Unreal 5.5: animToTexture Crowd Instancing with multiple Static Meshes not applying anim properly

[Berker84]

Hi,

I have been following this documentation to create a small crowd with the official animToTexture plugin in Unreal 5.5.4: How to use CitySample - BP_AnimToTexture? - #10 by kromond
(shout out and thank you to @kromond for putting this together!)

Question: Did anyone get this to work having multiple characters (staticMeshes) instanced using Blueprints in UE5.5.4?
The instancing itself works, but the animation is not being applied correctly. It only applies it to the first ‘Instance Static Mesh’ in the list. The rest is staying static. It also doesn’t seem to be able to pick up the Data Asset to randomize animation. It seems that ‘Add Instance’ is getting confused with indexing or something.

Here the breakdown:

1. I got it working well with just one staticMesh. It uses ‘Setup Instanced Mesh Component’ and applies transforms with ‘Updated Instance Transforms’. It reads the Data sheet and randomizes animation from 15 anim clips. Works well and as expected
   

   
   
   
   

2. Now, I am trying to add another staticMesh. The way I got them instanced properly is by creating a ‘Instanced Static Mesh List’ and use ‘Add Instance’ to apply transforms to each instance. However only the characters in blue (Instanced Static Mesh 0) are moving, the characters in red (Instanced Static Mesh 1) are static. It also doesn’t apply random animations based off the data asset. It only uses the first animation entry.
   

   
   
   
   

3. I also tried to apply random animations using ‘Set Custom Data Value’ after ‘Add Instance’ as per @krumond UE4 example) instead of using the data asset, but that doesn’t randomize or apply it either. I get the same results
   

   

Any advice would be greatly appreciated.

Thank you,
Bernhard