fde0e725b9ec895f2cca

i downloaded a annimation from "mixamo" and uploadede the skeleton that im going to use

https://gyazo.com/82a5607a52c0837f52cf490c16ba98c6

how can this happen ? its glitching out ?

the prewiev looks fine but not when implementing

[wise lintel]

Guys is there way to make attack animation speed increasion in the middle?
(I'm doing synced attack speed with animation speed)
so the middle value is depends attack speed that increasing animation speed. it is possible?
sorry for bad drawing. but its understandable i guess

[static falcon]

https://www.instagram.com/p/CMryKgUDerP/?igshid=1k96s730tgio9

My new dream is to understand this

[lyric cairn]

I also wanted to make a curve for animation speed but couldn't figure out a way, lmk if you do.

[rapid adder]

https://www.unrealengine.com/marketplace/en-US/product/giant-monster-animset
Unreal Engine
Giant Monster Animset in Animations - UE Marketplace
90 mocap animations, perfect for heavy and huge monster or giant.

Hello guys. I liked these animations. Are there many exactly like this? Because after a long search I have only thrown animations fighting

[heavy kayak]

why dose all annimations i download from maximo get broken

it get badly compadable with the bone/mesh unit im using :/

[ashen junco]

Does anyone experience odd memory allocation with control rigs, where the RAM usage would spike after working with it for a long time even with a single model? Is this fixed in 4.26.2 hotfix?

[ashen junco]

Adobe already killed support for UE standard skelmeshes since way back when.

[ripe yew]

If I use montage, do I only get to use the upperbody? How can i use full body animations?

[ashen junco]

Montage overrides the state machine by default

[heavy kayak]

@ashen juncooh okey, but then how would i fix this :/ ?

[tight dove]

Is ART toolkit for maya rigs is rigged to epic skeleton mean no retargeting is need for these rugs?

[static falcon]

You still need to retarget if you use different proportions than the default mannequin

[misty dagger]

how to fix z axis turns into -y when importing from blender to ue4? please help i've been trying for a long time

[heavy kayak]

https://gyazo.com/dab1d89e4bf2af1ae241d7c0499f82d9

hey how do i release camera to not fixate after charachters rotation ?

[misty dagger]

is there a way to add more angle when my character looks up for exaple now its 180 degree from all the way down to up but i want it to be 200 so it bends a bit more

[light river]

Doors are hard..

[spare kraken]

Anyone interested in joining the dota animation contest?

I can do the environment. Looking for a modeller to make a realistic model and animator (I might be able to help a bit with animation)

Probably would post in unpaid gigs as well

[forest aurora]

hey guys, i might need some help. i use the trial of iclone and the "walking" animation works only for the Z key. If i press D or Q (azerty keyboard), the character moves but not as it should. Any idea ?

(the animation is from mixamo)

[static falcon]

Have you set up the keys in the project settings?

[forest aurora]

i've used the existing thirdperson BP, and it works fine with the UE mesh and UE anim BP, so the keys are good
(i've basically just replaced the skel mesh and the anim bp)

[ashen junco]

Do you make a new anim BP for the iClone character?

[forest aurora]

yup and also the blendspace

[ashen junco]

Consider crosschecking that.

[forest aurora]

they are the same

maybe something between iclone and unreal ?

Update : i've juste started a new project to get things cleaned. All good 🙂

[copper sigil]

I've got two animations which don't match when played back-to-back, is there a way I can combine these two animations into a single animation file and fade between the end of clip 1 and the start of clip 2? I was hoping that's what the animation composite was for, but I can't seem to fade between the two?

(I can't use regular animation blending for this, I need the result to be a new combined animation sequence)

[static falcon]

You can do it in the Sequencer and export it as a single clip after

@copper sigil

[copper sigil]

Ohh, interesting. Let me try that. Thanks!

[static falcon]

GL!

[copper sigil]

Just to confirm.. Do you mean a level sequence?

[static falcon]

yep!

Just add your skeleton in there, add two clips to the same layer, and overlap them

[noble swan]

Hi frens, is there a way to rotate relatively with the rotation gizmo in the Unreal viewport? I'm doing some animation and would like to apply relative rotation to this arm control instead of breaking wrists 😂

[raw spire]

hi guys, does anyone know how to avoid character turning 360, when switching from -180 to 180 when you have set interpolation time?

let's say if character current angle is at 170 and target is at -170, it's closer to go anticlockwise than clockwise right

i'm talking about Animation BlendSpace1D, sorry if i didn't mention it earlier.

[ashen junco]

The interpolation should be Quaternion somewhere.

[runic sundial]

Best way to run code when an animation, not looping has finished in the state machine?

[ashen junco]

Anim Notify

[runic sundial]

Are you sure?

Not when the transitions starts, but when the animation would complete

[raw spire]

i see... but isn't Quaternion for 3D space? -180 to 180 is just float

[ashen junco]

You could put anim notify in the last frame.

[runic sundial]

Ah okay, I think I get you now

The functions these generate are also confusingly called anim notify,

But your suggesting just attaching it directly to the animation, right?

@ashen junco How would I link the notification into the anim graph? so that it calls a function in there?

[ashen junco]

I'm not sure if Anim BP supports interfaces...

[runic sundial]

Apparently if you just add one its there, magic 🙂

Must just add all notifications for animations, that are on the skeleton?

Either way thanks for your help c:

[cinder linden]

Hey guys I'm trying to export an anim composite to blender to have all the sequences into one files, but I don't get an fbx export option, does anyone know how to approach this ?

[ashen junco]

You want to combine multiple animation sequences into one?
Why not combine it in Sequencer? You can bake an animation track into a new animation sequence.

[cinder linden]

@ashen junco I'm trying to follow this video https://youtu.be/CqXKSyAPWZY?t=587 but yeah the sequencer idea is a pretty good one completely forgot about it

[ashen junco]

#cpp might be able to help.

[static falcon]

I am pretty happy with my little wall running setup... lots of room for improvement but pleased with it for having not followed a tutorial

parkour kitty

[heavy kayak]

https://gyazo.com/7263a9f8363be0a7f05a6f00291fc3d3

hey can i remove a Material "element" from this ?

or i need t oput in a blender or a 3rd program do disect it ?

[static falcon]

prob need Blender

[heavy kayak]

hm okey

[charred schooner]

Does anyone have any recommendations for the software they process their mocap files? I've been using Blender with an animation layers addon to clean things up and add poses and some leg movement, but I've been running into some weird issues with Unreal thinking the skeleton is different. I looked at iClone 7 but there seems to be a lot of paid addons required just to export and use your own rigged assets

[south dragon]

Would it be possible to extract the mannequin skeleton and rig my character with it?

in blender for example?

Like would that help it be more seamless when trying to import your own body mesh?

[ashen junco]

Yes, it's possible.

[south dragon]

Oh ! okay

Im very new to this so just trying to figure out what the best solution would be for importing my custom meshes in game and making them move in third person

@ashen junco

Would anyone happen to know any good tuts for beginners for something like that?

I just want to play with how to make it work with my own 3d models

[south dragon]

How exactly would i extract the skeleton btw?

[misty dagger]

I imported a custom anim with the same skeleton, and it asked me to do something starting with a I, it works but all the other anims are broken and looking like this. Can anyone help?

[hollow hare]

How can I hide my mesh mid animation and then make it reappear?

Anim notifies, or does the Blender mask modifier work in unreal?

[static falcon]

Its a skinning issue not animation issue

Gotta do a lil weight painting

[misty dagger]

How can I fix it?

[static falcon]

I only know how to do weight painting in Maya... But possible it any of the programs like Blender

[delicate junco]

The Blender mask modifier won't work. Use an anim notify state for that, that should work just fine (disappear at begin, reappear at end). Nice avatar btw

[dense saffron]

I'm having trouble getting morph targets to show up
In 3ds max I have the morph modifier below the skin
when I export to fbx I make sure animations and morphs are checked
when I import into unreal I make sure morphs are checked
I tried hitting reimport on the mesh
but still the morph list is empty in unreal

[crimson pelican]

So i am attempting to animate a drive shaft, id like it to spin at the same speed as the wheels, so i tried driving it using the bone controller, but i get this weird oscillating effect instead

it rotates in one direction, then rotates in the other

[devout lynx]

why are my animations importing as absolute monstrosities?

