Motion Matching & Animation Blueprints First Look | Unreal Engine Tutorial

[@jiiiiim_xyz]

Really well spent 50 minutes.. I came to this after really struggling with the unreal documentation and this really cleared it up, Thankyou! At first the music was a bit distracting, but then I just imagined It was 4am and I just met an Unreal Engine expert in the smoking area and he was buzzing on the new motion matching system

[@livinfreestyle6727]

Always a dance party! In seriousness though I think in the latest live stream stuff we've gotten better about the levels and I will try to make sure that same care is put into pre-records for future. Glad the video was helpful

[@jiiiiim_xyz]

@@livinfreestyle6727 Thankyou! Usually I'm not a fan of music on tutorials, but you've made it work! Feel like I've just discovered a GEM, going to watch your entire channel :) Aiming to be a tech artist myself, and its super overwhelming the amount of information I need to learn. Could I ask if there's a specific role for the type of tech artist that mostly gets to play around in Unreal Engine with Blueprints / Motion Matching etc.. I also have been learning a bit of C++ and intend to take your python course soon. But i'm definitely keen to be aiming towards a role that allows me to use and learn unreal all day. Thankyou!

[@livinfreestyle6727]

@@jiiiiim_xyz there’s more history to the music. But and unfortunately, the early videos were pretty tough. I’ve learned a lot of the last few years streaming, so hopefully the later stuff is better by far from an audio standpoint.

[@livinfreestyle6727]

@@jiiiiim_xyz there are several types of technical artist to get to spend a lot of time in unreal. Or more broadly whatever the engine is that’s being used on the game that is developed. It also depends on how large the team is so for example, you might have a lighting tech artist, or you might have a materials, tech artist for tools in pipeline or character. There’s lots. But if it’s a small team, maybe all of those things in one person. Sounds like I better finish off the Python tutorial series.

[@jiiiiim_xyz]

@@livinfreestyle6727 Thankyou! If you ever need a hand I've been a video editor for the past 12 years (now trying to switch to Game Dev).. Happy to help!

[@mpattym]

This is a great introductory video on motion matching. It definitely helps give more context to the sample project Epic dropped using it. Thank you for taking the time to make this video.

[@livinfreestyle6727]

You're welcome. We'll be doing more as we dig into the epic project, keep an eye out

[@FPChris]

Awesome. I watched the intro and agree 1000%. Looking forward to watching the rest. Thank you for this.

[@livinfreestyle6727]

You're welcome. Thx for watching. I think we are going to do a walk through of the latest doc as well, so keep an eye out

[@XuZhenlin-n4x]

Great to know these new features from UE5.4 in your channel. These information is so valuable and good for newcomer to have a overview

[@livinfreestyle6727]

thx for watching

[@AlyrioNeto]

26:54 at this point I understood when to set "Loop" for an animation and when not. Loop should be set for logical loop animation, like jog_right, the looped jog_right, not the start/stop. If we didn't set the loop = true for the looped jog animations, then we can see the character flicking each time the jog animation restarts. With loop = true there is no flicking. But loop really should not be set to Starts and Stops animations. Probably for idles yes. Thanks for the amazing tutorial

[@livinfreestyle6727]

Thanks for chimiing in with the clear info and for watching!

[@rbspec]

Wow, that definelly teached me properlly, thanks man!!

[@livinfreestyle6727]

You’re welcome

[@Ancientfall]

Hi, very nice tutorial, what method do you recommend using for NPC characters in a game? Thanks

[@livinfreestyle6727]

This depends on the game, but right now I am personally still using the Lyra method and not even that cuz I'm working on a 2d platformer.

[@Yggdrasil777]

This should be very helpful because I have a HUGE library from the Mixamo library with the different gait and arm settings in each animation, so it should prove very useful for this system.

[@livinfreestyle6727]

Let us know how it turns out for sure

[@raulalaris]

For round 3 in a motion matching tutorial could you take a look at the "your first 60 minutes with motion matching" from Unreal. It goes into the chooser tables but also does some other things in the bluprint animation graph. I could not figure it out (beginner here) but I feel like after trying to hours and watching this video I'm very close to understanding why mine isn't working properly. I really enjoy your tutorials and how you explain things is super helpful.

[@livinfreestyle6727]

we can totally do this. I've been meaning to anyway

[@livinfreestyle6727]

Are you on our discord? Send me your google email if you are.

[@raulalaris]

@@livinfreestyle6727 awesome, I was able to finally figure it out but still would def appreciate the insight you bring to the table.

