Does anyone have a good workflow tutorial or tips for having an array of actors do single / looping animations in sync on a specific reference point (like a skeletal bone or socket)?
I’m just a designer asking for one of our animators (and I’m also curious myself about the process) on what would the recommended method would be to create the animations and implement them.
In our past projects on different engines we would
- Skeletal bone(s) in parent object or single script actor in the worldspace
- Skeletal model or script reference point w/ level geometry would be exported out
- Separate animations for a vignette with actors created off the exported model / geo with offsets, (0,0,0) being the reference point
- Animations exported into the engine and the actor(s) are attached to the reference point(s) animating in the proper places
Should we keep that same workflow?
Also, are there any pros / cons to using a skeletal bone over socket? What about a static BP actor?
tl;dr Say I want to have a helicopter with actors animating (idles/actions/etc…), I want to make sure what you see in animation tool is what you see in the game (e.g., hands on handles / controls not clipping), would it be better to either…
Single reference point shared by all actors, animations have an offset
Individual reference points for each actor
Thank you in advance!