Is there any way to blend two anim track in matinee?

In Unreal 3 / UDK, it was possible to blend multiple animation tracks within matinee. This was great for being able to blend out hard transitions between animations that didn’t quite fit.

Specifically, in UDK you could:

  • Create an anim tree with an animation slot (“fullbody”, etc)
  • Create a matinee that played an animation via an animtrack on this slot
  • Create a second anim track on this slot directly
  • Blend smoothly between these two anim tracks via the curve editor

In Unreal 4 I can create two anim tracks, but the second always takes full control of my animation. The curve editor has no apparent effect on the anim tracks.

This is fairly critical feature in how we used matinee before, and its disheartening to see that for all the other goodness that this functionality is removed. Is there any way to workaround this functionality via composites or blueprints? (ie can it take my two animations that I want to blend and somehow generate a new FBX of the blended version?)

Thanks!

Unfortunately we had that feature removed but the plan is to support blending for composite so you can use composite for that, but we don’t have that feature implemented yet.

Will you consider using other system such as montage (which plays on slot node) or so and use blueprint to trigger?
Or do you need matinee control?

Thanks,

–Lina,

We really cannot use composite or montage for what we’re looking for. We want to make animations scenes not just gameplay animation sets.

As it stands now, I don’t see how you would be able to control multiple actors, or make cutscenes in UDK without being able to blend in matinee. Maybe it’s just because I’m a novice and have more to learn, but if not, I really hope this feature returns.

Thanks for telling us though Lina!

This is on the list, but just hasn’t been implemented yet because it’s not high priority.
Could you just not make source asset to blend together and import as a whole and use it in matinee?

Thanks,

–Lina,

Hi Lina,

We would like this feature as well please! Thanks!

Dan Matlack

I escalated this feature and placed it in our roadmap. That creates a better visibility.

Thanks,

–Lina,

Thank you Lina, for escalating the feature! To answer your earlier question, blending the whole animations takes more time and are not ideal when trying to make small adjustments on the fly.

But my primary reason for wanting it, is that by quick blending, I can take a hand full of animations, and make hundreds of variations of the animations blended to perfectly fit the scene, then if I DO want to keep the blend I made, I just export the track. (that’s how it is in UE3 anyway).

Thank you again, and I can’t wait to see how many more amazing things are coming from UE4. With the level of support Epic is showing, I have no doubt it’ll be the go to choice for new developers and community content creators like myself.

Is this still a no go? I am having issues trying to blend two animation tracks on a character using the curves editor, but when I try to blend the animations that same way that you would in UDK, it doesn’t work. I just want to make sure that I am not being dumb and missing something.

If this still isn’t implemented, which I REALLY hope that is not the case after several months. I know that Matinee isn’t high priority, but it is high priority to me and I would love to see this implemented into Unreal Engine 4. Sorry if this seems negative in any way. It was a huge disappointment to find this post saying it wasn’t implemented(in April) and I get that Persona and other methods are being spotlighted, but…yea, just hoping for some Matinee love.

It’s in their timeline which you can see online. It sounds like though they are working through the months of September and October on new blending options for Matinee…so hopefully that’ll be what we’re looking for or something better. I hope the old system returns, or that something better replaces it.

Where is this timeline? I can’t seem to find it. Thank you for the response BallisticG.

Go here, and on the right side you’ll see where it says “Road Map” allowing to see what they’re working on and even vote on what you want most.

Wow yea I completely missed that. Thanks. I am sad to see that they had Animation Blending Support set for October, but then passed it over to November. I wonder how many times they will do that…

Is this feature supported yet? If so, where can I find it?

Is this even on the roadmap anymore? I can’t find it in Trello and I’m pretty shocked that what I’d consider an essential feature is still not implemented after this long.

It makes Matinee pretty useless for short cutscenes where we need to play a few existing animations without stitching them together in Max/Maya directly. Usually, level designers make these cutscenes so it’s a million times more practical to be able to blend anims together directly in Matinee.

Any News on this??

I’m in need of this. I understand Sequencer is coming; But Matinee is here NOW - It’d be a shame to not have this feature for the time being.

What’s the status on this? My team would extremely benefit from this. I’m perplexed as to why they’d remove this functionality to begin with :frowning:

Like, check this out from UE3: https://udn.epicgames.com/Three/MatineeAnimControlTrack.html#Matinee _AnimControl Track

See how wonderful it is? You can use the curve editor to blend between animates. THIS is what my team needs.

I successfully set up animation transition/blending using Animation Blueprint/state machine : )

To mimic linear animation system like cutscene, I use a linear state machine. The transition/blending time is controlled using BlendSettings > Duration.

“Get Game Time in Seconds” to set transition rules.

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Well, the example uses motion captured Animation Sequence:
https://docs.unrealengine.com/latest/INT/Resources/Showcases/MatineeFightScene/index.html
Which make me think it is perfectly fine to blend in 3ds Max/Maya.

Montages only have a Blend In and a Blend Out but don’t blend between internal sections, right?