animation

[random sparrow]

@static falcon I use that node, often with an interface

[static falcon]

I tried to create a new animation blueprint to try some new options and all the references are now no good

[upbeat topaz]

How should i fix this warning

[noble dagger]

I feel like what I am trying to do is a probably a pretty common thing, and I am just asking about it the wrong way.

I am trying to take my character (rigged to humanoid, and modular) and a weapon (with a skeletal mesh with only 4 bones) and combine them using a Master Pose Component.

This is mainly so that I can use the RigidBody node in the AnimBP to drive the constraints that exist on the weapon.

If I go about this the much simpler way of just attaching the weapon to a socket, I lose all ability to affect the skeleton of that object.

I am happy to export to blender, make changes there, and reimport, but haven't got much traction on figuring out how to merge the two armatures and make the seperated mesh skinned to the combined skeleton.

Is there an easier way? could I use Virtual Bones to do this? Do both skeletons need virtual bones? or just one? If just one, should I add VBs to the characte mesh for the bone skeleton, or the bone heirarchy from the main skeleton to the sword one?

AHHH HELP! If there is any literature I should read or tutorials out there or even online courses to take for this sort of stuff

[random sparrow]

@upbeat topaz are they the "Leaf Bones" which blender adds when exporting the fbx unless you uncheck?

[upbeat topaz]

Should i uncheck the leaf bone in blender

[random sparrow]

yeah, I've no idea what they're for or why it's on by default but defo turn it off!

[upbeat topaz]

Thanks for the help Gabe

[random sparrow]

I'm getting crashes importing FBX into UE, animations are pretty dense, lots of bones, I'm experiemnting with Custom Sample Rate as per a video I found. does anyone know how the Custom Sample Rate affects the anim? Should higher values be faster? or slower?!

[static falcon]

You don't need to turn them off... Be aware of the difference between errors and warnings

Some warnings are just notifications more or less

[ashen junco]

Leaf bones will cause some troubles in UE, especially with IKs.

[woven peak]

By any chance, anyone know how to get the normalized time of an animation beeing played within a blend space of an AnimInstance (in C++)?

[ashen junco]

Probably not directly from the actor class, but you could pass through values from anim BP to the actor class.

(Also, if you're looking for absolutely no BP solutions, it would be impractical and hacky. Though I'm not surprised if #cpp folks found a way)

[real atlas]

Im having a problem with a Modify Bone thing that Im using for aiming, it rotates in the wrong direction, how do I fix that? https://gyazo.com/fc4d6c243f8d35754f99b91cfa1d91f0

I just need it forwards not tilting like that

[woven peak]

I want to be able to have proper rootmotion on Blend Space,

I'm trying to look at that video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YtWbl50Jwwc&ab_channel=CodeLikeMe
but i'm about to fall asleep listening to it

Best ASMR ever 😄

[real atlas]

oh did I interrupt

there are quicker videos on how to do this https://youtu.be/OSWX3vEgRcE

if you really want

[woven peak]

i want to be able to use root motion on that

[ashen junco]

lmao
CodeLikeMe is IMO bad at presenting the material in his videos.

[woven peak]

its a part 3 video, can't barely stay focus on the first 5min of the part 1

[real atlas]

wtf just part 1 is that long

when the video I linked covers it all

[woven peak]

I don't think the video you linked use root motion

Root motion isn't supported by blend space as far as I know

[real atlas]

oh, what is it youre doing different

[woven peak]

unlike a walk, this animation stops in the middle

So movement speed should also stop

[real atlas]

oooohh yeah I didnt think about that

[woven peak]

this is the extracted speed

in a normalized timing 😄

[real atlas]

some animations have the pause built into it so that the capsule keeps moving but the animation makes it look like the player stays in place

but thats not as good that way I guess

[woven peak]

we tried

but the blend over the IDLE don't work

[real atlas]

yeah I can see how it would have problems

ah yeah hed teleport

[woven peak]

and my animator cursed me to do it 😄

For a bad result at the end lol

Rootmotion is only supported with Montage

[real atlas]

does anyone know about this

it seems to rotate relative to the bones rotation but I need it forward in the way hes facing

Ive tried all the different options in the modify bone

this is it

[static falcon]

I'd be surprised... since you usually will set the effector relative to the bone before the end bone, and the end bone isn't weighted

but maybe just haven't seen it yet

[woven peak]

lol actually I was wrong, it's not 3 parts...but 6

about 3 hours of tutorial 😄

[real atlas]

oh shit

[woven peak]

probably to see that it's not what I'm even looking

[real atlas]

I hate watching long tutorials, even if I need to it just feels harder to follow

yeah that too, you dont know if its gonna work or not

[woven peak]

yeah and especially when sometimes, 3 lines of text can replace it

[real atlas]

yeah lmao

[woven peak]

so any idea how to get the timing of a blend space animation?

I found that in the Doc. https://docs.unrealengine.com/4.26/en-US/API/Runtime/AnimGraphRuntime/AnimNodes/FAnimNode_BlendSpaceEvaluator/

but it doesnt say much

and google don't know much about it 😄

[worn marlin]

Thanks good to know. I think I am a bit generous since my game is single player

[woven peak]

almost got it

but the thing behind, it's black magic

ok got it now 😄

blend space with root motion! 🤡

[drowsy bough]

is there a good mocap or animation library which is open source for unreal?

[woven peak]

mixamo

[drowsy bough]

nothing bigger?

mixamo is not bad but its very limited

[woven peak]

adobe owns it

don't think you'll get better than that especially open

[drowsy bough]

kk need to check it out

[woven peak]

indeed

[drowsy bough]

working on a simulation

[woven peak]

but you will need to do your own at a certain point

[drowsy bough]

no fps

ok i see

[woven peak]

can still contact them https://cyborn.be/

but that won't be cheap

have you worked with them?

hum, it's not custom

[drowsy bough]

what are you working on, fps?

there is a mocap library

its from some university

http://mocap.cs.cmu.edu/

but havent looked at it yet

[ionic canyon]

Anyone know how to fix invalid additive animation type?

[hard cedar]

can someone point me in the right direction for adding Rootmotion to an in place animation?

[ocean wharf]

Is it possible to pin constrain (skeletal mesh/physics object) to the vertex of a different static mesh?

[misty dagger]

hey guys i have a custom skeletal mesh but when i ragdoll it it just flops into a pile of mush

doesn't look solid

i assume i have to add some rigidity to it

[ashen junco]

You're looking for the constraints.

[misty dagger]

yeah i'll look into it

thanks

[tender isle]

hhhmmm, So I tried using physics animations but the mesh still goes through the walls and other actors.

[trim verge]

is there anyway to stop your character limbs going through its own body during animation

[lime dust]

So i created a Destructible Mesh and added it to my Actor, so that it could spawn with my platform, but the "Simulate Physics" check box is grayed out, my character passes through the mesh and never breaks it, how can i add it to an actor bp and make it break? any help would be awesome 🙂

[sour hazel]

can you suggest me any source for fps arms retargetting?

[static falcon]

@sour hazel I bet codelikeme has it

[sour hazel]

I couldn't find it...

[static falcon]

@sour hazel when you say retargeting do you mean transferring animations or getting the arms to point at a specific location?

[regal orchid]

Best way is to just adjust your animations so that they don't clip through. If they clip while aiming up/down etc for instance you would then modify your blend space animations to move the clipping body parts out of the way.

[regal orchid]

If your death animation has root motion then the capsule will move with the character as it dies. And if it hits a wall it will stop the mesh from clipping too much. Or you can manually move the mesh when you detect a wall so it doesn't clip.
Otherwise you can blend from your death animation into your ragdoll at a certain frame where it is still falling. Letting ragdoll take over after a while.

[trim verge]

I dont wana manually edit it bec i Dont know to edit animations and its a danceing animation so its difficult to edit anyway. Problem occurs after retargetting to another skeleton. I was thinking if there is a way to block it from going inside through collision or something

[regal orchid]

Not in any way that is feasible to do. You can edit animations inside the engine as well. Can easily add a few keys to move the arms out of the way during the parts where it intersects.

[trim verge]

Tried that , it messes other parts when i edit it

[regal orchid]

As long as you only modify it during parts where it intersects then I dont see how it could mess with other parts.

[steady hatch]

Quick question - Anyone know how I can bring up Anim Notifies in Blueprints with UE4 4.25?

[kindred swift]

only in animation blueprints, as far as i know

i was just about to ask a question about notifies as well coincidentally. I have a bunch of animations that have notifies set in the actual animation asset, but i'm playing those animations via montages, and they (the notifies) don't appear to be accessible in the anim BP. is that because the notifies have to be defined in the montage itself - ie, does it ignore all notifies in the actual animation assets when played through a montage?

or am i just doing something funky

not looking forward to adding notifies to all the montages if it's the first thing 😐

nevermind, i am dumb. i was trying to add a notify event in the state machine graph accidentally

[ocean wharf]

What is the difference between Skeletal Mesh and Skeletal Mesh Component?
I am trying to get the Skeletal Mesh Component in Animblueprint, but it isn't there? I can only get Skeletal Mesh.

So what would I need to do?
Add skeletal mesh to the actor, and then work on the blueprint inside that actor?

Lets say I want to blend some procedural animation with physics on the skeletal mesh. So i can add some random movement in blueprint, and then let physics take over.
Simple object, like 6 bones. Animation would include a simple bone rotation from time to time.

[sour hazel]

Yea ı mean using other arm animations on fps template. And i mean changing the default mesh

[steady hatch]

@kindred swift did you find the answer? 😮

All the information I found seems outdated xD

[kindred swift]

about your question on notifies? as far as i know you can only access anim notifies from the animimation blueprint

(if you mean my question, i didn't actually find the answer, but i was screwing something up on my end so i think they do, infact, fire anim notifies from the montage but i be 100% sure because i didnt really test it once i figured out where my main issue was)

[steady hatch]

@hazy magnet I think we're both looking for the same answer possibily? I'm following a outdated guide - But I cannot get the anim notify to appear in third person blueprints like this video 😮

[kindred swift]

(I think you pinged the wrong person) anim notifies are usually pretty straightforward - you set the notify on the animation itself or in the montage, and they will be accessible via the animation blueprint (as long as it's using the same skeleton as the animation)

You won't be able to access the notify events in the character BPs, only in the animation BP. So you have to call the character BP in whatever way makes sense (interfaces are my preferred way, but casting to your BP will work as well)

[steady hatch]

Oh my mistake - Thank you xD I'm pretty new to this part of UE4 lol

[stark grove]

Question: Any good Maya to Unreal Animation tutorials that you would recommend?

[robust locust]

The anim graph is complaining about things using blueprints making it slow , even though its just using variables declared in CPP

[robust locust]

It was a false positive , I copied all nodes to a new BP and it stopped complaining

[upbeat topaz]

(FAILED TO MERGE BONES:

This could happen if significant hierarchical changes have been made
e.g. inserting a bone between nodes.
Would you like to regenerate the Skeleton from this mesh?

WARNING: THIS MAY INVALIDATE OR REQUIRE RECOMPRESSION OF ANIMATION DATA. )

I am getting this warning wat shld i do can anyone help me

[misty dagger]

What are the benefits and draw backs to having an animation broken into pieces for example jump has start, airborne and, landing compared to just jump doing the entire process?

Please ping me if someone can tell mr in a sentence or tell me the term id need to search to figure this out myself when relative to unreal engine

[robust locust]

The airborne part may or may not run for the same duration depending on how high you jump or fall from

hence its a separate part so you can loop or run it for only as long as you need

[ashen junco]

Because it's much easier to implement - you don't have to have a set airborne duration, but your character have to actually jump/move upwards.

[merry wyvern]

https://twitter.com/YHWHGames/status/1424488419309281282

[kindred swift]

Can you post a video of it happening?

[rustic hearth]

can someone explain me how to fix the animation rotating around the pelvis?

I imported the animation from mixamo

[wheat hornet]

Hi everyone. So recently I have finished most coding on one of my solo projects and want to get some animations but the tutorials dont really make sense to me. Can anyone point to me a good tutorial or something to learn the basics of animation?

