UE4 Animate Physics in Sequencer 

RIGHT!? You're welcome! This vid is meant for us who go "WTF!?" when simply trying to throw an object with the sequencer and it glitches up!

Awesome! This was something that I really wished I had known a long time ago! Glad it could help you!

That's definitely my end goal! After learning how Chaos finally actually works, I'm now free to start experimenting what can do things where. Like that falling block on the right is a static mesh that's animated then swaps to chaos again... Hm... I wonder if I could perfect swap it. Like... I did a visibility trick with recording but what if I could simply swap out the static mesh with its chaos version using blueprints or something? Huh! Something to test! That'd be incredible! Then I can finish it off by using this trick in this video!

@@AZmaybe9 how to even make chaos destruction to work in with the sequencer?

@@erasernox2611 This one is tricky. You need a chaos Cache Manager. Create one by selecting all the pieces you want to add to it then right clicking and adding one at the bottom. Doing this will add all those pieces to its list. Then switch the Chaos Manager to 'Record' from the play setting. Then you add an event channel into sequencer and make a Keyframe then go into its properties. Custom event. Search for 'Trigger All' to tie to that event. Unreal will auto-pair the blueprint to sequencer with a sequence blueprint pop-up. Then record with the simulate button and let Chaos run through that event and when you want to stop. Once that's done, set the cache manager to 'Play' again. Now every time you simulate you will have almost ZERO dropped frames and Chaos will only activate once that event is fired off.

@@AZmaybe9 I *You need a chaos Cache Manager. Create one by selecting all the pieces you want to add to it then right clicking and adding one at the bottom. Doing this will add all those pieces to its list.* In this you mean just creating a chaoscache manager, i directly created chaoscache manager, then i added that chaoscache manager to sequence and added event in that i added a random keyframe and then did the rest of 'trigger all' thing that sequencerevent menu do popped up and then record simulated and then i put play and then simulated but whenever i hit simulation the object keep on starting the destruction out of its own rather than how it is supposed to happen to get triggered through sequencer only...did i do something wrong pls help, and also thanks for replying and helping me out, im a beginner in ue5 :)

@@erasernox2611 Ok, it's really just those steps. I'll try to give more details. Selecting all the destructible stuff, right clicking to make a Chaos Manager out of it. You'll know it's correct when you see a long list of clusters you selected in Chaos Manager. Then switch CM to record, yada yada. The Event Keyframe should be right before the physics activate. It tells CM when to start recording. Then finish that simulation. Switch the record to play on CM. Then what SHOULD happen is that the destruction is completely frozen until that event Keyframe is crossed. It's really just that. I've personally hit a lot of problems with Chaos where it doesn't do something right consistently and had to restart the process for Chaos Cache recording the simulation a few times. Sometimes my objects would teleport to a completely random spot for no reason!

RIGHT!? YOU'RE WELCOME! I FIGURED THIS OUT AFTER PUTTING A BUNCH OF SEPARATE SEQUENCER POTENTIAL INTERACTIONS TOGETHER AND IT FREAKIN' WORKED!

Hah! Believe it or not, it's actually an old one! Blender does great with this where if you want to throw a ball at a wall or collapse something, you animate the wind up and let the object go. It'd simply take the momentum of the animation and continue onwards. But Unreal Engine gives problems with that and it isn't straightforward. Like a car having physics turn on to ragdoll it across the street? Well you animate it, turn on the physics then... It freezes in the air... And teleports back to where it first started then starts it's physics just dropping from that point. It made no sense and bothered me for 4 years because I'd focus on a workaround instead of dealing with that bs. No tutorials on that btw. Because of course. So this one is quick and basic on how to do it right. Filling in the niche I wanted to find years ago and STILL see the problem pop up in new forum posts with ZERO replies.

@@AZmaybe9 so are u gonna create other animations than MMD?

@@Lazidiz I'm gonna take a guess you mean if I plan to use different kinds of models which I already have with video game characters, but like anything realistic like Daz models? Then no. Not interested in that sort of style and the style I'm building up towards is more concept art-y.

@@AZmaybe9 nope i mean like action scene and stuff other than MMD or some kind of weird comedy animation

@@Lazidiz I've done a variety of things already, but yeah I plan on continuing to build up on action scenes.

The cloth physics are attached to simulated runtime. So hitting the play button first in simulate mode would make them show up and you can use the sequencer window still. It's actually the same when testing the cloth physics in their separate window. You hit the play button and the physics start, which means it's simulating in that environment.

@@AZmaybe9 thanks for the reply, how do i render out a cloth simulation in the sequencer?

@@NUAGEFilms Shoot. I think it's just the live animation with no cache or baking. Rendering with sequencer or using movie render queue automatically simulates, so there's that for ya. There's not much cinematic control compared to using Blender to animate/simulate though.

