New To UE4 - How do you keep an imported animated character static until triggered.

Development Character & Animation
1

I just downloaded and started looking around the program yesterday and I have already been able to import an animated character! This is exciting as I have zero experience in anything game creation related.

However, my characters animation (run cycle) just loops when I play the scene in preview mode. I have not gotten into the blueprints and how they work yet but could someone give me a quick idea about how I would go about keeping my imported character from moving in the scene until something triggers the animation.

For example a character remains crouching behind a crate until you walk by and then the animation starts and he jumps out from behind the crate when you come close enough to the box.
Thanks!

2

Hi sgmusic… UE4 is great for making importing assets (even animations) relatively easy. However, what you are describing delves into the more complicated area of AI and Behavior trees. (ie. The simple behavior of your AI crouching then jumping out from behind a crate when they detect the player.)

A good place to start would be here: https://docs.unrealengine/latest/INT/Engine/AI/BehaviorTrees/QuickStart/index.html

3

Thanks ! I will check it out.

4

You could do it like that:

  1. create another character bp and anim bp.
  2. in your character bp you will have to create a bool variable
  3. now add a trigger into your level and in your level bp you have to cast to your character bp to get the bool variable
  4. connect the trigger event with the set bool variable so that the bool variable from the character bp gets set to “true”
  5. in your anim bp you also have to cast to the character bp
  6. add a “play montage” node + create a montage with your “jump out” animation + add it to the “play montage” node
  7. add a branch + connect it with the get from the casted bool variable + connect it with the rest of the string + connect the true with the play montage
  8. in your anim graph you have to add slot node between the state and the pose
  9. in the state you have to add another state + the crouch idle animation

It sounds very complicated, but actually it’s pretty easy :wink: -> this tutorial explains you everything about characters and animations: