So I’m trying to do the simple task of making an animation NOT loop. I would think there would be a check box somewhere in the anim for looping, play once, rewind but no such luck (at least that I can find).
All I could find is that I need to create an animation blueprint to make the animation play once (of which I couldn’t figure out exactly…I’ll have to go down that rabbit hole if it turns out that’s the only way), or there is an animation mode setting I found in the sequencer that I found. Custom asset, animation asset or Animation blueprint where Animation asset seemed to have the looping checkbox I’m talking about, but it doesn’t seem to ‘apply’ to the animation in question. The other option is Animation Montages, from what I can tell, of which I will look into as well.
These are all options for sure, and I’m happy to go down them eventually, but I mean all I want is the animation to not loop! Shouldn’t be this hard surely!
Any help on where the correct checkbox to set an animation to stop looping is and/or how to apply the animation asset animation mode correctly, or I guess confirmation that Unreal needs blueprints for even the smallest things would be appreciated.
The animations do have an option for looping and it’s usually On by default.
Click the animation within the state machine. In the details panel you can search for loop. That’s Should sort the setting.
Additionally, maybe just add a notify to the animation, change a boolean with it, and use it to exit the state machine.
it’s a crappy low performance hack - find the setting, it’s much better.
you can exit the state based on remaining time of the animation once it isn’t set to loop.
So I have to go into state machines INSIDE an Animation blueprint…to turn off a looping animation? I’ll keep my opinions about that to myself I think. I don’t know enough about the anim blueprints system and state machines yet to do that, all the things I have tried just don’t seem to work at all. So hours of youtube videos await no doubt. If I was making a game, then it would make sense in a way, but I just want to set up some animation at the moment.
I think I’ll just make a looping version of the last frame of the animation separately. Seems easier than doing all that for my purposes, and probably looks better anyway (Idle animation, etc)
So, normally animations are used and played inside of a blueprint.
I’m not sure what it is that you are attempting to do, or for what exaclty, but if you just want to play an animation once via nodes, then you would be better off setting up as follows.
Create an empty animation BP. Make a 1 frame animation and use as Idle (no state machine needed).
Pull up any tutorial on anim montages and use the info to set up a slot in your anim BP (set it on the root bone).
Next, create the montage with the animation you want to play.
After that, you just call the montage nodes for that montage and it will only play once (unless the montage is configured otherwise).
I suppose it is an extra layer of complications for you, but there is usually no need to play just a single animation via BP nodes. If that’s what you are even trying to do.
Maybe describe your use case a bit, and I or someone can come up with a better option.
You do have quite a few, including matinee or sequencer…
In my case I’m looking at just creating animation in Unreal…basically matinee/cinematic stuff. Not interested in any actual gameplay. I know it’s not designed for that, but as the movie/TV industry is seemingly going that way due to the use of raytracing, etc. I figure its a good thing to know and learn. I’m trying to blend a little more control of animation inside Unreal rather than bouncing to and from the modeling program over and over for small edits. Just looking at the best/fastest way to do all the things when focusing on animation. It’s certainly not as easy as I would have hoped, but not impossible to do once I learn (a lot) more about the engine.
Coming from Unity maybe spoiled me a bit in regards to things like this as it’s all VERY easy to do in the timeline/asset directly and there’s a lot of control with animation etc. in engine. don’t need to dive very deep to control a lot of this stuff. The catch is Unity is a little behind on the raytracing stuff (doesn’t have skinned mesh support for example) and never really looked as good as unreal out of the box. Unreal also seems to be the industry standard for movie/tv moving forward…although they have a LOT more toys to play with to make their life easier
Now that I know that Unreal works like it does, certainly a crash course over the last week, I have a better understanding of what to expect moving forward. Already looking into animation blueprints and will be getting onto the slots and montages and blendspaces and notifies and…and …and
I’ll also be looking at live link, if I can get any of that running with other applications I use. and who knows what else I can figure out to speed up the process.
Well, for the movie stuff sequencer is your friend.
You can choose the animations for it to play, along with any movement, etc. In a timeline fashion without any need for blueprints or stuff that is more pertinent to gameplay.
The downside is you don’t get to create blueprints for it.
There are a few official tutorials you can learn a lot from within the academy section.
top Learn tab and Online Learning
Very true…what it does, it does well…but what it doesn’t do (play once animation for example) it doesn’t do AT ALL Hehe. The best approach will be a mix of sequencer/blueprints/out of engine work. And each case will be a unique case for each situation basically.
Currently playing with Animblueprints and state machines to see what I can control through that.
Morph target blends (with no bone animation) seem to work correctly with Local Space set for Additive Animation Type under Additive Settings in the Animation panel. This will allow the bones to not animate and just blend the morph target over the top in Sequencer. Which is basically what I need, at least one method.
It seems this does not work the same way when using Anim blueprints though, as the morph animation shrinks to zero. I guess that makes sense though…kind of…maybe
To have the morph apply within the animation you’d have to manipulate/create a curve for it. once that’s created, and set to some value, then the morph will animate as well.
Not sure if you can get control of that curve via Sequencer, but I don’t see why not? you can definitely control it via BP…
