I’m trying to get the default third person player to hold a gun at all times (ie idle, running, jumping ,etc.) by merging it with an idle animation of the mannequin holding a rifle.
I created a montage of the rifle holding animation and entered it into a slot (DefaultGroup.DefaultSlot), I then tried to put it all together in the AnimGraph using “Layered blend per bone” but it doesn’t play the rifle holding animation, just the default idle one. I know everything else is good because if I break the link to my second blend pose, the character enters the default pose from the waist up.
Either I’m just missing a step or I’m going about this completely wrong.
AnimGraph
Rifle Holding Montage
-How do you play the montage animation?
-have you set a “bone” in the blend node
Make sure to take a look at this tutorial series: ? 
yeah that’s the one I’m following
the montage should play on its own at idle and yes I know I’ve correctly set the bone, that’s why if I break the link to the second blend pose, from the waist up you just see the default “T” pose
as a temporary solution, I’ve changed the default idle/run animation with one that starts with the character holding the rifle and ends with the character running with the rifle, it works okay except there’s not much of a walking component to it, the default third person animation had a walking component between idle and full sprint which made the transition look more natural that’s why I wanted to keep everything from the waist down
But how do you play the montage? Where do you tell the engine to start playing it?
good point, I found where ThirdPersonIdleRun (the default animation) is being called but not sure where I should be calling the rifle holding part
Do that in the event graph. There you have to add a “play montage” node - connect a branch with it and at the branch you check if the speed is under 1 = idle - connect the branch with the other nodes
Thanks, I got it working, yes I changed it in the event graph at first but then I just changed it in the AnimGraph
Now my character is always holding the rifle no matter what he’s doing. Only one issue remains and this is most noticeable when the character is walking, the upper and lower body appear out of sync, my character looks drunk when he’s walking, anyway I could tweak this? I may just settle for the other solution (not blending different animations together).
