How to create animations of static meshes and save them?

Development Character & Animation
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1

Hi, after 6+ months of commercial dev with Unity, I felt bold enough to try UE5 =)

But I can’t find smth that what’s called “Animation clips” in Unity.

The task is simple:
I have a treasure chest model made of 2 meshes (a cap & a chest body, without skeleton\bones, simple static meshes).

So I want to create a stylized animation.

  1. The cap opens with Ease -in-out
  2. The body and cap squashes (non-uniformly scales) while cap is opening
  3. At the end of the animation all parts comes to their normal sizes.
  4. Save this animation and apply to other similar models of chests
  5. This animations should be available to be triggered via BP (e.g.: with a key pressed near the actor)

I made the animation in level sequencer. What’s next? I can’t find out how to save it as an “Animation clip”(((

How is it possible to do in Unreal? And what node should I use in BP after the animation is created to play it on demand?

Thanks in advance.

2

Hey @exe2k!

I think what you’re looking for is called an “Animation Montage”, “Montage” or “AnimMontage” for short. You can call those on the BP with a “PlayMontage” or “Play AnimMontage” node, depending on where you’re calling it. :slight_smile: (It won’t show you the wrong one)

2 Likes
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I tried AnimMontage, but looks like it also requires a skeletal mesh, isn’t it? Or may be I do smth wrong?

The goal is to make simple animations without bones inside the engine. As far as I know, skeletal meshes with bones also are more CPU intensive… and seems like it’s overdone for such a simple things like a chest opening etc.

Tried to find any tutorial about AnimMontage but all of them are about characters with skeletons :frowning:

4

Ah, I see. What happened was I overlooked the chest thing itself. This is simpler than you think, and if you watch this, in 10 minutes you’ll be flying through this process. Take a look at this quick video, skip the parts you know… and you’ll be an expert in no time :slight_smile:
ps Yes montages require skeletons, that was my bad, I thought you had basic skeletons. It’s just sequences for this purpose. Not montages.

Disclaimer: This video is not associated with Epic Games, Unreal Engine, or their partners.