Right Hand Gripping for Weapons / Tools on Per Weapon Basis

Development Character & Animation
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1

I have an ANIM BP that has simple upper / lower body split, and has Idle/Walk/Run for the lower and an Aim offset for the upper that allows the character to look up and down with the camera.

However, the issue I am running into, is the upper body animations are based off of a generic rifle animation pose. Of course, There will be many guns. I am using left hand IK, but for the right hand each gun will have a different right hand position, different size grips, different trigger positions, etc.

What are some methods I could do to have each gun gripped properly with as little redoing of work as possible? Is the only option redoing every single pose and animation? Are there others?

Here is my current animBp, I have a single frame pose with the grip in the position I would like it (not included in the current animGraph), however I can’t seem to find a way to hook it up to my current graph and get it to work. I have tried apply additive as well as layered blend per bone.

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Any guidance would be greatly appreciated

2

Using state machines for different weapon types would be the cleanest way, I believe. This would require different animations for each weapon type. Even if you only blend the clavicles, for example, to only impact the arms and hands, you would need animations for handguns, rifles, etc. individually.

IK would help for the intersection location of the hands and guns, but I’m not sure how well it would alter the entire top half of an animation meant for a different weapon type. Though, I’m no expert.

Here’s a general tutorial:

How To Use IK To Fix Your Left Hand To A Weapon - Unreal Engine 5 Tutorial