Hello peeps. I have a scene, in which there’s a ceiling fan and a plant. While the ceiling fan is turned on, the plant should slightly wiggle around, to simulate wind. How would you professional Unreal animators approach that? Is there any way you can import an animation into Unreal without a skeleton/rig? This just doesn’t seem like the type of thing I’d put a bone structure on, but who knows, I might be wrong? Anyway, tips are appreciated since I’m a complete novice in animation.
maybe some world position altering material?
Why not an actual animation? It will give better result, since I can manipulate it better.
The Fan can be used as an actor that has a StaticMeshComponent, but rotates the StaticMesh with Event Tick.
The Plant should use a material that uses the World Position Offset.
Using Bones for plants is a bit overhead if you ask me (Imagine a forest with Trees, that all have bones and skeletal Animations…)
Alright, I did something called Alembic Animation. I’m not 100% sure it’s set up properly, but the animation plays fine inside the Unreal Engine without a skeleton. Now, I have a static mesh, called Plant and an Alembic Animation. I want the trigger to blend between them, rather than suddenly start/stop the animation. I know it’s another question, but I really need to get this working! So, to sum it up :
I have a button. Pressing the button has to make my Alembic Plant to gradually stop moving instead of suddenly stopping it. How do I blueprint that? Thanks.
I don’t think that Alembic caches support blending in/out in UE4 at the moment. I’d suggest looking in World Position Offset as laggyluk suggested. With a simple material setup you’d be able to get a nice looking animation and you have much more control over the animation inside UE4.