Hello everyone I’m having a bit of trouble with my animations when they transition between each other, they move extremely fast and sometimes seems to even snap or don’t even play, for instance I have aim animations for all the weapons but when I press aim the animation doesn’t play it just flinches and for the weapon sockets based on the animation I’m playing the weapon would change position even though I set it to the hand in the players skeleton. I’d really appreciate the help, thank you. @ClockworkOcean @Mind-Brain
three separate issues here, and they feed each other:
- fast/snappy transitions: give every transition rule a real blend duration (0.15-0.25s) instead of instant, or better, put an Inertialization node after the state machine and set the state machine transitions to inertialization blending. instant blends are exactly what produces the flinch you describe on aim.
- aim animation not playing: the flinch pattern usually means the state is entered and immediately left, or the source pose is still winning the blend. check the transition out of the aim state: if its condition can be true on the same frame (for example a bIsAiming check that flips, or a rule with no minimum dwell), the aim pose never gets weight. also right-click the aim sequence in the state and make sure the state actually plays that sequence and not an empty/pinned pose. print or watch the state weights with the anim preview to confirm.
- weapon drifting from the hand: if the weapon is attached to a hand socket it will always follow whatever that bone does, including mid-blend poses, so some movement during blends is normal. if it fully detaches from where the hand is, check: attach method on the weapon is Snap to Target (Keep World will leave it floating), it is attached to the hand socket on the same skeletal mesh that is animating (not the collision capsule or a static root), and the aim pose uses the same socket rather than an offset socket. also turn off Update Rate Optimizations on the character mesh while testing, URO makes sockets visibly lag and jitter.
fix the blending first. most of the socket weirdness disappears once the aim pose actually plays and blends smoothly.
do they have any root motion ?
What do you mean exactly if I have root motion enabled? i don’t use root motion unless the animation moves from point A to point B
fair question. root motion is when the movement comes from the animation itself: the sequence was authored with the character actually translating in it, and if root motion is enabled on that sequence the engine reads the root bone trajectory and moves the character with it, instead of the movement component. anims authored “in place” have no root translation, so with root motion off the character stays where the movement component puts it.
why i asked: if some of your locomotion/aim anims have Enable Root Motion on and others do not, you get pops exactly at blend boundaries, because one anim is driving the character position and the next one is not. that reads as the “not blending well” symptom on its own.
check it per asset: open each sequence, in asset details look at Enable Root Motion and the Root Motion Root Lock setting (Root Motion from Everything vs from Root Bone). make the whole locomotion set consistent. for a shooter where the movement component owns position, the clean setup is all locomotion anims in place with root motion off, and root motion reserved for authored displacement like vaults and mantles.
it matters for your socket drift too: blending an anim that applies a root transform into one that does not shifts the whole hierarchy mid-blend, and anything attached to a hand socket moves with it. once the set is consistent, the follow-through/sway you see is just normal hand movement during blends, and the earlier inertialization advice is the fix for that.
No, none of my animations have root motion enabled, and I don’t fully understand animations inside unreal yet, so I don’t get the inertialization stuff. All I know so far is that the blend in and out times can fix some of the issues and that by default the weapon sockets aren’t really broken they are doing what they’re supposed to, it’s just that I can’t figure out how to change the socket transforms based on animation even though you said I should check the animation blueprint it’s just not my skill level or I’m thinking too deep into it.