[misty dagger]

Ive just ordered some animations to be made on fiverr for somethinn im doing in Unreal - never ordered animations before and dont know what format I should request to receive them in, does anyone here know? - The maker has sent a draft to me in a Maya format...is fbx enough, or should I request something else?

[lusty ore]

Probably has to do with Enable Root Motion had that issue myself recently

tick the box on the left menu

[tender copper]

Hello unreal hivemind! i have a technical rigging challenge here. Im working on this characters who has these thick tubes. I want to simulate them, but i dont want them to collapse like they are now (cloth sim), but i also cant add any joints, since im using the unreal mannequin skeleton, and if i alter the hierarchy its not going to work with the animations i have in the engine.
https://gyazo.com/3481daead5ac1c57f307aa6561a29d0e

this is what the tubes are supposed to look like

[misty dagger]

@tender copper I believe ADDING joints is not a problem. You only have an issue if you remove the joints or change the names or parenting of the bones.

I have no idea why Epic champions their skeleton like it's the greek god of skeletons. If you aren't using marketplace items there isn't much reason to force yourself to use the mannequin skeleton. I just use whatever rigify gives me because it works and I don't have disparities between blender and unreal.

But either way, adding joints to the UE4 mannequin shouldn't break existing animations - those animations only manipulate the original bones.

[tender flicker]

hey, does anyone know a good movement/locomotion animation pack?
I need one without much head movement, I have a full body first person view and I need an animation pack where the head doesn't bounce up and down

[tender copper]

I tried that, and unfortunately it is a problem! The reason im using the mannequin skeleton is so that i can use marketplace animation data as a placeholder for showing our investors (we will hire an animator when we get funding). But i had a talk with our tech artist, and we agreed that a vertex shader is the best solution. Thanks lot for your time and help though!

[misty dagger]

Understood. What was the issue that you had? I'm fairly certain a lot of people have extended the mannequin skeleton before?

Check out the "Rules for Sharing Skeleton Assets" and "Additional Limbs"

https://docs.unrealengine.com/4.26/en-US/AnimatingObjects/SkeletalMeshAnimation/Skeleton/

Also just want to mention I love your creature model.

[tender copper]

When i imported it into unreal i got a popup that said that the skeleton had been altered and was no longer compatible with the animations

And thank you!

[regal orchid]

The maya format is ideal if you have maya yourself. Even if you don't, make sure to get the Maya files. Much easier for you to change the animations in the future if you do. FBX is fine for when you want to dump them into unreal but you can export those yourself from Maya. (but again, that assumes you have it)

[regal orchid]

Adding leaf joints (i.e. end of the chain) shouldn't be a problem at all. But if you add them in the middle of the hierarchy it can cause problems.

[regal orchid]

You can maybe try Anim Dynamics? (This needs additional bones though, but you should be able to add them without breaking your animations) https://docs.unrealengine.com/4.26/en-US/AnimatingObjects/SkeletalMeshAnimation/NodeReference/SkeletalControls/AnimDynamics/

[regal orchid]

Lastly, the epic skeleton is really weird to be honest. And I see so many games use it (along with some of Manny's animations) and I instantly recognize that weird hunched over stance. Not a good skeleton for proper humans in my opinion. The skeleton generated by MakeHuman is alright but has its flaws too, but still better than Manny's.

[woven peak]

Guys, Is Motion Warping available on UE4.27?

I know it's not in UE4.26

[misty dagger]

@regal orchid agree

[woven peak]

copy pasta from UE5 made it available 😄

lets see if it works ^^

Hum damn it... it doesnt

[tender copper]

thanks for the suggestion! I am working in maya 😄

[woven peak]

It uses the new element TObjectPtr from UE5... Don't know if I have the time to downgrade it :/

[tender copper]

i havent been able to add bones without breaking my rig even though ive tried multiple ways (constrains, parenting, loose bones etc.)

[tender copper]

completely agree with this, and the animations will be switched out. I do know how to rig, and i prefer making my own control rigs from the bottom up in maya, but this is a placeholder solution to get ready for an investor pitch fast

[regal orchid]

Ah, fair enough. But yeah you can try and add a chain of bones out from the torso and just make sure that the last joint in the chain remains static. (assuming you can do that, havent used anim dynamics a lot myself to be honest)

[tender copper]

ill try that! thanks!

[regal orchid]

Probably gonna be a pain in the ass to back-port stuff from ue5. There are motion warping plugins for ue4 but they are paid plugins. Either that or upgrade to ue5 I guess, but I personally think that is a bad idea at the moment since it is still very early.

[woven peak]

I already maintain both versions of my game between UE4 and Ue5, But right now I need to have my character going down a ladder :)

And motion matching seems to be the right move

[misty dagger]

Does anyone use UE4's socket feature? I avoided using it for the longest time and am trying to use it now but there doesn't seem to be a way to attach a static mesh to a skeletal mesh? AttachActorToComponent seems to freak out when I try to attach a static mesh to a skeletal mesh

[regal orchid]

motion matching or warping? Since they are very different.

[woven peak]

Sorry warping

[regal orchid]

Try actor to actor instead. I think that is what I use for my guns at least since they are self contained actors. Then you can specify which socket to snap to.

sec, gonna double check

[misty dagger]

@regal orchid Problem is this is for first person and I need to attach to the first person mesh which cannot be the character's mesh (because you cant parent the character's mesh to a camera) so I needed to use attachactortocomponent

[regal orchid]

Seems like I use attach to component myself too. So my gun is an actor and then I attach it to the mesh component of my player. But I don't use the socket system for that. I have a weapon bone in the skeleton. And well, seems like you are trying to attach a static component to a dynamic one.

So check that the actor you are trying to attach is not set to static. Since static actors are.. well. Static.

But I havent really had to mess with actors being static before. So not sure why that happens.

[misty dagger]

Well this is the player's mesh which is skeletal

And the 'weapon' is a static mesh

[regal orchid]

well static mesh is different from a static actor.

or well, should be

adding a static mesh shouldnt be a problem

set it to moveable if it is a raw static mesh component

that should fix it

[woven peak]

I basically need to have the character that finishes an animation on the ladder (to enter or exit a ladder). The demo they shown in UE5 seems to be what I need

[misty dagger]

Oh I see - the sword still thinks it cant move even with the player

[regal orchid]

Can't help you with that I'm afraid. But backporting will probably be a pain in the ass at least.

[regal orchid]

Yeah, exactly.

[woven peak]

I'm considering moving the main pipeline to ue5. But still questioning it

[regal orchid]

I would suggest sticking with one at least. Maintaining two versions of the project sounds like hell to be honest. If you go with ue5 just keep in mind that it is unfinished and all that, and it could bite you in the ass at some point.

[woven peak]

That's exactly why I still question it

Overall maintain both is to make sure we don't do stuffs that don't work under ue5

So far, absolutely no issue

[regal orchid]

Well, can you make do with what ue4 has until 5 is ready? And all ue4 projects from 4.26 (or .25 dont remember) are ue5 ready.

So no real reason to worry about compatibility when moving to ue5

[woven peak]

I'll try. I basically need to add some kind of a feature similar to it then

[misty dagger]

@regal orchid Works now, thanks. Still not sure what the advantage is over just creating a child component but whatever 🙂

[regal orchid]

Depends on what you are going for. If you know it never changes then you can just attach it like you did now. But if you always want a sword in hand, but the sword can change. It wouldn't be a bad idea to have it as a component and just swap out the mesh etc. Or separate actors like I do (since they have their own logic running) Endless ways of doing it.

[misty dagger]

Yea...unreal engine likes to offer a hundred different set ways to do something rather than a pure DIY or my-way-or-the-highway. Sometimes its frustrating, but so is Unity's DIY method sometimes.

[regal orchid]

Much like normal programming, it is very open ended.

[elfin bridge]

I am having the exact same issue, did you have any luck with this?

[regal orchid]

Looks like the root is the pelvis. I haven't used mixamo a lot but when I downloaded one of their characters it did not have a root point. So I added one myself.

[elfin bridge]

ok so I just need to add a root point and it should animate correctly?

[elfin bridge]

is the root something that needs to be animated manually or can I just add a root point

[regal orchid]

The root can be animated, often used for root motion. But the root is otherwise generally just a joint set at ground level, acting as the skeleton's point of origin.

that point between the feet is the root. When I downloaded the mesh it did not have a root and that is probably true for all mixamo chararacters. Usually only needed in games (to my knowledge) so that is probably why mixamo doesn't have them included and just uses the hips as the root.

you need to add the joint in a DCC (blender, maya etc) and make it the parent of the entire hierarchy and make sure that it is not weighted. So it doesn't pull any vertices with it.

Unless you want that for some reason.

[elfin bridge]

yea I tried getting this going in blender but I get all these extra random armatures in blender after exporting my character from unreal engine. Not sure if they're extra or just misplaced but the workflow is slow and hard to maneuver at this point.

[regal orchid]

I'm only familiar with Maya so I can't help you with blender issues. But maybe someone else can. But you should try and open the character as you downloaded it from mixamo, not the one imported into unreal. Just to be sure that unreal doesn't do anything weird.

Assuming that is a mixamo character.

[elfin bridge]

its from the unreal marketplace

[bronze osprey]

think those 2 big bones are IK bones

[elfin bridge]

so you think its importing correctly then?

[bronze osprey]

ye sorta

[regal orchid]

Ah, yeah then it is probably correct. The scale doesn't really matter.

could be IK joints like owninator said

[bronze osprey]

unreal to blender for skeletons is a bit funky

[elfin bridge]

okay, maybe I go unreal export the character to mixamo, import the character with the animations from mixamo to blender, add my root, then export to unreal engine with mixamo converter

[bronze osprey]

if the model doesnt have leaf bones its impossible to get a 100% correct rig from unreal i think

[regal orchid]

yeah blender is a bit peculiar so you're gonna have to look up how that works

[regal orchid]

the fewer steps touching the skeleton the better. Not more.

[bronze osprey]

FBX doesnt store bonetip locations

[elfin bridge]

ohhhhh, export as obj maybe then?

[regal orchid]

Obj does not support skeletons

[elfin bridge]

damn, running in circles here lol

[bronze osprey]

gltf is basically a copy of fbx

[regal orchid]

FBX is generally the way to go. The skeleton is most likely fine but like I said Im not familiar with blender.

There is gltf too, but never used that myself.

There are a lot of blender to ue4 tutorials out there so there has to be something to go on out there.

[bronze osprey]

hmm i never used mayA, i have no idea what a mannequin looks like when exported to maya as fbx

[regal orchid]

Lucky you. Maya is awful. 😛 But the mannequin works very well in Maya since Epic uses Maya internally too.

[elfin bridge]

right on, yea I've watched a ton of tutorials but the problem is no one takes characters form the marketplace and then animates them with mixamo so I'm having some trouble filling in the gaps

[regal orchid]

Ah, yeah that can be a bit of a challenge the first time around. But for starters you can just go unreal -> blender -> unreal and see if nothing breaks. That is step one I suppose.

See if the skeleton breaks

[elfin bridge]

most people just show you how to use mixamo characters in your game which I do not want. I'm doing social media videos and conceptual stories related to my next record so its important I'm not using something thats so stock... a little stock is fine tho lol

[elfin bridge]

ah I like that

[bronze osprey]

when you import in blender with auto allign bones checked the rig will look normal(not the tip bones)

[regal orchid]

sadly there is no real standard for coordinate spaces etc so you have to make sure nothing gets flipped around. But unreal is generally pretty smart about fixing it.

