Hi, I just wondered what this Conduit state is. It just seems to be a state without any animation pose. But how does that make sense? Isn’t it always required to play an animation?
So could you explain to me what a Conduit is and when do you need to use Conduits instead of normal states?
The documentation explaining what they are and how to use them is available here. They’re basically similar to a transition rule only they can have multiple inputs and / or outputs so you can branch into different animation states depending on various checks.
I’d just like to add that I share the confusion of the OP. I read the documentation and based on that there no difference to a normal state. The main determining factor seems to be in the sentence “The actual transition rules that exit the Conduit can then determine the type of death and allow blending to the appropriate state.” but that is exactly what I do with regular states. You have one state, then multiple outgoing arrows and the transition rule in each arrow determines when to take that route.
Neither the state/conduit nor the rules for states/conduit show any difference from each other whatsoever. So I can only conclude that the conduit is a redundant concept, perhaps a leftover from an earlier development state of the engine that was superseded by an improved version of the regular state.
I don’t know… I achieved everything with nested state machines… I don’t know the advantages of the conduit… but as of now I am using it to self transition to a state… So at least I found one use for it 
also, this guy UE4 Adventure Kit v2.0 Integration Tutorial - 07 - Anim Blueprint - Anim Graph - YouTube uses it in a smart way. Wish I had done it like him
A conduit has a Bool/Rule inside.
A state contains a slot for animation.
The conduit can be used like a state without having to play an animation.
You can use a state like a conduit gate, but it will want to play an animation.
That’s the main difference and why it exists. If you’re ever in a position that you scratch your head and think I really need a state here to control things or route something somewhere but I don’t want to play an anim, call up your buddy the conduit.
Usually a conduit gets used like a gate.
Lets say, your character can have different status effects put on them, that drastically affects how they look when moving (Exhausted, Wounded and Poisoned) Inside of each of those you have states (Idle, Walk/Run, Jump) that have their own Bool/Rules. You can copy that entire setup, rules and all, gate it behind a conduit like “Status” replace the animations with different versions and you now have “Exhausted and Wounded and Poisoned” all working off of the same bools to walk/run and jump, but the conduit gate keeps it in and out of the right status.
You don’t have to manage a lot of rules between your main node that is talking to wounded, poisoned and exhausted all at the same time. If you do that (hook it all into your main node) it gets hit, and checks all 3+ rules every time, but with the gate it only checks 1. If you do that enough times you can save yourself from hitting a ton of rules all at the same time.
Just wanna say thanks a ton for the amazing answer. That screenshot in the middle also clarified it really well for me, as I was already using an empty State as a Conduit.
Found an immediate use for it thanks to you 
its less taxing on the pc/Unreal and on your eyes than having 1 million arows going around everywhere same reason why people use inums rather than hunded diffrent var for every punch kick or any animation
Best explanation I’ve ever seen
