UE5 Character Locomotion Tutorial 4 | Direction Based Animation Switching

[@혈액의비트]

thank you. I am waiting for the video of this series to be uploaded. I've been looking for locomotion tutorials for quite some time, but I haven't found anything as perfect as this series. It's a pity that I can't understand many things because I watch using KZbin's automatic translation. I sincerely hope you continue this series to the end. thank you. Since I don't speak English, I used a translator. I hope that the meaning is conveyed properly.

[@akrillic]

00:11:36 following the tutorial at this point returns an error. You need to open the function CalculateLocomotionDirection > Details > Advanced > Enable Thread Safe. Compile again and it works.

[@CoDroStyleHD]

This needs to be Pinned. Thank you

[@struggling3dartist910]

Thank you, you've saved me a lot of frustration

[@tonywood2283]

You're a genius, sir. Thank you.

[@wouterjordens5795]

hey what is the reason to use this system instead of doing it with a blendspace ?

[@ismaeldelgado9805]

It seems he is trying to educate us on how direction and animation work together the way they do. I will admit that as of now its so complicated and i do wonder why we dont just use a blendspace, maybe later in the series ill learn why

[@angelite6027]

great video, very useful, thank you

[@罗双虎]

At the beginning, I pressed the w key and then pressed the a key, and the character could normally move forward to the left and above, but when I pressed the a key first and then pressed the w key, the character's running posture would become very bad. Is this the reason for the version? I used the version 5.4

[@kristerpresty8033]

Somehow on the deadzone execution sequence of the calculate locomotion direction function: For "Backwards", having a "Not Boolean" Breaks the orientation warping. While just inputting the normal bool of the subtract bmax with deadzone and add bmin with deadzone on the in range float bool function.

[@struggling3dartist910]

Once again, the new Orientation Warping node has me stumped here. In the previous video I bypassed it by copying the warp setup and passing the animations thought them separately. I keep trying to find workarounds, but further I go, more I think I won't be able to follow this series to the end. Seeing how these tutorials are quite lengthy, it may be a waste of time to even try. Please update the videos, or include some relevant instructions in the description at least.

[@tristantully1592]

For folks running into trouble with running the "Graph" mode on Orientation Warping, I found that its because there are animations that don't use the IK bones for movement, meaning once out of graph there is nothing for the orientation warping to run on. kzbin.info/www/bejne/n5a6aoCXrsebsMk This video covers making virtual bones to give Orientation Warping something to work with in place of IK bones.

[@big_dowle]

Great tut bro, any idea why when flicking between going left & right, my character does a rapid 360? :)

[@BROCKSGAMING]

10:50 , there is a better way for directions selection is using Select Nodes as it reduces Prosseing time , similar to an Inline function of c++

[@Jhtoastygames]

What is it that we do if we are not using root motion animations?

[@YoungWolfe15]

Any reason we aren't putting these four into a blendspace and letting that do the directional work for us? pretty sure we could take the locomotion angle, plug it into a blendspace and set up our animations to change based on the angle in one. I love the series ! This is definitely helping set good fundamentals, just curious on the reasoning for going this route.

[@YoungWolfe15]

Also, I have 8 directions in my anim pack rather than 4, and would love to include those for further fidelity. Blendspaces seem easier for this use case.

[@OutcastDevSchool]

I'll be covering a blendspace based implementation of the cycling state once I get through the distance matching, jump, and idle state portions of the series. Distance matching shouldn't be more than two more videos, and idle and jump should be able to fit into 1 video each. There actually some issues that can be difficult to avoid when mapping the full 360 degree range of the locomotion angle in a single blendspace, it all comes down to whether or not all animations in the blendspace have the hips facing in the same direction relative to motion. If animations where the hips are aligned with the direction of movement, or facing away from the direction of movement are put together in the same blendspace, it usually results in bad blend poses with lots of foot sliding or bunny hopping. The general approach I'll be taking will be to split hips facing into motion and hips facing away from motion animations into separate blendspaces, and toggling between them based on a locomotion direction enumeration.

[@TheBlenderProfessor]

When did you create the current direction variable? I dont see it in your list..

[@bam_bino__]

its a function input

[@alanperel1799]

First of all thanks for these amaziiiiing tutorials! Honestly, you are the best. I have one question in mind: The direction the character faces (by the enumerations) is based on inputs and camera rotation. I implementing these mechanics on an AI, and want the direction to be based on a specific enemy. Is there a way to use this method in order for the character to choose a state considering the enemy's location?

[@NokenBeats]

I get a compiler error on the calculate locomotion direction function inside the blueprint thread safe update animation, any chance you know why this is?

[@eruakin5293]

me too you go in the advanced options of calculate fanction and tick the thread safe box

[@kubolor1234]

Somehow after implementing the CalculateLocomotionDirection() function to take into account the Deadzone variable, the Walking Backward animation does not play but instead I get the forward animation. Can anyone help me out with this?

[@Mannyocrity]

Did you forget the not boolean after the branch? To understand how this all worked, I had to get a piece of paper and work through the calculations by hand. Direction is just a circle. The top is forward (0) and bottom(-180, +180) is backwards, left is -90 (or 9 o'clock on a clock) and right it 90 (3 o'clock on a clock). In range takes a min (negative) number and a max (positive) number. We calculate backwards first by testing if the angle is in Range of min and max. In the video, bMin is -130 and bMax is 130. If angle is 150 it will not be in range of bMin and bMax because it is the range from -130 to 130, so In Range will be false. We are testing for backward and since it is not in range we want to test for the negative case and thus we put the not boolean after the branch. You might have already understood all this, but I did not at first and I'm extremely excited that I now grasp it and can move on. hope my explication helps.