[bronze osprey]

and if you reparent to the default setup with envelope weights its stuck to the other skel again

thats how i do it

[elfin bridge]

dope, I'll try that

[bronze osprey]

mayB you wunna try the blender unreal plugin by epic

[elfin bridge]

oh wow I did not know about that

thats exciting

[bronze osprey]

there are a few reasons i do it like this, if you dont know what ur doin ur gunna break ur rig 100s of times 😛

[elfin bridge]

yea just noticed that trying to import from blender

[regal orchid]

Rigging is fun. 🥲

[bronze osprey]

ow, i kinda like it

its where a static model comes to life

[regal orchid]

Yeah, fair enough. But I still dislike it, mostly the weight painting which I hate. 😛

[bronze osprey]

dunno maya weight stuff, but if you place ur bones and twist bones well in blender auto weight can do a pretty decent job

[regal orchid]

Yeah it is fine as a base, but generally I have to tweak it manually and it sucks.

[bronze osprey]

blender can weight per bone

[regal orchid]

I'm pretty sure all tools do. Either way, weight painting is a big 🙅🏿‍♂️ from me. 😛

And I stand by it!

[mild blaze]

can anyone help me with his hairs...

[static falcon]

Anyone know how I can use control rig to keep the existing animation but offset it? Like a leg walking but raise the foot? Currently it locks the leg to point at the effector so I lose the animation

[ashen junco]

Make sure the material blend mode is Masked and NOT Translucent

[mystic cedar]

is it worth skipping control rig and just using the old school IK nodes for simple stuff

or is control rig just something that i should be using because its newer and more efficient and better or something

im lookin to step up my animation skills

[upbeat topaz]

FAILED TO MERGE BONES:

(This could happen if significant hierarchical changes have been made
e.g. inserting a bone between nodes.
Would you like to regenerate the Skeleton from this mesh?

WARNING: THIS MAY INVALIDATE OR REQUIRE RECOMPRESSION OF ANIMATION DATA.)

i am getting warning when i am adding a animation to a skeleton can anyone help me what should i do

[mild blaze]

masking i sdegrading its quality

[ashen junco]

well, no.

[mild blaze]

is there any other setting that i am missing?

[ashen junco]

Use Dither Temporal AA node right before the Opacity masked input.
Also consider developing a proper hair materials with that in mind.

[ashen junco]

You can use Paragon characters assets, which is free on the Marketplace, to get a reference point on how to develop a proper hair material.

[ashen junco]

Also I forgot that this was #animation and not #graphics. I should've redirect you there

[rustic hearth]

Yes this video fixed it for me https://youtu.be/SbC9rIRgu-A

[ripe portal]

Well, i think this could be the right place to ask, can i create a 3d model of a character in blender and then put the armature of UE4 mannequin and the animatoons of mannqeuin as well

[regal orchid]

Yes, you can skin it to the same skeleton. But the mannequin skeleton isn't very good to be honest.

[ashen junco]

The official female mannequin is the one that has closer to human proportions.

[bronze osprey]

i like the paragon rigs

[regal orchid]

Still the same base skeleton though, right? Or is it different. Don't remember.

[bronze osprey]

paragon have more twist bones

[modest geyser]

If I have a tank, and I want to animate the barrel recoiling whenever it fires, how would I go about doing that?

Everything I look at for animation involves skeletal meshes, but I just have a bunch of parented static meshes

[mint grail]

I fee like I'm missing something. I'm following a tutorial from GameDevAcademy and it's showing how to create an animation transition graph, but it seems like a ton of manual work even for a single animation.

I feel like there would be a quicker method than creating a huge web and manually linking all the nodes.

Also, is there a good tutorial specifically for learning the basics of blending animation transitions? As funny as it look, I don't want my mage to be hoverboarding around while casting.

[regal orchid]

You can animate without it but you will have to manually keyframe stuff using sequencer and whatnot (similar to how some use sequencer to animate doors etc). But I'm not even sure if you can run those animations while the object is moving and attached to something else. And even then, that it will be a pain in the ass to maintain. You are much better off taking your tank mesh and giving it some joints and animating it like you would any other skeletal mesh.

[regal orchid]

Don't know of any tutorials off the top of my head but the documentation is usually a good start for the very basics at least.

[modest geyser]

I was hoping to avoid skeletal meshes, but if it's unavoidable....

Thanks

[regal orchid]

It is the far superior long term solution in my opinion.

[velvet veldt]

Question. I feel like this should be super simple. Can you remove specific rotation or transform keys from an imported fbx skeleton animation? In Unity you can edit an animation clip as much as you need. Cant seem to get the keys to show in the animation viewer. Thank you!

[rugged crag]

Hello, I had an animation sequence in the sequencer but when I made a copy of the level with a different name all the objects with a keyframe gone invisible, anyone know how to solve this ?

[velvet veldt]

Sequencers are usually tied to the level its self. You can mark them as spawnable for them to just pop up.

Try and right click on each asset in the new level sequence and try and re-link them,

[rugged crag]

oh, I see doing them manually Is kinda sad tho, thanks for the answer

[tawdry cloak]

I'm having a problem using animation retargeting with the Paragon sparrow animations. I used the orion rig that came with it, and I was able to retarget the animations for the UE4 mannequin. But the "idle" animation for example, Sparrow's right hand is usually drawing the arrow back. But with the UE4 mannequin and retargeted animation, his right hand is behind his head in a weird position.

Is that because in the Orion rig, "weapon_l" is mapped to None? And if so, how could I fix that so it works right with the UE4 mannequin?

[elfin bridge]

Have you had any luck with root motion? My walking animations loop, but when I add root motion it stays in one place and the feet fall through the ground when walking.

thank you so much for that, it helped a lot

I tried mixamo_converter for blender but it doesnt seem to do what I want

[quaint orbit]

does having more bones in my armature/skeleton decrease rendering performance? I'm trying to make a stadium crowd so I need lots of performance

i'm wondering if I need to make a low bone count armature to maximize performance or if I can just use the skeleton I have already

[regal orchid]

Probably best to have a special simple skeleton for the crowd as opposed to a fully complex one that is used for main characters etc.

And the bystanders that are really far away could probably work as simple billboards too

[quaint orbit]

ok ty for the info

[elfin bridge]

Ah! I got it. Using Mixamo_Converter and this tutorial:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nDLVw535R8Q

[nocturne finch]

Is there a more event-based way to play animations with an AnimBP? So far, booleans have been inefficient for me as I want most of my animations to simply play on-event (not necessarily on-input) rather than while a boolean is active. Currently I am using an AnimBP for animations such as Idles, and then for event based animations I am simply playing Montages through the DefaultSlot with C++. Is there a better way to set this up, or is this a good usage of Montages?

[tender flicker]

hey, does anyone know how I can make a relative direction to a global direction vector in control rig?

I'm trying to stabilise the head bone on my character, I pass in the previous VB head transform as LastHeadTransform and the camera transform as CameraTransform and I have a tolerance on how much the head bone basically lag as the Tolerance.
the tolerance is given in how much the head bone can "lag" relative to the camera, so if the tolerance.x is 0 it means that it shouldn't lag in the x axis at all, relative to the camera.

not sure if it's very clear, I just have a virtual bone called VB head attached to the root->head bones

not sure if i got this completely wrong, since it seems to work sometimes but the rotating the old VB head - new VB head with the camera rotation and then inverse rotating it seems to cause issues since the values don't match, sometimes it varies by +- 1

[rustic hearth]

glad to hear!

[elfin bridge]

now my feet are falling through the ground... grrrrrr lol

crawl animation. Back to google

[lucid slate]

https://streamable.com/d9rarl

Looking good?

[regal orchid]

Pretty good! Working on recoil myself incidentally. I would say it shakes a little too much when you hold it down for longer. Especially around 4-5 seconds in the clip. It suddenly goes a bit wild there.

[misty dagger]

can anyone with a little maya knowledge tell me how to control multiple meshes with one blendshape

or is this the wrong place for that

[regal orchid]

That could just be the animation itself being a bit misaligned with the floor. Or due to blending etc. It isn't very hard to fix. If all feet go through the ground then you can simply offset the entire mesh. If only some limbs go through then you should try and offset them in blender with IK. (Or in engine if you want)

[regal orchid]

What do you mean exactly?

[misty dagger]

alright i have a human model with a face but also lower and upper jaw

i want one expression blendshape to open the mouth but move the jaws too

so it doesn't show the gums and look strange

from what i can see blendshapes can only apply to one mesh at a time but i have one in blender that controls jaw and face simultaneously so i know it can be done

i've watched 10 tuts read a bunch of guides and i don't know how

also i'm doing the movements via IK rig

[regal orchid]

Ah, my bad I misread it as blendspaces for some reason. Sadly I don't know much about blendshapes. But hopefully someone else can help you out.

[misty dagger]

alright

[vivid trench]

Is someone able to help me with something? I just posted my question in the General Unreal-Engine chat before I saw this one, sorry

[rustic hearth]

google is your best friend

[lucid slate]

I think my ak anims are good

Any comment?

I trier realistic i think it's normalm

[static falcon]

What's the question

[vivid trench]

I made my own custom character and animations in blender, I made an idle, walk, jump and a falling animation. I'm trying to implement the jump mechanic. I want to Jump then fall, and if I don't jump I just want it to fall because the Jump animation doesn't fit.

I actually was able to get it working

I did have one other issue though, In blender my bone controls i used aren't deforming the character, but after I imported it into unreal, It's deforming the mesh

[static falcon]

@vivid trench take a look at the third person example character... this is a good use of a state machine

[vivid trench]

The starter third person character had a Jump fall for its falling animation, so it confused me but looking at it did definitely help!

[static falcon]

I see

In that example project, jumping is set via spacebar key

So if you don't press it, it will not jump

So you can just draw a link to the falling from idle/run/walk

And "is falling" is a function built in to the character component

So you can use that to help those transitions

jump loop is essentially falling in their demo

[vivid trench]

well the problem I was running into, was the Is falling, just tells me if the player is off the ground or not so I had to figure out a way to differentiate between going up and down

[static falcon]

Are you sure? I thought "is falling" meant falling

[vivid trench]

yeah i had to mess around with it

it would activate even when i was jumping

[static falcon]

Ah okay

I made my own falling detection before by doing a tick sequence where I set the z height last frame and the z height of the previous frame... then I said if current < previous

[vivid trench]

oh thats smart

[static falcon]

And before that a branch to see if the character is falling

(or is in air) or whatever

so that it doesn't think you're falling when you're running down stairs for example

[elfin bridge]

Aright im back again, retargeting issue? All the other bones are working fine I'm wondering if im setting the forarm twist wrong maybe? Setting it to hand as directed in the tutorial I watched for retargeting. Its getting this weird crossover tho where the mesh is warped and the bones look weird

upper arm twist, I set it to forearm

removed the upper/lower arm twist and it fixed that. Still getting weird retargeting issues tho I'll keep googling

[misty dagger]

I have a new sympathy for people who design first person melee animations. It's really hard to make it look good with like 10 frames

[velvet veldt]

Sounds like your looking for a pose asset. Check out this doc and read where it talks about corrective blendshapes. https://docs.unrealengine.com/4.26/en-US/SharingAndReleasing/XRDevelopment/AR/HandheldAR/FaceARSample/

[thorny magnet]

Hello everyone, tell me how to connect animation, in the new version of the engine there is no get current montage function. Can't call the function.

Version 4.26 has this function, but it is called as a non-pure function. How to make a function in Unreal Engine pure a function?

[ashen junco]

By making a pure function of it.

No joke, that's literally what you need to do.

Also, it seems like you're flipping things up a bit. Pure functions are the ones that don't have the exec pins

[thorny magnet]

The fact of the matter is that this function was not written by me, it is built into the engine, so you cannot change it when you click on it, the Visual Studio editor opens

[ashen junco]

@thorny magnet
You don't address this so I assume you did flip things up. (Even then it's just one checkbox different)

Make a new function. Put the pure function node inside of it. Hook the output nodes to the Return Node. Done.

What's the holdup then? Even in C++ functions are equally treated. The "pureness" of the functions practically and largely just for BP housekeeping.

[thorny magnet]

The function Get current montage pure cannot be called from anywhere, only non-pure Get current montage is called

[ashen junco]

Actually no, scratch that
How about this?

[thorny magnet]

It doesn't even open the function, but how do you know what is included in the get current montage function, if it is a function of the engine?

