AdamCodd/unreal-engine-5-raw · Datasets at Hugging Face

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Once assembled, an Animation Composite is used in the same way as an Animation Sequence in the AnimGraph of an Animation Blueprint.

You can also add an Animation Composite to another Animation Composite or to an Animation Montage in the same fashion as a singular Animation Sequence using the Asset Browser.

Creating a Composite

Editing a Composite

Using Composites

Anim Asset Details

Preview Base Pose

Here you can assign and reference the base pose for an Additive BlendSpace. For more information about Blend Spaces please see Blend Spaces.

Sequence Length

Length (in seconds) of the selected AnimSequence playback, assuming a playback speed factor of 1.0.

Remarks

When opening your Animation Composite in the Animation Sequence Editor, there are a few unique properties that can be accessed from theAsset Detailspanel. Here you can see a reference of these properties for Animation Composites in the Animation Sequence Editor.

Animation Optimization

When developing animation systems in Unreal Engine using Animation Blueprints you can use several animation optimization techniques to increase your project's performance.

You can use the following document to learn more about a few best-practice techniques to optimize your animation system in Unreal Engine.

Your project's Animation System performance, or how efficiently each frame is evaluated, is based on the amount of time your Game Thread and Worker Threads require to process your animation system each Tick.

Animations are added to an Animation Blueprint, where they will be evaluated and played back on the character at runtime. Additional processes, such as animation blends, IK evaluations, physics simulations, and more, will each subtract from your project's performance budget in order to be evaluated. Some processes are simple and don't require much performance budget to evaluate, other processes perform more advanced operations that result in better looking animations, but may require a lot of your performance budget. All animation system features have an associated performance cost.

Generally speaking, the most performance-expensive operation of an Animation Blueprint is the Event Graph logic. While AnimGraph logic can be optimized using systems like Fast Path, it is recommended that you reduce your Event Graph logic as much as possible to achieve the best performance. The Event Graph is evaluated each Tick, with each process occurring sequentially on the Game Thread.

The following diagram is a conceptual breakdown of a single frame of animation. Each frame of animation contains several Ticks, and with each Tick the Event Graph is evaluated. Event Graph evaluations are typically the largest operation performed each tick. Event Graph evaluations are sequential, meaning each Tick's evaluation takes longer to complete.

You can optimize this process by relocating Event Graph logic to Thread Safe functions that can be evaluated simultaneously on available Worker Threads.

The following diagram illustrates the drastic reduction in the time each Tick takes to complete. When relocating all Event Graph operations to Thread Safe functions, operations can be performed simultaneously, thus reducing the amount of time required to evaluate each Tick by a significant margin and improving your animation systems performance.

Animation Blueprint Event Graphs always run on the Game Thread. In order to optimize the logic within the Event Graph to take advantage of multi-threading, you can instead build logic using Thread Safe functions.

To ensure thread safety, all references to data derived from other blueprints and components within your project, such as variables, must be called by your Animation Blueprint, rather than pushed to it.

You can use the Blueprint Thread Safe Update Animation override function to evaluate logic in your Animation Blueprint in a Thread Safe manner. You can add the Blueprint Thread Safe Update Animation function to your Animation Blueprint in the My Blueprint panel by selecting it in the Override down-down menu adjacent to the Function section.

Thread Safe functions are Blueprint Functions you can use to perform logic to set variables and properties that can be used by your animation system, in addition to performing other operations typically performed in the Event Graph.

To create a Thread Safe function in your Animation Blueprint, create a new function in the My Blueprint panel using (+) Add. After creating a new function, open its Details panel and enable the Thread Safe property.

Thread Safe enabled functions can then be added to the Blueprint Thread Safe Update Animation override function to be evaluated simultaneously when worker threads become available each Tick.

Thread Safe functions are unable to directly access non-thread safe blueprints and components. In order to access non-thread safe blueprints and their properties safely, you can use the Property Access feature to read their data and call their functions. Property Access can be used as a standalone node within a thread safe function's graph, or within a pin's properties on AnimGraph nodes.

Property Access Node \| Property Access Pin

To create a Property Access node, right-click in the graph of a Thread Safe function, and select the Property Access option in the context-menu.

You can use Property Access nodes to reference variables, components, and data found in other blueprints and game objects relative to your Animation Blueprint. To define the source of a Property Access data call, select the Bind drop-down menu, and then select the component or property you want to reference. By selecting a property or component you can reference the object or data directly, or you can navigate in the nested options of a property or component to directly access its components or properties.

You can now use a bound Property Access reference to set additional properties or variables within a Thread Safe blueprint function.

For more information about using Thread Safe functions, and Property Access data, see the Graphing in Animation Blueprints documentation.

For a workflow example of using Thread Safe functions and Property Access nodes to get Animation Variables, see the How to Get Animation Variables documentation.

