When using a skeletal mesh with an animation blueprint in sequencer, you must first set it to ‘Use Animation’ or ‘Custom’. This makes the animations work fine, but when you set it back to ‘Use Animation Blueprint’, the animation freezes on the first frame until the sequence finishes, then the animation plays properly.
Is there any way around this? Looks kind of silly that all my characters freeze mid-cutscene after playing their custom sequencer animations.
Here it was mentioned that sequencer will internally switch animation modes when nessicary, however it doesn’t work unless they are manually changed. Was this just changed in later versions to give more control?
Hi,
I was unable to reproduce the issue. If you can send me a small repro project, or some gifs, I can take a further look into it. In order for me to look into a work around, I need to know how you have things set up currently.
I have gone through the steps to reproduce the issue. If you open your Blueprint and select your animation that is connected to your pose, you should have some settings under the Details panel on the right side.(Screenshot Below) There should be a box labeled Loop Animation. If you check that and compile/save. Does this keep the animation running for you? If you combine this with what you have set up in sequencer this should keep the idle looping. This should keep it from freezing as well. Also, double check to make sure your video length is set in sequencer to stop at/just before where your animation ends. Let me know if this functions as a workaround, and if not I can look into it more.
Hi Riley, the animation is indeed looping (shown in that video at 0:25).
The problem is that creating a ‘Use Animation Mode’ keyframe sets the blueprint but doesn’t actually play it. When the sequence fully ends, all the skeletal meshes go back to normal anyway regardless of that keyframe. So most things work fine except for the one ‘Use Animation Mode’ key.
However just ending the sequence after the animation isn’t always an option. In this case some cutscenes need dynamic animations (hense the reason to go back to blueprint mode during the cutscene).
Are you still not able to reproduce this bug? If not I can create a sample project with it to send over. Also, there’s no big need for a workaround as the game won’t be ready for another handful of months. Would just be nice to know the bug is targeted for future Unreal versions.
It looks like the issue occurs in several versions of the engine. I have gone ahead and logged this as bug. If you would like to keep an eye on it I have placed a link to the public tracker here. If you have any other questions regarding this thread, feel free to reopen it and I will get back to you.
The freezing behavior that you see occuring is expected due to this method not being supported, therefore the bug has been marked as won’t fix. Slot posses can be added to the Animation Blueprint to blend the animations and avoid the freezing. It’s recommended that a custom mode is used for this, opposed to playing the animation asset instances. I’ve linked some documentation here on the recommended method for blending animations in sequencer.
