Select node not working in custom blend transition (AnimBP)

This is turning into a popular problem. You can see the spawn of this conversation at this AnswerHub link: Cleaning Up State Machine Spaghetti - Programming & Scripting - Epic Developer Community Forums

We’ve built a custom blend transition to handle some simple animation logic (like determining which WalkStart animation to play based on movement direction). Blend Poses by Bool works, but we’re trying to choose one of 8 animations to play, not just two. As you can see below, the Switch node looks like it should work, but it isn’t (the result is being ignored).

There are many people who would love to make use of this system (custom blends with AnimBP logic determining one-off animation choices) to help clear up their state machines, but no one seems to know how it works (or if it works).

Hi ,

It sounds like what you are trying to achieve is covered on this page:

[Blend Spaces in Unreal Engine | Unreal Engine 5.1 Documentation][1]

Specifically this section:

https://docs.unrealengine.com/latest/images/Engine/Animation/Blendspaces/BlendSpaceDirection.jpg

We’re trying to determine the playback of one-off animations, similar to animation montages. I don’t see how a blend space (which we use extensively btw) would be set up to work on our scenario.

The goal is to choose different transition animations based off context from one node to another within the anim state machine such as Idle->Run blend space. where the → could have a variety of idle->start anims based off the relative turn direction.

Thanks for following up - I probably wasn’t being very clear with the purpose.

Given your updated information, we are currently researching this to see if we can provide a better solution.

Okay, thanks for the help! I’m going to hold off on making my state machine any messier and see what you guys come up with.

Yeah looking forward to it. I actually was about to attempt to setup 8 or so different run->stop transition anims and realized it would be super ugly if it wasn’t nested.

I will continue investigating as much as I can over the holidays, but the developer in charge of the system is out on vacation for the next two weeks -in case you still wanted to experiment on your own during that time.

Select node isn’t supported in AnimGraph, There are BlendListByInt or BlendListByEnum where it can be used like Select node. Does it not work for you?

Thanks,

–Lina,

Where can I find it? I am using blueprints

Did you find out about it? yet

Hi gameme,

The BlendListByInt or BlendListByEnum nodes are accessible in any State of the a State Machine as shown:

Hi!

I found this thread useful since I had the same problem. Can I ask, if the Select node is not supported then why is it possible to place it inside the anim graph? I’m sure if you removed it it would help noobs like me not make the same mistake again!

Hi pottej,

I have entered an official request to have this corrected [UE-15755]. When this is addressed, an update will be added to this thread.

Thanks for your feedback!

Hi.

Spent some time now going crazy until i thought… google. Which brought me here. Will look into the blendlist options. Thx

Okay I see that you can blend poses based on an interger, but there is one problem. You can’t add another pin in the event that you want to choose between more than two animations, the way that a select node, were it supported in the animation graph, would allow. I’m using a BlendPosesByInt node which was the closest equivalent I could find to what was mentioned above. Is there something I’m missing?

If I understand your question you would achieve this by, for example, having a montage that includes loading a pistol, loading a rifle, and loading a shotgun and blending them by integer with the walk animation. If this is not what you are asking, please elaborate describing the scenario like I have done here.

Well what I was hoping to do was to select from a list of animations that are being blended together from the head bone. The rest of the body would be playing a separate animation from the head. From there, I wanted to be able to place multiple instances of the character in a level and choose from a list of animations which animation I want the head to play and which animation I want the body to play.

The problem I was having was the one I described above. I needed to be able to select between more than two animations for both the head and the body. I will give the montage thing a shot, however. Maybe the slot will allow me to have all of those animations accessible from one pin.

The following documentation on Additive Animations using a cached pose and layered blend per bone node (which you can add pins to) in addition to slots may be useful in finding a solution:

Using Additive Animations