I would like to take a level sequence that I have animated and make a reversed version that I can edit in the sequencer. Just take all of the keyframes of the original sequence and flip them so the animation plays in reverse with all curves and other info flipped.
I want to then edit that reversed version a bit.
I made an animation of my character unequipping a weapon using the new control rig system instead of using maya like I used to. Then I bake that to an anim sequence for unreal. In maya it was pretty easy to scale an animation negatively to keep all the keyframes but make the animation play backwards. However, in Unreal, I just see people using functions to play a level sequence in reverse, which I’m not interested in since I want all of the keyframes of the original level sequence but in reverse. I’m not using this level sequence for cutscene purposes, but for making animations for my character using the control rig system. I would then artistically tweak the keyframes a bit to add some secondary motion of my character doing things in the opposite direction, so I can’t just use the original animation played in reverse. Then I’d bake that animation to a different anim sequence.
I just want to flip this information horizontally:
Yes, that’s exactly what I’ve found all along so far. But I’m not looking to play the animation backwards in game. I’m trying to edit the animation in sequencer backwards with all of the keyframes flipped horizontally. I want to know how to use the sequencer tool to take the animation I have made and flip it negatively in the time axis like you can in Maya or other similar tools. There are options to maybe bake a mirrored animation, but then I have 30 keyframes over every frame instead of the original animation where there were a few keyframes and curves that were hand tweaked. Working with that animation would be a nightmare since you don’t actually want that version of the information for animating due to things instantly snapping next frame because there are too many keyframes.
For example, this is how I would do the same thing in Maya:
That way I can bake that animation out as an asset that plays on my character when it equips/unequips two handed weapons. I have tweaks to make to the animation, like making the hand that holds the weapon counter rotate opposite of the direction the arm is moving upwards. Also the final frames of the equip animation actually leave the hand away from the gun so there’s room to do a charging handle animation if needed, or just blend to the next idle animation if not needed. It all blends smoothly either way using cross fading.
I did find tools like the retime tool and transform tool, but I haven’t found a way to make those tools flip the animation backwards. Just scale it so it’s shorter or longer.
I did actually figure something out but I think UE5 is still limited and later updates will fix more things. The space switching was completely broken by this.
I figured out that the transform tool requires selected the keyframes in the sequencer view not the curves view. I then scale things by -1 and then translate them forward by the length of the animation. This technically does what I expected but not as correctly as I hoped which will probably be fixed in the future.
Maybe I can work with this at least. I somehow had to transform the animation by *-1 then by +30 then by *.5 to at least get it somewhat correct. I may be able to manually fix the space switching from here. Oh and I used Windows 10’s game footage recording feature so it didn’t capture the popup menu where I selected the transform tool, but everything else in this video shows me roughly getting a mirrror animation effect working. Even here though timing is way off. The last frame should be 25 not 15.
If you have animation clip in sequencer and now you want reverse that then just Do right click on the animation clip and go to properties and check the reverse option box under the animation section
Enjoy the reversed animation.
