How to loop an Actor to Sequencer section?

werwack
Wed, 14 Apr 2021 22:56:55 +0000
Cinematics & Media

Hello,

I am looking for a mean to easily loop an actor animation in the sequencer, this for an actor in the level.

My use case is this:

I want an object in my screen to have a specific movement in space in front of a door in a very specific place in my map, and I want this movement to loop forever.

The sequencer allows fast and easy animation of actors (transformations and properties), so I see it as a very convenient way to create this object animation.

I created a Level Sequence, added an Actor to Sequencer track, made my animation, declared it in the Level Blueprint so that it is played when the map is run. So far so good.

But I need this animation to loop forever. In the curve editor I selected the first and last keys of the animation and I set the post infinity property to cycle. Then I extented the section of the track so that it has an end time quite high. This “works” when the map is run but with 2 limitations: changing the post infinity value of the last keys is fastious and error prone in case of many animated properties, and the loop only last for the duration of the section.

Then I tested the method suggested in this post: [How to loop a subscene?][1] which take advandage of a section property introducted in UE 4.25 named CanLoop. This is great to enable a subscene content that is shorter than the current track to loop, but it is still limited by the end time of this subscene track.

Someone has a suggestion that can currently work?

To answer this very common usecase I would suggest the introduction of a new mode for the section “When Finished” property:

As shown in the following screenshot, it would be great to have a “Loop Forever” item in the dropdown list of the “When Finished” property. When this value is used the section Range End is ignored and the section would repeats itself forever. Simple to use, highly efficient, compliant with the current implementation.
(of course another item “Ping-pong Loop” would be great too…)

Many thanks for your attention to that idea

4 posts - 3 participants