How can I use animation layers together with a linked anim graph, to avoid modifying Lyra anim BP?

[bibbis]

I’m working in a Lyra-based project and we want to modify original Lyra assets as little as possible.
I only want to edit the Lyra anim BP (ABP_Mannequin_Base) to use our custom anim BP as a Linked Anim Graph, so we can modify our own BP with additional animation layers instead of Lyra’s.

It doesn’t seem like it’s possible to add animation layers (Link Anim Class Layers) that have only been included and defined inside our Linked Anim Graph, to the Lyra base anim BP.

I tried setting this up by simply adding all our animation layers directly in the Lyra BP, and that works fine. So the anim layers and their driving logic works fine, I just can’t get it to work when I want to contain it inside our own, custom, project-specific, non-Lyra, scalable, good dev practice, animation BP.

Unless I’m completely missing something, we HAVE to modify the Lyra anim BP, so if we ever upgrade the base Lyra project files in the future, everything breaks.

[Shmoopy1701]

One way is to dupe the BPs you need, bring them into your project, and modify them there.

We do this with engine functionality that we want to modify as well.

[bibbis]

I figured out it’s possible to access specific linked animation graphs by tagging them in the details panel

and then getting them like this from the character’s skeletal mesh component

By using this linked graph ABP, you can link layers that are not implemented in the base ABP.

I’m doing this in C++ and the logic is the same.

[bibbis]

Now we can implement all our custom animation functionality in our own custom ABP, and if we update any Lyra files in the future, all we have to do is open the Lyra ABP and add that one single node in my first post and all functionality is restored.