[newbie] Which animation method to use?

[wtfyoucare (smm)]

I am trying to build some cinematics in UE5, using assets from an old sub game SH4. I’ve imported the models, played a bit with various things (hey, got a MK14 torpedo running), but have a question…
A sub I’m working on as the first one has many moving pieces - propellers rotating, opening the torpedo doors, periscopes going up and down, radar rotating (or not) etc…
All of the assets are static meshes, as exported from the game and (some) Blenderised.

Now, my question is - what should I use to animate those small bits and pieces? I know how to animate static meshes (says props is very easy), but sometime it’s probably a bit more complex - when torpedo doors are opening/closing, it’s actually two moving parts (part of the hull and also the actual door). I’d have to sync those. In SH4 model, those were a simple keyframe animations (start/end point/rotation and how many frames), that you could just trigger.
The options I know I could do:

• make a function that animates the object (in case of the door, there’s 10 of them!)
• sequencer?
• convert the sub to a skeletal mesh?

TBH, the latter two seem like an overkill to me, but I’m a newbie, so any suggestions/advice gratefully accepted.

Cheers,
–smm
P.S. And if someone could point me how to create cavitation bubbles, that would be excellent too!

[ambdaL]

@wtfyoucare

I am trying to build some cinematics in UE5, using assets from an old sub game SH4. I’ve imported the models, played a bit with various things (hey, got a MK14 torpedo running), but have a question…
A sub I’m working on as the first one has many moving pieces - propellers rotating, opening the torpedo doors, periscopes going up and down, radar rotating (or not) etc…
All of the assets are static meshes, as exported from the game and (some) Blenderised.

Now, my question is - what should I use to animate those small bits and pieces? I know how to animate static meshes (says props is very easy), but sometime it’s probably a bit more complex - when torpedo doors are opening/closing, it’s actually two moving parts (part of the hull and also the actual door). I’d have to sync those. In SH4 model, those were a simple keyframe animations (start/end point/rotation and how many frames), that you could just trigger.
The options I know I could do:

• make a function that animates the object (in case of the door, there’s 10 of them!)
• sequencer?
• convert the sub to a skeletal mesh?

TBH, the latter two seem like an overkill to me, but I’m a newbie, so any suggestions/advice gratefully accepted.

Go for sequencer in UE5 for animations with multiple parts. It’s easier to sync and control, less complex than converting to skeletal mesh or creating individual functions.

[wtfyoucare (smm)]

Thanks, I’ll give it a go!

[wtfyoucare (smm)]

Ok, so I can us the Actor Component Sequencer to do this - but is there a way how to tell the ACS dynamically which two components to do (+ some transformation params, but I could live w/o that for the time being)?

I have 10 pairs of torpedo doors, and each has to have a sequence to open and close - so I’d have to build 20 sequencers, which seems a bit… wastefull?