I’m getting nowhere trying to add some additional animation on top of already running anim sequences. I’ve got two use cases:
1- Reuse normal humanoid animations on some creatures while adding some twitches etc. to the creature animation for added personality. This Idea can be seen in the Taken enemies in Destiny for reference.
2- Use some sort of additive animation to deform the characters via bone scaling to make them huskier or skinnier for character variation.
I’ve already tried hooking up an “Apply Additive” node in the anim blueprint, but then the scale channel of the animations also get added together so my character becomes enormous and deformed.
The scale channel of the animations has to fit the skeleton you’re using - if the animations aren’t meant for that skeleton, you can retarget them first with the built in retargeting tools.
If you have issues with “apply additive”, you can try using a “layered blend per bone” node with a specific bone-chain in the “layer setup” of the node, to blend your normal animations and the special animaitons for specific limbs for example. That way only the transforms for those bones will be taken from your “additive” animation.
Thanks for answering!
I can guarantee the animations are all meant for the same skeleton as they are all exported using the same skeleton. My concern with the suggestion of using “layered blend per bone” is that these additive animations are going to be full body animations. It’s not like an upper body aim, for instance.
There might something wrong with the skeleton in that case. Applying a correct animation should not result in scaling issues, unless the skeleton was created with non-zero values in the reference pose when rigging. Have you tried doing the same thing you’re trying to do with the Mannequin and two random animations? If it works for the Mannequin as intended, then the problem isn’t in the nodes you’re choosing, but in the assets you created.
I fixed my main issue. I found the settings for defining the animation asset as additive. This made things work as intended but now we’re running into an issue with the fact that all our animations are played via montages which we just play on the characters, thus overwriting anything else currently playing. I think this issue is gonna take some discussion with some of the engineering team at work. Thanks again for your help!