[Feature Request] Reusable (non/multi) Skeletal AnimBlueprints

I have been working on a game with a variety of different animals, many of which use different skeletons that are not even similar in structure. A major productivity road block is that to make updates their state systems I have to go into nearly 5 different Animation blueprints and add the new functionalities. Now while all their skeletons are different their animation sets are identical. I had almost gotten to a working base AnimBlueprint when I ran into the Skeleton issue which was a huge shame because functionally it worked, visually it looked like my animal had been squeezed through a black hole. Currently the animation system supports the following which actually work great.

  • Create a base AnimInstance class for your characters
  • Create an AnimBlueprint_A from your BaseAnimInstance and select a skeleton to go with it.
  • Create a new AnimBlueprint_B from the AnimInstanceBase and reparent it to AnimBlueprint_A
  • Parameter all Animations and run them based on the variables.

All the above work, it’s amazing and yet for some reason despite reparenting and parameterized animations the parent skeleton appears to be used. I’m sure there is a technical issue for why this has not been done yet, but having this functionality would be a great time saver.

We’ve worked around that problem by having everyone on the same skeleton. Sometimes it requires some unique naming, and has other issues, but it works.

like say you have a cat and a dog. They obviously have different proportions, but they have the same basic skeleton. We would have them on one skeleton, then the child anim blueprint can have its animations overridden with the appropriate animations

Yeah, it is not a real problem when you have everything on the same skeleton, but when every skeleton is different it becomes a major pain to recreate the exact same state machine… but with different animations. It’s tedious and easily prone to errors.