For a workflow example of optimizing an Unreal Engine project to use Thread Safe functions, see the Adapting Lyra's Animation System blog post.

Animation Fast Path provides a way to optimize variable access inside the AnimGraph update. This enables the engine to copy parameters internally rather than executing Blueprint code, which involves making calls into the Blueprint Virtual Machine. The compiler can currently optimize the following constructs:

Member Variables

Negated Boolean Member Variables

Members of a Nested Structure

To make use of Animation Fath Path, inside the AnimGraph of your Animation Blueprints, ensure that no Blueprint logic is being executed.

In the following example blueprint, the AnimGraph is reading several float values, which are being used to drive multiple Blend Space assets and a Blend node resulting in the Output Pose. Each node denoted with the lightning icon in the upper right corner is utilizing Fast Path as no logic is being executed.

If any form of calculation is added to the graph, the associated node would no longer be using Fast Path. In the following example, a simple multiply function is added to the float variables, resulting in the Blend Space node being unable to use Fast Path. After the graph is compiled, the lightning icon is removed to denote this change.

The following are the methods you can use to implement Fast Path variable access in your Animation Blueprints.

You can use Fast Path by directly accessing and reading the value of a variable to determine the output pose.

You can break nested structs, such as a rotator variable, to directly access its components while still using Fast Path. You can break a struct directly by right-clicking the variable in the graph, and selecting Split Struct Pin from the context menu or by using a Break node. You can now access its component values directly.

Some Break Struct nodes like Break Transform will not use Fast Path as they perform conversions internally rather than simply copying data.

To ensure that your Animation Blueprints are using Fast Path, you can enable the Warn About Blueprint Usage property. When Warn About Blueprint Usage is enabled, the compiler will emit warnings to the Compiler Results panel when a call into the Blueprint Virtual Machine is made from the AnimGraph.

To enable Warn About Blueprint Usage, enable the option inside the Class Settings of your Animation Blueprint under Optimization.

When executing Blueprint logic in the AnimGraph with the Warn About Blueprint Usage property enabled, a warning message in the Compiler Results panel will appear when a variable that can be accessed using Fast Path is not. You can click on the link in the warning message to focus the graph on the source of the warning. This can help track down optimizations that need to be made and will enable you to identify any node variable access that may be optimizable.

Unreal Engine provides a suite of debugging tools you can use to analyze your animation system, to find optimization opportunities.

Once assembled, an Animation Composite is used in the same way as an Animation Sequence in the AnimGraph of an Animation Blueprint.

You can also add an Animation Composite to another Animation Composite or to an Animation Montage in the same fashion as a singular Animation Sequence using the Asset Browser.

Creating a Composite

Editing a Composite

Using Composites

Anim Asset Details

Preview Base Pose

Here you can assign and reference the base pose for an Additive BlendSpace. For more information about Blend Spaces please see Blend Spaces.

Sequence Length

Length (in seconds) of the selected AnimSequence playback, assuming a playback speed factor of 1.0.

Remarks

When opening your Animation Composite in the Animation Sequence Editor, there are a few unique properties that can be accessed from theAsset Detailspanel. Here you can see a reference of these properties for Animation Composites in the Animation Sequence Editor.

Animation Optimization

When developing animation systems in Unreal Engine using Animation Blueprints you can use several animation optimization techniques to increase your project's performance.

You can use the following document to learn more about a few best-practice techniques to optimize your animation system in Unreal Engine.

Your project's Animation System performance, or how efficiently each frame is evaluated, is based on the amount of time your Game Thread and Worker Threads require to process your animation system each Tick.

Animations are added to an Animation Blueprint, where they will be evaluated and played back on the character at runtime. Additional processes, such as animation blends, IK evaluations, physics simulations, and more, will each subtract from your project's performance budget in order to be evaluated. Some processes are simple and don't require much performance budget to evaluate, other processes perform more advanced operations that result in better looking animations, but may require a lot of your performance budget. All animation system features have an associated performance cost.

Generally speaking, the most performance-expensive operation of an Animation Blueprint is the Event Graph logic. While AnimGraph logic can be optimized using systems like Fast Path, it is recommended that you reduce your Event Graph logic as much as possible to achieve the best performance. The Event Graph is evaluated each Tick, with each process occurring sequentially on the Game Thread.

The following diagram is a conceptual breakdown of a single frame of animation. Each frame of animation contains several Ticks, and with each Tick the Event Graph is evaluated. Event Graph evaluations are typically the largest operation performed each tick. Event Graph evaluations are sequential, meaning each Tick's evaluation takes longer to complete.

You can optimize this process by relocating Event Graph logic to Thread Safe functions that can be evaluated simultaneously on available Worker Threads.

