Help pls: How to animate a Skeletal Mesh Actor with Blueprint?

[DyotoOrion]

THIS QUESTION IS NOW SOLVED. Read down for a description of the problem and the solution. Thanks!

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Hi everyone!

I am a 3D artist by trade and am a bit new to Blueprints and Anim Blueprints in UE4. I’m trying to achieve what seems a pretty simple goal of getting a Skeletal Mesh Actor to play it’s animation in game using an Animation Blueprint, but sadly I can’t work out how to do it.

So here’s exactly what I am trying to do. I have a Sci-Fi air conditioning fan / vent built in my 3D modeling program. It is a simple Skeletal Mesh with 3 Bones: root, fan 1, fan 2. The main body of the fan casing is weighted to the root, and the two fans are weighted to the bones fan 1 and fan 2. Bones fan 1 and fan 2 have a looping rotation animation.

So all I want to do is to make the Fan Skeletal Mesh into a Actor Blueprint that references the Anim Graph and the fan spinning animation, so that I can just place this rotatiing fan any where in the level and have the anim play continuously, without having to manually assign each anim to each Fan .

Heres the Fan Skeleton set up:

Heres the Fan Anim Blueprint, which seems to work fine:

And heres as far as I have got the Fan Blueprint itself:

Now i know I am missing something, something that will actually get the Anim to play, but i dont know what. Please help, thanks!

Note: I am aware that Environment Assets with simple animations such as this can also work as Static Meshes with animated components in Blueprint, but I need to be able to achieve this functionality with Skeletal Meshes for various reasons, primarily the need to make complex machinery environment props, too complex for animating with multiple static meshes.

Also I have tried following the Epic Games tutorials on Anim Blueprints etc, but these are all for animated playerCharacters and I cannot find any tutorial on how to achieve the same effect with a simple Skeletal Mesh Actor.

There is also this Answer Hub post which suggests what I am trying to do is perfectly possible, but I dont really understand whats going on here: https://answers.unrealengine/questions/24355/how-to-reference-animation-blue-print.html

Any help or advice would be greatly appreciated. Thanks again!

[anonymous_user_923c79df]

Just create an actor bp - add a skeletal mesh component and select your skeletal mesh and also your anim bp -in your anim bp just add one state with the animation -> now it should work perfectly

[DyotoOrion]

Hi 5347 - thanks for your reply. I’m afraid I still dont understand. Isn’t that what I have already done?

I have an Actor Blueprint with a Skeletal Mesh Component called Spinning Fan 008. How do I “Select your skeletal mesh and also your anim bp”? My Anim Blueprint has one state inside the State Machine with the animation playing. The Animation plays in the Anim Blueprint fine. But I can’t work out how to reference the Anim Blueprint in the Actor Blueprint. Could you be more specific?

When I place the Spinning Fan 008 Blueprint into the level, the Anim does not play.

So what I want to be able to do is place the Actor Blueprint for the Spinning Fan 008 in the level and have the anim play during game play.

[anonymous_user_923c79df]

In the actor bp you have to click on your skeletal mesh component and there you can select your anim bp -> after that it will play the state animation

[DyotoOrion]

Awesome! I’ll try that, thanks !

[DyotoOrion]

Okay, that worked! (Gee I’m a noob). I had to click on the Skeletal Mesh Component in the Blueprint Components Tab and that brings up the Skeletal Mesh Details window inside the Blueprint. From there I was able to add the AnimBP to the Skeletal Mesh Component. That fixed it. Now I can place the Blueprint in the level and the Anim plays. Thanks very much for your help . Cheers!