Newbie question: Triggering animations with blueprints

Hi Guys,

First post here. Been playing with the UE4 for the last couple of days and super impressed with the ease of use and speed. I was going through the level creation tutorials on youtube and did the sliding door example.

That seems fine and good for sliding a simple geometry around but it seems very hard to animate something that has multiple pieces that way. I am wonding how I can go about exporting an animation from maya and triggering that in game with blueprints.

What I have in mind is:

-Create a futuristic door in Maya, animate it opening.

-Import that to UDK and trigger it with blueprints while hopefully having controls in UE4 for how fast the animation plays and adjust accordingly.

Any pointers on how I can go about approaching task?

Thanks so much in advance.

Hello there,

We actually have a tutorial for this: A new, community-hosted Unreal Engine Wiki - Announcements - Epic Developer Community Forums

I manage the wiki and would like to take moment to promote how much useful information can be found there in the form of tutorials. Please visit the official Unreal Engine Wiki HERE!

Thanks . Bookmarked the Wiki now. :slight_smile:

Not quite the answer

[= ;5156]
Hello there,

We actually have a tutorial for this: A new, community-hosted Unreal Engine Wiki - Announcements - Epic Developer Community Forums

I manage the wiki and would like to take moment to promote how much useful information can be found there in the form of tutorials. Please visit the official Unreal Engine Wiki HERE!
[/]

Your link isn’t actually the answer the poster (or I) was looking for. That is the exactly example he gave around using the engine to just interpolate the door in a direction.

We are looking for a simple way to play a premade animation via a trigger.

I have a door that has locks and gears that spin to unlock and then the door swings open as an animation. is now imported into the engine and I can preview it fine and it even loops when placed in the scene. What I want to do is have that within a blueprint with a trigger so that you have to enter the trigger area, click to begin the sequence (which will open the door) and then even include other things like a light that turns on when the sequence has reached the end and stopped.

There is a third person blueprint tutorial but it is almost too complex and deals with character animations and state machines and such. Is there another tutorial somewhere that can be referenced? I have yet to find one.

Thank you

[=Slipsilk;161225]

We are looking for a simple way to play a premade animation via a trigger.

[/]

Hey,

Use PlayAnimation on the SkeletalMesh, which contains the animation.

[=Slipsilk;161225]

We are looking for a simple way to play a premade animation via a trigger.

[/]

Hey,

Use PlayAnimation on the SkeletalMesh, which contains the animation.

You can have a skeleton Mesh for a non-rigged character. Thats interesting. Does the imported FBx have to be the combined mesh, or can they be modular?

I normally just use timeline, each part assembled by hand in Unreal.

I don’t know if i understand your question :slight_smile:
But i assumed he has a rigged character with premade animations. Therefore one gets the mesh, the skeleton and the animations by importing the FBX.

I guess you should be able to animate a animation based on non skeletal meshs as well, hierarchical transformation instead of bone animations per say.
should be a very basic feature?

But maybe all animated objects count as skeltal as soon as they got an animation?

In most cases machines for instance are not rigged, and I guess he is meaning a object with transform and rotation off the parts of the door.

I allways get confused why so many people always assume there has to be a rig and a skeleton involved in animation.