General questions on UAF

Development Character & Animation
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1

Hi!

We are still working with animation system based on ABP but already watching new framework. The main reasons why we want it is performance. We want to get rid of traffic of the game thread as much as possible. We believe, we hope, that UAF will help. I have already done some experiments and several questions appeared:

  1. In general, do you think that it is good assumption that new framework will be more parallelized and thus more efficient for many characters that use animations with root motion?
  2. We use MM for locomotion setup (based on GASP) and Montages for oneshots. Montage slot is injected into ABP (on several places) and this is working for us although it is not the most effective way because of root motion. But I didn’t find a way how to play Montage in UAF graph? Is if just something that will appear later or Montages are obsolete in the new system?
  3. When some official documentation will be available? I heard something about that first usable yet still experimental release will be in 5.8 (June or July this year). At least any doc would be a great help for next direction of our project.
  4. Our pipeline contains several stages:
    1. MM locomotion setup
    2. Procedural adjustments such as look at, slope warping, feet IK, another contextural modifiers
    3. Several slots for Montages that can completely override loco stage or can add to it for specific part of the skeleton

These stages are configured from our game component, data is copied to the animinstance and then applied in the graph. Do you see any possibility to use similar setup in UAF?

Thanks for help.

Jiri

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Hey there,

I’ll do my best to answer questions here, but currently, we are not recommending that teams use UAF unless there are really good, specific reasons. Much of the core is changing, which can put your project at risk. We do have an up-to-date UAF frequently asked questions that you can follow here: https://dev.epicgames.com/community/learning/knowledge-base/nWWx/unreal-engine-unreal-animation-framework-uaf-faq

In general, do you think that it is good assumption that new framework will be more parallelized and thus more efficient for many characters that use animations with root motion?

Yes, this is a primary goal. We intend to parallelize as much as possible.

We use MM for locomotion setup (based on GASP) and Montages for oneshots. Montage slot is injected into ABP (on several places) and this is working for us although it is not the most effective way because of root motion. But I didn’t find a way how to play Montage in UAF graph? Is if just something that will appear later or Montages are obsolete in the new system?

Currently, UAF does not support montages, and it is unclear whether it will. There have been discussions and experiments, but no clear answers yet.

When some official documentation will be available? I heard something about that first usable yet still experimental release will be in 5.8 (June or July this year). At least any doc would be a great help for next direction of our project.

Regarding my comments above, because we are not recommending that teams use UAF yet, we have not built any documentation or plan to release any sample content. Currently, nothing is slated for release in 5.8. Because the timelines for UAF are long, we do not have a date yet when we may release anything so you will want to just pay attention to the releases and git for now.

These stages are configured from our game component, data is copied to the animinstance and then applied in the graph. Do you see any possibility to use similar setup in UAF?

Yes, though much of that is changing now. User will be able to access game data in the UAF graph passed to the thread where it runs.

And for further clarification, it will be a long time (year) before UAF is available for general use.

Dustin

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Hi Dustin and thank you. I am aware of the FAQ you sent but I was looking for more details and the future of the UAF. Thank you for that, although it is not great news for us :slight_smile:

I still believe that we want to use as soon as possible when it will be ready. I am also very excited about that new technology. We still have many years of development ahead of us, so hopefully it will fit together.

Thank you very much.

Jiri

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