[@Clydiie]

14:16 I've noticed with the idle animations that they play at random, so depending on what you are looking for having all the idle animations in the PSD is fine.

[@livinfreestyle6727]

oooo....that's cool to know. Thanks for sharing

[@Clydiie]

Great video! I already knew about choosers but this video has ALOT of great info! Cant wait for epic to release the sample pack.

[@livinfreestyle6727]

Thanks for dropping the comment. I'm also very curious to see what we find with the sample stuff, but we may yet discover more cool stuff even before then

[@Clydiie]

@livinfreestyle6727 yeah I'm sure we will I'm really looking forward to see how they set up vaulting using motion matching. I haven't finished watching this video yet as something came up but will continue it later.

[@jmckelvey9190]

Don't know if this fixes your problem with the cast needing to validate the trajectory when starting, but in the official UE Feature Overview video (49:34), Jose clicks on the Pose History node and in the details panel clicks the Generate Trajectory tick box. I do it that way and don't need the cast if not valid step, but perhaps I don't for some other reason. Liked your video, keep up the good work.

[@livinfreestyle6727]

We'll prob be redoing this once the official stuff comes out, but it was fun to peek ahead. Epic also dropped these official docs: dev.epicgames.com/community/learning/tutorials/lwlG/unreal-engine-your-first-60-minutes-with-motion-matching

[@jmckelvey9190]

@@livinfreestyle6727 Nice - thanks for the link

[@Clydiie]

the way you set up the chooser table is different from how I did it I used on update to set it up and havent gotten any weird blending when stopping but I also do have idle in the same PSD as my walk/jog and use other PSD's like crouching and jumping - regardless great video learnt a lot so thank you - makes me want to redo my chooser table video theres a node called set databases to search which you can change the interrupt mode to "interrupt on database change" I think that will fix the walking animations when you stop

[@livinfreestyle6727]

I wanna try your way!!! Link me the vid? Thanks for dropping comments and the watch. I was actually going to do a separate vid to add crouch. Guessing it’ll be my shortest vid yet cuz how all this works but it would be a good example of an extra attribute in the chooser.

[@Clydiie]

@@livinfreestyle6727 I thought I replied to this already not sure what happened maybe cause I used a url it hid my comment - if you just go to my page its my latest video "how to motion match using choosers" - (you can skip to the chooser set up part in the timeline cause the video drags) also you can set up other anims like the rifle/pistol/shotgun lyra anims using choosers you can add that to the crouch video to make it abit longer but yeah it would be good to make that video im sure it will help alot of people out!

[@livinfreestyle6727]

@@Clydiie This is great. I'll check it out later tonight. I think enough people are asking that I am going to add a "crouch" video for methods 1 and 2 post haste

[@Clydiie]

@@livinfreestyle6727 ill defo check that out once you make it, ive just been in love with motion matching ever since I found out. I hope im not bombarding you too much but check out Mover 2.0 unreal is developing if you havent already its meant to replace the standard Character Movement and got a feeling motion matching and mover will be the future and we're meant to use the two together. (mover is still in the early stages tho but its just something to look out for)

[@livinfreestyle6727]

I heard about this and am hoping that it has some more customizable features for performance etc

[@jumparoundtheatoms]

Heya, awesome tutorials, many thanks for them all :) . In regards to this one specifically, trying to move diagonally is not really working. Or if you rotate the camera, pressing forward will move backward ( and the other way around ) and same, diagonal movement is broken. Wondering if this is a limitation of using only motion matching for everything ? Or some additional settings could fix this ( was not able to find them if that's the case ).

[@jumparoundtheatoms]

Reckon dedicated diagonal animations are needed actually (forward left, forward right, etc etc ) ?

[@livinfreestyle6727]

Yes, this would be my thought exactly and if says as such in the docs. If you want to increase the fidelity you just add more animations

[@MaximilianMitchell]

Any tips on how I can stop my animations for “popping”. Seems like they aren’t completing there loop and restarting the animation to soon

[@livinfreestyle6727]

what are your blend settings and also what controls transitions?

[@norvsta]

Great tut, succinct and to the point. TY!

[@livinfreestyle6727]

You're welcome!

[@devmathur1410]

Hey, thanks for the video, it has been very helpful. However, I am having some issues, since I am not using the Lyra animations but Mixamo's for my character, motion matching doesn't seem to be looping the animations properly. So for example for the walk animation the characters feet move on the first step but don't move for the second step but the character keeps moving forward. I have already edited the Mixamo character to work with UE5 with a converter so I don't thing the skeletons are the issue. Do you have any ideas on how I can fix this?