I made the rig in Mixamo and exported my model from blender, the anims are straight from Mixamo

[crimson pelican]

@devout lynx Mixamo does some funky stuff with animations, i usually have to clean them up by removing the keyframes on the armature itself

[devout lynx]

How do you do that? And is it a problem with the keyframes? Cause it seems like the mesh is incorrectly deforming with the skeleton. But idk cause I'm pretty new to this stuff

[ashen junco]

Just to make sure: What's the unit and scaling you have in your Blender scene settings?

[crimson pelican]

the armature object has keyframes, which screws up a bit when importing it

[devout lynx]

is this what you're referring to?

[ashen junco]

And that's the problem right there.

1 Unreal unit equates to 1 centimetre, while 1 Blender metric unit defaults to 1 metre. Therefore you need to set the Unit Scale to 0.01 to make the Blender unit equates to centimetre. Of couse, you might need to scale up the model by 100x uniformly after this.

If you use Blender and UE4 on daily basis, it's a good idea to:

1. load a new default cube scene
2. set the Unit Scale to 0.01
3. scale everything to 100x and apply all transform
4. adjust the viewport clipping plane to be 1 cm near, and 1 km far.
5. save the new configurations as the default.

(and no, setting the Length to Centimetres does not affect anything, it's a fake option)

[devout lynx]

OK I will try it 🙂

[lapis talon]

Ok so I’ll try to keep this short.

I used the control rig mannequin project as a guideline to setting up my quadruped’s rig and after trying power ik and full body ik, power ik gives the best results for limb control.

However, I’m lost on how I might be able to have the legs affect the rest of the body, the jaw move with the head, and the spine rotate with the body/be used to control some minor rotational tweaks such as bending down. What are some ways I can do this?

[south dragon]

whats the best way to export mannequin bones without them looking so funky? Im trying to align the bones with a custom mesh .

It looks like there are double bones in some areas as well /:

[ashen junco]

The "double" bones in the limbs are twist bones. It allows you to preserve volume when you rotate around the part of the limb.

[south dragon]

Okay, but how can i identify which one is a twist and which is not?

[ashen junco]

The bone names are dead giveaway for that

[south dragon]

Im just asking dude...

thanks anyways

[craggy knoll]

If you import your Skeletal Mesh to your Project and choose to use an existing Skeleton in the Project, does the Skeletal Mesh uses the Skinning from the chosen Skeleton or the one Skeleton within the FBX you imported?

[ashen junco]

I think it's the latter. I'm implying that Skinning = Bone weight.

[craggy knoll]

But Bone weight = Skeleton right? And in the latter I'm using a different UE4 Skeleton uasset.

[ashen junco]

Skeleton = Armature

I'm coming from Blender.

[craggy knoll]

Okay, then Bone weight = Armature?

or Bone weight details are saved in the Armature right?

[ashen junco]

Skeleton = Armature
Skinning = Bone weight

At least that's my understanding.

[craggy knoll]

Then it's the question in which uasset the Skeleton is saved in and in which the Skinning is saved in right?
In UE4 it's SkeletalMesh.uasset and Skeleton.uasset.

Then you might be right, Skinning could be in the SkeletalMesh.

[wide hearth]

UE4 skeleton is just a list of bone names, more precisely a tree of bone names. The skinning (aka weights) is saved in the skeletal mesh. Also the bone length and initial angles, which is called bind pose, are saved in the meshes.

This way you can have same anims, anim bps etc working with different meshes that share the same skeleton.

[craggy knoll]

okay, thanks for Clarifying @wide hearth

[copper sigil]

Hey folks! Just a question about animation alongside cloth physics. I've got a complex use case, where my piece of cloth can be dragged around by it's corners. I just tried importing an animation where the corner verts were manipulated from point A to point B, but they seem to have broken when combining it with the cloth sim in UE4.

Just wondering if there is another method of attaching cloth via multiple points along it's edge and having them influence the cloth position/simulation?

[misty stag]

Hi, any examples, tutorials for singleplayer only
Advanced Locomotion System V4,
for use multiplayer.

[silk agate]

Uhh having a bit of an issue with importing animations in to ue4

In 3ds max the animation looks fine and the animation show's the player running forward (not an in place animation)

but when I import the character in to ue4 the character doesn't move forward in the animation and is locked at the origin

[hollow hare]

I can't get my particle system to play during a notify state, I have the loop in the emitter set to 1

[delicate junco]

Use a notify if it doesn't loop indefinitely

[hot plume]

Can someone please help me with implementing procedural animation in unreal engine. I couldnt find anything on youtube nor were there any articles there for ue4. Most are just showcasing their work and the tutorials are of unity.

[wide hearth]

mb your char uses root motion and you have "extract root motion" checked in ue4?in this case it will play inplace in preview

[heavy kayak]

hey guys, anyone know if u can change the annimation length to a variable duration ??

[silk agate]

Is that option in the import prompt for the animation?

[wide hearth]

no in preview

wait 1 sec, i will make a screenshot

this thing. if it's checked you can try to uncheck it and see if that changes something

[real orchid]

Hey folks I had a sort of elementary question. What's the general best practice for using an animation notify or a skeleton notify? They appear to have a huge amount of overlap with the main difference being where the notify is sent and the blueprint logic that catches it is contained. Am I missing something? I'm trying to discern what their differing "intentions" are as I put together my combat system

[delicate junco]

Yeah pretty much, if you create a skel notify it'll be in order to use it in the animBP (may be useful to preserve fast path for some transitions for example since the "time remaining" node breaks it). If you create an anim notify and override the "received notify" method, you'll be able to do something with code/BP outside of the animBP

[real orchid]

Is the point of an anim notify to stop people from mass clogging the event graph of the anim blueprint with possible entity specific stuff? Oh I was not entirely aware of fastpath! This is very neat. Are blueprint funcs run in animation notifies not fastpathed? Is that reserved for the anim blueprint?

[delicate junco]

Yeah anim notify/notify states are meant to be used for something that should be driven by the animation itself. Say you want to have some hitboxes active between two frames, some particle effect to be thrown at this moment, some window to allow cancelling etc
Skel notifies are there to pass the info to your animBP so you could for example make a transition possible after that point or something like that. Basically they're used to pass some info that would be relevant to the animBP itself (so state transitions and other stuff specific to it), otherwise if it's relevant to gameplay like invincibility state a classic notify/notify state will be appropriate

[delicate junco]

Yeah basically you want to have fast path in your anim graph, unfortunately the "get time remaining node", that could be used for example to make a transition from jump loop to jump end, breaks it. So a workaround is to instead use a boolean for that transition, which would be set to true using a skel notify in the jump loop

I recommend checking the checkbox "warn about blueprint usage" in the class settings of the animBP

It tells you where you don't have fast path

You can learn more about it here : https://docs.unrealengine.com/en-US/AnimatingObjects/SkeletalMeshAnimation/Optimization/FastPath/index.html

And here https://docs.unrealengine.com/en-US/AnimatingObjects/SkeletalMeshAnimation/Optimization/index.html

[static falcon]

Yay I did a thing

[delicate junco]

Neat !

[static falcon]

Thanks @delicate junco

[ashen junco]

There are few replicated version of ALS V4 scattered around GitHub.

[devout lynx]

So I'm still having trouble importing my anims from Mixamo. I've tested several things and I found out that an older mesh works fine. The problem started when I transferred weights from the character mesh to the clothing mesh. If I import the old model its fine, but obviously the weights are wonky. Other than that I don't believe there have been any size or rotation differences, and I don't think those matter anyways...

So can anyone please help me figure out what is causing this artifact? 🥲

[karmic rapids]

Import from mixamo to blender then export the mesh + armature + anims from Blender to Ue4 and when importing to UE4 dont select a skeleton in the import options. This will result in it creating a new skeleton based upon the armature. It might look correct then.

[ripe yew]

How do you play full body montages?

So I've state machine for movement. In c++, I use PlayMontage to play my montage with upperbody slot, default body slot won't work

[ripe yew]

For example, the animation contains its own foot movements beside the upperbody movements.

[torpid tiger]

Anyone know a fix? As soon as i add a mesh and animation blueprint to my player controller child it stops displaying all windows once its been closed and reopened it.

[covert jay]

Does retargeting a skeleton break virtual bones?

[ashen junco]

Retargeting doesn't carry any virtual bones, no.

[covert jay]

Is there a way to see what a virtual bone's target is?

To manually recreate virtual bones.

[misty stag]

Thanks, C++ required, searching only BP.

[molten heron]

Let's say I'm playing an animation sequence from animation blueprint. Is it possible to fetch currently played frame number of that anim in Blueprint/C++ during gameplay on each tick?

Does creating a NotifyState and fetching frame delta time from that notify during animation makes sense?

[wide hearth]

if it wasn't renamed you can see that in the name (basically vb namie is "VB parent_child", or you can just look from which to which bone it goes and that should be the parent and target bones

[wide hearth]

i don't know, but you can add a curve to your anim sequence that goes from 0 to frame count, and read that value

[vestal summit]

Hey guys. ❓ ❓ ❓
I need some help.
I am stuck, unless I want large buttons, people press with their palms.
Where can I edit for special hand poses?
Can someone do a screen grab of the location where I can connect a Break, to force the hand into my desired pose?
I know how to create the pose, and I can even make it switch in the Hand Anim BP, but I can't (for the life of me) figure out where to connect the Break point in the code. I've tried in Pawn/Motion controller/Grasping hand, event graphs, and my hands still just act as normal, with no forced hand pose. I watched 5 videos on how to do it with a button press, or event, and none use the VR Expansion plugin, so I'm at a loss.
Please help.❓ ❓ ❓

[karmic rapids]

Put the default slot into your Animgraph and wire it up near the end so it overrides all previous poses when it plays.

@torpid tiger try to reset the UI to defaults

[torpid tiger]

that didn't seem to work😅

[raw spire]

Is there anyway I can use the Variable in Level Sequencer? I want to make an option to switch from FK/IK in Rig Control

[torpid tiger]

oh snapp fixxed it pog, thx for your time. all i had to do was reopen the class defaults in window and then click on "open full blueprint editor"

[spare otter]

Hey guys, I was hoping someone could give me some direction. I have watched the GDC Video: An Indie Approach to Procedural Animation several times in recent years and I finally decided that I wanted to learn about procedural animation. Particularly with a humanoid character. It seems like a big and scary world- procedural animation. How did you go about learning this topic? Do you dive in and just try or from past experience you would suggest a particular plan of action? Perhaps better question would be if its something feasible and worth doing in UE4 🤔

[south dragon]

Would someone familiar with animations be able to spare a little time ?

I have a few questions

Im very new to all these

Ive been watching tutorials

Idk how to extract the mannequin armature without it looking all broken and wonky

I would like to rig my custom character with the mannequin armature so i can use all the animations with it

but everytime i export it and throw it into blender it looks like this

[karmic rapids]

@south dragon just buy auto rig pro and all your problems with that will be solved

[south dragon]

Im not in the best financial situation unfortunately lol

I was hoping there was just a clean version of the UE4 armature

maybe someone can just drop me an fbx if they have it ?

I can do the weight painting and such

[fierce geode]

Hello guys, are there any guides how to tweak existing animation(mocap e.g) with control rig in sequencer?

I did retargeting but when I'm adding animation track over metahuman rig they doesn't work together but works one by one

[bronze osprey]

@south dragon there is no such thing as a clean unreal rig:P

not for blender

[south dragon]

thats dissapointing lol

[bronze osprey]

sure is, there is a bunch of wonky workarounds tho

[south dragon]

Yeah its really tuning me off to the whole thing

[bronze osprey]

mine is: export fbx from unreal, inport it into blender with and without autoalign

[covert jay]

Has anyone set up a ue4 mannequin for mixamo retargeting and uploaded it somewhere? Setting up all the bones and lining up a t-pose is kinda wonky when I do it.

[bronze osprey]

fix up the auto align to ur liking, now reparent the mesh with envelope weights to the original skel

[south dragon]

sounds like chinese for me lmao

[bronze osprey]

could use a rigify rig, rename the bones to unreal and use retargeting

yea its pretty messed up, its so weird u cant even write a phyton script to create a new skeleton

@south dragon the is also the blender plugin by epic, its not perfect but i think it holds a rig u can use to weight stuff

[south dragon]

hmm, and it'll use all the same animations in UE4?

[lavish flower]

Guys I want to create an object with a rotating animation
I drew a blue line in the picture and I need the object to rotate around this axis.
Does anyone know how I can achieve this? If I rotate around the z-axis it rotates like in the 2nd picture

And goes around but I want it to stick at the place and be tilted like it is and rotate around the blue line

Seems like it rotates around the yellow point but I need an axis

[light river]

Is there a way to getPerviousLODLevel for skeletal meshes? I want to switch the animation based on it.

[static falcon]

Thats Blender doing something weird

I've exported it loads of timed and it went into Maya fine

[static falcon]

Use local rotation

[lavish flower]

@static falcon nope same effect it always rotates around the yellow dot

[static falcon]

that's blender in the picture diodis?

@lavish flower

[delicate junco]

^ or R Z Z

[static falcon]

oh nice! not a blender native 😛

[delicate junco]

Yeah it's very convenient, pressing Z first will make the rotation around global Z axis and Z again will make it around the local Z axis

[static falcon]

Working on my parkour kitty got the shimmy-ing working

[gloomy fable]

Yo, I have a custom rig that has a rootbone, but unreal doesn't recognize it. Is there anything I can do to set the root bone to act as it should?

(as in it treats it like any other bone)

I just realized the "player_armature" is acting as the root instead of the actual rootbone. Is there any way to fix this?

(in unreal that is)

[gloomy fable]

No matter what I do unreal seems to count the armature itself as the rootbone

[ashen junco]

Change the armature name in Blender as "Armature"

[gloomy fable]

You are a lifesaver! Thank you so much!

[vestal summit]

Is there anyone here that is using the VRExpansion Plugin? I need to know how to force the hand into a pose. Take away the finger movement of the player when their hand enters a collision volume, then gives them back control over the fingers, when their hand exits the volume.
I can create the pose, and the AnimBP for the hand. I can't figure out where to insert it, and what to turn off, in the hand/pawn actors.

[ashen junco]

Is the plugin has dedicated support channels?

Also, I assume it's for VR, so go to #vr-ar

[vestal summit]

Yeah. It's VR, but I figured it was an animation issue, since, anything to do with movement in the body mesh, would fall under animation, correct? Even if it's VR?

[stable night]

can you achieve good, natural looking character movement without using motion capture?

[obtuse copper]

Hi, have an issue with blender i dosent found the solutions if someone can help me, i will be very thankful.
The problem: I initially started to parent specific bones in pose mode with specific models. So, the first part (left arms) work perfectly about parenting the bones and the objects. But When i went to the right arm with the same process of parenting bones. I had this Result:
https://streamable.com/1ucw21
The first bone in the video it's what i look for to the other bone in the end to do !
Somebody help me please. 😦

[spare otter]

Does anybody know how to use Bicubic Interploation in UE4? Or the option to create a Bicubic Curve?

[next python]

you can do either

[ashen junco]

You can. Rotoscoping from reference videos.

Record yourself doing the motion and match them in key poses.

If you want to animate in-engine, you can also use Unreal's Control Rig and take advantage of media textures.

[ashen junco]

Unreal Engine key interp and state machine transition is cubic interpolation by default.

I assume you're coming from David Rosen's GDC talk on key pose animations, since he mistakenly called it bicubic interp in that talk.

[spare otter]

Thats exatly where I came from 😁
Oh was it? So when he said Bicubic interp he actually meant cubic interp. hmm okayt i guess I need to play around with the curves used to interp my anims because they seem nowhere near as smooth and realistic looking as David Rosen's

[left edge]

Hi there ~ for a robot character with huge amount of rigid parts, should I still skin them to corresponding joints, or just parenting would work in UE ? Also even skinning to meshes to single joint could slow down my 3ds max scene a lot

[wide hearth]

i think for unreal it's the same. there is also an option "import meshes in bone heierarchy" in the importer. you should make a little test to see if it work for you

[misty dagger]

hi guys i exported a video from ue as exr pictures per frames how do i combine them and make them a video?

[obtuse quiver]

You could export from UE directly as .avi, or use another software (like Adobe After Effects, Cinema Pro, or maybe Blender?) to combine them to a video.

[bronze osprey]

or you open the exr image sequence in unreal and render em out as avi 😛

but that just seems like an extra step

[obtuse quiver]

Hi! I have a newbie question regarding animating a Metahuman, keyframing in sequencer: Whenever I traslate and rotate some parts of the body and generate a new key, it actually override the previous keyframe :/ Am I missing something? Did it happen to anyone else?

[molten heron]

Update, I've created an anim state and made its length same with the animation. On anim state tick function, I've calculated current frame number manually by tick delta. Worked perfectly.

[placid ermine]

Hi everybody ... i am having some issue due to anim montages. I am kind a noob in this field, but in my character blueprint i added an input event and connected with the montage play node... in the game-play it plays almost any anim montage except the one i need for my project and i cant think of any reason why it isn't playing it... i wonder if anybody has any suggestion or maybe solution for my issue .. its driving me mad tbh.. i also made a video about the issue

https://youtu.be/mmGuii1Cbms

[south nacelle]

Can anyone help me with animation hiccup? When I push the button I want to my character to strafe in the direction he’s facing but he currently faces the control rotation. Anyone?

[tawny mountain]

Could anyone provide me with a video that explains how/why Inverse Kinematics works? I can follow and have found many tutorials on how to implement it, but I'd like to know how it works on a theoretical/mathematical basis.

[left edge]

The meshes will be imported as bones in UE no matter the “import meshes in bone hierarchy” is on or off. Though it is super light animating in max using parenting

[solemn kestrel]

Hey can someone please help me with something??

I have made a very basic bone armature in blender but when i load it into unreal it doesn't seem to work properly resulting in my character holding onto the sword blade instead of the handle.

Pictures below

[eager rapids]

ayo i need help
does anyone know how i can animate the players camera without any skeletal mesh OR timelines?
kinda like the sequencer cine camera but it plays the animation where the player is instead of in a fixed spot

[tight hinge]

Hey guys, what's a typical hourly rate for a great animator where you're from? Curious of what to expect as we will be hiring a contract animator very soon.

[covert jay]

Wouldn't it be easier to just set the origin point to the handle and import it as a static mesh?

If you still can't get it to align you can always use sockets.

[ashen junco]

#career-chat #industry-chat

[solemn kestrel]

@covert jay I will try and set it to the origin point, and import as a static mesh. I did import as an FBX, i didn't thinkt there would be a difference

Import to blender

[warm pilot]

guys I have a question about rigs.
In valorant you have so many characters and like 17 guns, did they really make a rig for every gun adn every character?

[karmic rapids]

No. Characters are commonly skeletal meshes. Guns are commonly static meshes. You can attach a static mesh to a skeletal mesh by either creating a static mesh component in the character blueprint and then setting the mesh of the component to be the Gun static mesh, or by spawning a new actor of data type BP_YourGun and then attach that actor to a specific socket of the skeletal mesh. First create the socket on a bone. e.g. hand_r bone.

[bronze osprey]

guns are often also skel meshes

depending on stuff i think they often have their own rig

[karmic rapids]

Yeah I suppose the ammo reload can be an animation which can be done either with a skeletal mesh or multiple static meshes for each part of the gun and a bit of blueprint code to do the moving about of the parts, e.g. main gun part, magazine part, loading chamber part

I bet the Fallout 4 guns are static meshes since they're modular

And therefore interchangable

A skeletal mesh consisting of main gun part, magazine and loading chamber is not modular or interchangeable and you can't separate the parts at runtime without some C++ wizardry.

Or can you?

[storm turtle]

hello everyone. i just about 2 hours trying to do something i probably dont understand. i downloaded different skeletal meshes of characters (from cgtrade & mixamo). i can import them correctly, but when i try to convert those meshes to the manequin skeleton, it fails. it went into the original skeleton and made a mapping to the correct bones, but after that, i am stuck. managed to do one, but clicking assign skeleton and chose the manequin skeleton, but all the others fail. please help or please point me in the right direction?

[bronze osprey]

@karmic rapids could use a master pose, a modular skel mesh

[karmic rapids]

Each skeletal mesh would not bend though. So why should it be a skeletal mesh instead of a static mesh?

[jolly swift]

The blender addon (Blender to unreal pipeline) won't export animations to unreal, but exports meshes just fine.. does anyone know why? I checked all the preferences and in videos online it works, but trying the same thing doesn't actually work

[karmic rapids]

I've not heard of anyone retargeting Mixamo animations to the UE4 mannequin skeleton successfully. Why do you want to do that when you can use the Mixamo animations of which there are plenty?

[storm turtle]

because im doing a western game, rifles are held differently, so are pistols

nothing interest me on mixamo 😦

[karmic rapids]

Are there some anims on the UE marketplace you want to use?

[storm turtle]

no, there is no real reason why use manequin over mixamo. but still, i have an issue if i cant download a character from somewhere, which has a skeleton*, but cant be used (mapped to mixamo or unreal)

except of course if i dont map it, i upload it to mixamo and do the rigging there? hmpf

[karmic rapids]

You can use the Mixamo characters and all Mixamo animations in UE4 no problem. Simply do not select a skeleton when you import the Mixamo character. It will then generate a skeleton. Then you import the Mixamo animations and that is when you choose that newly generated skeleton. The anims should then work.

Then you can adjust Mixamo animations within UE4 by moving limbs and clicking Add Key then Save button.

And yes you can upload any char from anywhere to Mixamo and download a Mixamo-rigged version of the char. Then import that into UE4. Select the same skeleton you generated by importing some other Mixamo character, if any, and it should work with the same anims.

If you cant get the animations to look correct then its time to learn animation using Maya or Blender etc

Or pay someone to do it for you.

[storm turtle]

the issue is, i am migrating assets, from synty assets (weird 2 finger meshes) to normal asets, and, yeah, for a noob like me, it might have been easier to restart 😄

[karmic rapids]

Good luck and have fun!

[karmic rapids]

Screenshots of your process might help

[jolly swift]

Not much to screenshot. Made a simple 3-step keyframe (on the floor, in the air, again on the floor), no animation exported, tried to name it in the Action editor, still no animation exported, pushed it down to the NLA, still no animation exported

[karmic rapids]

I see in your Action Editor there is a button called New. Click the little button to the left of that and select your Jump_action action. Then send it to unreal.

[jolly swift]

Still nothing

[karmic rapids]

Show us your key frames

[karmic rapids]

Does it even have an armature parent?

[jolly swift]

Was messing around with armatures, seem to have deleted it since it wasn't working, though this wasn't today
I'll try readding it and trying things again

the keyframes, if they help

[karmic rapids]

I'm not certain but I bet it needs that armature.

Please let us know how it goes.

[jolly swift]

Still nothing.

If anyone has Blender (With the addon) and Unreal , testing this shouldn't take more than 1 minute
Feels like there's a very rudimentary step I'm missing

[karmic rapids]

@jolly swift did you create a new animation with the armature? Did you parent it properly with automatic weights?

