Trying to pass a variable from an actor to an animation blueprint or a pawn

[schallundrauch]

I’m new to Unreal and I’m struggeling to pass variables from an actor blueprint to an animation blueprint. When I’m using a pawn instead of an actor everything works but I want to apply animations to a metahuman which is an actor so how can I make this work?

Heres my working setup with a pawn:

And here is what I tried with the metahuman actor:

I also tried to pass the variables from the actor to the pawn to then transfer them to the animation blueprint also without success. I read sth about that for this the pawn has to “own” the actor but I don’t know how to achieve this. I guess they have to be related to each other somehow so is that what is missing here?

Thanks a lot in advance!

[Everynone]

@schallundrauch

metahuman which is an actor

Instead of:

Try:

You have it there in one of your screenshots, does it not work?

[schallundrauch]

You’re right it now works using this node! I tried it before but probably had sth else wrong then because it didn’t work before. So thank you! Can you explain why this node is needed?

[Everynone]

@schallundrauch

why this node is needed

You said it yourself. The metahuman is not a Pawn but a mundane Actor.

It all stems from inheritance. Actor is the base class, the deeper we go, the more specialised classes become:

• a Character is a Pawn and an Actor
• a Pawn is a Pawn (obv!) and an Actor
• an Actor is just an Actor - it does not know things Pawns or Characters can do

If you try to treat Metahuman Omar Actor who owns the Skeletal Mesh and the Animations as if was a Pawn, they will have no clue what you mean.

---

If you go Omar’s Class Settings:

You can re-parent it and make it a Pawn and the Try to Get Pawn Owner should now work.

[schallundrauch]

I think I got it now! Thanks a lot for your time, that really helped!

[schallundrauch]

Okay one last question: I created a variable from the Omar Blueprint and tried to plug that one into the Cast node which didn’t work. Is the difference that the Get Owning Actor returns the specific Omar instance that is in my scene while the Omar variable returns the general Omar blueprint that doesn’t have the animation tied to it?

[Everynone]

the difference

It would be the same instance. Could you show the script? Or try it like so:

[schallundrauch]

I just wanted to make sure that I undestand it correctly.

This is working because Get Owning Actor returns the Omar Blueprint Instance in my scene that has the animation Blueprint tied to it:

This is not working because Omar returns the Omar Blueprint which doesn’t have the animation Bluepprint tied to it:

Did I understand that right?

[Everynone]

Where do you assign value to the Omar variable? It’s almost 100% null. The blue note is telling you there is no need to cast. Have a look at my previous post:

You can then use that variable without casting anywhere.

[schallundrauch]

Ahh I see it makes sense now! The variable didn’t have a value assigned, of course it’s not going to work without setting it first. Thanks again a lot, you really helped me out!