I was looking for an answer for this question for a while now, but without success. If it was answered before, please point me in the right direction.
I want to create a reload animation for a character with a rifle in 3rd person view. How can I make my character throw away an empty magazine on the floor and make it stay there for a couple of seconds while the character is putting in a new magazine AND moves around the map at the same time? Do I need to arrange everything in the animation software, or is there a better way to solve it inside the engine?
The magazine dropping is usually done in game by spawning a magazine mesh with physics enabled and removing it after a few seconds.
To achieve that. Normally you create a notify at the frame in which the old magazine is expelled, and use the notify to both remove the attached mag, and spawn a copy that falls to the floor.
OR, if you are using sockets you may also be able to just detach the mesh and enable physics without having to spawn anything.
Better solutions usually involve weapons that have the magazine attached in a socket anyways, and since it takes a few mins to modify things I would suggest you use that method.
Even better inomementations would keep count of the bullets and perform a tactical reload (keeping the old magazine) if the ammo is more then 0. For that usually different animations and a different scripting are utilized.