[thorny magnet]

Then the animation does not play.

the developers needed to open the function, so that it was possible to edit the internal functions themselves, it turns out that they are closed, the functions in the Visual Studio do not open.

[ashen junco]

What
All it does is practically fetching the currently playing montage.

[ashen junco]

Actually, you can edit engine functions. 😏

All you need is the engine source code, NOT BINARY BUILDS from the launcher

Also patience because in most cases modifying engine functions rebuilds the whole engine.

[thorny magnet]

in general it should be like this, but the function is not from the parent class Character ref

[ashen junco]

I think you're getting the wrong idea here.

[thorny magnet]

this is unrealistic after 10 attempts and reinstallation of windows with clearing data from the hard drive, the building did not help, I have more than 50 error messages, even the development work, I don’t know what the problem is.

[thorny magnet]

Maybe someone will explain for the money?

[lusty ore]

Hey guys I am a newbie and currently using Mixamo animations. Im having this weird glitch when after collision with objects in the scene direction of animations change - it bescomes off by certain angles. What could be the problem?

[cloud creek]

Is it possible to import collisions for an SKM asset from houdini for instance? or maya?

[vapid ibex]

anyone know how I can zerofiy the scale of a bone in my animation? It seems importing an FBX with zero scale fails with this error

Do I need to do that in-engine? The idea of setting it to an almost-zero scale like 0.0001 is viable but feels disgusting :D

[sharp karma]

Guys, does anyone know how to expose this option as a variable. Or a way to cast to the animgraph, get layered blend per pose and expose it?

[flat siren]

Hey - I don't think I've ever posted in here before but I'm finally stumped on how to approach this in-engine... but this is clearly something that animators would have faced:

When animating a root motion combo sequence, how do you smoothly pivot the character between animations in a Third Person Action RPG?

Is there a way to lerp the root motion direction maybe?

[lucid slate]

Guys!

I wanna use AnimMontage but 120fps animation

How can i do that?

[frozen lava]

Is it possible to slow down and speed up a single animation? Like to start off the anim slowly then speed it up later on? Obviously the play rate is static and effects the whole thing I’m just wondering if I can change that play rate multiple times within a single montage

[flat siren]

Add a curve for Anim Speed, or you can use AnimNotifies to change the playrate

personally I think curves are the way to go

[exotic cipher]

How to use single root motion animation for jump?

[woven peak]

use a montage

[exotic cipher]

what about distance

since the animation only jumps up

[woven peak]

Well that depends on how you want to do it

if you want to have root motion everywhere you can activate for everything

but by default root motion is only applied to montage

---

Anyone know how i can force the entry from a animation montage to a specific Anmation Node?

Atm, everytime I play a ladder enter animation and need to go in the ladder state, it enter into the move node before going to the ladder

that result in a poping after the enter animation play as you can see bellow on the video.
the last frame of the going down the ladder and the ladder enter are the same, however it transition back to move and go back to ladder.

Here you can see it goes briefly just before the montage to the ladder (time 0:04)... then the montage play and then it stats again to the Move

[winged violet]

Once you bake a control rig anim to an anim sequence it becomes completely separated from the rig, right?

Meaning you can have a not so performant rig to create anims offline in the editor, but then bake out optimized anims for gameplay

So the rig would never be used by end players but can be used as a tool to author anims in the editor just like a DCC

[regal orchid]

Yeah, you can also use it at runtime to do runtime adjustments.

[winged violet]

Thanks!

In my case I'm just looking to keep anims as performant as possible

but get the flexibility to author them in engine

[ashen junco]

Though admittedly the curve editor is kinda flimsy to work with. Not to mention the lack of tweening and constraint adjustments.

[stray timber]

Hello, i had a question im looking to have a humanoid dragon and im attempt to have a dynamic tail based off live mocap data. Ive been looking for some videos on it but the ones i have found have been outdated. Any direction you could point me, thanks.

[frozen lava]

Are there tuts on this? Not quite sure what a curve means in relation to anims tbh

I’ll google it when I’m home ty

[flat siren]

Just expose the PlayRate as a Pin and then link it to a curve

In the AnimBP

If you are playing it from a Blueprint, you can do it like this:

Just make sure the Curve Name matches the Curve Object you made

[shell vault]

Not sure if that will work for you and there are probably better ways of doing this but the way i do it is set the transition rules variables in the middle of the montage, so by the time the montage ends it blends towards the new state. like so for example:

[flat siren]

I’ve never seen this, but I can’t imagine you would want that - if the capsule/root left the ground then physics would mess up your animation.

If you need a z-based collision tied to the character, maybe you could use a sphere collider attached to the head/hand bone?

If you want to use physics however, the launch or add impulse nodes should do the trick

[stray timber]

Is there a way to retarget mocap data live to a different skeleton? My mocap data is not using the real space of my mocap due to the actors size i think.

[flat siren]

Can you map it to the Humanoid rig?

The biggest problem is different bone-naming conventions

[stray timber]

I tried retargeting my rig to the humaniod on and ran it to the mannquien but with the same result

[flat siren]

As long as it has a similar structure you should be fine

[stray timber]

Well ghe legs for rig i have are shorter were im pretty sure the problem comes from

I can screen shot to show yall

This is the offset im getting with the UE4 mannequin and my custom rig(to the left)

Both are recieving the same data

Through Xsens and Live Link

[frozen lava]

https://tenor.com/view/mind-blow-galaxy-explode-boom-fireworks-gif-5139389

[slim sun]

Anyone know why Mr Mannequins root is offset on import?

[frozen phoenix]

Hello, I have a question how to handle this type of animation (read comment): https://www.reddit.com/r/unrealengine/comments/p2sev1/how_would_i_achieve_something_like_this_read/

[winged violet]

How is the latest version of blender for rigging + animating for UE4?

I remember when I last did it a few years ago there were some problems with the import process with UE

But now that they have received a lot of funding and updates, is it pretty much on par with Maya in terms of a bug free import?

[ashen junco]

2.8 onwards is fine.
Much less hassle compared to prior versions.

[winged violet]

Great thanks!

[rocky light]

Can we attach multiple meshes of different shapes to single socket, without any problem??

[ashen junco]

As in like attaching weapon meshes?

[rocky light]

Yes

[ashen junco]

Even Fortnite do just that, so take that what you will.

[rocky light]

Here i am attaching a wine glass, and beer glass. I couldn't attach them properly to the single socket

Both props have different Pivots

[stuck zenith]

what am I doing wrong here trying to bake a short animation to control rig?

[mortal violet]

is this channel exclusively for unreal's animation tool or can we talk about the pipeline from other softwares to unreal as well?

[regal orchid]

No idea about the "official" stance but people ask plenty of questions regarding the pipeline from maya/blender etc into unreal as well.

And to me that is totally fine at least

[regal orchid]

Does he actually have a dedicated root joint? Seems like the pelvis is the root in this case.

[mortal violet]

Okay thanks
does anybody have pointers for the general pipeline for animating for games? in particular in my case, I have a human character with a rig made using blender's rigify, and a sword that's not rigged, and I'd like to make a set of sword fighting animation but still import the human char and the sword separately in engine

[merry harness]

hey guys, in unreal engine 5, will shape keys be supported with the new animation thing

[regal orchid]

You can add a weapon bone to the character that the weapon attaches to in engine. That is what I do for my guns. That way the gun is positioned 1:1 in maya and unreal.

[mortal violet]

Sounds like it could work, though I imagine that'd cause problem with things like switching which hand holds the weapon, or attaching it somewhere else on the body during the animation

[regal orchid]

well you would need animations for both hands (or mirroring)

and you can just remove the mesh and do whatever you want with it at any time

in case you want it to stick to the back or whatever

when unequipped

and when you want to hold it, you attach it to the weapon bone

[mortal violet]

Okay, thanks

[mighty bear]

Okay, so I just thought of something that might have been wildly obvious to everyone but me. When animating an ability, do you animate the character’s motions on one layer and then do the vfx on another? In which case how do I do I animate a complex vfx. Like a water stream that swirls around the player and goes off into the distance?

[static falcon]

I might be wrong but I think this is what Ability system is for. A simpler way is to use Anim Notifies to time particle systems with animation.

[misty dagger]

Hello everybody, have you ever experienced rotation offsets on animations automatically added to animations? I'll explain: We've had our charcter skeletal mesh in game for months, and we've reimported the maya rig's updates over and over it for months. Today we have experienced some offsets in the anim in unreal not matching the authored animation in maya. i.e: a hand held steady to the belt in maya was instead intersecting the belt in unreal.
We than have imported a new skeletal mesh, retargeted the whole anim BP and anims on the newly imported skeletal mesh, and that fixed the animation issue. Ofc we than had to rewire the whole animBP but at least we removed the weird offset behaviour.
Is there in your opinion a better way to fixing these issues without reatrgeting and rewiring a whole animBP?

[mighty bear]

Thank you v much. That’s super helpful!

[lean jasper]

what is the best facial mocap software for ue4

other than faceware

[mental badger]

What's the benefit of a dedicated weapon bone vs attaching the weapon to a hand socket?

[regal orchid]

The hand socket only exists inside unreal. The weapon bone can be animated properly. Say you want your character to spin his gun around in his hand or whatever. Much easier to do with a dedicated weapon bone.

[oak cloud]

hey all, set up a live link with Rokoko to ue4 for recording animations with takes, any advice for cleaning up the mocap? ideally looking for a way to replace the legs with a clean walk cycle for sections of the takes, but keep the rest of the skeleton untouched? or something like this! the drift and sometimes lag can really make it a long process cleaning everything additively

(side note any ideas to "smooth" animations?)

[mental badger]

Ah, I never considered that. Makes sense. What bone do you typically parent your weapon bone to?

[regal orchid]

The hand bone. One for each hand is what I generally do. (but I usually only need one on the right hand)

[spice galleon]

I have an skel mesh, which goes in rag doll mode by default, how can i stop that?

[slim sun]

Yeah, the rig is identical to the Mannequin that comes with UE

[regal orchid]

Weird. Are you importing the mesh from outside the engine? You could just copy it over from another project directly instead.

[slim sun]

Nah, I'm importing the animation and setting the skeleton to the third person mannequin.
I managed to fix it by importing the skeleton it came with then retargeting the bones to the Mannequin and converting the animation

[regal orchid]

Ah, weird that it would act up like that. But if you managed to fix it then hopefully that is the end of it.

[mighty bear]

@static falcon So I just took some time to look at all the stuff the gameplay ability system is able to set up. It helps with the actual ability bit, but I still don't understand how to actually put in the animation into the game if that makes sense? Like I understand how to make the character itself move, but not the effects around it if that makes sense.

like there are plenty of tutorials on projectiles and aoes, but not any I can find on scripted movements of particles/effects

[mighty bear]

or am I just being stupid?

[lusty ore]

How to replace Advanced Locomotion system mesh? Is there some sort of documentation on setting it up?

[steady hatch]

Anyone know how I could blend two animations together? I'm currently blending my Animgraph by enum. So I'm unsure how this setup should look for my current situation xD

My Animgraph ;

Tutorial ;

[sharp karma]

Guys, I've been trying to solve root motion animations the whole day. The last problem I have is that inside unreal the root bone goes crazy, moving all around the place. Any ideas on how to fix this?

[misty dagger]

Okay I'll ask here lol, say I want to attach a character with a looping animation to a big robot, making it look like he's controlling it. How do I set that up with a static mesh, if possible at all?

This static mesh is being used as an enemy, floats around and pursues the player character

[ashen junco]

Is the robot just static meshes?

[misty dagger]

Yep, it

*it's a pretty simple enemy type

Basically just want to plop the character into the cockpit and have its rotation and orientation and location locked to the mesh

[ashen junco]

Why not make it a skeletal mesh as well? Much easier to handle for such purposes.

[misty dagger]

I did but for some reason the animation isn't displaying after socketing to the bone I added specifically for that

Unless there's something else I'm missing here, probably, I'm quite new to this

[ashen junco]

If I get this right, it's a flying turret, right?

Though looking at the Valley of the Ancient demo, they did stuff toghether skeletal meshes with static Nanite meshes attached all over.

