How to create duplicatable self-contained sequencer animations that use multiple BPs? (Since Actor Sequence is broken)

Development Programming & Scripting Blueprint
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Scenario

  • I have multiple separate BPs in a cooking game, for example a Frying Pan BP and ingredients BPs (for example, Meat BP, Fish BP).
  • I need to be able to dynamically instantiate multiple Pan BPs and also for each Pan instantiate multiple ingredients and animate them with move/fade/scale,
  • I also need to call events when they reach certain points in the animations (for example, to trigger a Skeletal Mesh animation for “frying” when the Meat move animation reaches the pan, to trigger turn on/off the stove, etc).
  • All of this individually, each pan with their isolated Sequencer state.

Biggest Need

  • Create self contained multiple instances of sequences.
  • Basically, to be easier to visualize, how can I create multiple independent self contained Sequencer instances of the animation from the video below, for example?

What have I tried

  • I created a Level Sequencer and in the Level Sequencer I instantiate the utensil BP and then the ingredients and call the events when needed in the right keyframes.

In this video example, in a single sequencer:

  1. Instantiate the sugar cane machine BP
  2. Call Turn On skeletal mesh animation
  3. Call Loop animation
  4. Instantiate sugar cane BP
  5. Move sugar cane
  6. Instantiate Jar and Liquid
  7. Call event to start dissolving the liquid

As you can see there are multiple BPs involved in the Sequencer:

Problem

  • The Problem is that this is tied to a Level Sequencer. I can’t duplicate it and even move it to another Map.
  • It’s not self contained, it’s tied to those instances of the actors, in that level.
  • The closest that I ALMOST managed to accomplish was using Actor Sequence, but it’s buggy and crashes as soon as you add more than two actors and events on both UE 4.27 and UE 5.0.

image

  • How does one do this in UE?

Equivalences

  • In Unity, in a Prefab you can add Animators and Directors and just duplicate the Prefab, all animations and events will be self contained.
  • In Godot you can just use Animation Players and they are isolated in the Nodes, also being able to be instantiated isolated.
2

I’m pretty sure the level sequence actor doesn’t understand about whether actors are copies of each other, or isolated, etc.

I would say, it’s time to switch to just blueprints. Then this sort of thing would present no problem.

Once you ‘teach’ a pan to fry, it will work automatically for all copies of the pan, without any work.

3

But there’s a lot of literal moving/TWEENING actors around that I need to do. In the video, for example, the cane moving and being positioned, then moving through the machine. Then when it reaches the middle of the machine I call an event, so on and so forth.

Do I basically need to do that with instantiating Timelines and Curves sequentially with Code? Is this really the only way?

Then it’s impossible to visualize in real-time where exactly are the actors moving and the precise keyframe to call the events, etc - with the sequencer I see the positioning on the fly while I keyframe them.

The ACTOR SEQUENCE plugin is made for the purpose that I need and allows for similar things to Unity’s Prefabs with Animations - but the fact that’s still a crashing Experimental thing even on UE5 makes it a no go.

4

All these problems you’re raising here, are why I stopped using the sequencer.

If you make a sequence for an object, X, then I’m assuming you can make a copy of that sequence and point it at Y, instead.

When I was using it, Epic had had several goes at making the sequence data non-location dependent. I don’t know if they every got there.

I understand that making the sequence is a very natural way of mapping things out, but when it comes to portable functionality, the sequencer just doesn’t cut it.

I’d love someone to come along where and tell me I’ve got it wrong ( and convert me back ), but I think BPs is the way to go.

Once you’ve made a BP for a ( generic ) piece of food being tossed or fried etc, then making many others with different mesh in different positions etc is a doddle.

If you are skeptical, and you get no more answers, I’d repost this. It’s a nice clear post, and deserves a clean answer.

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5

So it’s the answer that I was afraid of, having to do it with code, guessing and tweaking Timeline curves :frowning: Thanks a lot for the clarification.

Thank you :smile:

6

What would be really nice, would be if you could ‘package’ a sequence with an actor. Every time you drag it into the scene, it has the sequence attached.

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7

I think Epic tried to achieve that with the Actor Sequence plugin, and if you give it a try today you can do that - but as long as you have only a few keyframes and do not call events, otherwise it crashes.

Also what you just described is what Unity allows with Prefabs with Animators and Godot Nodes with AnimationPlayers. Unfortunately, considering that the Actor Sequence plugin is Experimental since the beginning of UE4, I doubt it would be implemented by now.

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