I’m spawning an AI character for a scare moment where it quickly pops up from behind a couch.
The issue is that on spawn, the Skeletal Mesh is visible for a single frame in its reference/T-pose before the animation starts playing. This completely ruins the scare because there’s a noticeable flash of the idle or T-pose before the intended animation kicks in.
I tried multiple approaches:
-
Playing the animation on BeginPlay
-
Setting the mesh to Animation Mode → Use Animation Asset with the desired animation already assigned
-
Spawning the actor hidden and unhiding it once the animation should be playing
-
Enabling pose ticking / bone refresh options (Always Tick Pose & Refresh Bones)
Despite this, the mesh still renders for one frame in a default pose right after spawning.
Goal:
Spawn the AI so that the first visible frame is already part of the animation, with no visible T-pose or idle frame.
Question:
What is the correct way to spawn a Skeletal Mesh actor so that its animation pose is fully evaluated before it becomes visible?
Is there a recommended workflow (deferred spawn, AnimBP setup, mesh visibility handling, etc.) to prevent this one-frame pose flash?