Animation Curve - Obsolete documentation and issue with Material type curve

Development Character & Animation
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1

Hello!

I’m trying to pilot a material parameter through an Animation Curve of type Material as it seems cleaner than using AnimNotify and easier for designers to use

I saw this documentation but it doesn’t seem up to date at all, for example the Anim Curves panel doesn’t exist anymore: https://dev.epicgames.com/documentation/en\-us/unreal\-engine/animation\-curves\-in\-unreal\-engine\#usinganimationcurves

By checking some community sources, it seems that now we have to create the curve on the skeleton asset, check the “Material” type checkbox in the Curves panel and then I should be able to add it in an animation sequence available with this skeleton.

I did this process but issue is that in the Animation Sequence Editor, I see in the Curve Debugger panel that my curve doesn’t have the “Material” type checkbox checked (whereas it is still checked in the Skeleton Editor) and I see that the curve isn’t considered as “Active” as it is only displayed in Curve Debugger when Active filter is not selected.

I attached a screenshot with a little reproduction of the issue with the ThirdPerson sample project.

Is it planned to update this documentation soon ? Is there an operation I missed in the process/setup of animation curve that drive a Material parameter ?

Thanks!

Anthony

Community sources:

2

Steps to Reproduce

  • Create a curve in a skeletal asset with Skeleton Editor
  • Check the Material type checkbox within Curves panel still in the Skeleton Editor
  • Open an Animation Sequence compatible with the same skeleton asset
  • Add the curve you’ve just created in the Animation Sequence
  • Open the Curve Debugger still in Animation Sequence Editor
  • You’ll see that your curve isn’t active and doesn’t have Material type checkbox checked
  • Same behaviour with or without having the scalar parameter in the parameter with the same name
3

Hi, thanks for reporting this. I’ve taken a look and I see that the curve debugger window has been broken since we added support for it with the pose watch system in the Anim BP editor. There were various assumptions made when that code was added which aren’t true when in the anim sequence editor.

I have a fix shelved at CL 46954322 if you’re able to integrate that change and test it? I can also provide it as a patch if that would be easier. With that you should see:

  • The curve vaues correctly update as you would expect
  • Curves on both the sequence and the skeleton appear
  • The various filters work correctly for Active (ie. animation curve rather than skeleton), Morphs and Materials
  • The Material/Morph check boxes display correctly
4

In terms of the documentation that you mentioned, I’ll pass that onto the docs team so they are aware. They are pretty stacked with other tasks though so I would expect it’ll be quite a while before they can get this updated unfortunately.

5

Hi Euan,

Thanks a lot for your reactivity !

We are not able to test the fix right now but that’s already enough for us to know that the issue is known and a fix is available.

Thanks too for sharing the info to your doc team !

Have a good day

6

No problem! We escalated this internally since it’s quite a big QoL feature, so we are going to try and get it into the 5.7 release. You should find it there if/when you upgrade, as long as I don’t run into any further issues. Thanks again for reporting it.