[@livinfreestyle6727]

You are the second person that has mentioned this with the mixamo anims. There was another convo in discord about it too. I don't have them so haven't done any trouble shooting on why they might be different and so far I havent' seen an answer, but I would probably go attr for attr between the mixamo fwd walk and the lyra fwd walk to figure out what is going on

[@SlySk]

Great vid :D Thank you very much!

[@livinfreestyle6727]

Glad you liked it!

[@HighLammer]

Very good.. have a crouch example?

[@livinfreestyle6727]

Indeed: kzbin.info/www/bejne/gaWWZXmaqr2jlZY

[@ZundleFire]

How would it work to blend poses. For instance, I have several animations that only affect the arms. Before I would blend the animation blend spaces by the bone. How could I accomplish something similar with motion matching? Or do they need to be full body animations to work?

[@livinfreestyle6727]

Maybe you are talking first person shooter? I suppose you would define your reference joints different, but also....I'm not sure how much it would apply in that case (unless you are seeing someone full body in coop). It kinda hurts my head to think about using it for first person if I'm inferring correctly (but it could be a thing. I have some other ideas on use cases that are not locomotion based)

[@Panti0204]

I love your channel and this is a great tutorial but I have an issue. Followed all the steps in the video but when I try to move my character with WASD it moves forward fine but with the other 3 keys it turns instead of strafing. I imagine this is a simple fix but I could not find any information that I understood regarding how to change this. Having said that I am new to animation blueprints and UE in general.

[@livinfreestyle6727]

Sounds like on your Third Person character you need to uncheck the checkbox that says turn to face control or orient to control (I always forget what it's called, but it's a checkbox)

[@Panti0204]

@@livinfreestyle6727 Thanks mate, it worked

[@livinfreestyle6727]

@@Panti0204 👍

[@JanasZoro]

Hi Kevin did you have already a look on game animation free assets ? It will be really interesting if you can do a tut also on that

[@livinfreestyle6727]

I have looked at them. Still working out what might be good from a tutorial standpoint also with the Epic walkthrough. We'll see what you all think is helpful as people progress through the project

[@JanasZoro]

@@livinfreestyle6727 your tutorials are helping me a lot for everything thank you so much for your effort doing this.

[@Ready_Fire_Aim]

i've found a lot of us dont understand what it is and what it isnt. its a direct drive for locomotion only correct? ppl are still using blendspaces etc, offsets etc it just replaces the state changes in locomotion correct? rebuilding their characters around this is the main struggle most are dealing with. (esp if they are retargeting or different skeletons)

[@LSui-kj6jm]

u dont need to define blendspaces because motion matching takes every single frame from all the montages into the database so it can match and select from them dynamically thats why theres that pose search schema. I dont think it has to be the same skeleton, just needs to be compatible skeleton but dont take my word for it yet. I did already have all same skeleton so that wasnt an issue. but there isn't really predefined states, things happen per pose so the pose search schema is really important. It does the movement prediction based on your velocity, orientation, etc. That information is taken a lot from the character controller that gives real time movement logic. So first make sure your character controller is well defined and animations are clean then this should work nicely. if anybody thinks i said something wrong feel free to correct me or continue discussion, it is new for me too.

[@Ready_Fire_Aim]

@@LSui-kj6jm yeah, . im meaning. people trying to use it by blending 10 diff weapon pistol idles anims , or firing anims etc (using it outside locomotion) but thanks. that information is good to know. its covered in the video in method 3 =) . really helps ppl re-design their character where its not to much trouble to get some good results.

[@livinfreestyle6727]

THis is also why I have personally decided to wait to see what the sample project has in it. We could absolutely fumble around and figure things out for the next month (our community is super curious) BUT think about all the time we can spend building out other parts of our experiences and games. Either way you are still going to need the anims, BPs etc.. It won't hurt to move forward for soooo many things and use your time efficiently. Spend a couple of hours with the samples rather than days through trial and error. We've already send the first of Epic's official guides here: dev.epicgames.com/community/learning/tutorials/lwlG/unreal-engine-your-first-60-minutes-with-motion-matching I know not an answer, but that is why I'm personally waiting and using time elsewhere

[@olodum111]

Hello Kevin, Don't know anything about MM. I hear you clicking on keys, Manny changes direction, stops,etc. Are there special keys for MM movement?

