I posted this in the general forum section with no luck. So I’m willing to pay someone 10 USD through paypal to make a quick video tutorial with all steps to answer these to questions below for me.
My character is a flat 2d character like in Paper Mario but is a 3d model. It is not a sprite. I’m terrible with material and texture stuff so I need some help. =D There are two different things I’m trying to figure out.
- What steps do I need to do to create a parameter in the material and be able to create an animation curve on an animation so I can for example, per animation have different facial expressions like during idle animation the character blinks. Or the character damaged animation he has a pained face. Or the character attack animation he is angry.
- The other thing I wanted is what steps do I need to do in blueprint code if I want to override the default expression with a different one. So for example if the character is angry, I want to change the idle animation normal expression to an angry expression. But I don’t want this to be permanent, just until said event is done or duration of time.
The photo provided is all I have so far. I know sometimes it is harder to help folks if they have too much going on so I hope this makes it a bit easier. I have my character expressions as different textures. Each expression has it’s own texture and all expressions have an alpha texture that goes along with the texture. I have a photo as an example below. So what I’m trying to do is texture swapping. I heard about being able to use sprite textures but I do not know how to do that with my setup.
I need a step by step guide on how to do this through video tutorial. Unfortunately when it comes to materials I’m pretty dumb and it isn’t my strong suit so I need step by step tutorial. Please any help would be much appreciated.
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If need be I can provide texture samples to help make it easier.
I’m, confused about what your trying to do here… You want to know how to set your material changes to a curve? You want to know how to swap textures based on a character state through blueprint? If that’s what your looking for then:UE4 - Tutorial - Change Textures at Run Time - YouTube might be what your looking for.
Thank you very much! This video helps me greatly for my 2nd question. Yeah runtime texture swapping is exactly what I need for 2. Thanks!
For my 1st question. I was wanting to use some sort of animation curve that can control which textures I want for the face during a particular animation like this. Animation Curves | Unreal Engine Documentation
However, I don’t know how to do this with texture swapping. I am not good with working on materials lol. I have this same problem in Maya as well. But if there is a way to set like 1 = normal expression, 2 = angry, 3 = happy, ect, and use the values in an animation curve to set what expressions I want during an animation. That would be exactly what the doctor ordered.
To answer above question so in the game for each animation I want the character to have a certain expression at different times in an animation. So like an idle animation on 10 frames I want the character to close eyes, then on 12th frame I want him to open his eyes. I want to be able to change expressions throughout each animation. The point of the second question is that during gameplay, lets say an event is triggered and this character is now angry. So I want to manually in blue print code be able to set his exprssion to an angry one for a period of time or until event is completed. After event is completed I want the expression to return to the original one (question 1s) from original animation.
I hope this clears up some confusion. Thanks!
I’m glad that helped. I’m not sure why or how you want to attach the swaps to a curve. I’d probably attach them to specific events like the character’s current movement or if he’s jumping or just got hit. This series: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S9KforwzAAU goes over how blueprint event’s work.
You want to use the blueprint and attach some bool variables to the character’s movement and if the controller input is not = to 0 then toggle the bool from idle to running and change the texture based on that. Same for is falling but they did that for you, and how ever you have your damage set up set on in there too, to toggle the hurt face. Hope that helps.
Oh I see! Yeah I never really thought of doing it that way. I was thinking too much as an animator instead of as a programmer. If I recall Doom did something similar like if you take over a certain amount of damage doomguys face changes. So if I think in terms like that in the logic I think this will be easier to do. Bool is like an if statement so I need play around with that and timing. Delays as well. Thanks so much! I think this will help me greatly!
Thanks mate! I shall try this approach!