[jolly swift]

Alright that seems to be a step in the right direction but UE now throws an error "Import Failed"
Not very descriptive

[karmic rapids]

@jolly swift have you ever imported a skeletal mesh and animation successfully from Blender?

How much experience do you have with Blender?

You possibly didn't select the mesh and the armature before you exported it

I can recommend some Blender courses if you like

You seem to be just starting out with Blender

[jolly swift]

I actually managed to get it working once, but then took a break since it was being wonky
I have some experience, nothing huge
Any recommendations are welcome 🙂 tho chances are I've seen them if they are on YT

[whole coyote]

You can look up how Epics did it in MetaHumans

[raw spire]

There is Control Rig in MetaHumans? I haven't play around with it

i have been looking the twitch webinar

but, sure, will look it up, thanks for info

[whole coyote]

Well I mean MetaHumans sample project, not the Creator
https://www.unrealengine.com/marketplace/en-US/product/metahumans-external-link

[raw spire]

I see... yeah, I understood what you mean

[karmic rapids]

https://cloud.blender.org/training/blender-2-8-fundamentals/

[tawny coral]

Hey I'm new to animation

Any idea where to start or a pathway for learning game animation?

[karmic rapids]

You seen this? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SbC9rIRgu-A

[misty dagger]

Hey, I'm just getting into animating my characters and their clothes, does anyone know any good videos or documentation on how to animate clothing? Any pointers would be appreciated :)<3

[karmic rapids]

https://cloud.blender.org/training/blender-2-8-fundamentals/

[karmic rapids]

Followed by other training here https://cloud.blender.org/training/

[misty dagger]

ooooh wow, thanks a bunch @karmic rapids

[karmic rapids]

@misty dagger that was meant for @tawny coral actually sorry

[misty dagger]

haha oke

[karmic rapids]

If you wanna do clothing simulation then there are some youtube videos

[misty dagger]

Well I'll be looking through anyways

yeah but I hear you can do that in unreal now so I don't know if I should just rig it in blender and do the animating in ue or :S

[karmic rapids]

Doing animation in UE4 is not possible yet. The Control Rig will allow that one day but its not there yet.

I mean animation sequences from scratch

unless its simple stuff like nodding or raising an arm

[delicate junco]

It depends on what kind of cloth we're talking about and the accuracy you want imo

[misty dagger]

Just want to get a basic cloth or a kilt

[delicate junco]

Cause depending on the cloth we're talking about simple solvers with bone chains may do the trick

[misty dagger]

to get a feel for it

But the simulation is done in unreal or?

[karmic rapids]

if you search YT for "ue4 cloth physics character" you will find some tuts

[misty dagger]

ah I'll check em out, thanks Jim

[delicate junco]

You can make physics bones/bone chains and bake the sim to them in Blender or do the sim at runtime

[misty dagger]

aah so I could just make extra bones for them

and parent to the skeleton?

[delicate junco]

Yeah exactly

[misty dagger]

gotcha thanks ❤️

[delicate junco]

Then in the animation Blueprint you'll use these to drive the simulation

Using "anim dynamics" or this plugin, which is very useful imo https://github.com/pafuhana1213/KawaiiPhysics/blob/master/README_en.md

Don't be mislead by the name, it can be used for other stuff than anime

[misty dagger]

😄

[karmic rapids]

@delicate junco are there any YT tuts on that?

On "You can make physics bones/bone chains and bake the sim to them in Blender or do the sim at runtime"

[misty dagger]

aaah that's exactly what I was looking for, hair was my next step

[karmic rapids]

Thats complicated, for advanced UE4 users

[delicate junco]

Just a sec

[karmic rapids]

I would try that stuff if my character creation skills are A grade. At the moment they're D 🙂

[misty dagger]

why not learn both at the same time 😄

[karmic rapids]

Here is my level of ability so far https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nfC_CGHG8vI

There is a cloak in there with cloth simulation on it

It is a thick cloak too. Not the thin stuff you see on other YT videos

[misty dagger]

very nice 🙂

[karmic rapids]

Getting cloth sim right is a case of experimenting a lot with the right bone weights in Blender and cloth painting in UE4.

[delicate junco]

So for "baking" physics in Blender I made some bone chains for the cloth and simulated these using this addon https://blenderartists.org/t/wiggle-bones-a-jiggle-bone-implementation-for-2-8/1154726

[karmic rapids]

You just need bone weights in the areas that dont move during cloth sim. e.g. with a cloak its near the shoulder area.

[delicate junco]

Here's an example on my prototype character

[misty dagger]

nice @delicate junco, @karmic rapids I didn't know that. Thanks for the help guys ❤️

[delicate junco]

I use a mix of this and runtime simulation depending on the animation

[karmic rapids]

Ah so you're simulating in Blender and then baking it into an animation then exporting that to UE4 as an FBX animation sequence?

[delicate junco]

Exactly, for some animations at least

[misty dagger]

That raises another question, does simulation cost more?

[delicate junco]

For some others I just use Kawaii Physics, which drives the simulation at runtime using the same bone chains

[misty dagger]

Probably does right?

[ashen junco]

Kawaii Physics' overhead is fairly minimal.

And it's easier to setup too.

[delicate junco]

Probably does but so far the cost has been non existent as long as you don't have some crazy amount of bones and collision setup

[misty dagger]

ah k gotcha

[karmic rapids]

Nice

I may use that

thx

[delicate junco]

And yeah Kawaii Physics is literally just placing a few collision volumes, defining your physics bones and a few simulation parameters and you're good to go.

[misty dagger]

Hello dear gentlemen, would this be a good place to ask about importing models into the Unreal Editor and pivoting?

[delicate junco]

Np, hope that helps. A lot of japanese games use similar solvers like these

[delicate junco]

#graphics or #ue4-general should work

[misty dagger]

Thank you!

[tawny coral]

This is a paid service T_T

[karmic rapids]

Pay now , earn many times over back later.

Invest in yourself 🙂

[tawny coral]

XD T_T

I've heard that so many times

But I'm a college student 💀

[karmic rapids]

I've been there. It can be tough. Maybe you can cut down on the other luxuries, if not then there are plenty of free tutorials on youtube which is enough. Try the YT channels, CG Geek, CG Cookie, Grant Abbitt, Imphenzia, Steven Scott, Blender Daily, Pixxo 3D, Royal Skies LLC

Darrin Lile

Darrin Lile, CG Cookie and Grant Abbitt are the best probably.

[tawny coral]

What abt maya

[karmic rapids]

Darrin Lile sounds like someone from Skyrim

[tawny coral]

Idk but people use it a lot

[karmic rapids]

I dont use Maya but there are plenty for Maya too. Just put in some keywords into the YT search box when you need to get help. e.g. maya animation tutorial

Make a cup of tea and sit back for hours and absorb. Then try do it yourself.

Or orange squash in your case.

If you want a career in 3d graphics then Maya or 3dsmax is still industry standard

and reocmmended

Darrin Lile sounds like that shopkeeper who had his claw stolen

in Skyrim

[jolly osprey]

how can I view the animation keys that got imported into UE4? looking for something similar to Maya's graph editor view

I can view custom curves in ue 4.25 but haven't found loc rot scale so far

[toxic anvil]

https://m.facebook.com/story.php?story_fbid=4029147337152663&id=100001723108980&sfnsn=mo

Did this with my friend :D unreal engine animation and light and render

[vernal haven]

Hello, I've been attempting to make first-person arms using the Synty Studious Western pack.
I imported the mesh into Maya and deleted the sections of the mesh that I didn't need to make the arms.
I didn't touch the skeleton or skin weights.
After re-targeting the animations, the third person mesh and lower torso mesh are animating properly.
The arms mesh animates as well however, one triangle in the character thumb is misplaced, as seen in the image below.
The skeleton and physics assets are shared by the three meshes.
When the arms mesh is animated, two of the thumb vertices seem to be stuck in the original T pose position.
Do you have any suggestions on how I can remedy this?
What is the best approach to trim a mesh in Maya without affecting the skin weights or skeleton?
(I used the uv shell tool to delete the parts of mesh that i didn't need for the arms)

[fickle yarrow]

If a vertex isn't moving then it probably just needs to be weighted to the joint. You could try copy and pasting the weights from the original mesh to the altered one. I've used that technique in the past for other issues with success.

