Recording more than one character in sequencer

I’m prototyping a cinematic where three bad guys (same visual, like clones) are chasing a girl. To benefit the fantastic Unreal engine recording playable character feature, I applied to these two different characters the skeleton of the default mannequin. This way, I can simply open the ThirdPersonCharacter blueprint, change the Mesh to the character I want to see in the shot, run and record in play mode. BUT, let’s say SHOT #1 is recorded with the girl. If then I change the blueprint to a bad guy for the SHOT #2, obviously, when visualizing the whole sequence, SHOT #1 is now showing the bad guy too (and not the girl anymore)!
I guess that I would need to create another playable character, one for each different character I want to see (especially if there are seen at the same time in the same Camera Cut).
So my two questions are :
#1 - Is there a tip I missed that would allow me to do the job without creating a new playable character?
#2 - If not, I found many videos showing how to create a playable character from scratch but I didn’t find yet any video or document showing (if this is possible!) how to easily “duplicate” the default ThirdPersonCharacter. Let me know any link that could help.
Thnaks a lot!

Hey! Did you ever find out a result for this? Looking to do the same thing :slight_smile:

Hi ! No unfortunatly :frowning:

I needed this myself and saw this is left unanswered, this is relevant to UE5.1.

1. How to record a playable character?

To record a playable character using the PlayerStart, open Window>Cinematics>Take Recorder. You will need to add the BP_ThirdPersonCharacter you want to be recorded with the “+Source” button and select “From Actor”.
If you don’t see it, press Play to play the level, then the BP_ThirdPersonCharacter will appear in yellow.

Now you can press record (top-right red button), you will get a countdown and you can move as you like, end it with exiting play mode (Esc).
This will generate a sequence, you can find it in the Content>Cinematics>Takes folder (also accessible with the “Show/Hide the Takes Browser” folder icon on the top right).
Open the sequence and play it to see your recorded take, you can even press play to play the level and see the recorded movement at the same time.

2. How to record different character meshes using the same technique?

Simply changing the Skeletal mesh asset won’t work since it will change it for the previous take you recorded.
The solution is to duplicate the BP_ThirdPersonCharacter and change the skeletal mesh asset to a different character.
(BP_ThirdPersonCharacter located in Content>ThirdPerson>Blueprints)
(To change the character open the BP, in viewport you will see the “Skeletal Mesh Asset”)

After you changed the character, you will need to record your new playable character.
In your editor, go to World Setting panel (if you don’t see it: Window>World Settings), expand the “Selected GameMode” and change the “Default Pawn Class” to the new BP_ThirdPersonCharacter that you made with the new character mesh.

2

Record using the same method.
Now you have multiple recordings of your playable character.

3. How to play all the sequences together, real-time?

As you know, if you stack multiple shot tracks on top of another, only the shot track placed on top will be played.

To fix it you will need to add “Subsequences” to your Level sequence.

Create a new level sequence > “+Track” > “Subsequences Track > Press on the “+” icon and add how many recorded sequences that you want.

3

Now you can see all recorded tracks and play in the level at the same time.