What the hell is a slot?

Development Character & Animation
1

Ok, I’m confused.

What is a slot?

I don’t mean the attach point that you add to a skeleton. I understand that one.

The animation blueprint in shootergame blends in the third person aim blend space but then has a slot node after it which has “UpperBody” set. But what the hell does that Slot node do? I want to be able to blend only the specific parts of the skeleton that are contributing to the aiming, which I do right now by using a blend that allows me to specify a start bone and a depth. But is that what the SLOT thing was doing? What is the “UpperBody” and where is it defined?

Its kind of fascinating how fiddly all this stuff is. I’m doing a first/third person controller with cover taking/parkour/crouch/prone and the like and it amazes me how many things contribute to the overall animation. Things like additive loops for firing weapon knock-back and the like.

How do you guys work all this stuff out? I’d like to design some of this up-front because right now, so if anyone has any tips please share them.

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The slot node is used in combination with a montage -> In this series you learn everything about the UE4 animation tools (also explains how to use montages and slots) :slight_smile:

https://docs.unrealengine/latest/INT/Engine/Animation/AnimMontage/index.html#slots

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Riiight, I can see whats up now then. It was basically additively doing a montage on the upper body using the UpperBody slot and blending that with the cached base pose. Which makes sense. I thought for some reason it was doing a blend with the aim offset blend space.

Well there you go, I learnt something new! Thanks :slight_smile:

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