Animation Sequencer with HEAT

How to use HEAT animations in the Unreal Engine animation sequencer to blend multiple animations together.

ADDING A LEVEL SEQUENCE AND PULLING IN ANIMATIONS

• At the top of your Unreal project viewport click the 'Level Sequencer' button () and select 'Add Level Sequence'.

Add level sequence to Unreal Project

• A pop-up window will appear to save the new level sequence. Feel free to name it whatever you like and click 'Save'.

• The Sequencer will appear at the bottom of your project window.

Unreal Engine 5 Sequencer

• In the HEAT plug-in window find an animation you would like to pull into your scene and choose the model that you would like to bring the animation in on.

• Drag and drop your animation in the same way that you did in the Quick Guide, but instead of dropping it in the 3D scene drop it into the sequencer at the bottom of the project window.

Dragging and dropping animation into the sequencer

• When you drop an animation into the sequencer it will not automatically start playing in the same way that it does when you drop an animation directly into the 3D scene. In order to view the animation you will click the 'Play' button () in the lower left hand corner of the sequencer.

Most likely the animation will be longer than what the sequencer has set as a work area. To increase this so that you see the entire animation grab the red line on the sequencer and drag it further to the right

BLENDING MULTIPLE ANIMATIONS TOGETHER

• If you want to blend into another animation simply choose your next animation and, while keeping the initial character selected in the 3D viewport, drag and drop the animation onto the sequencer. You will now see both animations side by side.

Two animations in the sequencer

• We can take this a step further by blending the animations to have a smooth transition between them making one longer animation sequence!

  1. Grab the second animation and pull it over to the left to have it blend with the first animation. Where they overlap will look like this showing you the blend region. Adjust until the blend looks natural.
  2. You may notice that the animation is now blending well but that the character is moving in space between the animations. We can apply the second animation without translating the character by matching the second animation to a bone of the first. Simply right click the second animation, hover over 'Match With This Bone In Previous Clip', and choose a bone to match. for the best results choose either the left or right toe bone (ball_l and ball_r on UE mannequin)

Matching bone to previous clip

• Now when you play full sequence you will see a smooth blending between the two animations!

Final result of two animations blended together.

you can continually append and blend animations together if you have your character selected. If not selected a new character will be generated in the sequencer when you drop an animation in.

Next we will go over some more advanced tools and techniques in Unreal Engine 5 that you can use in conjunction with HEAT.