[@livinfreestyle6727]

OHHHHH...now I understand. This is just the third person character project. Im using the WASD keys to move the character as if I am playing a game.

[@olodum111]

@@livinfreestyle6727 Duhh!! Will MM work in Sequencer?

[@olodum111]

@@livinfreestyle6727 BTW, Thanks for the quick reply

[@livinfreestyle6727]

I think this depends on how you’re driving your character in sequencer. But I think as long as it has whatever it contributes to trajectory it should work again I have not tested it though.

[@olodum111]

Thanks. I am going to experiment tonight

[@bergus541]

Hey, Thank you for this video, I am just experimenting with this and in my case I noticed one thing. I set animations for idle, walking and running in one PSD. Running is triggered on the left shift and the value for sprint I have set to 600 for Max Speed while for walking is set to 300. The whole problem is that the character when he wants to move (walking) the running animation will turn on. I've been messing around and came to the conclusion that in order to turn on the walking animation I have to set the value for walking to no more than 200, everything over 200 the trajectory interprets as sprint. Is there any possibility to change also the minimum value to make the trajectory recognize walking up to, say, 400?

[@livinfreestyle6727]

I haven't tried with this all combined as you've described. Only using the walk speeds and max walk speeds to actually switch to different state machines. I think there are weightings you can use within the PSS and history, but if you find out let us know for sure.

[@bergus541]

@@livinfreestyle6727 So, I searched about this for 3 days and did not find a concrete solution. It seems to me that there is still no such option to adjust trajectory recognition (I couldn't find it anywhere, I don't know, the easiest way is probably to create a separate PSD and switch it accordingly depending on Max Speed Walk) however I managed to track down two clues which could be the problem. Or my own character that I downloaded from mixamo, maybe I must have downloaded or imported it wrong. Or there was an error somewhere in the animation blue print of the character. I solved the problem by downloading my character from mixamo anew and creating a new project in unreal (I tried to create new ABPs in the old project, but the problem persisted). I need break from unreal xDD

[@livinfreestyle6727]

@@bergus541 Doh...sometimes just rebuilding does work and that hurts us. SInce you're taking a break. Have you seen the latest update from Epic? dev.epicgames.com/community/learning/tutorials/lwlG/unreal-engine-your-first-60-minutes-with-motion-matching 🤣

[@bergus541]

@@livinfreestyle6727Great, I must have missed it, thank you, I'll check this out

[@troligtvisme]

Thx for the tutorial. I have a question, I use my own animations (bought) and they have root motion ones that I am using. Although when following the tutorial I do not get the same result. The blue trajectory debug channel is staying in the centre, while the green debug are following the feets as expected. I have enabled root motion for the animations, locked the root motion so they have the same settings as the ones you use. So the actual result right now is that the animation does not follow the movement of the character, either its the classic snap back after animation is done or it only uses one animation. Is there a setting I am missing or could it be the animations aint setup with RM correctly? 🤔 I am using CLazy animations if that helps

[@livinfreestyle6727]

...locking root motion? I wonder, when you pick the animations in the Pose Search Database window. do the characters move through space or stay in place? If they stay in place, do you have some setting like force root lock etc that you can uncheck to get them to move through space? I don't think motion matching will do well if everything is sitting at the origin. Its hard to know without seeing the anims but it's the first thing that pops to mind to try

[@troligtvisme]

@@livinfreestyle6727 they are moving accordingly but not with the blue debug line as in your videos. The blue is always in center 🫣

[@livinfreestyle6727]

I would have to troubleshoot it. It’s hard to know without having animations. One thing that I would double check is if you open the Lyra animations, do they look correct to you. And then I would start to figure out what is the difference in the settings between a Lyra animation in your animation.

[@dumpylumpo5525]

@@livinfreestyle6727 I am also experiencing the same problem. I am using animations from Fortnite to test MM. The animations root bone moves, so i'm not sure what i am doing wrong. I thought it might be a scale issue when exporting from blender to unreal but it wasnt

[@livinfreestyle6727]

its kinda weird. KZbin shows I didn't reply, but I also see it in the history so just in case. I would open your custom anims and the lyra anims and do a line by line compare to see what might be different. If you can't find anything I'd take a look at the skeleton or the character next.

[@Panti0204]

I tried using this method on Animations that were recorded with 45cm/second speed. When I open the data base the footplants and the root seem to be off, the longer animation goes the further they get. The root and footplants are in the correct place when I open the animation asset. In the data base on the right it says the average trajectory speed is over 60cm/sec. Is there a a chance that the trajectory isn`t calculated properly? When I try using on the anims in the video they work perfectly fine and footplant and root are in the right place.

