Can you use Sequencer to animate objects inside a BP Actor?

[JJChalupnik]

Hello, I’m fairly new to using Blueprints, but I’m finding that it is an incredible tool. Especially for more artist friendly folks like myself. In an effort to learn, I built a functional door in the Level Blueprint, using a level sequence animation to drive the door movement, once triggered by the player. The next step was to turn this door into something I could instance throughout my level, such as a BP_Actor that can be used over and over.

Researching this topic has lead me to numerous good threads on playing a sequence, or using the Animation Timeline to drive the door motion, but nothing on getting internal objects to use sequencer to then drive a doors motion. Is this possible? Sequencer is far more intuitive to use and animate with than the Animation Timeline Node inside the Actor Blueprint.

When selecting objects to convert to a BP_Actor, it renames and re-assigns the objects in question, effectively removing them from the level and making them a part of the BP script. Do I have that right? This nullifies the animation from Sequencer, requiring you to either keep the doors separate, replicating doors every time in you want to use one inside Level Blueprint, or re-animating using the system inside the Actor Blueprint. Is there no way to combine them?

I’m still a complete noob. Just trying to understand how UE4 thinks about things. I appreciate any help you guys can offer.

Cheers!

[Max.Chen]

Hello,

There’s an experimental feature, “Actor Sequence Editor” that might help in your case. Enable it in Plugins->Editor->Actor Sequence Editor.

Once you have that, Add an Actor Sequence using “+Add Component”. From there, you can add components from your blueprint and animate them. You can also playback settings on that actor sequence, like autoplay, loop, etc. Then add your blueprint to the level and hit play. Here’s what I have set up to have a cube moving up and down in a blueprint.

Keep in mind this is an Experimental feature and is subject to change…

[JJChalupnik]

Thanks for the tip! I really appreciate it. I managed to get the BP working using the timeline. I think I have a better understanding of how to troubleshoot and work with it. It was a combination of not having a scene root to freeze my transforms, along with splitting up the vectors and knowing to enable/disable input so the blueprint was self contained. A lot of learning but its a lot of fun when you get a breakthrough. I can see how it can be very powerful when used right. Thank you for your time in responding to this question.

[LuisAlaguna]

can you share your solution? thanks