[misty dagger]

Essentially yeah

See I can get the t-pose mesh in there but actually getting the animation applied is a whole other thing

[ashen junco]

So here's my idea:

• Make the turret a skeletal mesh, with three bones after the root bone: two for each end of the guns, and one for the driver
• In your BP, make the driver skelmesh a child component of the turret's skelmesh, with its parent socket pointing to the turret's driver bone.

[north herald]

Can anyone recommend me a video for hit reaction for individual body parts?

[hollow glade]

Hello anyone know if this is a bug, i retarget my Anim bp and all my animation, but now the anim bp didn't read the curve value on the second layer of animation, only on the first one that I play, anyone knows something?

[smoky sail]

Hey, a bit of a weird one.
Does anyone know why WantedLetter variable doesnt work as input for the animation StartPosition?In a sense that, I'm setting WantedLetter, HandRotation, EffectorTarget and ElbowTarget exactly at the same time in cpp. The only one that doesnt reflect any change is WantedLetter. If i replace it with Random Float node, works.

[weary frost]

Hi, Could anyone tell me why the animation montages are playing at different angles here please?

The first frontal swing whilst running looks ok but the second swing is all wrong and when standing idle and swinging the sword it swings up in the air instead of directly in front of him, Many thanks.

[covert lotus]

Is there a way to export an animation with mesh including the post process anim blueprint?

The left is with the post process on, and the right is what it looks like when exported (post process missing).

[regal orchid]

Probably since the animation is designed to be played on the entire body. So when you blend (and thus mask) the lower half of the body. It won't be able to place itself correctly.

So you're gonna have to adjust the animation most likely.

[weary frost]

@regal orchid ok thanks!!

[dusky leaf]

Hey all, I was wondering if anyone with experience with control rig could help me out. So we have our performance capture recorded and coming in fine with both body and face animations working correctly. But, when I bake the control rig the facial animations go away entirely but the body animations remain, has anyone else run into this issue?

[minor lichen]

Anybody know why some properties are exposed in the Timeline Editor for animation and others aren't? I'm trying to expose the SpringArmComponent's TargetArmLength property for animation but am not sure how (or if it's possible)

[merry lynx]

When I import a skeletal mesh without assigning a skeleton to it , then retarget it , it gets some problems

But when i choose the skeleton when importing and assign it , it has no problems

Any idea what’s happening?

[compact pebble]

Have a quick question guys. i have animation bp (its retargeted one) with my model, if i change base pose in skeleton of my mesh, is anyway to see changes in animation BP? or i have to retarget animation everytime?

[cerulean turret]

im very new to ue4, like 3 days ago new and uh..

i dont know whats going on

does anyone know how to make it not hover when i press play? thanks:)

[shell cypress]

this could be anything really but maybe check your colliders @cerulean turret

hey does anyone know how I can make this Control Rig node in the Animation Blueprint do a backwards solve instead of just a forward solve? I'm doing an animation from a sequencer but it doesn't play because of the control rig

[lucid slate]

Guys

What is ue5 animmontage fps

AnimMontages suppprt 60fps?

Guyss

[static falcon]

I have a desk fan I want to rig up. Would you use bones for this or just have the blade a separate Geo and rotate it? If bones, I def don't want an anim BP just for a fan, so would I use a montage?

Hopefully there's an easier way @shell cypress , but you can have a section in your Control Rig BP that sets the position of the controls to the bone's position before doing any of the following logic

Actually maybe it's more complicated than that, because you might lose the control rig function if you do that... argh

I assume the example project is setup to do what you are describing though.

[shell cypress]

@static falcon thanks for the answer. There is a special event at the start of control rig called Forward Solve, and another called Backward solve. they are separated exactly for that reason you mentioned, that otherwise you would lose the forward function if the rig was reset every time. But I don't know how to trigger the backwards solve in the sequencer. Perhaps it's not meant for that...? I'll check out the example project, I haven't seen that.

Regarding your fan, I would say it sounds the easiest to give it an animBP and rotate it with math, this way the spinning is separate from all your other scripts/things. I wouldn't know how to make a separate geo and rotate it without some kind of similar script or component. Also, montages seem wack to me.

[static falcon]

If I just separated the geo in my DCC, threw them all into a BP, and used a rotation component (I think there's one?) that could work too though

Seems simpler to have only 1 bp for such a basic asset

or maybe the anim bp is fine

[south lotus]

can unreal not import non skeletal animations? like in blender, if I were to animate a modifier property, I can't convert that to a shape key and get that unreal or something?

[static falcon]

https://docs.unrealengine.com/4.26/en-US/WorkingWithContent/Importing/FBX/AssetMetadataPipeline/

This might help

I thought blendshape keys did come in though... you can also store data in bones as a hack if need be

[exotic cipher]

is there a way to move capsule along with rootmotion montage?
like I have a animation where player moves up and forward and when animation ends, the player teleports back to where he started.

[velvet sparrow]

That means it's actually not using root motion. You'll have to check the documentation and compare it with your setup, it requires some very specific steps

[exotic cipher]

ahhh

[exotic cipher]

When enabling root motion on the animation why does it disables character movement upwards?
like now it moves on x and y axis in animation, by z axis movement is disabled.

[neon fiber]

IIRC correctly you need to set the movement mode to flying or something that allows Z axis movement

[still bronze]

I have a problem where whenever I save an animation it disappears

[exotic cipher]

awesome, seems like that fixed it.
Thanks alot mate

[neon fiber]

oh that worked? good stuff, i was going off what I remembered from last time I had to mess with it in our project

it's very confusing to say the least

[mighty bear]

It looks like your collision box on the terrain or your player is off

[silver jasper]

Anyone know of any good animation packs on the store that have an off-hand grenade throw?

[neon fiber]

I wish I did, I'm actually trying to hire an animator to just create the stuff I need because there isn't enough animation there

[raven ravine]

Hello guys. I'm confused on what the rigidbody node does, because I found that I don't even need the rigidbody node at all for hair bones on my character to simulate physics. I noticed all I need is for the hair body in the physics asset to be set to "simulated" and then the hair reacts to physics even without the rigidbody anim node.

So what would be the point of that node?

[ashen junco]

Never even see a node called "rigidbody"

[raven ravine]

big oof

[ashen junco]

Roflmfao
I don't even use that node for anim dynamics

[raven ravine]

Yeah. I heard it was 2x faster than anim dynamics so trying it out

[ashen junco]

[mortal violet]

hi, is it possible to animate a skeleton without a mesh attached to it to a specific framerate no matter what the actual framerate is, so that gameplay related stuff on it (ie hitboxes) work consistently, while also having another skeleton copy that skeleton but at the actual rendering framerate?

[median isle]

Hello, how would you guys implement something like a chase cannon (see gif) https://qph.fs.quoracdn.net/main-qimg-b59c4c37aa3f775b06af51966d24136d, I've tried animating the spin but it obviously always starts from the same spot, can I do something with additive animations or maybe spin it through the animBP? Looking for suggestions here

[silver jasper]

Yeah, I'm having the issue where I might see an animation I like, but it feels bad to purchase 50$ pack for just 1-3 animations

I guess its still cheaper though

It doesn't help that most animation packs are mostly just walk/run cycles + handful of "actual" animations

[silver jasper]

Can't you just play it as an additive? As that will just add the rotations (ergo spinning the canon)

[median isle]

yeah i'm trying to get it working as addtive

but no success so far

and the animation itself

ugh I guess I need to learn how additives work first

the base animation is basically the cannon in its referece pose

also vfx is very wip XD

[silver jasper]

In your anim-graph you need to add an additive slot

and than play the additive animation in that slot

[median isle]

hmmmmmm

[weary frost]

Hi, Is there anyone who can point to some good information on how to "correctly" blend animations in UE please? , I keep trying to get this animation correct but as the guy is standing idle his upper body spins and his legs dont move at all, and when the second swing happens he kind of slides along, Seems buying marketyplace animations isnt a great idea when you dont know how to use them 😦, He also has some kind of weird motion for his legs when running and using the sword. Kind of feels like unless the animations are "designed" specifically for a certain model its really hard to make them work.

[median isle]

so the "spinning" part would be additive to the rest

I'll try it out, ty

[regal orchid]

Think I mentioned it last time. But I believe the biggest issue is that these animations were meant to be played on the whole body, while the character is standing still. So the torso's twisting etc is all designed to look right with a lower body that is also following along. Stripping that part out makes the animation look completely off.
As for the blending, you should generally try and keep the number of animations adding to a joint to as a few as possible. Otherwise you'll get unpredictable behavior unless you are careful. Which probably explains the weird legs.

It is mixing running and the full body sword animation. Causing the weird behavior.

[weary frost]

@regal orchid Thanks for the replies, I have found a video of something I would like to try and replicate but I am so lost with how to even start with it. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c7S7HfeafvA

The animations look so smooth there.

[regal orchid]

You need animations that are specifically made for full body and animations that are meant to be put on top (i.e. blended)

[weary frost]

When you say "full body" is that like to RM animations(Root Motion) ones or the In Place ones?

[regal orchid]

for example that flip the character does is designed for the full body, you cant blend away part of it without it looking all kinds of wrong. There are plenty of cases where you can use part of fullbody animations. But the animation needs to be made with that in mind generally.

[regal orchid]

By full body I just mean that it affects the entire character. Like doing a back flip or something similar to that video.

regardless of root motion

[weary frost]

Ahh ok

[regal orchid]

so you probably want some sword swinging animations that are designed to be put on top of your locomotion

since the ones you are using are pretty extreme and twist the entire body into a distinctive pose

so removing elements from said pose will make it look off

[weary frost]

Ah that makes sense. so you have to be very careful when getting animations off of the Marketplace then as you cant just "blend" them and they will work.

[dusky quarry]

Hello, does anyone know is it easy to convert Unity character rigs to Unreal character rigs?

[weary frost]

So the animations I am using are best to use a "disable movement" and then "play the attack" and then reenable movement rather than trying to blend them together because of the extreme movements and poses./

[regal orchid]

Pretty much. If there was a more neutral looking sword swing you could get rid of the legs and it would be fine. But those you are using in particular are very distinct.

[regal orchid]

Yeah, exactly. If you look at the video you linked the character attacks with his whole body there as well.

If the game has any running while attacking animations then they would most likely need unique ones.

Also I guess I should <@&213101288538374145>

[weary frost]

🙂 I guess I will need to see if i can find a sword swinging animation that only affects the top half of a body.

[regal orchid]

You can try animating with control rig or similar. Havent used that much myself since I use Maya but it seems useful if you arent familiar with traditional DCCs.

[weary frost]

I think I understand better now that when looking at animations I should look at an animation and ask myself "can i perform this whilst the legs are moving independantly without making it look all kinds of weird"

[regal orchid]

Depends on what you mean by rig. A skeleton is just a skeleton. Shouldnt matter where you got it from provided it is properly made.

[regal orchid]

I guess that is a start, yeah. Those animations you got are definitely designed for standing in place. You could reduce the twisting by blending further up the spine potentially but it may still look weird. Or only blending the two arms and ignoring the spine.

[dusky quarry]

I have a few epic marketplace animations that work with the Epic skeleton, and the 3D artist I'm working with uses Unity-compatible rigs. I know there is a way in Unreal to map bones to a different skeleton. I forget what thats called now

I'm also wondering how realistic it is to use that feature. Like is it actually realistic to do in a production game, or is it a hacky finnicky thing. (I tried it once in the past with no luck)

Oh I am thinking of retargeting.

[regal orchid]

yes you are

😛

But if you are just talking about retargeting animations from one skeleton to another then that should work. But they usually need tweaking after. Depending on how different the skeletons are.

[dusky quarry]

Ah okay thanks. The tweaking/cleanup process is what I'm afraid of!

[regal orchid]

Best way to know is to just try it with an animation and see what happens..

[dusky quarry]

Would it be better to just rig the model for the epic skeleton before importing it?

