Jose Villarroel

Lead Animation Programmer @EpicGames

[Caleb Longmire @clongmire42]

Got some good news and some bittersweet news:

Good news is, the 5.8 Game Anim Sample update is live! It contains lots of new goodies, like character physics, multicharacter motion matched interactions, locomotion improvements, robust control rigs, and more!

The bittersweet news is, since UE5 is coming to an end, this is unfortunately the last planned update to this sample project...We had many hopes and dreams for it but sadly could not realize them all. Regardless, I'm still very proud of what our tiny team was able to build. This project exists solely because of the passion of our team who gave their spare time while supporting many other internal initiatives. It has not been easy, and in light of everything else going on at Epic its actually a miracle this project exists at all.

On the positive side, my focus will now be fully on UE6 and UAF, where I (along with many others who are truly some of the best in the business) are working hard to ensure that the future of gameplay animation in Unreal can succeed.

https://t.co/4w0vGZF5gv

[Unreal Engine @UnrealEngine]

GASP 🫢 The Game Animation Sample Project is back with a brand new update for UE 5.8!

Grab it today and prepare to get physical with new physics, motion matching, interaction, and Control Rig features and more: https://t.co/w3qZjXKGvv

[Caleb Longmire @clongmire42]

What do you get when you cross multi character motion matched interactions, active ragdoll physics, and some awesome mocap?

Cinema.

Here's a little sneak peek on what we're working towards. I usually don't like to share early but this was too good to keep hidden, enjoy!

Also you'll want to unmute for this ;)

#UE5 #animation #gamedev

[Jose Villarroel @JSpoiler4]

@RyanMuoio @clongmire42 TL;DR Orientation Warping manipulates some bone transforms directly (it always has unfortunately), so this breaks the whole component-space caching system. We've never noticed because we always had Orientation Warping first in the chain. We'll fix this up in 5.8.

[Jose Villarroel @JSpoiler4]

@clongmire42 @RyanMuoio There's always one on each release! I think in 5.4 we had an off-root crouch pivot, and in 5.5 we had a few flipping stops? I'll call this one the necklace pivot.

[Jose Villarroel @JSpoiler4]

@SandriaGirrith @kiaran_ritchie The point of this approach is to optimize the standard character pipeline instead of building crowd-only tech. That way it's up to the devs if they want more NPCs or not, and if they have crowds, they're not cut out of making them super interactive. This is very hard in UE today

[Caleb Longmire @clongmire42]

Thanks to the flexibility that Mover provides, we were able to achieve some pretty robust rotation behaviors, which I'm personally quite proud of. Rotation has been something I've fought with since the very beginning, but I feel like we're finally turning a corner (pun intended). This newfound rotational freedom has given way to a unique approach to "Strafe" locomotion. With just F+B directions and what I call "Spin Transitions", we can make a character that can move and rotate in any arbitrary direction with seamless transitions.

[Jose Villarroel @JSpoiler4]

We're excited to share what the team has been working on!

[Unreal Engine @UnrealEngine]

The Game Animation Sample Project is updated for Unreal Engine 5.7 and we're so excited for it, you could describe us as, well: Animated

From the addition of the Mover plugin, to Smart object setups, a new slide feature,  locomotion style and much more, there’s plenty of new things to check out in the new GASP 5.7: https://t.co/do3e5bijae

[Unreal Engine @UnrealEngine]

The Game Animation Sample Project is updated for Unreal Engine 5.7 and we're so excited for it, you could describe us as, well: Animated

From the addition of the Mover plugin, to Smart object setups, a new slide feature,  locomotion style and much more, there’s plenty of new things to check out in the new GASP 5.7: https://t.co/do3e5bijae

[Jose Villarroel @JSpoiler4]

@LincolnMargison @hyperwebster @louiswhitworth_ We also separated the state of the prediction/history from the state of the root motion from anim and sync'd manually, since it caused a feedback loop that made trajectories noisy and caused bad selection. Unsure if it's the right way and we'll continue experimenting.

[Jose Villarroel @JSpoiler4]

@LincolnMargison @hyperwebster @louiswhitworth_ For the Witcher tech demo we calculate trajectories "manually"/outside of the root motion flow.

We made a new spring movement model in mover 2.0 that's used for prediction. For the player it's in blueprint and for crowds it's in mass.

[Jose Villarroel @JSpoiler4]

@xen_studio Re: our 5.6 release can be summarized by this https://t.co/BANu84gTuX
Re: retargeting we intend to push it in gasp soon and we're aware of the knee pops

[Caleb Longmire @clongmire42]

Due to our teams involvement in this demo, we weren't able to deliver a significant update to our Game Anim Sample for 5.6...

...however, we are hard at work to make sure the next update is solid ;)

[Jose Villarroel @JSpoiler4]

@xen_studio If you check UE5 Main, you'll see there's an alternative to animation blueprints in the works. Conceptually both concepts will be pushed, but the workflow will be completely different.

[Jose Villarroel @JSpoiler4]

@MaxGariepy @RyanMuoio We ended up using hand_r in spine_05 space for everything but I think we could get better results by tweaking that per-item too.

[Jose Villarroel @JSpoiler4]

@RyanMuoio We based the node on an animator's workflow and I think this could be applied to an IK chain on chest/hips too. Animators tied parameters on a chooser so you could tweak them on running vs idle.

I'd like us to eventually do this on control rig to make it more animator-driven.

[Jose Villarroel @JSpoiler4]

@RyanMuoio Most of our items had a delay between 0.033 (grenades, consumables) and 0.1 (assault rifles), with the heaviest ones going to 0.2-0.3 (I think pickaxes).

We also made a node similar to your transform modify advanced and copy pose so I think you're definitely using it right!

[Jose Villarroel @JSpoiler4]

@hublan2 @snowchimp @kiaran_ritchie No. The 5.5 update depends on 5.5 engine updates.