[@GamerFollower]

I cant get the left and right to work, it only plays the backwards animation except for exactly 0.0 direction where it starts playing forward running :/

[@GamerFollower]

Im in 5.4 - I had to swap the return nodes for F and B to make it work, no idea why. As for the flip-flopping between left and right angles, I had to set the Orientation warping's "locomotion angle delta threshold" to "0" to make it stop. EDIT: I think the flip flopping is a symptom of the left and right animations flat out not working and being ignored.

[@GamerFollower]

Hmm, seems I cannot get it to recognize anything but forward and backward.

[@flymacseamus3474]

So if I understand this correctly, a non-zero Deadzone creates a sort of bias towards the Forward and Backward directions, by expanding the F/B arcs while reducing the L/R arcs? And it's only if we have a "strongly committed" L/R directional change that we actually switch to either of those directions?

[@Kijotora]

Great content, I'm loving the series! One question I have is that I'm not understanding having the two types of directional logic in the Locomotion Direction function. I get that the information branching from the 0 output in the Sequence node has deadzones and the other coming from the 1 does not, but why do we have both rather than adding the deadzone calculations to the basic direction switching logic we did first? Are both being used? Thank you!

[@OutcastDevSchool]

There's probably a more concise way to achieve the same result as what I did in my video, but my thinking at the time was to use the switch on enum node to only calculate the deadzone for the angle range that the character is currently within. Lyra's approach is simpler albeit slightly less flexible, it's definitely worth checking out.

[@Uchidan]

Are we eventually going to add 45 degree animations as well?

[@alejandro.m8728]

Hi, great video just one question, I do not have the blend poses locomotion direction node in my editor, unreal 5.3, do I have to install another plug in?

[@labgamesstudio]

When directly switching from left to right or right to left, my character sometimes start to do a 180 degree rotation which really does not look very immersive. Do you know why this might be?

[@Susuer]

I also have this problem, did you fix that?

[@labgamesstudio]

​@@SusuerYes, somewhere in your Anim BP, you defined a struct with min and max values for the rotation of the character. I had to adjust those to make the rotation animations more realistic. I also slowed down the rotation speed of the character when moving to the sides (right & left).

[@hdolivares]

@@labgamesstudio Appreciate your help! I changed the Rotation Rate value for the Z axis on the Character Movement Component to a higher value and that fixed the weird turn blend.

[@furrybproductions]

Have you thought about using gameplay tags instead of enumerators? I find it works better, especially if you're gonna do this on the tech artist end for an art department for your game.

[@OutcastDevSchool]

I actually did have a version of my gait switching video where I used gameplay tags instead. I might make a short video showing how they can optionally be used instead of enums. I've been using them more recently, and the versatility and power of the gameplay tag system always surprises me.

[@furrybproductions]

​@@OutcastDevSchoolPLEASE DO!

[@robertoferreira4896]

Amazing! Will you also do start and stop animations? Thanks!

[@Uchidan]

This too! Pivot as well :)

[@OutcastDevSchool]

Definitely. Distanced matched starts, stops, and pivots are part of the plan. Potentially spins too if I can get those figured out.

[@robertoferreira4896]

@@OutcastDevSchool that is just amazing. Thanks!

[@JaviC77]

I'm developing a game with monsters with very different skeletons, they all have the same blueprint animation code, except for the animation files. Is there a way to use a common animation blueprint template, to reuse it in different skeletons? The retarget would not work for me, because if I make changes to the base animation blueprint, I would have to change it for each of the skeletons. Thank you very much for the videos, they are being very useful to me :)

[@shannenmr]

How different is very different? UE5 has the ability to set "Compatible Skeletons" so long as the main bones are the same between them.

[@JaviC77]

@@shannenmr yes, they are very different, quadrupeds, satyrs...they have different bones and skeletal structure. I want to have the same Anim Graph and Thead Safe function, since everyone is going to do the same, walk, run, attack...

[@shannenmr]

@@JaviC77 Well your AnimBP is going to be doing LegIK and CopyBones nodes which reference incorrect / missing bones so you will probably need separate AnimBP's for each type of mob if they don't share at-least a similar bone hierarchy for the bones you will be manipulating. You can copy paste nodes into a new AnimBP though you don't get the efficiencies of running a single AnimBP logic from a CPU performance perspective either.

[@shannenmr]

That said there is a lot more functionality with Animation Linking / Animation Layers in UE5 though so "maybe" you can store all that unique logic and animations on an ABP Layer that is linked in at runtime from the mob and just add Compatible Skeletons which are wildly different. Lyra has examples of Animation Layer Linking and he has some older videos going over Lyra's AnimBP setup.

[@JaviC77]

@@shannenmr Thanks for your answer. The layers thing is correct, but I would need a solution to reuse the base animation blueprint, so that it is not linked to the skeleton, is there a solution for this?

[@MarviciMedia]

Haven't watched all the videos in there entirety yet, but do you plan to optimize this with replication as far as dynamic jumps or whatever necessary to replicate for multiplayer? Thank you for all your hard work!

[@KharonYT]

Just replicate the variables that drive the anim graph, as far as I'm aware nothing else needs to be replicated

[@MarviciMedia]

@@KharonYT thank you. I just figured he has a whole outline on this tutorial and wasn’t sure if he is getting in to some things I’ve never done before. I’m sure you’ve done dynamic landings and stuff. Not that it’s super difficult but it’s a little more than just replicating the variables

[@TheKelkal42]

please repeat How to integrate MetaHumans with ALSV4 tuto with ue5 please thank for all

[@mrhunter8629]

can u increase the length of the video at least 30 to 35 minutes or at least one topic of the particular part in one video until its completions .... 🤞😐