I guess I'm wondering like... how much work is it to use the Unity rig vs. creating a new rig

[regal orchid]

so just to be clear, when you say rig you mean the skeleton, right?

[dusky quarry]

Yeah, I think so. haha

Sorry I am new to 3D art/animation in general. Mostly worked on 2d games

[regal orchid]

Since there is nothing inherently specific about skeletons in unreal or unity.

No worries.

A character will work in either engine. I would say that a custom skeleton is always better than the one epic provides but entirely up to you what to use.

In your case retargeting is probably best unless you really want the unreal mannequin skeleton for some reason. (Which is a bad skeleton imo)

[dusky quarry]

ah okay gotcha. Why do you say a custom skeleton is always better?

I am guessing its easier to animate with a custom skeleton rather than a boilerplate?

[regal orchid]

More that the unreal mannequin skeleton is designed for that character. Proportions and all. So taking a different character it will be "forced" into the same mould as the mannequin. That is why you see so many unreal 4 games with hunched over characters that look totally unnatural. Because they use the same skeleton as the mannequin.

same skeleton and animations often

If you have a unique character, chances are it will need a unique skeleton to fit it

[dusky quarry]

oh okay, yeah that makes sense. so regardless of the engine I'll want whatever the skeleton the 3D artist uses so it fits the character style

[regal orchid]

yeah, pretty much

a small character will get really stretched out if you use it on the ue4 mannequin for instance since Manny is designed to be ~180cm

for example

[dusky quarry]

thanks for all your help! 😊

[regal orchid]

No problem!

[still bronze]

Anyone know where i can post for help that isn't here or the UE forums? Does unreal have a stack overflow like blender does or something?

[weary frost]

@regal orchid Thanks for the help !: ) I forgot to say thanks got distracted making my child;s dinner lol

[regal orchid]

No worries. 😛 You're welcome.

[median isle]

Anyone have any examples of rotating animations? basically what I need is my cannon to rotate 120 degrees and shoot then the next time it shoots it should continue from where it left off.
Any kind of working examples will help me.

[misty dagger]

anyone help please

I have montage animation that in Blender the root moves forward etc. In unreal when Root motion ticked on the AI plays montage and the bot in this case moves forward but capsule stays put ??

Root motion Enables

Root Motion not enabled and bot moves how it's animated

Bot plays Montage but Capsule stays put

With RootMotion on Bot plays animation but stays in place dosen't move forward

[ashen junco]

https://answers.unrealengine.com

[still bronze]

thank you

[jaunty dagger]

I have some animations FBX made in maya, and some of them when I import to unreal the timeline is playing but the animation isn't. Has anyone ever had this problem? Any fixes?

[simple birch]

i would have something to say about animation but I still can't figure out the best way to put bones in a car to simulate suspension, rotation, and turning in blender 2.9

[raven ravine]

What do people usually set their twist bones to for the translation retargeting? Is it treated the same as IK bones and set to "animation"?

[lone wharf]

In my setup, I want the neck rotation of ABP_A to set neck rotation of ABP_B.

What is the proper way to cast from one AnimBP to another AnimBP with support for calling these variables in Editor?
Do I need to utilize Control Rig for access to these joint rotators outside runtime?

[crystal tundra]

Here's a question, say you have a character with fully established animation logic in the animation blueprint, say a full set of generic animations, is there a way to blend a pose additively to that animation logic, to give a model some unique character? Can you add something with control rig, to adjust a character additvely?

[mortal violet]

trying to import a humanoid character with a simple animation and the character & skeletons import just fine (except for the auto generated physics asset being pretty bad) but the animation is completely broken, any idea what could be the cause?

using the send to unreal plugin btw

[proven badger]

When I have a mesh that has the same skeletal hierarchy but extra bones, and I re-target it to my existing skeleton it asks if I want to add the bones to the skeleton. Will that create issues for my current assets, or can the skeleton have the extra bones and the other meshes won't care?

[torn pelican]

Hey guys have any one of you faced with static mesh,i made sure bone hierarchy is correct,double checked it's using the correct skeleton,only packed necessary files,i rigged the mesh from scratch for 3 times but model is becoming static in game,what might cause this.

[proven badger]

I'm far from an expert, but do you mean when you import it, it becomes static, or when you spawn it in game it becomes static? If the first, did you set it as a skeletal mesh when you ran the import wizard, if the second have you set an animation to it?

[torn pelican]

i import my fbx to model's shared skeleton without any problem,but in game when i spawn it it becomes static and stucks at A pose

im sure bone hierarchy is correct,no zero weigts

[proven badger]

Are you just dragging the mesh into the editor window and hitting play? Make sure wherever you have put it that you put an animation on it, you can set it in the highlighted field from this screenshot:

In this case I've just drug the UE4 Mannequin into the editor, and since it has no animation it A-Poses when I run.

[torn pelican]

Thank you,fixed it problem was shared skeleton's location

[mortal violet]

trying to enable root motion on my animation blueprint and the option is nowhere to be seen
it's supposed to be in the details panel but there's just nothing there

[vapid ibex]

How do third person games (although it can be any game) usually handle actions like reloading weapons, for different pitch/yaw rotations? Is it the same reload animation in different angle variations, put together in a mesh space additive blendspace?

[mortal violet]

most games first orient the torso toward what you're aiming using IK or other stuff, then run the reload animation over that

[vapid ibex]

so how do they resolve cases where hands need to reach say, the pelvis for the ammo belt?

Wouldn't rotating the reload animation together with the torso cause the hand to get an offset?

[mortal violet]

either the animation is made in engine using IK and other types of constraints instead of baked animation imported from other software, or they don't actually solve the problem and instead either put the torso back to a forward orientation, or don't even do that and hope the average player doesn't notice the weird animation

[vapid ibex]

Gotcha, thanks for this 👍 I think the most reasonable compromise for lower budget might be to orient the animation forwards with a little IK support where needed

as you said

[mortal violet]

yeah

that or make an animation that doesn't rely on part of the rigs that might have other animations running on them & whatnot

also I found the root motion option so disregard my question pls

[glacial gale]

Hello! i am new to unreal engine! and currently trying to learning animation handler in engine and looking for best resources! which one you suggest me as old unity game dev?

[crimson pelican]

In UE4.26 there was an anim component called Wheel controller, or something along those lines, has it been renamed in UE5 or does it not exist yet?
This is an image for context on where i used it in the chain, without it the anim does not work as intended

[leaden flint]

Hiho i have a regular question about animations, Skeletons and sockets.
I have a ThirdPersonCharacter as Character_Parent and i have different Character_Childs (Mage, Warrior, Hunter) as male and Female. If I set all Animations, Sockets and so on to the Parent Character and i will Change the Child Character to an other Character Mesh the new Child Character will get normaly his own Skeleton. Can i give a different Character the same Skeleton to usw the Skeleton settings like Weapon and Armor Sockets, Special Moves like Jump, Role, Dash?

This is an example

all the settings are in the Right Third Person Character but the childs (middle and left) should usw that settings like weaponslots, Do a role and so on in the gameplay.

Do i have to create and setup all the settings for each new character also male and female?

[sullen raven]

How do we make transform bone work in 360 rotating gosh darn it? It only works up to 180 degrees, then it ignores the half turn. Any tips?

[copper matrix]

Is there a good, built-in way to bind to anim notifies directly from cpp, or is that still unsupported?

[misty dagger]

anyone know the proper way to get a custom mesh on the ue4 mannequin
retarget requires a proper skeletal mesh
but I cant find anything about it

[leaden flint]

Some ideas?

[regal orchid]

https://docs.unrealengine.com/4.26/en-US/AnimatingObjects/SkeletalMeshAnimation/AnimBlueprints/ Could give child animation blueprints a look. But if they have different skeletons you may have to make entirely separate animation blueprints on a per skeleton basis. Not entirely sure how that works with child blueprints.

[leaden flint]

Oh Thank you!

[steady hatch]

Anyone familiar with root motion? I'm following a guide currently - but stuck at this part. I have to blend by bool , however I don't know how that'd look with my setup.

my blendby enum set-up

The tutorial

[steel raptor]

This might sound like a strange question, but does anyone know how to make animations in UE4 more choppy? Kinda like DBFZ or Into the Spider-Verse?

[sullen aurora]

Yeah, the way to do it is to ensure your curves become more stepped, this can create a choppy animation feel to it, animators also use that to quickly block out animation shots, to get the timing right, and then refine the curves.
so the key frames would become less curved, and more stepped, as in straight lines vs curved. not 100% sure how to do this in unreal but probably possible to edit animation curves, look at how to do that maybe, and see if you can edit the curves to becomes stepped/straight vs curved.

https://forums.unrealengine.com/t/set-animation-interpolation-type-for-a-stepped-animation-look/156453

[steel raptor]

Thanks!

[shadow birch]

Does anyone knows how to get the character stop "flying" when I retarget it? When I open both skeletons they kind of seem at same position

[cobalt mauve]

@shadow birch when importing make sure Convert Scene unit option checkbox is true

[clever blade]

Hi!
I made a AnimBP with an AnimGraph to use as a base class for locomotion of all characters.
The idea is to add additional animations and functionality for specific characters in a Child AnimBP that inherits from the base AnimBP.

So far, this works - I can add additional logic in the Event graph and everything from the base works too.

The child class doesn't have an AnimGraph though... Is there a way to extend the base AnimGraph in a Child AnimBP?

[meager marlin]

Hi everyone,

I am trying to create modular First Person Controller System, but i have issue with inverse kinematic with Two Bone IK.
so my two bone ik is lagging one frame behind.

Here's how i did it:

• Effector location is set by world location from the gun socket
• the gun is rotated with camera

I've tried:

• Changing the tick group of Mesh (inheritd) component to post update work, but no luck, the ik is still lagging.

But i've also tested that if i am not using mesh inheritd, but by adding new mesh component and set the tick group to post update work then the lag is gone.
So this issue is only appear when only using mesh inheritd.

However, i can't add mesh component either, because if i using non inheritd mesh component then root motion won't gonna work.

does anybody here have solutions for this? i am stuck with this for like 2 weeks

[worn marlin]

Hi. When do we use the usual FABRIK over the usual two bone IK? I read that it is a bit similar. So far I am seeing more options for FABRIK, I assumed you can tweak more out of it. I reckon it would be better for certain animations but how about for FPS type animations? I am currently using the usual IK for weapon sway and left hand placement. Thank you

[crimson pelican]

Just want to re-iterate this issue so it isnt lost #animation message

[regal orchid]

If your IK has to rely on other objects then chances are there will always be a delay. The only way (to my knowledge) to ensure that the IK does not lag behind without messing with tick groups. Is to make sure that all the data that the IK needs is within the skeleton it is affecting. I had a lot of problems myself with IK for my two handed guns, where the left hand would lag behind. The solution was to add IK joints to my skeleton.

I have two ik joints that come from the root (with the left hand ik one being a child of the right hand ik joint). These two joints are animated to follow their respective hand joint in Maya. So they are always where they should be.

So when I use IK on my left hand, I can use that joint in the picture as the target, and I know it will always be accurate since it is in the exact same spot as the hand originally was, even if the left hand itself drifts due to aim offset animations or whatever.

The added benefit of this is also that I can use this to create dynamic recoil. I just push the right hand back and then lerp it back to the position of the hand_r_ik joint that I have which is always correct.

[meager marlin]

@regal orchid
Awesome, thanks for the reply.

yes no matter what i do i can't fix the problem.

but it only works when using new Mesh (non inherited) and then set the tick group to post update.

however this doesn't allow me to do root motion.

is there's a way to do root motion without using the default inherited mesh from Character Class?

e.g getting the root motion vector from the skeletal mesh? anyway?

[regal orchid]

I'm not experienced with root motion so I can't help you with that. But I know that my approach uses a regular skeletal mesh component, so root motion features shouldn't be impacted.

But if you want your IK to not lag behind then that is the best solution that I know of. Epic's Manny has weapon bones too but for some reason Epic didn't use them when animating him.

[meager marlin]

Thank you for your suggestion, really appreciate it.
i will try.

