I asked in the forums but nobody could answer me for 3 days now. So I wanna try here:
I don’t have much experience on animations at all, so I wanted to ask some questions to make things clear because it gets really weird in my head.
So question #1:
If I make “template” animation for rifles, can I use it for different kinds of guns of the same class? For example I make animation to hold AK47 but then I reuse the same holding animation on M4A1 but the front handle should be a little bit further. Can I use the same animation but move the bone of the hand forward in the engine? Or I have to make different animations for each gun?
Question #2:
When reloading a gun, are there two animations or one? I think they are two, one that moves the magazine of the gun and a second one to move the hands of the character. If so, do they both play at the same time and how do they sync?
Question #3: Any beginner tutorials? Not on youtube please, I tried youtube and it didn’t work for me haha.
1: If you want to share animation you have to make the sharable.
The animation can be shared between those skeletal mesh , who have the similar joints.
There is also a procedure to assign a walk animation of a human , and retarget it as giant.
So sure, you can share the animation of the rifles with same skelet-joints.
You can also build up rifles using more than one skeletal mesh , and so have the animations
load from above, Load from under, add silencer, separated from the rifle.
For the fire, i believe you can easily move the socket (a pointer parented to a joint) a bit forward
Or just spawn the fire and the bullet using a little vector as Offset in the blueprint. and save this way all your animation .
2: Its about to you, you have to think that if you make the MagazineOutforReload animation as part of the rifle.
you have to take care of the magazine, its good if you have the magazine showed in your rifle.
for those that dont show the magazine all the time. you can make the animation reload without the magazine.
and add the magazine via blueprint, and destroy it after the reload.
Surely , you have to create the animation in appropiate software, where you can create animations.
Should be a mess , try to sinc the animation of the arm , with the one of the arm.
But sure, you can use the matinee , for sinc two little animation and so on.
I believe that if you made an animation for the magazine, you can sinc it in matinee and also put his visibility on and off.
3 I know that follow tutorial its a bit sad and long. after watched all the beginner tutorial on the site and the 72 compilation on youtube i didnt learn enough clearly the basis to make easily a door open XD.
The true Learning you get in lab style.
Try little thing on your own , read the documents , search for similar problem on this site , and watching tutorials.
The first thing i have done is build my own gun and learn how use animation , count bullets and casting istant raycast and physical bullet.