Hi guys. Im trying to addd a firing animstion to my character and i already have aim offset setup. But when i fire while aiming off-center, the gun moves way toward the center and looks awful.
I tried the regular fire animation and it does this. When i try the additve animstion and press fire it blows my character’s torso iff, as seen in the image below.
Could you guys tell me how i can make it so when i fire the gun, the firing animation plays correctly no matter where im aiming with aim offset?
Thanks so much guys
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You could use an AnimMontage, set it to Local Space additive, using the idle animation as the base pose.
By doing so it will add the firing on top of the AimOffset, assuming that the montage slot is used before the AimOffset.
Oh man thank you for the reply. This sounds right but could you explain more?
Is there a base pose and additional pose inside the montage or do you mean use the montage as the base pose in the layered blend mode?
And i cant check back to what you said while typing a reply, but where do i find the additive setting you mentioned?
So it sounds like:
I make a montage with the shooting anim
Do the additive setting
Use the montage in the bsse pose of the lsyer blend node
And use the movement blendspace i already have in the other pin?
Where does the aim offset node get plugged in?
Oh wait. You mean i plug the montage into the base pose of the aim offset node dont you?
Thanks a ton for the reply!
Yeah i dont see the option for local space additive. 
Edit: its not letting me drag the montage onto the graph in the state. Is this a bug or something you think? How can that work for one person but not for someone else i wonder
You need to study up on additive animations, montage slots, and montages.
Unless a rather specific case (specific weapons requiring specific stances) you don’t usually do aim/reload/shoot using state machines.
I’d say find some better tutorials.
What you have been learning from is probably trash (and yes this does include epics BS tutorials on the subject).
Order of operation in the animation graph is also important.
The aim offset should be the first thing on top of the base motion.
A montage slot before or after can dictate if the aim offset is applied to it or not.
There are tons of tutorials for montages, especially for FPS/TPS, but my advice, especially if you’re planning to use lots of weapons and add additional stuff ( melee, reloading and so on ), is to find a tutorial series that covers pretty much everything you need, so that at least you have the possiiblity to follow and integrate the same technique used.
One thing you need to decide is how the montages are triggered, if using GAS or standard BP->Cast or ABP triggers the montage.
If you’re planning to use GAS don’t stick too close to Lyra, since for newcomers the setup is overwhelming and you may find yourself not understanding what’s going on.
Having said that, the base setup for a montage is this ( going to use Lyra as an example ):
- Open the skeleton of your character, create a slot, call it AdditiveAnims
- Find your fire animation, right click on it → Create → Create Anim Montage
- Change the montage group to Additive
- Open your fire animation again, within its details → Additive Details ->Additive Anim Type set Local space, then for Base pose choose Select animation frame, then as the base pose animation choose your idle.
Lyra uses Mesh Space and is using the same animation, not sure if this works the same/worse/better than using Local Space, so you can experiment with the settings and check which one works best for you.
- In your ABP add a slot and place it after the Upper/Lower body layered blend per bone ( assuming you have one to split between legs locomotion and upper body aiming ), make sure to set it to Additive.
This should give you the result you want, where the aiming works as intended, the fire animation will go on top of the AimOffset and the legs will follow the locomotion BS.
As mentioned above, follow a tutorial series and stick to it, so that you’ll have pretty much what you need and learn along the way.
Ok do you know of any good sources to learn the proper way? Thanks a lot for the reply
Oh ok so what is GAS?
And im going to try this in the coming days but ill probably have some questions. I didnt use a tut for a lot of that state machine i showed. Im not exactly new to UE but i havent got into animations so i was just seeing what worked.
Im much better at following videos than text but i dont know of any good tutorials thst show diffetent weapon setups including melee. Do you?
Ill try to find one but ive never heard of one.
I really appreciate the support from you guys. Ill reply back when im going to attfmpt what you said.
Thanks!
I can tell you this much - no one posting animation stuff on youtube does it right (and i’m just as guilty of this myself).
This is because posting ■■■■ on youtube is not a job contrary to popular belief.
People who actually took the time to learn are usually far too busy to put out trash on youtube…
So, no.
I’m not aware of any specific tutorials that are good, and you probably won’t find them.
But the base concepts:
Can probably be understood by watching any bonehead fumble through any related how-to…
Including the live-training videos from epic.
I think GAS is Gameplay Ability System
Epic clunck no professional would be caught dead using.
But again, if the videos for it illustrate the concept, and you understand it, then you can come up with your own solution…
A good agnostic system would either define blueprints that the character swaps to - locking the character in on that specific animation structure (so if you grab a spear, suddenly you cant jump or do other things like crouch unless you specifically change all the animations and create state machines to allow it).
Or use Weapon Class (c++) defined animations to use for montages.
Or a combination of both.
But like always, the best system is the one you make yourself so you truly understand it…
Hi, im trying to do what you said but i dont know where to create a slot in a skeleton. Can you let me know? Thank you
I was just going to rant about how Godawful nearly every tutorial is. They seem to be able to navigate the systems themselves, but they talk like “so if you connect this thing to the thing you can now understand how this works.” With next to no actual explanation. Its like they think showing themselves doing something will somehow transfer their knowledge (as flawed as it is) to the viewer, with no context.
Thanks for that very solid response. Ill keep trying to piece tutorials together until i have a comprehensive understanding. Hopefully
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