Hi there guys, after almost 2 months of programming, digging into the source code, and banging my head around some solutions, i’m almost ready to release my own contribution (PLUGIN, sorry for the misunderstanding) to unreal engine, called “PaperZD” (Zeta D).
Because i’m working with a 2d dev team, we recognized the lack of 2d support for 2 things that are really needed IMHO: State Machines + Event System, just like on AnimBPs.
The solution we present is a mirroring of 3d AnimationBlueprints, the plugin comes with the following:
- Animation Blueprints => Now one can create an animation blueprint, add logic, modify an state machine (adding a Flipbook to each state as wanted), and even use Transition Graphs just as the Normal “3D” Animation Blueprints.
The Transition Graphs work just as any event graph:
- Each of this “States” can be double clicked to enter the “Event Editor”, which works as closely as possible to the AnimBPs.
Some things that this system can do:
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Can use Native Notifies or NotifyStates, the drawback is that this notifies are PaperZDNotifies, because AnimNotifies from Unreal rely on some wonky 3D objects not present on 2D.
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Can use BlueprintNotifies derived from this PaperZDNotify or PaperZDNotifyState
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Can use CustomNotifies: Just like on 3D, one can define a new notify, and the integrated compiler for this AnimBP will create a new function normally named ReceivedNotify_{NOTIFYNAME}.
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This plugin fully supports UNDO and transactions, so one can edit with no problems.
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The PaperZDAnimBlueprint comes with a TickEvent that can be managed to update animation variables, or whatever one would want.
My DevTeam and I are right now using this plugin for our own game, and we are working on making it better each day.
The plugin will be finished in about 2 weeks (we are testing right now), and will be sold on the marketplace (will update here with the price).
I’m considering creating a Beta Testing team, so if any of you are interested on this solution and would like to beta test it, give me a call.
Cheers!