Sequencer: Attach actor broken

Development Cinematics & Media
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1

Hi all,

I’m working on a sequence similar to the kites inside the cave at the end of the kite demo.
I exported some animated paths and attached my flying objects to them.

I did it this way because I wanted to have the option of adding animation to the objects on top of the path they were on.

Everything worked until I saved, exited and re-entered my project.
Now the attached meshes just stay in place when I export the movie, PiE or play in a new window.
Some move when I simulate.

The weirdest part is that when I play back or scrub from sequencer everything works fine.

I tried it in 4.13 preview and the problem persisted.

I’d really appreciate any help you could give me.

Best

2

Hello StoriesAG,

I have a few questions for you that will help narrow down what issue it is that you are experiencing.

Quick questions:

  1. Can you reproduce this issue in a clean project?
  2. If so, could you provide a detailed list of steps to reproduce this issue on our end?
  3. Could you provides screen shots of any settings that may be involved with this issue?
3

Hi Rudy,

Thank you for taking the time to look into this.

To the answers:

1: Kinda; I created a new project and migrated the map file and the problem carried over exactly as it was.
Next, I created another new project and imported the source files from scratch and put the sequence together again.
This time most actors work but 1 actor stayed in place.

2:
Create new scene;
Import fbx with path animations (9 files with a baked cube following a path parented under a locator);
Import butterfly actor with wing animation;
Drag everything (paths and butterfly) into the scene;
Duplicate each path once and rotate 180 degrees;
Duplicate butterfly 17 times;
Attach butterfly to paths;
Create level sequence;
Add paths and butterflies to sequence;
Add animation to all components;
Create camera;
Create camera cut track;
Add sequence to scene set to autoplay;
Save and close project;
Reopen project;

I could package the project up if that helps (840ish mb with starter content) but I described every step above, there are no custom settings on anything.

Thank you for your help.

Best

4

Hey ,

I’ll be taking over on this issue.

Can you send me your fbx files? I’m having some trouble reproducing this on my end and I’d like to see exactly what you’re working with.

5

Hi

Thank you for looking into this.

This is the version that breaks, using geometry and a locator:
https://www.dropbox.com/s/x8wj463si5l6rnf/Broken_MotionPaths.zip?dl=0

This is the updated fixed version using joints and a skinned cube so that I can import it:
https://www.dropbox.com/s/8ystu6rr3ywmnwj/Updated_Working_Paths.zip?dl=0

Btw it would be nice if at some point unreal would allow just importing joints for this without geometry needing to be attached :slight_smile:

Here is the actor I’m attaching with an animation clip:
https://www.dropbox.com/s/j6kjiot7rw3p757/Actor2Attach.zip?dl=0

You actually have the entire project since you’re also tending to another issue I’m having here: Bug: Camera Crane breaks camera - Cinematics & Media - Epic Developer Community Forums

If you play it back in any of the play modes you will see that some butterflies don’t follow the motion path even though they all do in sequencer.

In our main project I’ve replaced it with the new joint based system so it’s no longer super high priority for us.

Best

6

Hey ,

The butterflies appear to work as expected in the project that you sent. All move around the scene as expected.

On a side note, I’m glad your using joints and a skinned mesh now though. I don’t usually see people using a dummy actor and a mesh. You can export just bones and import it onto an existing skeletal mesh as an animation. It is expensive to have as many different skeletal meshes present as you have. (See Kite Demo as an example, like you mentioned in the original post)

7

No worries.
I went with geo because I used it to visualize the size of the mesh that was to be attached and because unreal let me lol
Since another workflow took care of the problem and you can’t reproduce the other method on your end, you can close the ticket.

Thank you for your help.

8

I have to say . Williams, i’ve been searching for an answer to this problem on MANY forums and every single one you “take over” you have not provided a good answer for any.

9

Hi Mark,

Thanks for the feedback. We encounter many cases where the answer can be “this isn’t a recommended method, please try this instead”, like this one. Others are “This is a bug, here is the report I’ve entered”, which there isn’t much more to be done. Since this is typically the case, I hope you don’t see that as a bad answer.

Any chance you can provide me with some examples so that I can see what you mean? I like to think that I provide clear responses and resolutions in many cases and take pride in my work.