Climb Through Window (Question)

Development Programming & Scripting Blueprint
1

I’m wondering how one would go about creating a window entry system like in Assassin’s Creed, some how get an animation to play when you are near a window, and have the character move through the window…

I’m just brain storming atm, but something like shrinking the capsule as the character passes through the window frame and then scaling it back up.

Could this be done with triggers?

  • When the character gets close enough to the trigger, the capsule shrinks and an animation plays, the character passes through the trigger and then the capsule scales back up, and the animation transitions into a fall / jump.
2

I would use an Animation Montage with disabled Collision as long as the Montage plays.

3

Which I’m assuming is pretty basic stuff.

But I didn’t really want it to be like a cutscene, where the character goes through the window, animation plays, there’s no further control like, crouching in the window frame.

IF I could get the basic code structure down, I don’t wanna turn off collision fully, because the point at which he stands needs to have some, and the walls to either side of him.

Can this only be done by shrinking the capsule some how?

4

Rootmotion would help doing this, anim notifies could be used to change the capsule scale and then reset it back;
Btw, Assassin’s Creed animations are 60~80% procedural animation generated on the fly. They’re developing that animation AI since AC2, you won’t see something like that on Unreal, Unity, CryEngine, Whatever…

5

Well, it’s not so much the animations, more actually getting the character to go through the window.

So I’m on the right track then? shrinking the capsule is the way to go?

6

Yes, it’s an option; crouch function does just that.

7

I don’t understand where to go from here really, yeah, capsule half height thing with crouch works really nicely, but I have no idea how to program it so that A. The character climbs through the window (with an animation) and then collision changes due to the capsule, if you have time, I’d love to see a quick example.

8

If you use root motion, you can move the animation forward, and the whole actor will move forward to align itself to the animation.

9

Right, but how do I make the animation play within trigger radius, or for that matter hook the trigger up to have the pawn play the animation.

10

I still have no idea how to make this system, is it with a trigger?

I.E, actor gets near the trigger, actor plays root animation and moves through the window.

But I don’t know how to set the system up, I’ve only been able to do this the opposite way; actor walks near trigger, door opens, etc etc.

11

Actually, with Ikinema Runtime Indie, it is possible.

12

You can transition to the animation in many different ways.

  1. You can make it automatic - Player overlaps window trigger and it automatically climbs through the window (set boolean in PlayerBP that tells AnimBP to go to an animation state)

  2. You can make the window trigger ALLOW the Player to push a button to climb. Set the trigger to show a Widget with something like “Press E to Climb” and then cast to the Player BP and set a state variable (lets call it CanClimb) true. Then, when the Player presses ‘E’ check if CanClimb is true, if so, trigger animation, if false, do nothing.

How to do the actual animation is up to you - be it InPlace or Root Motion.

The capsure size can be resized dynamically by setting the variables via Blueprint.

Hope this helps!

13

That is only an IK system, it’s not even close.

14

Ikinema procedurally generates animations too.

15

You are correct, RunTime is an IK solver used to procedurally generate animation :wink: