[AI] Is there a way to store animations in a variable or call them from a node?

Development Programming & Scripting AI
, , ,
1

I am about two weeks into learning how to use Blueprints and I’m not certain if this is the correct way of doing this, but I’d like to keep everything in BP’s for the time being since this is where I want to focus my learning at, also English is a second language so bare with me please :\

So I plan on having 10+ different NPC’s in my game, all with different animations, I’ve created a master class for the AI and just create children for each individual NPC. https://i.gyazo.com/a82c4928c28d8a94de3f86b81165bc1f.png

Inside of the main class I have all of it’s logic being handled which works as intended, but I hit a dead end when it comes to animations.
Since each animation is unique to the mesh I can’t just set the animation in the “Play Animation” Node to one being used by certain NPC if other NPCs are going to using the same logic, it results in some weird dis-forming of the mesh when it gets played https://i.gyazo.com/d58d54234dde07df1536eeadbae2de7c.gif

Only node that comes off “Anim to Play” input I recognise is get current montage, so would I need to create a montage for each NPC, if so, how would I get it called (I’ll finish off the rest of this train of thought if that’s the case)

Here is my Blurprint: AI Melee Damage posted by anonymous | blueprintUE | PasteBin For Unreal Engine (Look for the rerout node)

Maybe there is a way to have an “Input & Output” node that I could edit in the Child Classes?
Or would I need to add that NPC attacking system individually to each child class?

2

I really need to stop being lazy, adding the above graph into my child Ai classes and having in run off Pawn Sense event worked, but it exposed some problems in my logic

3

Have you considered animation retargeting for your different NPCs? If they all have similar bone structures it will work. https://docs.unrealengine.com/latest/INT/Engine/Animation/RetargetingDifferentSkeletons/index.html

4

I was made aware of the true purpose of animation retargeting on another thread, but thanks :slight_smile: