F_ckin’ A!!!
This solves the problem of blending between distinct anim-bp’s: Guide: How to create a smooth blend between two different animation blueprints (4.24)
No vid but I can say there is no stutter between switching weapons-anim-bps. It’s even robust enough that if you advance through multiple items fast enough (before the next bp starts) it can shift seamlessly through the bp’s (until you stop).
I DO have to stick the unequip/equip animations in the middle, but now w/distinct anim-bps, I can eschew the above overhead and ultimately, this opens up more customization possibilities, as well as weapon-specific bp’s for stances, etc… w00t!
Thanks for the input everyone. I know I didn’t get this answer straight away but w/all the discussion and research resulting-from, I found what I was looking for.
FYI - this is what I was working off before I found the forum post, relevant & has a good vid: Animation Pose Snapshot | Unreal Engine Documentation
EDIT: Running and switching is kinda fugly, but I might have an idea…to be posted.
EDIT2: when using the anim-bp blend, you apparently need to use the method where the pose is stored into a variable. Since the named-pose path is stored internally in the current anim-bp, one cannot save the pose to the NEW anim-bp and hence loses the pose when switching to the new anim-bp…
Only noting this b/c the docs and tooltip itself suggest the named-pose is somewhat more performant… Otherwise this seems to work great.