Blending Animation Blueprints with Sequencer

Describes how you can take a the pose from an Animation Blueprint and blend it with animations defined inside a Level Sequence.

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If you want to blend an animation assigned within Sequencer with an animation defined from a Character's Animation Blueprint, you can do so using a Slot node and the Weight property of an Animation Track in Sequencer.

In this example, we take the idle pose from our Animation Blueprint and blend in a running animation defined from Sequencer.

Steps

For this how-to guide, we are using the Blueprint Third Person Template project.

  1. In the Content/Mannequin/Character/Mesh folder, right-click the SK_Mannequin then under Create , select Anim Blueprint.

    AnimBPWeight_01.png

    Give the Animation Blueprint any name and save location.

  2. Inside the Anim Blueprint , drag in the ThirdPersonIdle and connect to a Slot node, then connect to the Final Animation Pose node.

    AnimBPWeight_02-1.png

    Notice the Slot node is given the name DefaultSlot by default and is the name we will refer to inside our Level Sequence later in this guide.

  3. Drag the Anim Blueprint into the Level, then from the Main Toolbar, select Cinematics and select Add Level Sequence .

    AnimBPWeight_03-3.png

    Give the Level Sequence any name and save location.

  4. Add the Anim Blueprint character to the Sequence, then add/loop the ThirdPersonRun animation to fill the Sequence.

    AnimBPWeight_04.png

  5. Expand the Animation track, then change the Weight value to 0.0 and add a key to the Sequence.

    AnimBPWeight_05.png

    By setting the Weight to 0.0, we are stating that we want to use no part of this Animation until we increase the Weight value.

  6. Add a key for Weight with the value 1.0 at frame 75 , and another key with a value of 0.0 at frame 150 .

    AnimBPWeight_06.png

    This will blend from 0.0 to to 1.0 (full effect of the animation) back down to 0.0.

  7. Right-click on the ThirdPersonRun track, then under Properties , notice the Slot Name , and the three Keys we added.

    AnimBPWeight_07.png

    Slot Name is the name referring to the Slot Node added inside the Animation Blueprint. These names must match in order for Sequencer to know which Slot you are referring to and to pass through the Weight values.

  8. Select the Level Sequence, then in the Details panel, enable Auto Play and set Loop to Loop Indefinitely .

    AnimBPWeight_08.png

  9. From the Main Toolbar, select to Play in the Editor.

End Result

When you play in the Editor, the character will starting idle (which is the state inside our Animation Blueprint) and will blend to the animation we assigned (running) inside our Level Sequence, then back to idle.

While our example uses an idle animation as our Final Animation Pose, using this method you can generate an entire State Machine to produce the Final Animation Pose inside your Animation Blueprint based on any number of factors, then blend to an animation defined inside a Level Sequence.

As an example, an NPC could have some logic defined that governs what pose they are in and the player could approach that NPC triggering a cutscene where you override the animation logic with an animation defined within Sequencer.

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