Anim state machine debug logging

Trying to debug an animation state machine is driving me nuts, I figured for sure there must be some log setting somewhere that would let me output transition events with times. Couldn’t find anything.
I think this would really help and should be easy to implement.

Anyone have any tips for debugging animations generally? I found ‘showdebug animation’, but it seemed to be ignoring most of my commands and I have no idea how to choose the target. From the docs it seems this gives no info on state machines anyway though.

2 Likes

Have you tried attaching the Persona debugger to an instance in the world? Open the Anim BP while in PIE and pick an in-game instance from the Object to Debug drop-down. It shows the current weights and active transitions of the states visually.

Cheers,
Michael Noland

Hi Michael, thanks for the response.

Yep actually I had discovered that functionality, and it’s true that in most cases that is probably sufficient. In my case though I was trying to debug an issue where states were transitioning immediately when they shouldn’t, sometimes multiple transitions in a single frame. Obviously in cases like that a realtime visual display (without breakpoint functionality) isn’t much help, and having a log to browse after the fact would be useful.

Fair enough. I normally just use the visuals and and if I notice two states pingponging instantly I look at the transition rules for it and diagnose from there. I don’t even normally use PIE since you can exercise the inputs that drive the transitions directly in Persona.

Tracking down traversal across multiple states can be trickier; I can see where a tracepoint log would be useful there for sure.

Cheers,
Michael Noland

I second the request for good Anim State Machine Debug Logging. This would be very useful!

Jim

Has there been anything on this? I am having an animated door close instantly instead of taking a full second as I would expect and I could use a logging mechanism to see why—it has me stumped.

To anyone still looking for a useful tool, check out the Animation Insights plugin and the Rewind Debugger: Animation Insights in Unreal Engine | Unreal Engine 5.2 Documentation