Hello, there are a number of playrate problems when using animations inside of Sequencer that makes looping animations with a different Rate Scale nearly impossible to use.
1. Skeletal Mesh with Use Custom Mode:
Animations always play at the rate of 1, despite the actual animation asset having a Rate Scale of 0.5.
This is fine as however the Play Rate can just be adjusted right there in sequencer.
2. Skeletal Mesh with Use Animation Blueprint:
When using the animation blueprint and a Slot to feed in the sequencer animation, the above starts to fall apart. When using the slot, the animation will indeed play at the 0.5 that’s set in the animations Rate Scale, however, sequencer will not adjust the loop size, and so the animation plays at half the speed, but then just loops back halfway, as sequencer thinks it’s using a Play Rate of 1.
This is where the problem lies, as lowering the Play Rate in sequencer adjusts both, so the animation still gets cut off.
3. Scaling the animation track
You can slick and drag the left edge of the animation bar to the right to scale/shorten it. However this does not speedup the animation rate, it only shortens the loopable part so it cuts off. If this is the case you should be able to drag that bar to the left to lengthen the looping area, fixing the problem above, however you can not drag it to the left. This essentially makes it a feature that has no apparent benefits.
Note: These problems are in 4.16 however I did not see anything addressing them in the 4.17 notes so I assume they’re present there as well.
Can you send me some screenshots/more details on how you have things(Blueprints, Sequencer, etc.) set up? This way I can work on setting up a repro project. I would also recommend making a copy of your project in 4.16 and updating it to 4.17 to see if the same issue occurs. It may not be directly mentioned in release notes, but some changes may have been made that would indirectly affect the issue. It also could be something that could get included in hotfixes.
Hi Riley, it’s very simple so I can easily just give a step by step.
Also I am on 4.17 now and all bugs are still present.
Animations always play at the rate of 1
Throw a skeletal mesh into the scene with animation set to Custom Mode
Go into one of it’s animations and set play rate to 0.5
Put that skeletal mesh into sequencer and set the above animation. It will play at full speed.
Slot Anims play at proper speed but have wrong loops
4. Throw a skeletal mesh into the scene with a new AnimationBlueprint set on it.
5. Set up AnimationBlueprint like this (link)
6. With skeletal mesh on UseAnimBP mode, put it into sequencer and assign that animation from above again.
7. You’ll see the animation plays at the proper speed (0.5) but it loops too quickly, at the point it would loop as if it played at 1 speed.
8. Attempt to right click the animation track and change the speed to fix the above.
Scaling the Animation Track
Now you can also try scaling the left side of of the animation track to fix the above, and you will again notice some oddities with how that works.
Note: I’m assuming the problem with the first two is an oversight with not matching animations in sequencer to the speed set in the animation. However, slot animations behave as they are (don’t blend or anything) which is why the their speed isn’t being adjusted, but the actual slot animation still plays exactly how it was set up (at 0.5 speed).
Due to the time that this thread has remained inactive, I will be accepting the comment above as an answer. If you have any questions regarding this thread feel free to reopen it and I will get back to you.
For the animations playing at a rate of 1, one way to work around this is to go to your sequence and select the animation track itself that you want to change the speed of. If you right click this you will have an option that says properties. In the properties you can change the Play Rate. Changing this setting in the Animation Asset itself will affect it for gameplay, but not in sequencer. In this same Properties box mentioned above, you can also change some other settings as well, such as Start and End time etc. This can change how you loop animations. When it comes to editing some of the speeds and how animations loop, it is better to remain consistent with the work flow since there are several ways to drive your animation(via animation asset, through sequencer, blueprints etc.) It depends and what exactly you are trying to accomplish, but it seems like you may have some of your animations driven a few different ways. This may be causing some settings to conflict/override each other. If you can post a gif/video of of the issues/results you have having from scaling the animation tracks I can take a more thorough look at those as well.
