Play the same anim blueprint instance on multiple skeletal meshes?

Skip to the bold text below for the actual question if you want:

I have a flying character that initially I had as one whole mesh that animated with one animation blueprint. However it only offered me one material slot to use for the mesh and I wanted to use 3 separate materials for this character (it has a main body mesh, an outer wing mesh, and an inner wing mesh originally).

So in a 3D modeling app, I separated the model into it’s 3 different parts (the body, the inner wing, and the outer wing). All 3 skeletal meshes I assigned the exact same skeleton when imported. None of them use any different skeletons, they all use the same one. I then assigned all of them the same Animation Blueprint to use. And I found out they all spawn separate animation blueprint “instances” during runtime (when the game is playing).

This poses a big problem, as now I have to reference all 3 skeletal meshes and (since I’m using C++) I have to set 3 different variables on the 3 separate anim blueprint instances, in order to get them all to play the same state at the same time. This is very cumbersome, and even at the beginning of the game the wing skeletal meshes are playing at a different point in the “Idle” animation state, which makes it animate the wings offset from the body animation, until they exit the state and transition back into it at the same time.

So, sorry for the book, but my question is – is there a way to get skeletal meshes with the exact same skeleton to use the exact same animation instance during runtime, so that I only have to tell one animation blueprint to go into the “flying” state, for example, and they all enter the flying animation state at the same time?

Thanks for any information or help.

I want to find an answer too.

would like to know as well!