I am trying to animated a metahuman in sequencer using root mote animations. Ive got root motion enabled in the animation details, and in the animation preview, my character walks forward for an infinite amount of time using the root motion.
When I bring that character into sequencer, I am only given the option to add that root motion animation in single iterations ie. it plays once, then resets the body to the starting position.
I cant figure out any way to make the animation draggable to a custom length and having the root motion animation move the character forward without resetting the body back to the starting position everytime the animation loop completes.
Hi there,
To make this work, make sure to use a looping walking animation for repeated sequences. If your animation starts from idle, it will not work. Just drop the animation one after another. To link the current location, @alberto has showed you the fix. If you need a quick video instruction:
I changed "when finishedâ to âkeep stateâ from project default.
I also used the method from that video, which Iâve tried previously without any difference, but in my frustration I only tried using "rootâ bone.
This time I tried âpelvisâ and its working!
Nevermind. Spoke too soon. Tried it with a different root animation to make sure it was solid and it doesnt work. Tried 10 different bones. Went back to the original root animation where I had the issue. Tried it again with the exact same setup. Resets my character back to its position after every iteration, regardless of bone matching. Clicked âshow skeletonâ under anim properties and the skeleton is left behind at the end of the animation when it resets the mesh to starting position. This cant be normal, or right.
I am now convinced root motion is purely broken. I played around on a different project with root motion in sequencer for about 30minutes. I retargeted root animations from scratch to new characters, enabling root motion, ensuring translation mode was set to âglobally scaledâ for root in IK retargeter, and ensuring root motion is not only limited to montages in animation_bp.
I loaded up 4 different root animations sequenced one after another. Enabled bone matching for each clip, starting with pelvis. All of the animations worked and my character continued on a path without resetting his position, although none of the animations transitioned smoothly. Oh well.
Then I added the same animation one after another 5 times and the root motion worked, although still, there was a slight skip backwards on the Y axis at every transition. Still the root motion worked.
Then I switched around the bone matching between clips, using head, clavicle, etc. All of them worked the same as pelvis previously. Then I switched to ârootâ for bone match. Everything broke. None of the animations transitioned anymore. Character reset to starting position after each animation played through.
There is ZERO consistency to this, and what is an absolutely crucial workflow for sequencer is completely busted in this version of UE5. Canât say enough how disappointed I am, as this has brought me to a complete halt. My only other option is to manually key the transform position for my character using in-place animations, which is fine, If my characters didnât break away from their transform gizmo and my previously set keys didnât completely blow up and move all over the map.
So now, my ACTUAL only option is to figure out how to mocap an entire sequence and upload a single animation without being able to change or alter anything. This sucks.
I found that the blending option @alberto mentioned is relative to the position your cursor is at, which means to tell Sequencer where to start the blending I think.
I wanted to follow up here as I ran into the same issue where my skeletons visually were matching but the mesh was popping to a different location, basically the root motion wasnt seeming to work.
My issued ended up being the Animation Mode on the character was set to a blueprint that wasnt extracting root motion. Switched the Animation mode on the mesh to either a custom mode or ABP that was doing that, and the mesh now stays with the skeleton.
Can confirm, was having the same issue with âinconsistenciesâ (random blending issues, which shouldâve not have happened in the first place). So itâs key to make sure when you modify these stripes in the sequencer, your cursor (timeline) is right at the end/beginning when you set the blend type (on top of having the âkeep stateâ property enabled in the settings above). Knowing this couldâve saved me a day or two!
for some reason when you add new animation to the track the new skeleton appears to be matched with previous animation though mesh is unmatched. That begs the question - are newly added animations supposed to be matched by default or itâs a bug?
matching it by root (even if I set cursor at the correct position) has 0 effect;
matching it by pelvis helps (sometimes).
Any ideas why it works only by pelvis? Thatâs seems inconsistent and sometimes does not work too.
Dunno if it helps but I found this thread with a similar problem, we exported the animation clip from UE and reimported it and could then get the bone matching to work, which then led us to realise that âRoot Motion Lockâ was enabled in the clip, if we disabled it then bone matching with previous clip works.