[steady hatch]

Hey everyone. I want to enable an animation/skill during certain frames of a separate animation/Anim Montage. Would Anim Notifies be a decent option to achieve this?

[sinful birch]

I have an animation blueprint set up with locomotion, plus an attack montage blended in when my player is attacking. However, I want to make it where, when the character is at idle, the animation plays on every bone. Currently the animation only plays at the top-half of the skeleton (as I want it when the character is in motion)

[covert jay]

Exporting an animation with root motion from Blender to Unreal looks okay in Unreal's animation preview. But when actually clicking enable root motion it flips the animation on it's back. Is there a way to fix this?

[sinful birch]

Is the mesh oriented correctly in blender and did you apply location and rotation?

[leaden flint]

Hiho is there a way to Change the downloaded animations for a new character?

I was importing the animations for the skeleton of this character but the result is that -.-

[lean stone]

i've been using add mapped skeletal mesh to map skeleton to rig in blueprints - does anyone know why adding another add mapped skeletal mesh node in sequence with the same skeleton but a different rig does not work?

in metahumans use, there's a control rig for face and one for neck - i can't seem to be using both on the same mesh

[regal orchid]

Are the animations made for that skeleton or are you retargeting them? Could be a problem with joint orientations, among other things.

[lean stone]

well never mind i've joined the control rigs

[leaden flint]

The Animations are from Maxoma/maximo? this webside with characters and animations xD
And the characters are maximo characters from sketchfab

[regal orchid]

So I take it that you didnt retarget them. If so I would suggest double checking your import settings.

[leaden flint]

What do you mean with retarget?

i can only set the skelton to the NPC 01- NPC05 or Character 01-03

[regal orchid]

https://docs.unrealengine.com/4.26/en-US/AnimatingObjects/SkeletalMeshAnimation/AnimationRetargeting/

Im afraid it is hard to tell what the problem is from here.

[leaden flint]

oh thnaks thats perfect so i can use all animations für different characters xD

[regal orchid]

pretty much

but you may have to tweak them after retargeting

[leaden flint]

thats ok

after retargeting maybe the animations are not smooth like before ^^

Thank you!

[vapid estuary]

Anyone with experience on IK Hands lagging? Left hand is lagging when implementing recoil force on right clavicle when firing gun

[regal orchid]

Incidentally someone asked about this issue today. Scroll up a bit and you'll see my answer.

forgot you can link #animation message

[vapid estuary]

Thanks. Will have a look into that

[covert jay]

It looks correct. I had to create a root bone, parent it to the hip, and transfer hip location data to it.

[covert jay]

Looks like the model you are using is missing twist bones for the arms and legs.

[fervent elbow]

Is it possible to make a keyframe hold for a random duration between two values before continuing an animation? If so how would I go about doing that

[leaden flint]

Yes i know, its not perfekt but better than the first try XD

Ok but some of this Animations are not working xD

[covert jay]

You could probably clip it together in a montage and have the engine handle the logic.

[mighty bear]

Hey, guys. I’ve done some researching since my last questions. I wanted to know if y’all could help me some more with the vfx of my skill! This is the one I’m trying to implement. And as far as it goes in ue4, I believe I need to create a spline path for the ball of water to follow. And then spawn a projectile that travels in an arc after it leaves his hands. Is that correct?

Oh that didn’t upload the video correctly :(

This is a 2 version of the skill I’m wanting to make. Sorry for the bad quality, but it’s just a demonstration of what it’s supposed to do

[midnight oyster]

What is the best way to mirror animation inside the same skeleton... i have an animation for one hand,, like Left Grab... i want to use the same animation and do the right grab.. both should be independent of each other ?

[strong flame]

Hi do you know if MH male and female have different or same skeletons?

[misty dagger]

Hey all,

I'm having this issue with getting MetaHuman male and female meshes to play animations. These animations that I'm working with has been animated using a male MetaHuman skeleton, so when I go to use a female MetaHuman onto the animations, the proportions seem off as seen in the picture. The animations play just fine, it's just the proportions that are not to scale it seems.

I'm not sure where I'd start looking to try and fix this issue, if anyone knows where I can at least start looking to solve this issue that would be great. Thanks!

To add a bit more information on top of that, the female MetaHuman skeleton is shorter than the male MetaHuman skeleton, just for a bit more context as to what might be at play here. Thanks once again to anyone that can help 🙂

[spare adder]

Is there a way to export material animations? To fbx or something?

For example foliage with material animations

Export from unreal to fbx or any other format

[leaden flint]

Hiho someone know the Rig Function of Mixamo? I try to create a Rig for my little Reaper but the Rig function will destroy the Reaper ^^
Look at his arms 😦

at Start he was a friendly small reaper ^^

[leaden flint]

someone have any idea? ^^

[static falcon]

That tool works best when the character is very simple... yours looks like it would cause alot of issues

You can try stripping out some of the accessories and see if it works...

Looks like your character has no feet too? @leaden flint

[rustic hearth]

can you import animated meshes into unreal? I have a mesh with a ton of different moving parts, when I import it it gives me a few hundred skeletal meshes etc.

[covert jay]

Honestly, I went that route for a while. It causes more trouble than it's worth if you're using it for anything other than rapid prototyping.

You might be able to get around those issues by applying cloth physics to the robe around the arms and putting a capsule in the physics asset where the actual arm is.

[leaden flint]

Thats correct the character havnt feet.

[leaden flint]

Ah ok nice. Would be there an other way to give this character a rig without this webside?

[covert jay]

It would help hide the imperfections with that specific mesh you've already rigged through mixamo.

Other than that you could rig it yourself in Blender.

[leaden flint]

I can trybut i dont know ^^

[covert jay]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uK7TTDn1rZ8&list=PLyBYG1JGBcd3Q7okcS2wXacvNVM9vo2Ps

[leaden flint]

Thank you !

[covert jay]

No problem! That guy has good tutorials for a recent version of Blender. I personally find it harder to follow along with older videos.

[leaden flint]

Its different some older version are more detailed that newer onece^^

[junior berry]

Hey, does UE4 support squash and stretch in animation ? With custom rig imported.

[tranquil hound]

is there a way to decrease the amount of root motion in an animation without taking it outside of unreal engine? looking to halve it, goes a bit too far.

[mortal violet]

whenever I import models with "automatically scale bones" turned on in the Send to Unreal plugin for Blender, my character looks fine in tpose but animations look like this
If I don't turn it on, it looks fine but anything I attach to the mesh's sockets gets scaled x100
any idea how I can solve this?

[coral thunder]

Hey everyone, have a question about morphtargets/blendshapes: Is it possible to have the blendshapes for a given skeletal mesh spread out over a bunch of different fbx files for organization purposes?

And then import them into the unreal into the same skeletal mesh

[mortal violet]

I found how to fix my issue but I have to manually rescale the movement on every single keyframes of all of my animations, great

and it involves turning off a warning on an official Unreal Engine plugin for blender because that's how good plugins are made

[steady fulcrum]

Hey everyone, hope you have a great day. I'm currently trying to import a model with its animation into UE4. But the mesh in unreal appears to be broken. However the animation has no problem. I searched for like 1 hour and I still didn't find anything about this. Does anyone would know how to fix this ?

[regal orchid]

I guess it has a really weird bind pose for some reason

[steady fulcrum]

Here its is bone hierarchy, i'm not sure it's really conventionnal, I'm not really an animator 😓

[regal orchid]

Not so much the bone structure, just where the bones are when no animation is affecting the bones.

like Manny stands in an A-pose when no animation is applied.

[terse lichen]

Has the Maya rigging toolkit been deprecated?

[regal orchid]

Your trampoline's "A-pose" could be that weird jumble

[terse lichen]

i can't find the plugin and half the documentation is down

[regal orchid]

You mean the A.R.T. plugin?

[terse lichen]

yeah

[regal orchid]

I think so, the guy who made it left epic years ago

[terse lichen]

oh, weird

how were the driven bones set up for metahumans then?

was that a different plugin?

they said its availabe

[regal orchid]

metahumans is completely separate and the characters are made by epic

so don't think it applies

[terse lichen]

oh i'm looking for pose wrangler

its on github

[steady fulcrum]

Ok, so I changed the weight on 1 bone and it changed the appearance of the mesh 🤔

[steady fulcrum]

So i fixed the problem, it was comming from the dummies i used to control the bones. I scaled them and that was a terrible error 💀

reseting their xform fixed the problem

thanks for the help !

[regal orchid]

No problem. But you should be able to scale them, just make sure not to include them in the fbx you export from your program. Only select the mesh itself and the skeleton when exporting. Your control rig should stay in whatever program you used. (And make sure that the scaling you do on your controls do not affect the joints they control)

[frozen lava]

Is there any point in using ALS and control rig? Whats the difference between the two?

control rig looks ultra customizable in terms of IK, anim charts, etc. ALS seems more like just an advanced animation machine that gives a lot of movement options

but control rig looks ultra complicated... idk.. thoghts?

[harsh plover]

Hi there! How can I make an animation freeze on the last frame after playing once?

Its for a death animation. It keeps looping the animation over and over

[frozen lava]

just make 2 animations. cut the frames of the first one to just a single frame

[harsh plover]

nice

[frozen lava]

or u could add a key frame to the end

then just make it go for however much longer u want

idk if that makes it longer tho.. havent done it before

[fair patio]

Hey guys, can I ask for some help?
My animations in state machine are looping even after I exit them

example

1. I enter an animation - length 100 frames
2. I exit it at frame 52
3. When i enter it again it starts playing back from frame 52 instead of frame 0

[leaden flint]

Hiho i need help xD
My ThirdPerson Character animation is broken...
Normally the ThirdPersonCharacter can Jump and will run automaticly but my character have 2 errors and will not use the Jump,Walk and Run animation xD

I dont know why. Yesterday all animations were working

This are the JumpStart to JumpLoop (Rule)
JumpEnd to Idle (Rule)

what kind of code is this little thing ^^

There also was a problem with the Thirdperson Materials, so i have to set the textures again. Its spuky ^^

The Char is now Ideling but broken xD

[regal orchid]

Control rig is a built in rigging and animation tool. ALS is just a character with animations and associated animation blueprint etc.

They are not mutually exclusive

[somber tangle]

Every time I reimport an animation I have to delete the montage, create a new montage, adjust the settings again, and rehook it into my code. Is there a way to avoid this?

[weak kestrel]

Hey noob question. I have retargetted mocap animations for my character imported into UE5. everything is working fine , just wondering if there was some type of setting , blueprint or physics trick i can apply in order to prevent my characters arms from passing through his shirt or his other arm. Looking for a way for the arms to just collide with his body instead of pass / clip through

[fresh lotus]

anyone can help me with this skeleton issue?

[crisp bluff]

what is the best way to make character fat?

should i need to scale each bone individually?

[vivid roost]

Hello. When viewing an animation montage, how can I have a particular socket be displayed while the montage is playing?

I want to view how it is transforming

Found it. Nevermind

[sinful birch]

Years ago, I used to use MakeHuman for.. making humans in blender. Is that an acceptable way, or is there something that's preferred that is comparable?

[strange marsh]

Anyone here know why a character might get stuck in T-pose in Standalone mode, but works normally with PIE?

I'm using the default mannequin.

[misty dagger]

does anybody know how to make the bones not do that when you add basic ik

[bronze turtle]

in retarget manager under set up rig--->select rig...we only get humanoid as default....is there a way to create one in engine for a Dog or cat...or a place to download some more that can be assigned in this drop down?

Im trying to retarget a few animal animations but since their is no epic standard naming convention for 4 legged animals, literally every model has the same exact bones named completely differently and without a rig file i cant retarget anything at all

[static falcon]

Anyone know what I need to do to get AnimBP + Sequencer to work together? I want to use Anim BP to have a head look-at

I guess this would be a better use of control rig... but for now

[terse lagoon]

Hey, quick question. I've got a ticking clock animation using a sequencer but I cant figure out how to trigger it. I tried dragging it into the level bp but that didn't do anything. I want it to loop from the beginning of the game

[frozen lava]

trying to buy an animset on the marketplace but they havent been updated to the latest engine since 4.23

I imagine its not a problem since they're just anims, right?