Oh ho, boi. Chaos is... Finicky to understand with outsider collision! I'm still trying to figure out something consistent but what I do know works is this: . Geometry collection needs to not be in a chaos solver. . The Collider box or sphere I guess must have a convex collision to it. (Sometimes works. The way you can convert that is in your static mesh settings and some kinda collision window you find in there) . You get much easier results with cluster index of zero and then settings the damage threshold at zero to something like 10,000 so it doesn't break on itself instantly. . And I'm still trying to figure out why Chaos will either listen to a cube post-collision all the time vs listen to the spheres here only first collision... Although now that I think about it, I didn't check for the sphere to have convex collision. Just kinda spawned it in and surprised it worked. I'm very close to understanding Chaos much more to make a fuller tutorial, but there's still some stuff I don't quite understand why it works or doesn't work sometimes. The most consistent thing to do as a backup plan rather than spending days like I have trying to understand why or why not is to trying to make it look like what you wanted to do using the fields blueprints. They may be like ductape for proper physics but it's damn good duck tape when used well. The biggest hurdle I'm experiencing are general constraints. Take out a pillar of the building and then that side should fall. But having GC's be the same cluster id literally glues everything together. And faking it with anchors is kinda hard when you can't turn that off post-simulation. But there MUST be something about the Kinematic version of things that will be useful. Idk how to get that to work yet and testing soon, but it might be the key to far greater control of when things break apart in the structure since you should be able to tell it when to collapse precisely at what cluster you want.

@@AZmaybe9 thanks so much for replying. I agree something which can be done much easier and efficiently in blender is tricky in UE - i am totally struggling with unreal physics sims as there are so little tutorials that are not focused on gameplay - i just followed a tutorial that had to rewrite the blueprints becos they work in UE4ish but not UE5. I also tried to do a cop out work around with destructible mesh but it does not translate to UE5. Regardless, I wrote to rbdlabs the blender addon to see if their system can somehow be ported over to unreal via bridges / other workarounds they know of. What I have seen in your demo here means I'll keep trying to see if I can achieve your same results... I tried caching - didn't really work - and the menus are so different looking UE5 vs 4ish. Tried calling events - components - etc in sequencer and no luck either. Forums --- only a suggestion to hurl an invisible object that triggers damage - but even so - it is gameplay centric and not via sequencer. Hope i'll get lucky chancing upon something. I'll be looking forward to your future tuts :)

@@kromide3d Yeah, I'm in the same spot doubting if I should just go to Blender instead of dealing with so little documentation of Chaos. I've been able to carve a path before with MikuMikuMoving when it didn't have anything, but that clicked way sooner than Chaos did. And now... I know a lot more but it's not enough flexible power to justify Chaos over something like Blender with RDBLabs, which I should check out. As I said before, Chaos is like damn good duct tape for destruction. But like... Chaos is really nice and performative for easy iterations without constant baking and I was able to get the Chaos Manager caches working really well that they don't impact performance at all once they're recorded. I was also able to use geometry brushes as a REALLY FAST way to rebuild buildings for proper destruction. In which more details put in on how a building a built, the better. But now I think figuring out a way to cut buildings off and rebuilding the parts that get destroyed, rather than the full building, would be a much faster workflow. But yeah, I'm starting to think if I want more cinematic destruction, I should rebuild building parts with geometry brush objects, then export to Blender and do the proper destruction there. But not yet. Not until I know full well the possibilities of Chaos and there are still unanswered questions like how to trigger kinematic state changes and maybe if smart clustering could help make things look more constraint-y. (Or if it's really ONLY for how things fall apart and nothing about structure at all) I haven't used UE5 yet because it would consistently Blue screen my PC, so I'm on UE4 4.27 Chaos Preview. I really want to though, but UE4 is pretty stable. Well, Chaos kinda isn't but I like the consistency I have atm. AND the performance. Oh, don't forget to grab the Chaos fields blueprints from the Chaos demo. Just migrate that folder to all your new projects. Of course, getting the Chaos demo to run is a different matter that requires a small guide, but generally worth it for studying. With all that talking done, I feel like the 2 weaknesses so far with Chaos are just the worst to workaround. No proper constraints so destroying things either take the whole building down atm or it's static and stays glued together because cluster indexes are the only way to actually glue modular wall pieces together. So the whole tower falls like a Lego brick. And then the second one is interaction. Like grabbing a geometry collection moves everything and the destruction parented it as well as just trying to get static meshes or character meshes to interact with the damn thing. Which becomes impossible once it's in its own Chaos solver. So it's really working against itself in the worst ways. Especially with the Chaos demo not being properly updated and requires workarounds to use. So anything complex like a Kaiju battle and buildings falling into each other after a swipe? Forget it. Requires a lot of faked workarounds and duct tape and that's what hurts the most.

@@AZmaybe9 I do have the sample chaos blueprints but those arent made for UE5. so it's another 12 hour day gone trying to figure out something so simple in unreal. I might look into 427. but my workflow at the moment is only 426 and 5. because of other metahuman related workflow with mocap. I am open to a paid tutorial. Because from your current example, I can get part ways further and what is left is cheating with niagara plus pc + gpu power to fracture further iterations :)

@@kromide3d That's fine,4.26 Chaos stuff isn't too different at all. Heh. I'll definitely make a tutorial on my workflow with Chaos once I finish knowing it. I love to shed light where there are no for tutorials! Even if it's something simple. But it will take some time. Unless I magically solve kinematics today and and they can magically animate Chaos into a physics swap as shown in the video for the spheres. Then I may be able to retract some disappointment because manually animating some destruction would be really great. Manually animating chunks that have broken off? Now THAT would be powerful. Like half a building gets sliced and the inside floors manually animate to dip down and half the building falling over while Chaos handles the rest of the mess. Possible currently with a mix of static meshes and chaos at least. Just tricky to explain atm. Whenever I get to my Chaos tutorial, it'll mostly be focused on sequencer but I bet there will be use for you too. Especially if I figure out controlled collisions in a more consistent way.

Wait a second... you're that guy from Metroid: Other M, right?

Hi :D