I would like to request more granular control over animation bone reduction in the Procedural Vegetation Editor.
Environment: Unreal Engine 5.8.4, PVE.
Current limitation
With Bone Reduction Strength set to its maximum value of 1.0, tertiary branches still retain animation bones. In my example, the PVE preview reports 144 branches and 282 bones after reduction.
My goal is to preserve the complete branch geometry while allowing tertiary and smaller branches to follow their parent branches, without requiring their own animation bones.
Requested functionality
- A configurable branch-order cutoff for animation bone generation, such as keeping bones for the trunk, primary branches, and secondary branches only.
- Automatic reassignment of affected geometry and attached foliage to retained ancestor bones.
- Corresponding updates to skin weights and wind simulation data so the exported asset remains valid.
- A preview of the retained bones and resulting bone count before export.
Optional controls based on branch radius or length would also be useful.
Why this would help
For densely branched species, a global reduction strength does not provide enough control over which branches retain independent motion. Artists may prefer to sacrifice independent movement on small outer branches while preserving their visual detail.
A supported workflow inside PVE would avoid manual post-export bone removal and the risk of invalidating skinning or wind data.
I understand that PVE is experimental. This is a workflow and optimization feature request rather than a claim that the current behavior is a bug. Thank you for considering it.