In UDK all of my 1p arms, 3p characters, 1p and 3p weapons…all had separate animsets and in each of those animsets all the animations were named exactly the same. The names were like:
1p_Equip
1p_Idle
1p_Fire
1p_toAim
…etc.
In code we were always calling the same named animations on both the weapons and the meshes and simply swapping the referenced animsets. This made for pretty easy organization.
So we just had to call that animation on all the associated meshes. As long as the animation existed in its animset, it would play. If the animation didn’t exist in the set, it failed out and was safe. Most weapons only needed fire and reload anims, but were always looking to play every animation in case it had floating parts during other cycles like a bipod during run that jiggled.
But in UE4 all the animations and meshes are all just out in the open, not in any sort of containers. They are associated to the skeleton only. This is semi-akin to an animset of sorts, but I don’t know if it’s wise or feasible to swap skeletons during run time when you swap weapons or not. Even if that works, won’t I need multiple copies of the skeletons for the arms?
I know the animBP can take care of a lot of this, but it still feels like I’m about to go down a huge rabbit hole full of spider webs. I can’t name my animations as just the view_animation anymore, now I have to name them all based on the weapon being used. My list of animations is going to be staggering. Is there really no way to make any kind of animation “set”?
How should we be organizing this for a game that has 1p arms visible to yourself, a 3p body visible to others and both 1p and 3p versions of the weapons in a game featuring 150 weapons? …no, I dont’ have 150 weapons, but do you see where my worry lies?