When do i use the AnimBP and when do i use the "Play Anim Montage" function?

Development Character & Animation
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Hey guys,

I just downloaded the CouchKnights Project to learn a bit about animating a swordfighter.

So normaly i would use a AnimBP that blends between different Animations based on Bools or other factors.

So i looked into the AnimBP but i was half empty. I couldn’t find the Attack Blend. The character is able to do 2 swings. If you press attack fast enough a second time, you swing back from the first swing endpoint.

I wanted to know how this works. I thought you do this just with 2 bools.
The first bool is the first attack that changes the anim from idle or running to the Swing1 and as long as this Swing1 bool is still true, you have around .3 seconds time to press again and set Swing2 bool to true. With this bool also set to true, it blends to the second swing. After that, both bools will be set to false and we are back to the idle/running. If you don’t press attack a second time, you will directly go to the idle/running.

Is that wrong?

Because the devs of CouchKnights did this differently. They took the event tick and checked for the bool.
They used the bool that was set to true to start the Swing1 Animation with the “Play Anim Montage” function.
They also check the current Montage to determine if we are still using Swing1. If this is true, they play “Swing2” (if you press Attack a second time).

So my question is: Why do they split this? Why not doing this all together in the AnimBP like i said at top?
Is this just to show 2 ways or is there a deeper sense behind it?

Thanks for your time reading this. I hope someone takes some more time answering me (:

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Would be nice if someone would take some time to read this ):

I need this information to start making my own animation set for my character!

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#Start Experimenting

You should just start experimenting and see what workflow you enjoy most!

UE4 is new, the “established” and correct ways of doing things have not been invented yet

You are free and encouraged to experiment

Just a note, Epic has stated that using Anim Montages can be expensive, so using blendspaces or animation sequences is preferred if you can do it.

But for something like I sword swing I would tend to use a montage :slight_smile:

By the way the Play Anim Montage is something that uses your AnimBP!

You have to have a Slot node setup with FullBody or UpperBody, and then set the name in the Anim Montage, so your question does not quite make sense.

Montages are part of an Anim BP via slot nodes :slight_smile:

I’ve answered lots of questions about this over the months, use the search feature to find my other replies and pictures!

lots of pictures!

Rama

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Hey Rama,

thanks for the answer. Since i wasn’t sure about this, the question was good i think :smiley: Then i will study the other questions and try to learn again with the Couch Knights setup. Seemed pretty good organized.