The following diagram illustrates the drastic reduction in the time each Tick takes to complete. When relocating all Event Graph operations to Thread Safe functions, operations can be performed simultaneously, thus reducing the amount of time required to evaluate each Tick by a significant margin and improving your animation systems performance.

Animation Blueprint Event Graphs always run on the Game Thread. In order to optimize the logic within the Event Graph to take advantage of multi-threading, you can instead build logic using Thread Safe functions.

To ensure thread safety, all references to data derived from other blueprints and components within your project, such as variables, must be called by your Animation Blueprint, rather than pushed to it.

You can use the Blueprint Thread Safe Update Animation override function to evaluate logic in your Animation Blueprint in a Thread Safe manner. You can add the Blueprint Thread Safe Update Animation function to your Animation Blueprint in the My Blueprint panel by selecting it in the Override down-down menu adjacent to the Function section.

Thread Safe functions are Blueprint Functions you can use to perform logic to set variables and properties that can be used by your animation system, in addition to performing other operations typically performed in the Event Graph.

To create a Thread Safe function in your Animation Blueprint, create a new function in the My Blueprint panel using (+) Add. After creating a new function, open its Details panel and enable the Thread Safe property.

Thread Safe enabled functions can then be added to the Blueprint Thread Safe Update Animation override function to be evaluated simultaneously when worker threads become available each Tick.

Thread Safe functions are unable to directly access non-thread safe blueprints and components. In order to access non-thread safe blueprints and their properties safely, you can use the Property Access feature to read their data and call their functions. Property Access can be used as a standalone node within a thread safe function's graph, or within a pin's properties on AnimGraph nodes.

Property Access Node | Property Access Pin

To create a Property Access node, right-click in the graph of a Thread Safe function, and select the Property Access option in the context-menu.

You can use Property Access nodes to reference variables, components, and data found in other blueprints and game objects relative to your Animation Blueprint. To define the source of a Property Access data call, select the Bind drop-down menu, and then select the component or property you want to reference. By selecting a property or component you can reference the object or data directly, or you can navigate in the nested options of a property or component to directly access its components or properties.

You can now use a bound Property Access reference to set additional properties or variables within a Thread Safe blueprint function.

For more information about using Thread Safe functions, and Property Access data, see the Graphing in Animation Blueprints documentation.

For a workflow example of using Thread Safe functions and Property Access nodes to get Animation Variables, see the How to Get Animation Variables documentation.

For a workflow example of optimizing an Unreal Engine project to use Thread Safe functions, see the Adapting Lyra's Animation System blog post.

Animation Fast Path provides a way to optimize variable access inside the AnimGraph update. This enables the engine to copy parameters internally rather than executing Blueprint code, which involves making calls into the Blueprint Virtual Machine. The compiler can currently optimize the following constructs:

Member Variables

Negated Boolean Member Variables

Members of a Nested Structure

To make use of Animation Fath Path, inside the AnimGraph of your Animation Blueprints, ensure that no Blueprint logic is being executed.

In the following example blueprint, the AnimGraph is reading several float values, which are being used to drive multiple Blend Space assets and a Blend node resulting in the Output Pose. Each node denoted with the lightning icon in the upper right corner is utilizing Fast Path as no logic is being executed.

If any form of calculation is added to the graph, the associated node would no longer be using Fast Path. In the following example, a simple multiply function is added to the float variables, resulting in the Blend Space node being unable to use Fast Path. After the graph is compiled, the lightning icon is removed to denote this change.

The following are the methods you can use to implement Fast Path variable access in your Animation Blueprints.

You can use Fast Path by directly accessing and reading the value of a variable to determine the output pose.

You can break nested structs, such as a rotator variable, to directly access its components while still using Fast Path. You can break a struct directly by right-clicking the variable in the graph, and selecting Split Struct Pin from the context menu or by using a Break node. You can now access its component values directly.

Some Break Struct nodes like Break Transform will not use Fast Path as they perform conversions internally rather than simply copying data.

To ensure that your Animation Blueprints are using Fast Path, you can enable the Warn About Blueprint Usage property. When Warn About Blueprint Usage is enabled, the compiler will emit warnings to the Compiler Results panel when a call into the Blueprint Virtual Machine is made from the AnimGraph.

To enable Warn About Blueprint Usage, enable the option inside the Class Settings of your Animation Blueprint under Optimization.

When executing Blueprint logic in the AnimGraph with the Warn About Blueprint Usage property enabled, a warning message in the Compiler Results panel will appear when a variable that can be accessed using Fast Path is not. You can click on the link in the warning message to focus the graph on the source of the warning. This can help track down optimizations that need to be made and will enable you to identify any node variable access that may be optimizable.

Unreal Engine provides a suite of debugging tools you can use to analyze your animation system, to find optimization opportunities.