I’m looking for tutorials, documentation, or just in general a jumping off point for understanding how to make animations interact with each other. For example having a character choke another character out. I am unsure how to word this in google so I am having a terrible time trying to find anything relating to it.
I am using blender as my modeling program.
So I am assuming you mean one animation in one character triggering an animation in another?
Well, for googling that I would assume you could find any kind of “flinch” animation (ie an animation that plays upon damage taken) and just copy the logic and adjust it to your needs.
Basically, if you wanted to choke another character, you would have to send that action between blueprints. This can either be done by a blueprint interface function, or a simple cast to node. You can do this by setting a variable or by triggering a custom event. If you want to know how to do it with BPI or variable just ask, I’ll explain it now with a cast to example triggering a custom event:
You make a custom event in your enemy character/actor blueprint called “OnChockedBegin” or something like it. In that event you add “play animation” or the much more useful “play anim montage” (this requires you have converted your animation to an animation montage and have set up a custom slot in your animation blueprint). From there, you can set damage taken, play rate and so on.
Then you need a way to trigger that event. For this example let’s say you have your choke attack bound to the E key in your character blueprint. When you press E you play the choke animation naturally, but you also need to message the other actor to let it know it is being choked, ie triggering the custom event in this case. This is achieved by a cast-to node. Now the issue will be setting the object, which can be done in a few ways. Some use “get all actors of class” (I prefer not due to the engine stress), you can use a line trace, or you can use a simple collision sphere or capsule that enables collision when you play the attack, thereby allowing you to set your choke target and use that as an object for your cast to node.
I realize this may all sound a little convoluted and difficult, but this is just the basic logic behind it.
Thank you very much for the well thought out answer, however I may have stated the question wrong. I’m more looking for a tutorial on how to create said animations than how to implement them in the game world.