[regal orchid]

Bit stupid that they require a specific engine. But you can most likely just download 4.23 and then click export or migrate on the animations. And they will work just fine unless the maker did something really weird.

You can make an animation play node and then expose the animation as a pin.

which turns it into a node that looks like this

[lavish thorn]

is it possible to animate inside ue4? If the base model and rig are already set up yata yata? or an easy way to edit animations for the model that are already in?

[misty dagger]

Control Rig

[exotic cipher]

Anyone know how to fix this?
these bones don't seem to move at all, only rotate in-place

[magic citrus]

How do I loop an anim montage?

[sour elm]

when u play it u can set it to loop

depending on how u play it

like from bp Play Montage node has a loop var I thinik

[glacial gale]

or in case you have multiple section you can select checkbox in rightside to loop next section

[magic citrus]

Yup it was just a simple checkbox thanks

[normal marsh]

can anyone tell me how to remove the numbers that is being displayed in the left

[normal marsh]

is this the right place to ask this question or is there any other channel?

[brave musk]

Quick question, I changed the movement speed walk and crouch but now the slowed animation doesn't fire the anim notifies and I don't understand why, where should I look? (found that changing the anim notify mode to all animations kinda fixes but spams the notifies) Second question; where can I find the animated mesh component?

[fresh lotus]

this is more a general question, not animation related

probably #blueprint related?

[narrow topaz]

Hey y'all:
I've got this wonderful data from a Live Link performance capture in blendshape curves.
Anyone know if there's a way to export these curves from Unreal into an .fbx for retargeting / cleanup in Maya?

[reef agate]

hey peeps, I need some advice on mirroring skeletal animations. I've been using a marketplace RMAMirrorAnimation plugin. Works great, but i'd like to get away from using the plugin

do you think there is a benefit to me creating a mirrored animation set in Maya or is there any other alternative?

Looking to keep things as optimized as possible

Curious what an AAA game would opt for

[bronze osprey]

reimport with scale of -X

[reef agate]

So export the anims from UE4 (assuming I don't have the originals in Maya) then scale -x in maya and import the new scaled ones?

Seems a lil too easy but if it works : P?

[bronze osprey]

import option in unreal has scale

[reef agate]

oh

Why have i never seen that documented or mentioned in a forum etc?

[bronze osprey]

i explained it a bit up too WhippyTrout

[reef agate]

seems like an easy solution

[bronze osprey]

cuz im a freakin genious 😛

and i dont do many forum posts

you should find it if you use the search in this channel

i usually do it in blender but with import options should be fine

come to think of it the import options screen unreal has a transform section and u can scale it -1 in there, it wil flip the anim and set that as 1.1.1 it should be perfect

that was my final answer and was accepted as correct 😛

never tried myself tho

you can do it ineditor aswell, but than sockets would also be -1 and you might or mightnot want that

so better no do that cuz if you forget or other person doesnt know its -1 it can become hard to debug

[reef agate]

erm

there is no non uniform scale in anim import

[bronze osprey]

stranslation x-1

[reef agate]

translation would just move the mesh

not mirror anything

what u talkin about for realz? : )

[bronze osprey]

let me open the editor

[oak badger]

I have a SKM mesh and animations for it, and have recently decided to add a new bone into the hierarchy, the bone itself isnt animated, it just sits in a position and thats it. I reimported the SKM mesh and the bone is in the correct location, and I expected the other animations to just leave the bone alone as it isnt in the animation data, but instead it has moved the transform of the bone, so the old animations just dont work with regards to that 1 bone. Does anybody know if theres a way to fix this, an option perhaps?? Thanks!

[bronze osprey]

@reef agate

[reef agate]

dats what i want ya

[bronze osprey]

mayB the animation scale on import got removed?

[reef agate]

i'm on 4.26

what did you do that mirroring w?

[bronze osprey]

in details

i set scale to x-1

[reef agate]

on root bone in the anim?

if that's what u mean that has bad side effects for me like inverting normals

[bronze osprey]

no on the skel mesh

nah i mean sockets wil be -1x and could do weird stuff

[reef agate]

ya that's a terrible idea for me i almost certain

i not looking for hacks. need a solid solution

my game is VR, full body IK blah blah : )

wondering what a AAA workflow would be for this

[bronze osprey]

scaling the rig and apply the scale is fine

[reef agate]

you switch left or right hand dominant in the game that's why i need mirrored anims

reversing sockets is a definite deal breaker

[bronze osprey]

well thats what the reimport was for, it applies the scale and sets -1x as 1

[reef agate]

there is no non uniform scale on import as i mentioned : /

[bronze osprey]

@opal jackal said it worked tho

so mayB it got removed?

@reef agate the VR template pre 4.27 does something similar too

2 hands 1 skel mesh with flipped scale

[indigo palm]

So does control rig give you the ability to create your own animations without using 3ds max / maya / blender?

I've been hearing conflicting information

[bronze osprey]

yes it can

[indigo palm]

Cool

I found it confusing when I tried to use it in UE5 with no prior experience with it. I know how to make controls and use different solvers in 3ds MAX, but when it came time to actually create an animation in control rig with UE5, I felt lost. Nothing jumped out at me to click to open up the animation editor (if that exists)

[bronze osprey]

marketplace has a control rig example free from epic

[stoic thorn]

I'm not sure to understand this :

Does the slot override the state machine ?

(And do you have any resources about anim graphs etc .. ?)

[opal jackal]

It mirrored the animations for my I just had to import and set the rotation and the negative value so it would be right side up. I wound up not using it because if sockets being backwards, I finally found the maya bonus tools on Autodesk website which adds the mirror tool to maya. Then I mirrored the anims in maya

[remote shadow]

So im trying to add shield and sword moving/idle animations. I have the code for the idle and movement for crouch and walking aswell as running and I have the animations for attacking and putting my sword on my back/in my hand. Im trying to make it so If I put the sword in my hand Ill get a different idle animation.

[velvet dagger]

hey guys, I want to add some small animations to my project like door opening, drawer opening, etc. I'm still a learning the engine so I'm not sure if it's something that should be done through blueprints/CPP (setting the rotation/position over time) or if you can create keyframe animation clips in the editor and trigger those.

[slender saddle]

guys when i jump i can crouch

how to stop that

[static falcon]

@slender saddle make some transition rules in your state machine

[slender saddle]

how ?

im kinda new to ue4 thats my jump crouch nodes

@static falcon

sorry for mention :-:

[static falcon]

Easiest way would be create a boolean variable called crouching and set it to true when crouching

Then in the jump, use a branch node

Actually sorry, that's backwards from what you asked

[slender saddle]

:-:

can u come prv ?

[static falcon]

I don't know what that means

[slender saddle]

dm

[static falcon]

I had this question the other day too Huffdog

My feeling is it's probably easier to just do it with a timeline and two separate pieces for something like a drawer opening

I had a fan that I wanted to rig, and making animation clips and an animation blueprint felt like overkill

You could rig it with a skeleton and do it that way too though, but not really sure why go through the effort, unless anyone else has a good reason I am not aware of

[velvet dagger]

Great thanks @static falcon , I went with timeline node option, using a float value to drive position and/or rotation. Seems to work well handy that it has play reverse functionality too.

[static falcon]

It also has the added advantage of the desk being able to be static and therefore light baked, where as the skeletal mesh probably wouldn't

[static falcon]

I'm not sure exactly what the issue is but maybe you could make two different locomotion state machines that you swap to based on a boolean?

[brave musk]

I lowered the crouch speed in the char movement component and now the crouch animation seems like slow motion? What and where do I need to change?

[kindred saffron]

can you show the anim blueprints

[brave musk]

It's kinda big, anything specific?

[kindred saffron]

the crouching state

[kindred saffron]

Yeah I figured, because you're using a blendspace the animation is trying to match the blend

just increase the playrate of your animation, or change your velocity stuff to match the animaiton properly

[brave musk]

these values?

[kindred saffron]

I'd recommend fixing your parameters if you're gonna use a blendspace. But yes you can just alternatively speed up the animation

Where it says rate scale

increase it to 1.5 or 2.0

to see a nice change

or whatever you want

looks like it's only necessary for crouch forward

[brave musk]

Velocity is sensitive cause I already have notifies rigged to the animation and changing it not a good idea. Will try now changing those rates.

[kindred saffron]

https://gyazo.com/88a3176f4a82471b99df9770cd9b8846

Increase the rate scale of this one

that will speed up the animation

[brave musk]

Weird, changed to 10 all that say fwd and it only changes the strafing crouch.

[kindred saffron]

yeah sorry, it's not my project so I don't know which animation name is which

but whatever animation is looking slow mo, jsut increase the rate scale on it

to match the desired effect

[brave musk]

It's fine, maybe I will try find the "playrate of the animation" I saw that somewhere yesterday

[pliant trail]

yeah iirc you do that on the specific animation, rather than the blendspace

[brave musk]

Sigh still doesn't do

[kindred saffron]

Should work fine on the blendspace, otherwise the option wouldn't be there. Perhaps there's something else

[brave musk]

Or are they just a preview tool

got it

changed these values "strafe" and "forward" to half

[kindred saffron]

That's what I was recommending in the beginning, glad it worked

"I'd recommend fixing your parameters if you're gonna use a blendspace."

sorry fi I worded that confusingly

[brave musk]

You were mentioning the rate scale, not those 😅

Ah yeah the wording. No worry glad it's all solved. Thank you so much for your time 🙂

[quaint bramble]

Hi all. I have a blueprint coding related animation question... I think :0 Not sure which channel to post this in. (2D) I have an animation where the player is moved off of the ground during the anim, and ends having moved in both the Z and X dimensions. E.g. you carry a box with you and the animation is you putting the box down in front of you and then climbing up onto it. So it ends with you standing on the box. Should I be moving the pivot point every frame of that animation to always centre on the player character? Up until now I had been playing the animation through the AnimBP and then teleporting the player to the end position of the animation when the animation is finished. So far this has worked okay but it has obvious issues - e.g. the camera is attached to the player, so it snaps (or suddenly lags) over to the end position once the anim is finished depending upon lag settings. So i've just been experimenting with what I see as the other way of doing it (hopefully there are better ways!)... so I move the pivot point throughout the animation, (and having turned gravity scale to 0), I then teleport the player roughly towards the end point of the animation. This kinda works but doesn't match correctly even with VInterp etc. I guess to do that right I'd have to move the specifically needed distance per frame of the animation (i.e. a different amount of X and Z for every single frame of the animation. That is possible but is going to take ages... am i doing this wrong? Is there a better way? Advice welcome!

[noble dagger]

I don't really work with 2D in unreal, but, if you changed the animation to use root motion, wouldn't that take care of it, since the capsule is moving, the camera's centering should continue to work?

[quaint bramble]

Hi Geei - thanks. I have no idea. I've heard that term before over the years. I don't know if it is applicable to Pixel2D or not offhand. The animations are just a series of sprites played as a flipbook.

Each sprite has a positional pivot point

[noble dagger]

ahhh, yeah, then basically you would have the positional pivot change on each frame, that is a pretty good analogy for what a root motion animation is in 3d

[noble dagger]

General workflow question:

If I have animations that are designed for one skeleton (think unreal marketplace) and want to migrate them toa similar skeleton (same bone structure, different proportions). Would it be best to:

• retarget the animations in Unreal, export, and then modify the animations in Unreal via keyframe edits
  or
• retarget the animations in Unreal, export, and then modify the animations in another program (blender, cascadeur, etc), then import
  or
  something else

A "high level" exmaple would be adjusting animations so that a shorter-armed character (woman, child/teen) could use a 2 handed weapon well.

Thoughts?

[slim herald]

Hey guys, I have a character customization feature where the face mesh changes based on user selection of scales. I was wondering, how do people integrate animations when the mesh changes? i know some games have very big character customization options and still manage to animate the player character during cut scenes to display face emotions, so how is that done?

[slender saddle]

guys is the look good ?