Blinking animations randomly using a skeletal anim?

Development Character & Animation
1

I have a few animations for my character, run, walk, jump, etc which have all but the facial expressions controlled.

I then have a separate FBX with one animation, blinking, and nothing else on the timeline.

Is there a way to play only that part of the animation randomly?

I.E. The character will still be in idle, for instance, and then randomly the blinking animation on only the head will play.

Thanks in advance :slight_smile: sorry for the newbie question, still learning :slight_smile:

2

Hi Xiexe,

you would need to override the eye lid bones in the animation graph editor with the ‘layered blend per bone’ node. Animation Blueprint Blend Nodes in Unreal Engine | Unreal Engine 5.2 Documentation

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3

Thank you so much! How would I add randomization to it? I got it working and all the bones to control blinking set up, but I cant add a delay or timer or anything for some reason?

4

in the animgraph you could fork using a blend by Boolean and in the eventgraph make a random generator that triggers the event. Overall generating a procedural event can become complicated

So

Since transform data is cheap you could create a blink animation file that seems random across X number of frames and keyframe a more natural look. The reason humans blink is because their eyes dry out so sometimes they might blink 1 2 or even 3 times in a row and is much easier to control over X number of animated frames.