How do I get my character's upper body animations to act independently from the lower body?

Development Character & Animation
,
1

Hello everyone!

So I have a bit of a problem with my character’s Animation Blueprint. Basically, I have now incorporated some logic into my game where I can hold and use objects in both my left and right hands. When standing in place, the animations look quite nice. The left and right Arms of my character properly align in whatever direction I am looking at.

However, once I begin moving, both my left and right arm animations lose most of their control, usually facing whatever direction that my character walks in. Below is a short clip demonstrating how when I am still, my animations look nice, but once walking left/right, my control of my left and right hands are essentially sporadic:

To add some additional context, I have made sure to use the “Layered blend per node” for the “clavicle_l” bone for my character’s left arm. The animation which I have I have playing for the left arm for the “Layered blend per node” is just a single frame, so nothing crazy there. Also, I’ve made sure to make a montage of my left arm animation, and add it to my “Left Arm” slot.

2568×1408 518 KB

Does anyone have any advice of how I could essentially have my character’s arms/upper body act independently from the lower/midsection of the body? Or even just some advice on how I can make some of my “jaggedy” looking movement much smoother?

Thank you in advance to anyone who may be able to help me! Please let me know if you need me to add any additional info here.

Many thanks,

2

Hey there @POTATOGAMER! I came to let you know the blend per bone node was what you had needed, but it seems you’d already started down the correct path. You may need to have less weight on the blend itself, or start at a lower bone in the chain. If this is only going to be first person and singleplayer, you could in fact start much further down.

As a note, the jagged nature is probably from the distance where the bone wants to be in the original animation and where it intends to be and the time it’s blending is very quick. Tinkering with the blend weights and blend time should help a bit.

3

Hey there @SupportiveEntity,

These are some fair points, I guess for the moment I will work on my animations and try to make sure that the locations of some of my important bones (spine, root, etc.) don’t stray too far from each other when changing animations. Also I’ll definitely adjust my blend times and hopefully this will resolve my problems.

Thank you! I’ll let you know how it goes