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> Testing and Optimizing Your Content > Performance and Profiling > Unreal Insights > Animation Insights Overview

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Animation Insights Overview

Overview of Animation Insights, the gameplay and animation performance profiling tool available as an editor plugin

Advanced

Choose your operating system:

Windows

macOS

Linux

Setup

To begin using Animation Insights in the editor, enable these plugins:

Animation Insights
Insights Data Source Filters
Trace Data Filtering

If you choose to enable these plugins from inside the editor, locate them in the Plugins tab under Editor > Plugins > Built-In . Otherwise, enable these plugins in the project's *.uproject file:

{
    "FileVersion": 3,
    "EngineAssociation": "4.25",
    "Category": "",
    "Description": "",
    "Plugins": [
        {
            "Name": "TraceSourceFilters",
            "Enabled": true
        },
        {
            "Name": "GameplayInsights",
            "Enabled": true
        },
        {
            "Name": "TraceDataFilters",
            "Enabled": true
        }
    ]
}

After enabling the required plugins, restart the editor.

If you built the editor from source, you will need to compile and run the editor for your project after enabling the required plugins.

When the editor restarts, navigate Window > Developer Tools > Profiling to open Animation Insights and Trace Data Filtering .

After setting up filters with Trace Data or Trace Source filtering, live trace data will record and visualize in Animation Insights. Traces automatically write to the following project directory: <YourProject>/Saved/TraceSessions . Because trace sessions can grow in size over time, make sure to actively monitor and manage the *.utrace files.

Trace Data Filtering

The Trace Data Filtering minor tab initially opens next to the Content Browser. In Trace Data Filtering, users can set Trace Channel states to enable trace data by while the engine runs. After making filter selections, users may choose Filter Presets > Save User Preset . Currently, the editor provides a default Animation preset that currently enables Frame, Object, and Animation channels.

Unreal Insights Overview

Channel filtering

With enabled channels, data will trace to the timeline in the Animation Insights minor tab.

Selective channel filtering limits performance overhead and disk space.

Play-in-Editor (PIE) to view animation data trace out for skeletal mesh components in the scene

Trace Source Filtering

With Trace Source filtering, users determine the gameplay objects that can output trace data. If users are working on a large-scale game, there are a large number of Actors and Components in a given world. Trace Source filtering enables users to reduce the amount of recorded trace data, limit overhead, and reduce the amount of used disk space (for example, users may only have interest in the PlayerPawn or certain Actors within range of the Player).

To open the Trace Source Filter tab, select Menu > (Filtering) Trace Source Filtering in Animation Insights.

User Interface


Number	Description
1	The Add Filter dropdown enables users to add and combine user-created filters with AND, OR, and NOT logical operators. Use Options to visualize each Actor it's individual filtering state, reset the current filters, and to save or load filter presets.
2	Context sensitive region to set filter variable values.
3	The Options dropdown allows users to enable world filtering by World Type (Editor, PIE or Game) or by World Net Mode (Client, Server or Standalone).

The following animation shows the Trace Source Filtering in action:

How to Implement Trace Source Filtering

Animation Insights

Animation Insights expands on the preexisting showdebug animation feature, which displays animation runtime internal data. The ability to visualize and analyze the information enables users to identify the cause(s) of animation glitches or bugs.

Over time, showdebug animation limited users' ability to track down animation problems because the showdebug animation system only outputs text to the screen. With Animation Insights, users can record the frame ranges containing the animation bugs while also having the ability to scrub (or play back) those frames while reviewing the data breakdowns.

showdebug animation

Control Reference


Input Shortcut	Function
Ctrl + Left Mouse Button Drag over Time Ruler	Drags Time Ruler (above tracks view) to control the current time, allowing values to be scrubbed in schematic views, poses to animate in the viewport, and more
G	Toggle Graph visibility
V	Auto-hide tracks that have no timing events in the current Viewport
I	Toggle I/O (File Input) Overview and Activity Track visibility
L	Toggle Asset Loading track visibility
Y	Toggle GPU track visibility
U	Toggle CPU Thread (and all CPU thread group) track visibility
R	Toggle Frame track visibility

User Interface


Number	Description
1	Animation Insights menu that enables users to display Timing Insights tracks (such as Counters or Frames). Additionally, users can open the Trace Source Filtering Panel from this menu.
2	Frames panel
3	Timing panel with Track grouping and filtering options. See below to view the available track types.
4	Context menu enabling users to view specific properties, visualization styles (like polygons or points), series data, track layouts, and track sizes.
5	Transport controls enable users to play back a recorded session and step frames.
6	Schematic views that display properties of each track. These change over time while scrubbing the ruler.

Unreal Insights Overview

Track Inspection

To inspect a track for debugging or performance analysis, right-click the track and follow its context menu to learn more about the track.

Right-clicking Graph - AnimSingleNodeInstance_1 opens the Graph Track context menu.

Animators typically need to identify problem spots in their animations, and Animation Insights helps the debugging process by enabling animators to visualize Notifies , Curves , Pose , Graph , Montage , and Blend Weights .

Track Types

Each track type features its own context menu, which is the main entry point for per-track operations (for example, the Pose Track menu allows poses to be enabled or disabled for viewport rendering). Some tracks have common context menu options. For instance, tracks that display graphs allow graphs to be scaled, series to be toggled, stacked/overlay views and more.

Notifies

Notifies tracks display animation about notifies and sync markers. The topmost lane of the track displays the per-frame events, such as ticks, notify events (example, for audio and effects) and sync markers. Other lanes display the active notify states. Right-click the track and select View Properties to display the notifies that are active on the current frame.

Curves

Curves tracks display all curves that were active in a frame. Right-click and select View Properties to see the curve values that were active on a given frame.

Pose

Pose tracks enable users to show or hide Actor poses while scrubbing the timeline.

Graph

Right-click and select Debug this graph to open the Animation Blueprint debugger and connect it to the track. With the Animation Blueprint debugger open, scrub the timeline to view the graph in action, including pose link weights, state machine states, asset player positions and blendspace samples. Select View this graph to see a schematic 'tree' view of the animation graph.

Montage

Montage tracks enable users to inspect Montage information over time, including blend weights and current/next sections.

Blend Weights

Blend Weights tracks show all the assets that were active in a frame and their effective blend weights. Right click on a graph to go to the node in the Animation Blueprint that the graph corresponds to. You can also view other graphs such as playback time or blendspace coordinates.

Track Visibility

Use the Tracks dropdown filter to toggle timing track visibility.