How Tick Animation Even When Character OffScreen

Development Character & Animation
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1

Dear Friends at Epic,

Hi there!

When the main player character faces away from the center of another character that I am using as a skeletal mesh platform,

the animations stop playing

but I need them to keep playing so the platforms keep moving :slight_smile:

I’ve looked through animinstance.h and characer.h

What property will enable the animations to continue even if the character is technically offscreen?

I’ve looked at SkeletalMeshComponent.h

/** If true, tick anim nodes even when our Owner has not been rendered recently  */
UPROPERTY()
uint32 bTickAnimationWhenNotRendered_DEPRECATED:1;

and the movement component property to update only if rendered

but

that doesn’t seem to be the solution :slight_smile:

Thanks!

Rama

stopped.jpg
stopped.jpg1280×960 168 KB

neverstops.jpg
neverstops.jpg1280×960 229 KB

2

Hi Nathan,

Check out the property MeshComponentUpdateFlag, which replaces the deprecated flag that you found. You can set it to SMU_AlwaysTickPose if you just want notifies, or SMU_AlwaysTickPoseAndRefreshBones if you want accurate bone positions as well.

Cheers,
Michael Noland

3

woohooo!

Thanks Michael!

I created a tutorial based on your fabulous input for the Community

http://forums.epicgames.com/threads/972861-20-TUTORIALS-C-for-UE4-gt-gt-New-Implementing-a-Color-Picker-in-C?p=31702761&viewfull=1#post31702761

:slight_smile:

Rama

4

Looks like MeshComponentUpdateFlag is now deprecated. It’s replaced by VisibilityBasedAnimTickOption. I was able to get offscreen characters to perform montages by setting it to:

GetMesh()->VisibilityBasedAnimTickOption
= EVisibilityBasedAnimTickOption::AlwaysTickPoseAndRefreshBones;