[@livinfreestyle6727]

Its possible. They added some more clairty around making the trajectory with both the "First 60secs of motion matching" and with the Motion Matching Anim Project. Did you look at either of those methods?

[@Panti0204]

@@livinfreestyle6727 I haven`t yet but I`ll take a look now.Thanks again, I`m learning heaps of information from your videos.

[@livinfreestyle6727]

@@Panti0204 there is also another video coming that is your first 60min with motion matching walk through.

[@Panti0204]

@livinfreestyle6727 Sounds good. I'm going through the steps on the site, making some progress. I'll finish it hopefully this weekend, then I'll try to apply it in the anims that it was broken before

[@CrypticNord]

I have been at UE5 for over two weeks now, and I feel like I haven't learned anything because this shit is so complicated and layered.

[@livinfreestyle6727]

It is crazy deep. There is so much you can do and so many ways to do it in Unreal. Hop in the discord, let people know the type of stuff you are trying to learn and maybe you can grab some tips (also your background helps too....ie are you just starting out in 3D or seasoned and just learning a new engine type stuff)

[@FPChris]

Loads of subsystems with their own set of nodes.

[@malicious0072]

Super unrelated, but at 2:55 you had a super tiny spider come into frame on your neck. It makes it's way towards the bottom of your adam's apple until it gets shaken nearly to the collar of your shirt at 3:30.

[@livinfreestyle6727]

OMG....thats only slightly disturbing. Not a super huge fan of spiders, but also insane you saw that.....4k camera what!?

[@livinfreestyle6727]

also now I feel like I have spiders crawling all over me all the time....

[@malicious0072]

@@livinfreestyle6727 I have perfect vision, to the point that the Government wanted to hire me as a sniper. Unfortunately due to boxing, I damaged the nerve endings of my hands and can't keep a steady hand even if I wanted to. But I can read a street sign from about 3 blocks away, so I got that going for me I guess.

[@brocscogmyre5592]

Hello Kevin can any version of this be applied to automobiles or metahumans, by the way I'm using 5.4.1 and am more interested in films than games but I guess the same rules apply

[@ryanjdevlin87]

in theory automobiles could work if all the animations are authored with exactly the same parameters. If your doing everything in sequencer its honestly easier IMO to do EVERYTHING in sequencer and not use animations atall. If something has to move or rotate do it all in the level sequence. Applying other animations on top of the sequence for anything but humanoid characters has been a pain from my experience so I just resorted to doing everything in sequencer and it increased my workflow alot

[@livinfreestyle6727]

Thanks for sharing your XP here @ryan. @brocscogmyre5592 I have never tried for automobiles, but definitely dont' see any issues with Metahumans. I am working on some alternate workflows with Motion Matching and as soon as I have other sample cases that makes sense.....we'll make more vids!

[@brocscogmyre5592]

@@livinfreestyle6727 I note most unreal engine tutorials on animation always seem to prefer mannequins, not much done with metahumans which is of interest to me as they obviously look very realistic. I'm looking forward to future videos 👍

[@ryanjdevlin87]

@brocscogmyre5592 if haven't worked with meta humans much but if they use a different skeleton than Manny with the retargeting feature in 5.4 you can retarget any animations u have from ue4 or Manny skeleton to it very easily

[@pewpew518]

How would you do Crouching? And transition between crouch and stand.

[@livinfreestyle6727]

when you crouch, you should have some kind of state or boolean that says you've crouched. You use that to either drive your state machine or your chooser. Then have a separate database for crouch would be one way

[@pewpew518]

@@livinfreestyle6727 I was thinking the same. Have two separate databases. This would probably also require a new I believe its called Schema. The asset that handles all the parameters to calculate best pose. For example when crouching, you would be move slower so you don't want your trajectory to go too far in future too fast

[@livinfreestyle6727]

@@pewpew518 not necessarily, in this demo I used the same schema for all the stuff. You could try it out pretty easy

[@pewpew518]

@@livinfreestyle6727 Certainly! There's also sample project epic showed in GDC coming out next month. I wounder if they have a crouching state i know they have traversal and are using montages for it.

[@livinfreestyle6727]

Lyra has crouch so you can grab assets from there

[@indycinema]

literally no unreal tut has ever had a good font size for the UI.

[@livinfreestyle6727]

Help me understand this better. Do you mean you are having trouble reading stuff or is there a better font I could use? Also I do record at 4k so you can zoom in when needed