We are using the Mutable plugin and it works well and as intended with the exception of the point in the headline.
We have spit up our gear and armor for characters into separate skeletal meshes, and with Mutable we are able to merge the skeletal meshes into one and the same at runtime. Everything works really well with physics assets, cloth simulation, materials, etc. However when we have modular skeletal meshes that use separate post process ABPs, we have not been able to get one merged ABP to use for the merged skeletal mesh that still deforms all the joints from all the individual modular pieces. In the official documentation Mutable Overview it is stated that it “Combines animation graphs of multiple parts” but we can’t get that to work.
Is there any additional documentation about this? Or can someone point us in the right direction of what to do?
The documentation is misleading in its wording (We’ll get this addressed). You cannot combine animation graphs directly because of the nature of the anim graphs themselves.
Anim Instance : This is metadata that will be attached to this skeletal mesh node. If a generated CustomizableObjectInstance/skeletal mesh ends up using this skeletal mesh, it will also have this anim instance metadata. It will be possible to query the present anim instances in the CO Instance via the Mutable API (grouped by component and AnimBlueprintSlot, the next property). The anim instance will not be automatically applied to the generated CustomizableObjectInstance/skeletal mesh, it will have to be done manually by the programmer possibly in the Instance Generated Callback.
The idea behind this current setup is to apply that metadata and use linked layers or slots to inject specific animation information for that section. Often you use a similar core set of joints that lead to your newly applied leaf nodes skeleton information, and then use a linked layer to apply that animation directly using blend by bone node in your animgraph. There are other creative solutions, but you cannot merge animation graphs like that easily right now.
Have a nice day!