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Unreal Engine Basics 06 - Animation, Audio, Visual Effects
Chapter 6 of Unreal Engine Basics focuses on animation, audio, and visual effects within Unreal Engine, covering key concepts like animation blueprints, blend spaces, and sound cues. The chapter explains how to control character animations, manage sound assets, and utilize particle systems, providing practical examples and methods for implementation. Additionally, it includes an assignment that involves creating various animation and audio settings for a character, along with resources for further learning.
Unreal Engine Basics 06 - Animation, Audio, Visual Effects
- 1. Unreal Engine Basics Chapter6: Animation, Audio, Visual Effects Nick Prühs
- 2. Objectives • Understanding howto drive final character animation poses through animation blueprints and blend spaces • Learning how to configure, combine and play sound assets • Understanding the modular nature of particle effects in Unreal Engine
- 3. Animation Blueprints • Controlthe animation of a skeletal mesh • Allow you to blend animations to define the final pose for every frame • Based on a specific skeleton • Tied to character blueprints through their SkeletalMeshComponent • Variables and Event Graph just like any other blueprint
- 4. Animation Graphs • Sample,blend and manipulate poses to be applied to skeletal meshes • Provide blend nodes and state machines to evaluate the final pose
- 5. Animation State Machines •Break skeletal animations up into multiple states with transitions • Each state and each transition is another condensed graph
- 6. Animation States • Eachstate in turn may be a simple as just playing an animation – sometimes driven by additional parameters
- 7. Animation States • Eachstate in turn may be a simple as just playing an animation – sometimes driven by additional parameters
- 8. Animation State Transitions •Control how the skeletal mesh goes from state to another • Return value determines whether the animation can move through the transition, or not
- 9. Blend Spaces • Allowany number of animations to be blended between based on the values of two inputs • 2D graph where… each input value defines one axis animations are plotted on the graph at various points • Allows skipping parts of the interpolation through Target Weight Interpolation Speed Per Second parameter • Example: Direction and Speed input Forward, Left, Right and Backward movement animations
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- 11. Calculate Direction forBlend Spaces • Calculates angle between character velocity and forward vector • Returns a single float, thus very useful for feeding into blend spaces
- 12. Sound Cues • Importingan audio file (preferred .wav) creates a Sound Wave asset Provides basic overrides, such as volume, pitch or attenuation • Sound cues are composite assets that allow you to modify the behavior of audio playback, e.g. applying random volume & pitch selecting random waves looping mixing
- 13. Playing Sound As always,Kismet‘s GameplayStatics provide convenient methods for playing sound: UFUNCTION(BlueprintCallable, …) static void PlaySoundAtLocation( const UObject* WorldContextObject, USoundBase* Sound, FVector Location, FRotator Rotation, float VolumeMultiplier = 1.f, float PitchMultiplier = 1.f, float StartTime = 0.f, class USoundAttenuation* AttenuationSettings = nullptr, USoundConcurrency* ConcurrencySettings = nullptr, AActor* OwningActor = nullptr); Sound Attenuation, Sound Class and Sound Mix assets allow you further (re-usable) customization of your audio output.
- 14. Ambient Sound Just droppinga sound cue into a level will automatically create an AmbientSoundActor with various parameters.
- 15. Particle Effects • UnrealCascade* allows for very modularly designed particle systems: EmitterActors exist in your level, controlling where and how the particle systems are used in your scene ParticleSystem assets contain multiple emitters Emitters emit a specific type of particle for an effect Modules define particle behavior * soon to be replaced by Niagara
- 16. Particle Effects Example– Starter Content Explosion Example for a system combining multiple emitters with consisting of multiple modules each:
- 17. Spawning Emitters As always,Kismet‘s GameplayStatics provide convenient methods for spawning emitters: UFUNCTION(BlueprintCallable, …) static UParticleSystemComponent* SpawnEmitterAtLocation( const UObject* WorldContextObject, UParticleSystem* EmitterTemplate, FVector Location, FRotator Rotation = FRotator::ZeroRotator, FVector Scale = FVector(1.f), bool bAutoDestroy = true, EPSCPoolMethod PoolingMethod = EPSCPoolMethod::None);
- 18. Spawning Emitters As always,Kismet‘s GameplayStatics provide convenient methods for spawning emitters: UFUNCTION(BlueprintCallable, …) static UParticleSystemComponent* SpawnEmitterAttached( class UParticleSystem* EmitterTemplate, class USceneComponent* AttachToComponent, FName AttachPointName = NAME_None, FVector Location = FVector(ForceInit), FRotator Rotation = FRotator::ZeroRotator, FVector Scale = FVector(1.f), EAttachLocation::Type LocationType = EAttachLocation::KeepRelativeOffset, bool bAutoDestroy = true, EPSCPoolMethod PoolingMethod = EPSCPoolMethod::None);
- 19. Assignment #6 –Animation, Audio, Visual Effects 1. Create a blend space for run animations of your character. 2. Create an animation blueprint calculating direction and speed. 3. Create the animation state machine for run and jump animations. 4. Play a sound when firing a projectile. 5. Show a particle effect when a projectile hits a target. Bonus: Play death, fire and hit react animations.
- 20. References • Epic Games.Setting Up Character Movement in Blueprints. https://docs.unrealengine.com/en- US/Gameplay/HowTo/CharacterMovement/Blueprints/index.html, February 2020. • Epic Games. Animation Blueprints. https://docs.unrealengine.com/en- US/Engine/Animation/AnimBlueprints/index.html, February 2020. • Epic Games. AnimGraph. https://docs.unrealengine.com/en- US/Engine/Animation/AnimBlueprints/AnimGraph/index.html, February 2020. • Epic Games. Overview of State Machines. https://docs.unrealengine.com/en- US/Engine/Animation/StateMachines/Overview/index.html, February 2020. • Epic Games. Blend Spaces Overview. https://docs.unrealengine.com/en- US/Engine/Animation/Blendspaces/Overview/index.html, February 2020. • Epic Games. Audio System Overview. https://docs.unrealengine.com/en- US/Engine/Audio/Overview/index.html, February 2020. • Epic Games. Key Particle Concepts. https://docs.unrealengine.com/en- US/Engine/Rendering/ParticleSystems/Overview/index.html, February 2020.
- 21. And now … Makesomething Unreal!
- 22. See you nexttime! https://www.slideshare.net/npruehs https://github.com/npruehs/teaching- unreal-engine/releases/tag/assignment06 npruehs@outlook.com