[Open Beta] Procedural On-the-Fly Animation in UE4: iTween!

Never used iTween before - but sure looks nice an amazing plugin! I’ll keep my eye on this.

's alpha release version 0.3 (because we said so):iTween for UE4 a0.3f

It has near 100% complete implementations of Move From/To Location, Move To Location Array, Move To Spline Component, and Float Update.

We understand some of this may seem cryptic or difficult to figure out without some sort of tutorial, and we apologise for that! We want to make the full suite of tweening operations available first before we get started on tutorials.

If you’re feeling adventurous, please try it out and give us your feedback so we can improve the product.

Thanks y’all

-Sweet

I’m having some compilation errors after a drag the iTween folder to my Content folder and start the project… do you know what might be the problem!?

Cheers!

Eww! That’s a disappointment. That’s caused by the blueprints not referencing the same exact paths. I was hoping everything would be relative, but it looks like I have to find a way to set those objects correctly. I’ll try to find a way to keep that from happening Tuesday and re-release.

The fix for you will require going through and setting variables individually and turning on interfaces in individual blueprints. For example, where it says “Spawn Actor From Class,” you’ll need to choose the class “iTMoveToLocation,” or whatever best matches the name of the event that calls it and turn on iTInterface for each of the blueprints in the itween folder using the Blueprint props rollout.

Yeah. Like I said, I’ll find a fix for you. :slight_smile:

Scratch what I just said, Daniel. I was unable to repro what you were experiencing until I put iTween into another folder - so what’s causing your errors is most likely from not placing it in the same folder I did.

It’s my fault for only suggesting Content\Blueprints\iTween. It really should be exactly that. Yor content browser should look like this:

The relative paths still keep, you just need to make sure your relative paths are the same as mine.

Do people still use the Blueprints folder? Should I move everything to the root folder?

I don’t use the default folder structure. I organize my assets by author:

  • If I created something it goes in ./Veo/
  • If I commissioned something from someone else it goes in ./Author/ with a license file as well as details of the transaction.
  • If something is open-source/public domain/etc it goes in ./Third Party/Author/Project/, with a license file and a link to the original.

Makes it far easier to keep track of what I’m allowed to distribute, what I’m using for prototyping but have to replace before I sell, etc… After that I typically use the default folder structure for my own stuff and whatever the author used for anything third party.

Basically what I’m trying to say is: Please don’t force directory structures if you don’t absolutely need to, and make it easily configurable if you do need to. :slight_smile:

Veo, thank you for this valuable feedback! This is definitely something we’ll have to consider and try to find a new approach for. Blueprints are, by nature, a closed beast so I’m not sure if this is something we can conceivably make happen with the content-only release; when we have the C++ implementation ready we’ll have a lot more flexibility on that.

At this time I’d like to formally request some input from Unreal devs :slight_smile: - What’s the deal with blueprints and file references?

EDIT: Brain lapse, you can easily move the package after you import it to the engine the first time. Put it in Contents\Blueprints first, then open up the iTween.uasset blueprint. If there are no compile errors then you can simply use the content browser to move the iTween folder using "Move " :slight_smile:

Alpha v0.35: Mediafire

Changelog:
-Fully commented blueprints (except Float Tick)
-Rotate From/To and Rotate Along Spline added
-Removed Move Along Vector Array
-Added Generate Spline From Vector Array and Generate Spline From Rotator Array functions for the sake of modularity
-Added “Space” enumeration for above functions to allow for calculations based on world, parent, or self coordinates
-Added option to destroy spline object in Move Along Spline and Rotate Along Spline Events (useful for cleaning up generated splines you only plan to use once)
-Usability Pass
-Optimization Pass
-Moved iTween folder to root, or \Unreal Projects\My Game\Content. The reason is that everyone has this folder, but not everyone keeps a “Blueprints” folder.

Known issues:
-Ease In and Out Elastic Ease Type is more or less broken
-Ease Types that go beyond input and output (example: Back and Elastic Ease Types) do not work correctly with Spline-bound Events
-Some things seem to have random capitalisation. This is because we’re developing on 4.4 and I am bad at typing things correctly the first time. This is in the list of corrections for when 4.5 is released and strings preserve capitalisation.

Roadmap:
-Comment Float Tick BP
-Scale From/To
-Move Tick (for a constantly changing move target)
-Rotate Tick
-Scale Tick
-Update Move Events’ orientation features to use Rotate Tick instead of the current RInterp implementation
-Add support for custom Ease Types through math expressions or curves
-Fix known issues
-Video Tutorials

I’m really new to this type of situation, would like to know where exactly to import these files. Is it in my game, just click import or?

You copy the Itween folder to Content inside your game folder and they’ll be available for use. Just follow the rundown in the OP. If you can sit tight for about a week, I’ll be making some video tutorials.

yeah that’s fine until then I can go ahead and work on other assets. Are you going to post a link to it in ?

Yes, of course.

Ok everyone, now in beta, 's iTween v0.5b for UE4: Mediafire

And a few tutorials for those of us who learn better with a video demonstration: Youtube Playlist

More to come.

Changelog:
-Float Tick commented
-Move Tick, Rotate Tick, Scale Tick events added
-Optimization Pass

Known issues:
-Ease In and Out Elastic Ease Type is more or less broken
-Ease Types that go beyond input and output (example: Back and Elastic Ease Types) do not work correctly with Spline-bound Events
-Some things seem to have random capitalisation. This is because we’re developing on 4.4 and I am bad at typing things correctly the first time. This is in the list of corrections for when 4.5 is released and strings preserve capitalisation.

Roadmap:
-Add support for UMG render transforms
-More video tutorials
-Add support for custom Ease Types through math expressions or curves
-Fix known issues

Sounds like you’re making some good progress!

I don’t know the meaning of the word.

Very useful - thanks for this!! :cool:

Brilliant, thank you so much! Funny enough, I just had decided that I will try porting one of Unity’s C# tweening libs (iTween or Hotween) over to UE4 for my game when I stumbled across this thread… perfect timing :slight_smile:

One question: Do you know of a way to make use of the landscape splines for the MoveToSpline task? That way you could have actors follow a road without manually placing waypoints or an additional spline. I couldn’t find a way to get a reference to a landscape spline into the Blueprint, but maybe there is one?

What about the ‘other’ splines? (not landscape). I have blueprints updating a mesh to follow those quite smoothly, but the splines themselves seem a little inflexible. It mentions splines above so I assume there is work being done in this area which would make it more simple if everything relating to movement was implemented in iTween.

Wow! When this all happen… Totally missed this.

Our personal workflow is to make everything in Max and Zbrush, so we haven’t even begun to dig into landscapes yet. I have some free time this week though, and I will see what I can see. However, if it’s not exposed to blueprints, it most likely can’t be done. If that’s the case, there are two options: request the feature to epic and when it’s implemented we’ll get right on an iTween solution, or wait for the C++ version of iTween (which will be a while, since the blueprint version comes first. If we can make it happen, we’ll make it happen!

Regular splines are already supported! You can move to a location on a spline or rotate to look at a spline point using iTween. I know it’s probably not extremely clear how to do that, so be on the lookout this week for more tutorial videos.

Glad you’re now :cool: