Hi,
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No, master pose component can have basic skeleton without any additional bones. Master pose component then should only be used to play animations that are needed for the whole character, like walking, attack, etc.
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Sure you can put your skirt on legs (probably attach it to hip bone) and set it to follow master pose. If your skirt doesn’t require any additional animations Master Pose is good choice. If you want to play additional animations, then make it have it’s own animation blueprint and use copy pose.
Copy pose is exactly for addition to main animation, as it will make your skirt follow main body animations and you will be able to add something else on top. -
I have never been trying to use normal and vertex animations together. For things like hairs and clothes I would rather use clothing and physics system. But in theory if you really want to do this with vertex animations, it’s probably possible to add such animation in material.
But I wouldn’t do main animations as vertex, as it will be hard to create a system to switch between them and blend them together. -
I’m sorry, I have never been using Skeletal Mesh Merge. We just use separate Animation Blueprint for head, it has copy pose from the main body and we do all facial expressions in that animation blueprint. I think it would be hard to achieve such modular system with merging it to one skeletal mesh, especially if you want some parts to have it’s own animations.