Is it possible to use multiple animation slots in sequencer to layer animations?
For example, can you set up slots in a character BP for things like “Head”, “UpperBody”, “Lower Body”, “Hands”, etc. and then layer multiple animations in sequencer so that one track is a full body idle, another track is just animation on the upper body, another track is just head animation, etc.
Thanks!
Yes it is possible. The way that I do may not be the most elegant way of doing it but it works.
I think there were 2 challenges:
Here’s what I have:
In my character’s animBP > anim graph, I have a simple state machine to combine animation poses from different animSlots
And In the state machine, I have 2 states: a state for animations from a regular inputs(a gamepad in my case) and the other state to be piped in from Sequencer. Note that I’m using a simple boolean variable to change between those states.
In the “Sequencer state”, I used a “layered blend per bone” node that filters one literally useless bone that influences nothing. In other words, it will filter out all bone animation keyframes. Also note that there are no base sources to those slot nodes because we’ll get animation inputs directly from Sequencer later.
In Sequencer, add my character’s animBP, NOT the character BP.
And go into each animation track’s property > set anim slot to a proper anim slot name
That’s it. I hope that helps.
Hi and thank you so much for your response! One quick question I have (that I should have clarified in my original question) is if you can blend between animations within a given slot track. I’ve been led to believe that this isn’t possible and unfortunately it is a major factor in what I’m intending to do. For example, within the “Body” track in sequencer using your example above, could you have multiple animations overlapping and blending between each other? Say you had a “Body_Idle_01” animation and a “Body_Idle_02” animation overlapping on the same body track. Would that work or would it visually just pop between those two poses?
Thanks!
If you just simply want to have multiple animations overlapping and blending among them, that’s a “default behavior” of Sequencer. All you need to do is to adjust each weight of animation track. And, my post was to describe how to blend animations as filtering specific body parts in Sequencer.
One thing that I’m not clear with your question is: you said, “Say you had a “Body_Idle_01” animation and a “Body_Idle_02” animation overlapping on the same body track. .” You mean on the same body track as one animation track? “Body_Idle_01” animation and a “Body_Idle_02” can be blended as two animation tracks together, but not as one track. I hope that I answered your question.
Oh sorry, to clarify I was referring to doing both at the same time. So having separate body, head and face tracks and then being able to blend between animation clips within each one of those tracks.
OK then, like I said, blending animations is simple and Sequencer is made for that already.
As long as you’ve set up anim slots with joint filtering properly for your needs, it’ll work. I worked for me.
Thank you so much!
Thanks for showing me this trick.
Now I can mix animations much more efficiently within sequencer!
This is incredible. You saved me days of banging my head against the wall. THANK YOU!
Hi! first of all, thank you so much for this, idk how theres so little information about something so important and usefull.
I might be doing something wrong, becuase when you said add the blueprint to the sequencer…it gets red and doenst let me do it. Tha sequencer thing that you have red out in your blueprint might be the key but i can see that anywhere…please help im literally 2 weeks stuck on a production because of a lipsync!
thanks!
Hello,
I’ve tried this method (with UE4.16.3), but for some reason, it did not work for me.
It seems that the sequencer only plays one animation at a time, even though I make the animation tracks overlap each other and assign different slots.
The same animations previewed in the animation blueprint editor are correct, so I suspect either there’s something I’m missing or there’s a bug when the sequencer tries to play 2 animations at the same time.
Could someone point out what could’ve caused this issue? Thanks!
Heres another way I found thats easier and worked for me. Basically you open the speech animation and set the additive to local space. Heres the tutorial I found. UE4 Merge combine Face Lip Sync with Body Animation - YouTube
