I am making a movie, and not a game…
In blueprints I can animate my facial morph targets nicely and they run great inside the game simulation. I can’t get them to run inside Sequencer, where I need them to be to render out the movie.
I know I can dig into every one of my dozen or so animation clips, and hand animate every morph target curve just to get a nice blink and relaxed idle facial expressions, but that is a massive hassle to have to repeat over and over. Plus this makes anything more dramatic impossible (Like running an idle animation on loop while using the morph targets for lip sync and changing expression).
I can get that animation using blueprints, but I can’t figure out how to get the blueprints to play inside the sequencer.
Or is there some other secret way of controlling morph targets inside Sequencer? Or capturing and rendering the movie from outside Sequencer?
I think I found a workable solution, as animation composites can be called like animations inside the sequencer. There also looks like a crazy way to redirect through slots in an animation blueprint, that breaks my brain. There are not a lot of tutorials on either that aren’t directed towards game use cases, but it is a start. Any additional advice is still very welcome.
In a project we’re working on now we are using an Event track that targets actors in the scene which have corresponding custom events set up to fire off all kinds of things (including timelines inside the blueprints.) Seems like a good fit for your general use-case, but I might be misunderstanding.
Movie renders do use the game simulation by the way, so when you render the final movie it should work, though it is hard to preview.
Without knowing what blueprints nodes you are using, maybe this will work for you;
Create a float variable on your blueprint for each morph you wish to animate.
Check “Expose to Cinematics” on the variable settings (so it is editable via Sequencer).
Create a function with the name “Set” and make the function take one input of type Float
Use that incoming value and assign it to your variable.
Use the incoming value/variable and call the blueprint nodes needed to set the morph target with that value.
Now when you animate the property in Sequencer it will automatically call the Set<…> function you created and pass the evaluated value. This gives you a chance to run other code (such as setting the morph target values) as a result of the Sequencer evaluation. This should work in the editor (may require checking “Call in Editor” on the Function properties)
im also trying 2 find how to do this for cinematic purpose, i hope u can help me a little here, in sequencer i recorded game play driving vehicle, the vehicle has its own separate animBP (the mechanical machine gun), when i playback the recording the machine gun is not there, only the car is visible, so how to get all the full anim recording? looks like u’ve found workable solution, would u mind passing some related tuts link? tq
