Let’s say I have a bunch of creatures that are similar, but not identical Skeletons. Currently I seem to have to retarget and make a UNIQUE anim blueprint for each one of these slight skeleton variations. Is there no way around this? Seems like a maintenance problem when I want to go and add a bit more functionality to the anim blueprint, I would then have a lot of unique duplicates to modify. Does anyone know of a better solution to this? Have been trying to determine a way to encapsulate the anim blueprint event graph & animgraph in some re-usable way across these similar character skeletons…
Is it possible for you to share a Skeleton asset amongst your characters? It isn’t necessary for all of the skeletal meshes/characters that share a Skeleton to have an identical hierarchy. Basically, you would want your base hierarchy to match (like Root->Pelvis->Spine1, etc), but if one character has joints for a cape or ammo packs or armor plating that another character doesn’t have, that’s not a problem at all. Those extra joints will appear in your Skeleton asset, but will be kinda greyed out in any skeletal mesh that doesn’t have them. I think that is the simplest/easiest way to address the maintenance problem that you are correctly pointing out.
In case you are interested, almost all of the bipedal characters in Gears of War shared a skeleton. Marcus Fenix, the Locusts, Anya, just about everyone. It can take a bit of foresight, but it can save you tons of work in the long run.
Thank you for this! I posted a comment previously but only just got what you were getting at with the answer. Just to add a little more, anyone looking to wrap their head around how this works a little quicker:-
It seems that an animation blueprint (both the event graph and anim graph) are tied to the skeleton in your blueprint. You can change the mesh you’re looking at using the little grid icon on the mesh tab but as far as I can see, if you add a mesh to any actual actor you make, it will reference the correct animation blueprint so you don’t need to duplicate all these. Provided that you can share the same skeleton asset across your meshes (as detailed above)