Sequencer Skel Mesh Animation Blend Problem

Moleytv · January 1, 2021, 4:50pm

Here is a further video illustration of the problem:

Moleytv · January 1, 2021, 4:08pm

I am having trouble blending animations for my skeletal mesh in sequencer. Any help with this would be greatly appreciated.

I have a skeletal mesh and two animations. In both animations the character’s feet are fixed firmly to the same spot on the floor and the pelvis is moving. When I blend the two animations by overlapping them in sequencer the character’s feet wiggle and slide during the transition.

Both animations have no root motion. The root bone is in an identical spot in both animation clips. I have made a video to illustrate the problem:

link to YouTube video showing problem

I have turned on the skeleton preview for both animations. This shows that the two feet are static in both clips, but geometry itself seems to squidge out of position.

I have tried changing the interpolation of the transition to linear, but this doesn’t help.

When I right click on the little yellow line that represents the transition interpolation, there is a pop-up with an option to change the blend type, but clicking the ‘blend type’ menu item does nothing, there are no options. From my research it seems like I should be able to change the blend type to relative or absolute, but no dice.

In short I would like to be able to have a character standing with feet firmly planted and have it transition between to animations where the rest of the body is moving and not have the feet wobble. I am beginning to think that this is not possible.

Thanks in advance for any help or advice anyone can offer.
Peace

Moleytv · January 2, 2021, 12:00am

OK So I figured it out! Hopefully this helps someone else.

Create a control rig asset for your skeletal mesh. Good tutorial on how to to that here:

In the control rig asset set up a basic IK for each leg. Good tutorial for that in these two videos:

1. In sequencer click on the skeletal mesh's layer and click on the track buttton and choose 'Asset Based Control Rig' and choose the control rig you created in step 1. This will lock your feet to the ground like s#*t to a blanket.

To control the extent to which the IK effects the motion of the leg and feet I created a control that adjusts the weight of the IK node, with 0 being no effect and 1 being full effect. This value along with the position of your ik target are then animatable in the sequencer track. Below are screenshots of how my sequencer looks and the graph of my control rig.

If you need any clarification, hit me up.

I think this works in 4.25 and later.