4.14 Animation Feature & December UE4jam Theme Announced - December 8th - Live From Epic HQ

https://docs.unrealengine.com/latest/images/Support/Builds/ReleaseNotes/2016/4_14/image_40.jpg

WHAT
Lina Halper is on the stream to once again show us all the latest and greatest animation tools. With the release of 4.14, animations have received new upgrades and an updated UI! Come watch and learn all about these powerful features!

Then, we’ll be kicking off the December UE4jam live by announcing the theme at the end of the stream. So stay tuned until the very end to get in the jam!

WHEN
Thursday, December 8th @ 2:00PM ET Countdown]

WHERE

WHO

Lina Halper - Sr Animation Engineer - @nikolobin](https://twitter.com/nikolobin)

Power Point from this video is available for download here.

Archive:

?v=Ny3TULUfehk

I know this is beyond the scope of this stream, but I just wanted request a stream or tutorial series on Procedural Animation, techniques seen in Overgrowth.

Like leaning towards acceleration.
Pose asset blending from velocity (modify bone to emulate flipping, rolling speed and direction tied to velocity).

Curve asset controlled secondary animations, creating things like floppy ears (a non-physics version of what physical animations can do w/o collision) The devs of overgrowth show an example.

Just wanted to say thank you to the team behind the current updates to the animation features in 4.14. And thanks to Lina Halper for coming to discuss them for us. Whenever you’re on, I know it’s going to be a fascinating stream :smiley: [because I’m an aspiring animator]

Just to keep a record, it would be nice to hear about:

  • how to work with animations using Child Montages,
  • how to use new Pose Driver
  • how to work with virtual bones

Pretty sure this is not for this particular topic for this stream, but I for one would love to see some training on animation replication. I do pretty good for the most part, but a full blown example for animation replication, such as montages that contain animation notifies would help me a lot for sure. I get most things to replicate, but when it comes to things like montages that contain animation notifies, that’s where it starts getting me every time!

We need more replication tutorials in general for blueprints, ive followed all the ones available, but for the love of god and all that is holy, do something like the shooter game example, but all in blueprint!

The skeletalMesh viewer used to have two checkboxes per material element for highlighting or isolating the corresponding mesh sections.
Where is that now? It was pretty useful to debug complex material element configurations.

I agree, missing that too. Especially useful when you have meshes with +3 or more materials.

That option is moved to LOD section. Materials are list of materials, and LOD section should display how they’re assigned, and that option shows it.

I have an issue where I have a custom AI for flying enemies and I want to be able animate them nicely for complex maneuvers across space, but at the same time the collision/obstacle avoidence should not break. Any idea on what could be a good approach? My programmer is against just using sweep and run the animation despite collision issues, because the AI might get stuck in the environment. We consider checking whether the animation has enough space, then play the animation if there is enough space. Any better ideas?

On the same enemy, I was trying to get a 180degree rotation done so that the enemy faces the other way. I animated the actor rotation in blueprints and my actual animation that played at the same time was compensated for that rotation. It worked neatly, but I was wondering if there was a better way to do this.
Also, the animation trails would basically get reset at the start and end of this animation. So I was wondering if there was a better way to handle those. Can I use ribbon particles like animation trail particles (on an animated skeletal mesh)? Or should I make a special skeletal mesh with an animation trail and attach that to the enemy?

Thank you so much, There wasn’t enough time in this stream. As for pose asset blending, in our system, we still rely on anim blueprint to handle blending and so on. Pose Asset allows you to animate easier by manipulating curves.

Secondary motion, you can use anim dynamics (please check 's twitch stream - we have lots of Paragon heroes using it).

I think doc team or support team can make a cool demo with all of these like over growth style of system. Keep poking! I’ll do same.

I suggested this idea to streaming team. Thanks for the suggestion.

>> AI

If you don’t use collision from mesh, (i.e. capsule of pawn) then animating shouldn’t make them stop there, but you’ll visually see the penetration. If you prefer having physics on them, you could try Physical Animation so that it will work with physics.

>> 180 degree

I think we might not have good support for root rotation, but that is usually what I’d suggest, but what you did is also fine. If it’s multiplayer, make sure it also works in clients seeing another client.

>> trail
I’m not exactly sure what you’re trying to solve. You don’t like them finishing? You want them to stay around? You could try mesh particles and so on also like you mentioned.

Thanks,

–Lina,

@nikolobin

Thanks for the reply, I have reasons for seeking a non physics solution for specific elements. Like for the pelvis, you can’t really rely on physical animations without making the whole body limp when all you want to do is add some “bounce” or “springy” behavior to the center of the character without causing adverse effects on the legs and feet, like in Overgrowth :slight_smile:

Thank you for bring this up to the team, I would love to see a demo showcasing such elements. I’m currently still trying to see what I can figure out on my own, but thanks for anything more you guys can provide! :smiley:

@nikolobin

Thanks! This helped!

The archive is up :smiley: