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 “globally scaled” 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 “root” 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. Can’t 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 didn’t break away from their transform gizmo and my previously set keys didn’t 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.