I have a character than can craft a long wooden pole which can help them pole vault to far away places. I’m not sure what the best approach is to doing this. I can just animate the character myself, but the mesh would move but the actual player character wouldn’t move with it because of the offset. Somehow I need the entire player character to thrust the pole in the ground while running and then the pole animation plays, then the character is constrained to a socket on the pole then?
rather than moving the pole, after the pole is crafted attach it to a socket on your characters hand. if it doesnt look right open the skeleton for the character and add a new socket. Make a pole vaulting animation for youre character, the best way would be to use root motion on the animation to make him move, if thats not an option for whatever reason, you can just code him to move. the pole will move with the character if its attached to the bone and the animation is correct (if you really need to, you can make the pole a skeletal mesh, detach it from the characters hand when the animation plays and have the pole play an animation at the same time, then after the animation is completed reattach it to the socket.)