[coarse willow]

Are there any good papers or lectures on getting dresses properly rigged/simulated? I am thinking that I need part of the mesh being skin weighted to the character rig, and part of it having some of the mesh acting as collisions and apply physics simulation to it, but I am not sure how I would properly solve this.

[vernal haven]

The skin weights were messed up after erasing the non-deformer history;
Solved the problem by performing the same action on blender with no difficulties.

[delicate junco]

It's going to really depend on the degree of accuracy you want. For example in Lightning Returns all her outfits are simulated at runtime using 3 bone chains per half cloth part https://youtu.be/dTF9Len_afs?list=PLJKEKeMcejOxSCoglDo3Vq5QhH0EsjtTA&t=99

The Crimson Bloom outfit looks kind of the same as yours so it may be a possible approach

[coarse willow]

@delicate juncoThanks for the link and input. I am aiming to test all possible options before starting to optimize for our project. So I want to understand it all, then scale back and problem solve from there on.

Do you have anything more on the setup they used, @delicate junco ? I like what I see and I think that would work, but Im not fully sure how I would approach it.

[delicate junco]

Yup, I'll DM you some info when back home 👍

[coarse willow]

Much appreciated:)

[storm turtle]

im using the spider from the infinityblade assets, and the attack has it move forward. so i set the anim to root motion and lock root motion, but in the anim montage, it stills moves forward altough it is locked? is that a bug?

[distant moon]

Does anyone know how to use a LinkedAnimLayer node multiple times in an animation graph? It throws an error whenever I do it.
EDIT: Nevermind, I'll just code a custom animation node instead.

[tawny coral]

Hey!

Does anyone know how to integrate houdini fx into UE4?

[left edge]

Have you selected “root motion from everything” under “edit default” in your animation blueprint?

[vague token]

how do i fix object can fall?

[serene crow]

I have a mostly fundamental issue with playing an animation with my character. I can drag my character into the world just fine, and the animation actually plays but the mesh just kind of disappears.

[exotic cipher]

How to calculate pitch aim offset for topdown character?

[buoyant geyser]

this is dumb lol i know im doing this wrong

but i dont rember why

or how

i just want upper half of a rifle animation with my locomotion in the legs

[dusk hatch]

Just trying to make sure i'm not being a complete muppet.

But why can't i call an event in my player blueprint, from an animation blueprint? I could pull from any of these "as KaosPlayerCharacter pins and don't have access to any of the events i've defined in that BP.

[unreal basalt]

hi everyone, just having a issue with the ue4 sequencer, the animations aren't playing in the editor but play when the game is running, any ideas on how to fix this, its slowed me down alot having to test timing by playing the game over and over

[noble dagger]

Question regarding adjusting animations after retargeting:

If I have a humanoid character that has slightly shorter arms than the default mannequin, is there a cleaner way to adjust where the ik_hand bones are for animations than just to use keyframes for the animation and adjusting it there?

(would a virtual bone potentially help?)

[misty dagger]

i put a new custom anim in and now my mesh does this, help?

and it seems to work just the placement of the arms are off

[spice galleon]

is Anim Modifier is editor only or it is runtime?

[wide hearth]

editor only i think

[wide hearth]

you can just put a copy bone node in front of your anim graph

[spice galleon]

i had some ideas of using AnimModifier for distance matching.

now its only editor only, i should think something else.

any hope had epic will ship DistanceMatching plugin in 4.27?

[wide hearth]

i think they said something about ue5, which should be pretty soon now

[spice galleon]

actually 4.27 is UE5

[wide hearth]

really? proof?

[spice galleon]

@wide hearth
https://portal.productboard.com/epicgames/1-unreal-engine-public-roadmap/tabs/24-unreal-engine-4-27-summer-2021

they mentioned 4.27 not UE5

[wide hearth]

i don't really understand, but I think ue5 was said to be released early 2021, so maybe it's 4.27 or maybe we'll have 2 versions in parallel.

because i would prefer they keep some kind of ue4 LTS version

[spice galleon]

no there is no parallel version

[wide hearth]

not yet

i mean there is no ue5 branch on github right now, but that dosn't mean they don't have it in private

because you can see references to ue5-main in github commits

[next python]

master is on 4.28 man

[spice galleon]

can you share those commits?

[spice galleon]

i would not assume that, because all the commits of master is also pushed in 4.27 parallely.

[next python]

https://github.com/EpicGames/UnrealEngine/commit/7c7074ab6294bbbd91cb627dc4273ccec5e14073

A lot of the heavily experimental plugins are slated for 5.0 release if that helps?

[spice galleon]

does those plugins contains DistanceMatching?

so this year no UE5 then?

[next python]

https://github.com/EpicGames/UnrealEngine/tree/master/Engine/Plugins/Runtime/AnimDistanceMatching

Woof, no updates for a while

[spice galleon]

this is empty.

[next python]

There is a rumour that UE5 is happening mid June but don't hold your breath

[spice galleon]

i will put faith in your rumours

[next python]

It's certainly frustrating not knowing what the future workflows will look like

[steel tree]

I believe preview for ue5 is most likely Q3-Q4

And full release in 2022

Because 4.27 is most likely in June or july

[spice galleon]

after 4.27

[steel tree]

Yep

If 4.28 is a version before ue5 or ue5 is 4.28 then most likely 2022

[ashen junco]

We still going to have 4.28, but it's not closing possibility that Epic worked in both UE4 and UE5 in tandem.

After all, UE4 was worked on in tandem with UE3.

[next python]

Yeah, no reason they can't happen at the same time

[steel tree]

Yeah

[ashen junco]

And it would be a pipe dream come true if we can backport some UE5 plugins to UE4 😈

[spice galleon]

so which will be superior 4.28 or UE5?

[steel tree]

Maybe 4.28 because it's more polished

[ashen junco]

I'm going to stick with UE4 until my game is fully completed, which is about 2 to 3 years later.

[steel tree]

Ue5 with the new stuff must have some bug fixes

[spice galleon]

i heard ue5 will have new scripting to replace bp.

[steel tree]

Will upgrade my engine when is 5.1.3 is out

[ashen junco]

I'm sure by that time UE5 is matured enough to be fully production ready.
The first UE4 game ever was so rough on the edges.

[next python]

I doubt things will be that rough this time around

UE4 was much more of a departure from 3

[steel tree]

Hopefully

[spice galleon]

this time epic promised fortnite team will ship their to UE5 ASAP, so no need to fear.

[steel tree]

oWO

[spice galleon]

i hope in UE5 epic ships the legacy tools used in Paragon along with fortnite exclusive tools.

[steel tree]

Yep

I would like to see more of the tools they use for fort and paragon in engine

[ashen junco]

Speaking of which, I bet UE5 will be released once Fortnite Chapter 3 came out.

[spice galleon]

ohh, as per epic's commitment, they had plans to release UE5 preview and by the preview period fortnite team will ship their to UE5

[steel tree]

I haven't played fortnite since 2019 idk what chapter 3 is

😅

[ashen junco]

That one black hole stream is basically transition to chapter 2.

BTW we should move to #ue4-general as not to clutter this channel with non animation stuff

[steel tree]

Yeah

[errant ermine]

Hello! Is there a way to constrain the movement in Control Rig? For example If I don't want specific bone to rotate along the X and Z Axis

*Movement or rotation

[ashen junco]

There is an option to limit rotation in the details panel.

[dire pollen]

4.27 is UE4 with bug fixes and some new features (some of these changes or even most of them are backported pieces from UE5), 4.28 is likely just some 3rd party SDK updates and future bugfixes build of UE4. Things scheduled for 4.28 are probably things which are not meeting 4.27 deadline but they still want to have them in UE4. UE5 is something completely different. It’s 5.0

They mentioned before that UE4 will be receiving critical fixes and sdk updates. So there may even be 4.29

[spice galleon]

i hope your words are from epic staff.

[misty dagger]

I downloaded one of the Paragon characters from the marketplace, but I'm a tad confused about the animations as I've never touched on this subject before. When I walk, shouldn't its animation for walking/sprinting already be setup so when I call MoveTo in my BehaviorTree it plays the animations? Only the idle animation is playing right now.

[noble dagger]

I'm not exactly following: Are you saying to add a bone or socket, then in the animgraph, copy the ik bone using the copy body in the anim graph, but modify it will an additional translation (That puts it in the right spot)

[wide hearth]

sorry, i assumed you want ik bones (like ik_foot_l and ik_foot_r) to follow the feet exactly, and they are not correctly after retargeting, right?

[noble dagger]

this is for hands

let me show you

[wide hearth]

ok hands is the same, you want the ik_hand_l follow the hand_l for example, right?

[noble dagger]

I want ik_hand to follow the animation, but adjust a little bit because the skeleton's arms are shorter

[wide hearth]

that's what i was talking about

[noble dagger]

the problem is, the bones aren't ALWAYS attached to the hands

[wide hearth]

the workaround is in your animbp use copy bone

copy the transform from hand_l to ik_hand_l

usually you will first play some anims, put the hands in the right pose, then copy that pose to the ik bone, then use ik bone in your ik stuff

[noble dagger]

goootcha

that makes sense, thanks!

[storm turtle]

i hope you guys can help, im almost crying... i exported/imported a shitload of mixamo anims in my project, using the revenant mesh i uploaded into mixamo. now when i take another mesh, i realise the original skeleton for revenant has a really long neck, so all my new meshes get deformed by his skeleton....
is there any way to either modify his skeleton to shorten his neck (even if it bugs his mesh because of the shortned neck) or change all the anims to a normal skeleton? without loosing all my work, again ? 😦

[wide hearth]

did you setup "retargetting options" in your skeleton?

https://docs.unrealengine.com/en-US/AnimatingObjects/SkeletalMeshAnimation/AnimationRetargeting/index.html

[hollow venture]

i added custom animations and now default ones are broken. How to fix this?

[wide hearth]

check the link above

[raw spire]

Does the order of Bones to Controllers in Backwards Solve in Control Rig important?

e.g. doing the fingers before transferring the Shoulder?

[storm turtle]

HOLY MOLLY

so reading the documentation DOES Help sometimes?! my problem is fixed, thanks to you @wide hearth and the documentation, that i could understand!

[raw spire]

I assume is because of the pose, probably your character is in A pose while the other character is in T pose

make sure their pose match

[wide hearth]

it's the retargeting config, 3rd person template anims are broken, if you don't put "skeleton" they look like so. it was like that since always. @raw spire @hollow venture

[sinful birch]

I'm using Mixamo for the first time in awhile, and all of my animations are importing rotated by 90 degrees. Is there a setting I'm missing somewhere, or is there an easy in-engine fix?

[wide hearth]

in the import dialog there is a rotation setting

[regal orchid]

What is the best way to animate a first person camera?(or even a third person one) I've used a bone before and that worked to a certain extent but has a lot of drawbacks and the only way to do it in engine is using some obsolete camera anim system that will be replaced soon apparently. (Uses the old matinee interface and all) So I'm not sure how to do it. Say I want the camera to move up a little when you equip a gun, or tilt when the player crouches etc.
I don't see any way to easily animate cameras precisely without using bones and animating the camera in Maya or similar.

[karmic rapids]

@storm turtle I was watching this and thought of you 🙂 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Io76DagpS-8

[storm turtle]

yeah saw that one yesterday 😄

[karmic rapids]

FInterpTo node perhaps. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DsgnAtvzZHg

[tender flicker]

I'm using a weapon attachment bone that is attached to the hand_r/l of the character to attach my gun, but someone suggested that you can also use a bone that is attached to the root bone of the character so that it's independent from the hands

what do you guys use? is there any pros/cons for using one over the other?

I basically want to make some animations that are similar to this

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

[ashen junco]

The bone should be attached to the root bone - that way you won't have hard times getting disoriented everytime the hand moves. Attempting to cancel out the hand movement may cause janky interps too.

[tender flicker]

what do you mean by "getting disoriented everytime the hand moves"?

[ashen junco]

Let's say your character taunts by throwing the gun up. If the bone attached to the hand bone, it'll follow the hand no matter what, even if the gun isn't being "physically" touched by the hand.

Even simpler - you want to have left handed mode without flipping the character along with it? "hardcoding" the attachment to the right hand would require you to flip the mesh, and to some people, it looks jarring. It doesn't matter if it's first person or third person view.

[tender flicker]

ok thanks

[regal orchid]

Thanks I'll check it out. But I don't think it will allow me to animate precisely, at least not based off of my previous use of that node.

[tender flicker]

hey, if you stop a montage, does Anim Notify States call EndState?

[stoic cypress]

Anyone have a decent tutorial on montages?

Preferably for 4.25.3 so a noob like me can follow easily

[stoic cypress]

My montage won't play

I can force the animation but I don't understand what I am doing wrong for the montage...

Tried setting it up in the state machine too but I couldn't see a way to trigger it from another function

[tender flicker]

https://docs.unrealengine.com/en-US/AnimatingObjects/SkeletalMeshAnimation/AnimMontage/UserGuide/index.html

@stoic cypress do you have something like the last screenshot setup?

you need to setup the slot node in blueprint

[stoic cypress]

Oh! Okay I think I get it now... So is it like a normal animation, but the slot is basically allowing you to call it at any time?

I ended up just making a bool in my pawn bp, and 1 in the animation bp, then setting bool 1 when the player fires to true, and when they release the key it's set to false. Then I done a cast to player to grab bool 1 and set the bool in my animation bp to control the rules. But this way is much better, more optimised for one.

[stoic cypress]

I'm sorry for this... But where am I going wrong?

I think the problem is that I don't quite understand how to actually make a montage

I'm just clicking "make montage" and saving it...

[tender flicker]

did you change the slot of the montage it self?

you need to make it use the DefaultSlot since that's what you have the Slot node set to

https://docs.unrealengine.com/en-US/AnimatingObjects/SkeletalMeshAnimation/AnimMontage/Editor/index.html

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fkbftFEEmx8

the videos are a bit old but you should still be able to follow it

[stoic cypress]

I did indeed, still no luck, I shall give the video a watch though thanks.

[misty dagger]

hey I want to play animation for my character on an event overlap

[sturdy agate]

Hi i have a question

I got an animation from mixamo but i forgot to tick the in place option for it and now the character is moving even more than I'd like

is there an option within unreal just to keep the animation in place? or do i have to just dl the animation again?

[ashen junco]

Enable "Extract Root Motion" in the details panel.

Be careful though, as Mixamo rig don't have a dedicated root bone, and uses the hip as the root bone, so your character's hip might stuck in place.

( fuckings goes to Adobe for removing the UE4 rig support back in 2017 )

[sturdy agate]

mmm if thats the case then its fine, I;ll just redownload it rather than cause any potential problems. I was just wondering if the engine had an easy solution within it that i missed

but thanks anyway

Okay how do I match the AI's Speed with the Animation speed like for moving?

[ashen junco]

Use Blend Spaces.

See the Third Person template for implementation example (you don't have to create new project to get it)

[ebon moth]

Hello!
Can someone answer me? for what purpose in skeleton i have IK bones? and do i need to use them for skin?

[wide hearth]

bones like "ik_foot_l"? you don't need to use them for the skin. they are used for calculating ik targets, but now with control rig you can make ik without them too

meta humans for example don't have ik bones anymore

[ebon moth]

thank you very much!

[devout dagger]

What could be the reason for a montage not play in the following setup - I have a state that connects to the Default slot (for montage anim to override entire body anim) and from there into the final pose. Inside the state there is layered blend per bone. On primary pose I have locomotion 1D blendspace, on the secondary I have same thing, but going into a slot (Torso) first and then into the secondary pose. The idea is that while AI is idling, it plays random idle montages on Default slot, which works fine. Then when locomotion kicks in, 1D blendspace plays. When speed changes (so it goes from walking to running), I also want to play montage on Torso slot (one time). That's where I have issues - Torso montage doesn't seem to play (it doesn't override the upper body).

What would be the reasons for montage not playing with that setup ?

(at work right now, so I can't post screenshots / video of my setup)

if it matters, layered blend per bone is happening on spine_1 and depth is set to 2

[karmic rapids]

Torso slot isnt placed after the Default slot in the AnimGraph maybe

[delicate junco]

montages are better for this imo, you could play with the blend in and out times to make it as smooth as possible

[karmic rapids]

Or the animation you want to play isnt assigned to the TorsoSlot

[devout dagger]

it definitely is, unless UE4 corrupted the data

[quasi remnant]

All my streamed levels disappear whenever I play a montage. The persistent one doesn't. whats up with this

[karmic rapids]

Or maybe you aint calling the Play Montage node or not properly

Use Print String everywhere

to debug

[karmic rapids]

RIght click sublevel and choose Change Streaming Method > Always Loaded

[quasi remnant]

I'm using a BP to load.

And is always loaded the same as not using level streaming?

[devout dagger]

I definitely do - when debugging I can see flow hitting Play Montage node and if I put Print String before it, it prints.. But nothing happens past montage node 😦

[karmic rapids]

Probably. Whats the point in streaming a couple of cubes?

[quasi remnant]

Its just a test map.

[karmic rapids]

Try to temporarily simplify your AnimGraph and isolate the Torso slot to see whether its working.

[karmic rapids]

Are you doing other stuff same time as playing that montage?

[quasi remnant]

wdym other stuff? There's a couple of line traces

[devout dagger]

is there any way to preview anim montages in animBP ? I can debug previewing animBP with almost anything, except having montages play on slots when needed, in preview.

[karmic rapids]

Do you unload the level at any point in your blueprint?

[quasi remnant]

Yes its a streaming volume. Load on begin overlap and unload on end.

[karmic rapids]

Perhaps there is something wrong about your trigger box then

[quasi remnant]

That could be the issue. Maybe playing the montage triggers the EndOverlap event. No idea how

[karmic rapids]

You can press pause then go to your animbp and click the >> up top and select your animbp instance and then you can press Play and see all the execution paths flowing like a river.

[devout dagger]

correct

but that doesn't help with not being able to play any montage on any slot I need

while in the preview mode

[quasi remnant]

Confirmed that onEndOverlap is triggering on montage play

[karmic rapids]

Good good

[karmic rapids]

The only way I can think of to test your montage is to simplify your animgraph to just a statemachine > TorsoSlot > OutputPose. Then wire up a Keypress Event to a PlayMontage node.

[quasi remnant]

Should I disable unloading while the montage plays then? Or a better solution

[karmic rapids]

Examine the trigger box for your sublevel. Is it big / tall / high enough?

[quasi remnant]

Yeah Ive done that

[karmic rapids]

Examine your blueprint that unloads it. How does it work?

Whats it doing?

[quasi remnant]

on Event End Overlap it checks if the actor is the player pawn and then unloads the stream level

[karmic rapids]

End Overlap of what?

[quasi remnant]

of the box coliision

[karmic rapids]

SCreenshot pls

[karmic rapids]

and a screenshot of the Viewport tab pls

[quasi remnant]

its just a box

[karmic rapids]

Now highlight the levelstreamer actor in your world so we can see the size of the box there.

Then post another screenshot of that

[karmic rapids]

wow thats big enough

I dont know why its happening then. I was expecting it to be too small

[kind turret]

hi all, can anyone point me to some nice tutorials on anim dynamics or trail controllers. I'm making a cape and while I got some decent results with the RigidBody node, i can't keep it from cutting through the character's body despite setting up physics assets ( which work correctly in the phat tool)

[wide hearth]

i've just seen one today, didn't watched it yet :https://vimeo.com/521291208
@kind turret

[delicate junco]

Wrong quote 😄

[delicate junco]

I personally use this free lightweight plugin for that kind of simulation https://github.com/pafuhana1213/KawaiiPhysics/blob/master/README_en.md
Basically you just set a few volumes for the bones to collide with and you're good to go

Example applied to hair/cloth https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ia2_5zvc-Ps

[wide hearth]

oh sorry.

ps. watched it's good

[delicate junco]

Lol no worries, just found it funny

Yeah thanks for sharing, anim dynamics and other dangling physics resources are too scarce unfortunately

Only official one talking a bit deeper about these is https://youtu.be/Oe7fYS9qxmk?t=760

[wide hearth]

oh tanks, this one has so much useful info, i even forget it talks about trails too

btw, the person who made the other tutorial he was working for epic too (he made ART tools) so it's also kinda official i think

[delicate junco]

Yeah just looked at his resume and definitely looks like he knows his job 😄

[kind turret]

wow. thanks for the info guys. will def watch the video and also check out the plugin too.
I've watched the epic gdc talk but its a bit dated and the node has a few different things i don't know what to do with. I do wish they shared some sample content.

[random bane]

Hey Guys, i wondered if anyone had a good tutorial on whats involved with creating interactive animations between a player / enemy AI, for example zombie biting the neck so latches onto the player. I cant seem to find anything useful from googling so far thanks in advance!

[real atlas]

I’ve done a similar thing I just set the actors location to wherever it needs to be when playing the animation

[delicate junco]

Not Unreal but it may give you a few ideas : https://youtu.be/LxWq65CZBU8?t=1045

Also this from capcom (turn on captions) https://youtu.be/x58JnJJSDYM?t=96 @random bane

[random bane]

Thanks Dimy

[real atlas]

ok then...

[wide hearth]

i'm watching this now, and there is a little bit of ue5 anim info here maybe https://youtu.be/ntvrjeW2Pek?list=PLZlv_N0_O1gaYa0lsBcVzkTbZPVXGNv_s&t=195

yeah not much :

[delicate junco]

Yeah just a little bit of info 😄

[wide hearth]

you can see curve names! lol

like slope_warping curve

also it's root motion

probably there will be not much new stuff in animation dept

[delicate junco]

Yeah lighting and geometry solutions seem to be the big deal for UE5's release

[cobalt dove]

Guys, does anyone know why "Look At" is ignored in anim BP when applied to bone with physics body and constraint? And how to fix/avoit it?

[misty dagger]

I ned some advice with animation in blender to Ue I know get refrences and crap I got that but I need some mroe advice for example last night someone told me use interpolation so I did and the outcome was not good because I didnt get it right how can I make my animations better for example

[forest aurora]

any users of "cascadeur" here? Just to know if there's a night view mode?

[wide hearth]

you mean dark mode?

actually dark theme: settings->app->theme

[buoyant geyser]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z1rmvlrlSBY

Im having an animation problem with my aiming

Im not sure how to have the aim be correct rotation with planetary world

here's the current roation method

[devout dagger]

bizarre issue I am having with montages 😦

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

it seems to work when triggered during walk/idle, but when blendspace in jog/run position - it doesn't work

any idea what's going on ?!

[thorny patio]

let's make it really simple, you make a anim blueprint that blends the running and pulling gun.

so it will be something like this.

(waiting for me, opening UE4 now)

[devout dagger]

https://docs.unrealengine.com/en-US/AnimatingObjects/SkeletalMeshAnimation/AnimHowTo/AdditiveAnimations/index.html

this is what I followed

and it doesn't work on AI

(when AI is moving )

[thorny patio]

doesn't matter, all AI do is setting flags to drive your animation BP

if AI didn't set correct flags nothing will change

if you can't drive the animation BP to do it from player controller or previews , your AI can't do it as well as it's logical bug