Animation montage is one of the most time-savior of UE4, it gives you a possibility to don’t need recreate entire animations. The most common animation montage we know is reload&running at same time (playing above spine_01 reload animation and from spine_01 down the running animation), Paragon also did it, you could attack while walking. But this is the merge of two animations (reload and run, or in Paragon’s case, attack and run) what about three? Or four? The post is about: How to make more? For example, if i want my character to run, reload and talk to the phone? Or lets go further! Run, reload, answer to the phone while looking to the sky (yeah i know it is very unrealistic, but lets suppose), what i have to do? Create a montage for spine_01 above play reload, while in left hand answer the phone and from head above look to the sky? I really have no idea what should do (or even if it is possible).
you wouldn’t do the phone via animation really. it’s an hand IK thing since the character head is not always in the same spot for an aim to scale properly.
Moving your head around is also an IK thing though it’s more just bone movement.
That said, you just set up as many Slots or splicing points as you want and attach whatever clip you think is worth playing at that bone location.
You create a slot for the right arm, to which you assign the animation montage to play (answer phone),
You setup the reload animation on a left arm same way.
You can then answer the phone while reloading a gun.
The reason this isn’t done often is performance cost due to the locomotion cache and slot placement, on top of the IK thing.
Here’s the tutorial to watch for the 411 on slots/montage/locomotion cache
Correct me if I am wrong but I think this can’t be done. You can only play one slot at a time. All instances of multiple animations at once I have seen have been blended single anims or blendspaces mixed with a single montage slot.
I am not 100% on this can anyone confirm?
Here’s your correction.
Run anim for one leg isolated by thigh bone playing while reloading anim is playing. Here’s the nodes.
You can technically blend the same way into any bone and get multiple montages to play. Doing it with the double layer and avoiding another cached pose is less performance heavy.
You can always refer to https://docs.unrealengine.com/en-US/…tiveAnimations for the basic how to.
The phone was just as example, just to illustrate. What i really wanted is know how to make more than one animation montage or merge more than two animations at same time (3, 4, 5 etc). So you guys are saying that what should be done is making how many slots i need to this, so if i want blend/merge (i really dont know the correct term in this case, if is blend or merge) 3 animations, i need a slot for each merge i want to make, right? Thanks for answer. Now for curiosity, if you want to know why i asked this is because i want to play in left foot one animation and in right foot other animation when an event X occurs (in a nutshell, is this), now you said it is possible (i was worried if it is even possible). Thanks guys.
I have done so But now Struggling with cloth
To be more clear: what i wanted with this post is to know how to do this: play attack animation, but in footL play one animation, and in footR play another. So we have a whole attack animation played in character, except in footR and footL, for what i knew before asking here is that i could make only one montage (because a lot of tutorials of animation montage just make one, and is always spine_01). Now you solved my doubt (make one montage just the way everyone does, but change spine01 for footL and add more one element for footR). Good, thanks. If anyone has anything new to add, feel free.
Actually, a doubt just threw me a curve ball here. Wich pose it plays “above that bone” and wich pose it plays “under that bone”? Blend pose 0, blend pose 1 or base pose?
In my example, an attack animation, an animation for left foot and an animation for right foot, i want above footL and footR play the attack animation, and under footL and footR play the animation i want to blend. What should i do? How should i connect and where?
You set up what plays where in the Anim Montage by selecting the slot it belongs to.
Then you set what bone the blend pose plays on which slot with the “add pin” and layer setup pictured above.
I was using the running animation montage for a test, but the effect is the same, chicken leg + reload.
So in my example, where exactly? We are close to finish this thread! Good. It needs to be clear that isnt a walk animation merging with an attack animation what i want to merge. It is just a small rotation in footL and FootR while the whole body plays the attack animation. The idea is to make it looks like the character is flying by changing his feet position (to it doesnt looks like he is “standing in air”)
Look above, you literally have everything you need except the actual Montage including a short clip of the resulting behaviour.
So the slot Will play the animation IN the bone, above the bone or under the bone? (I’m sorry, my mind is very slow). Because when tutorials make animation montage between a reload and a walking animation using spine_01 (base pose is the walk, blend pose 0 the reload) the reload animation plays ABOVE spine_01, while walk plays under this spine, so following this logic, if i set the attack animation the base, the footL rotation blend 0 and footR rotation blend 1, so it’ll will play above these bones, and the base pose (the attack) will play under (like happens with the classic reload/walk), isn’t it?
Some of you must be now “omg… This guy is a freaking DUMB!” i’m sorry guys, i really didnt get it haha.
As for how the Bone specified in the layer blend works, If you look in the skeleton the layer blend will effect everything under that bone in the hierarchy. So you can have the animation only moving the Right hand and fingers, you can select the bone at the Right shoulder for the blend and the animation will still work, cause the Right hand is under the Right shoulder in the hierarchy.
The step missing is You need to make separate groups in addition to separate slots. A quote from Unreal " Animations are now organized into groups. You can play a single montage per group. Want to be able to play another montage at the same time? Simply create a new group for it." You make new groups in the same panel you make new slots. Right click a slot and move it into a different group. Then make your slots in the anim graph and set them to the correct slots and use a layer blend. Having different groups will prevent montages from overwriting each other.
