Sub Anim Input Issue in UE 4.23, part I

Some issues about animation blueprint have just been discovered when I try to upgrade my 4.20 project to 4.23. And it turned out that those issues had caused some trouble to us.

As a result, it took me several days to dig into this issue, and something seems should be recorded. Hope this could help you some day.

What Is This Issue?

When you try to open an Animation Blueprint with a Sub Anim Instance node in it, you may notice that the engine is frozen. And while you check the editor log, you see lots of:

FAnimNode_StateMachine: Bad machine ptr

And you may notice that the engine takes much more time to compile the Animation Blueprint that have a Sub Anim Instance node in it.

Now you may get the point: This issue is all about the Sub Anim Instance node.

If You Simply Want a Solution

Method 1: Modify the engine code

By modify the engine code, you can fix the issue once and for all.

Modify the FAnimInstanceProxy::InitializeRootNode function in the AnimInstanceProxy.cpp file.

You need to move

for (UStructProperty* Property : AnimClassInterface->GetAnimNodeProperties())
{
    if (Property->Struct->IsChildOf(FAnimNode_StateMachine::StaticStruct()))
    {
        FAnimNode_StateMachine* StateMachine = Property->ContainerPtrToValuePtr<FAnimNode_StateMachine>(AnimInstanceObject);
        StateMachine->CacheMachineDescription(AnimClassInterface);
    }
}

to the top of the if block.

The final code looks like:

if(AnimClassInterface)
    {
        // cache any state machine descriptions we have
        for (UStructProperty* Property : AnimClassInterface->GetAnimNodeProperties())
        {
            if (Property->Struct->IsChildOf(FAnimNode_StateMachine::StaticStruct()))
            {
                FAnimNode_StateMachine* StateMachine = Property->ContainerPtrToValuePtr<FAnimNode_StateMachine>(AnimInstanceObject);
                StateMachine->CacheMachineDescription(AnimClassInterface);
            }
        }

        // cache any state machine descriptions we have
        for (UStructProperty* Property : AnimClassInterface->GetAnimNodeProperties())
        {

            if (Property->Struct->IsChildOf(FAnimNode_Base::StaticStruct()))
            {
                FAnimNode_Base* AnimNode = Property->ContainerPtrToValuePtr<FAnimNode_Base>(AnimInstanceObject);
                if (AnimNode)
                {
                    InitializeNode(AnimNode);

                    //if (Property->Struct->IsChildOf(FAnimNode_StateMachine::StaticStruct()))
                    //{
                    //	FAnimNode_StateMachine* StateMachine = static_cast<FAnimNode_StateMachine*>(AnimNode);
                    //	StateMachine->CacheMachineDescription(AnimClassInterface);
                    //}
                }
            }
        }

        // Cache default sub-input 
        for(const FAnimBlueprintFunction& AnimBlueprintFunction : AnimClassInterface->GetAnimBlueprintFunctions())
        {
            if(AnimBlueprintFunction.Name == NAME_AnimGraph)
            {
                check(AnimBlueprintFunction.InputPoseNames.Num() == AnimBlueprintFunction.InputPoseNodeProperties.Num());
                for(int32 InputIndex = 0; InputIndex < AnimBlueprintFunction.InputPoseNames.Num(); ++InputIndex)
                {
                    if(AnimBlueprintFunction.InputPoseNames[InputIndex] == FAnimNode_SubInput::DefaultInputPoseName && AnimBlueprintFunction.InputPoseNodeProperties[InputIndex] != nullptr)
                    {
                        DefaultSubInstanceInputNode = AnimBlueprintFunction.InputPoseNodeProperties[InputIndex]->ContainerPtrToValuePtr<FAnimNode_SubInput>(CastChecked<UAnimInstance>(GetAnimInstanceObject()));
                        break;
                    }
                }
            }
        }
    }
    else
    {
        //We have a custom root node, so get the associated nodes and initialize them
        TArray<FAnimNode_Base*> CustomNodes;
        GetCustomNodes(CustomNodes);
        for(FAnimNode_Base* Node : CustomNodes)
        {
            if(Node)
            {
                InitializeNode(Node);
            }
        }
    }

Method 2: Modify the Resource

If you tend to keep consistent with the official engine, you need to follow these steps:

1. Add following lines to your DefaultEngine.ini file.

[Core.Log]
LogAnimation=Error

This would prevent the engine from printing endless log to your console, which causing freeze.

2. Open the Animation Blueprint, and locate the Sub Anim Input node. This might take some time…
3. Create a new Sub Anim Input node and replace the old node with the new one.
4. Revert those modifications from the DefaultEngine.ini file.

So that’s how we should fix this issue. Another blog would be post to record how I dig into this issue.