Unreal Engine Basics 06 - Animation, Audio, Visual Effects

Unreal Engine Basics
Chapter 6: Animation, Audio, Visual Effects
Nick Prühs

Objectives
• Understanding how to 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

Animation Blueprints
• Control the 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

Animation Graphs
• Sample, blend and manipulate poses to be applied to skeletal meshes
• Provide blend nodes and state machines to evaluate the final pose

Animation State Machines
• Break skeletal animations up into multiple states with transitions
• Each state and each transition is another condensed graph

Animation States
• Each state in turn may be a simple as just playing an animation –
sometimes driven by additional parameters

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

Blend Spaces
• Allow any 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

Calculate Direction for Blend Spaces
• Calculates angle between character velocity and forward vector
• Returns a single float, thus very useful for feeding into blend spaces

Sound Cues
• Importing an 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

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.

Ambient Sound
Just dropping a sound cue into a level will automatically create an
AmbientSoundActor with various parameters.

Particle Effects
• Unreal Cascade* 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

Particle Effects Example – Starter Content Explosion
Example for a system combining multiple emitters with consisting of
multiple modules each:

Spawning Emitters
As always, Kismet‘s GameplayStatics provide convenient
methods for spawning emitters:
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);

Spawning Emitters
As always, Kismet‘s GameplayStatics provide convenient
methods for spawning emitters:
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);

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.

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.

And now …
Make something
Unreal!

See you next time!
https://www.slideshare.net/npruehs
https://github.com/npruehs/teaching-
unreal-engine/releases/tag/assignment06
npruehs@outlook.com

Unreal Engine Basics 06 - Animation, Audio, Visual Effects

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