Have you ever grown bored of making multiple hit animations yourself? Your character isn't reacting to your bullet shots or fists? Well look no further!
Easy Procedural Hit Reactions adds animation-free, location-aware hit reactions to Unreal Engine characters using a single Control Rig node.
Hits are applied procedurally over the character’s existing animation. No dedicated hit-reaction animations, montages, directional animation sets, or physics simulation are required.
The system receives the impact location, direction, hit bone, and strength from gameplay, then produces configurable rotational and positional spring motion around the affected area.
## Easy setup
1. Reparent the target Animation Blueprint to EasyHitReactionAnimInstance.
2. Add Easy Procedural Hit Reaction to the character’s Control Rig.
3. Connect a Get All Bones array, or provide only the bones allowed to react.
4. Run the Control Rig after the character’s normal animation pose.
5. Send hits using one of the included Blueprint functions.
And you're done! Time wasted set back to only 5 minutes.
## Features
- Single Easy Procedural Hit Reaction Control Rig node
- Animation-free procedural reactions
- Additive motion layered over existing animation
- Location-aware bone influence
- Automatic hit-bone detection
- Automatic closest-bone selection when a trace hits a Character capsule
- World-space Blueprint inputs with automatic component-space conversion
- Configurable impact strength
- Configurable influence radius and spatial falloff
- Spring-based recovery
- Adjustable damping, stiffness, and mass
- Per-bone maximum rotation limits
- Optional positional hit response
- Blend-weight control
- Multiple buffered impacts
- Supports direct skeletal-mesh hits and Character capsule hits
- Works with weapon traces, projectiles, damage systems, and custom gameplay events
- Designed for humanoids, creatures, and custom skeletal hierarchies
- Runtime C++ implementation with full source code
## Blueprint functions
- Camera Trace Easy Hit Reaction
- Send Easy Hit Reaction From Hit Result
- Send Easy Hit Reaction
Camera Trace Easy Hit Reaction provides a quick one-node implementation for demonstrations and prototyping. Existing weapon and damage systems can send their original Hit Result directly without performing another trace.
## Included presets
The documentation includes starting configurations for:
- Subtle flinches
- Sharp gunshot reactions
- Standard punches
- Heavy melee impacts
- Large creatures
- Explosions and shockwaves
- Exaggerated cartoon reactions
## Included content
- Runtime C++ plugin
- Easy Procedural Hit Reaction Control Rig node
- EasyHitReactionAnimInstance
- Blueprint integration library
- Demonstration map and character setup
- Quick-start guide
- Configuration presets
- Full source code
## Requirements
- Unreal Engine 5.8
- Control Rig
- Target characters must use an Animation Blueprint derived from EasyHitReactionAnimInstance
The included Third Person Template character content is used for demonstration purposes. The procedural hit-reaction system itself is skeleton-independent and does not require the demonstration character.