Hello all, I posted this question in the animation section and nobody really answered it and it was slowly going away. I’m hoping by addressing a larger audience I might get help. help slots in montages and what the buttons that change the slots do and why they are used
I’ve been reading the documentation and have been watching videos on montages + slots. However, I still don’t understand the process. For example, the button DefaultGroup.Default slot confuses me , as I don’t understand what it is actually doing. Does it allow only one animation to play? If so then why have animations in the tracks that you are not going to play? It seems to me that I am missing a logical step in my mind about how slots actually work and the whole point of them.In my mind I see people clicking the button to change the slot, which then does what? Do all animations play, or I mean how what action is it actually causing in the track with animations in each row? I just don’t understand I suppose how and why of this, and when to put an animation there if another is only going to play, and what the Anim Slot Manager is doing. Like I said I’ve read the documentation such as here: https://docs.unrealengine.com/latest…dex.html#slots and have watched videos but something is not clicking in my head. If someone can explain it in more simple that would be wonderful.
This is as simple as it gets. - YouTube
If you buy one of the larger template kits from marketplace you can see how people are using them.
But in order to learn you need to break down someone elses project in order to see how it completely works.
A great montage example that I can think of is any game where you pick up materials. Think Tombraider. Your inputs are disabled for the moment you find a material until the montage finished. Some fighting games use them as sequence bits. Punches, kicks, recoil, and reload. etc. Because the dont want you to punch, and kick at the same time.
Your not using the entire state machine to fire off those animations. If you were using state machine. it would be more complex. If you play darksouls you know the montage for taking health.
So if I wanted to just kick an enemy, or give a player a simple animation sequence use montage. I wouldn’t use montage for something like say swimming. Where you want the character to swim up, down, forward, and back. You can make your own slots, and notifies. It’s a long process of learning all of that. Couch knights uses a simple slot, and notify with montage. It’s free.
marcin published 2 kits that I know have tons of gameplay examples. Side Scroller Shooter Kit - Unreal Engine Marketplace - Trailer - YouTube
I am a beginner with unreal , but when I made the 3rd person game along side the video tutorial , I remember him saying the the default slot was just there almost as a placeholder because something has to be in there. but once we put in the first animation in the montage , we then just deleted the default slot.
hmm ok thanks razmaz. I’ll have to view that again. it has been i long time since i did that tutorial.
If it makes it easier to understand
An animation BP contains an animgraph where the migration path is created in two sections.
Section 1 is generally called the locomotion state usually built using blend spaces and state machines which determines how the player moves in 3d space. This will be your runs, walks, crouch, swim, climbing, flying or in general anything where the player needs to move. More or less locomotion involves animation be applied to the player model from toes to nose.
Section 2 is the action state where the animation is layered using a per bone blend that adds the animation to a selected bone, the first joint above the hips, where the animation overrides the animation applied in the locomotion section that involves states like like reloading a weapon, punching, or waving hello or any action where the player is not required to be moving.
The result is the player now has the ability to combine two states at the same time as in being able to walk and preform an action at the same time like walking and waving with out having to make unique animations as a single state, like a single animation of the player walking and waving.
Using this kind of setup one can account for any kind of animation combination and keep the animation requirements down to what is needed to move the player or trigger any action state with out consideration as to the current locomotion state.
The action state is where montages shine as the player can only be in one action state at any give time so the migration requirements usually involves just three components.
- A cached state coming from the locomotion section.
- A per bone layer
- A montage slot.
The rest of the work is done in the eventgraph as once you make the montage and assign it to a slot you can add the montage “name” to a list in the eventgraph and when triggered the slot will pick it up base on the slot the montage is assigned to.
Some other advantages.
A montage will play from start to end once activated. If you are reloading by pressing R you don’t have to hold the R button as you would using a button to move forward for example.
A montage can be locked in until it’s completed or overridden if another montage is activated.
A montage can be passed much easier from one BP to another with out consideration as to unique takes. Think of a montage as a package that fits in a single channel as to managing the action and not so much that the montage contains an action state like waving hello.
So rule of thumb if you want to add an action state consider a montage as it cuts the management and animation requirements down to next to nothing as compared to using individual takes.
**FrankieV, thank you so much for writing this. I am going to study what you have written as much as possible and it is making many things easier for me to understand. Thank you for taking the time for a detailed response, and not a vague one. Give me a few days or so, so I can absorb what you have written and I will let you know if I have any questions. Again thank you so much