In case anyone googles this in 2025 and is still curious: the solution more or less came down to using “Possess” nodes instead of “Set Skeletal Mesh” and “Set Anim Instance”. Actually I wouldn’t recommend going the latter route because in order to properly initialize everything, it requires a lot more work, and sequencing off of beginGameplay and eventTick and yadda yadda. Here’s what I ended up with:
Inside BP_TopDownCharacter (manny default bp):
Inside BP_Bear (the bear that I wanted to shapeshift to):
The “Shapeshift to Bear” function inside manny’s bp:
The “Shapeshift to Manny” function inside bear’s bp:
And now, when I press G to transform…POOF I’m a punchin’ kickin’ bear, and all the print strings are firin’ and I feel happy. Hope this helps someone else too!
Note I’m still new to Unreal, so I realize that these blueprints are riddled with unnecessary elements, but it works for now, and please, if you have any suggestions for how to simplify, I’m all ears. This took me weeks of trial and error and endless google/youtube rabbit holes but nothing was quite what I was looking for.
Shoutout to Mind-Brain for the enum tip–without it, I’d be living in boolean hell, and now I’ve found a lot more uses for enums in other parts of the project!