MorphCue

MorphCue lets animators drive morph targets exactly where the animation happens. Right-click a notify track in any animation sequence or montage, add a Morph Cue notify state, drag it over the frames you want and pick morph targets from a searchable list filled from the preview mesh. Blinks, smiles, breathing, muscle bulges, corrective shapes and cloth wrinkles play in sync with the animation without baking curves and without Blueprint or C++ logic.

Each Morph Cue holds any number of layers. A layer plays one morph target from value A to value B, from B to A, from A to B and back, or holds A, with one of ten easing functions or your own Curve Float. Layers can loop several times, play over only part of the notify, and combine with the current shape in Override, Additive or Multiply mode. When the notify ends - or the animation is interrupted - the morphs keep their final value, return to the value they had before, or reset to zero, as you choose.

Morph Cue Presets are data assets of named weights: build facial expressions, visemes or body shapes once and play them from a notify, from Blueprint or from C++. For modular characters, a cue can also drive every skeletal mesh attached to the playing mesh or every mesh on the actor, filtered by component tag. Mirroring swaps left and right tokens such as _L and _R in morph names, and random end values and random delays make repeated blinks and twitches look natural.

The Morph Cue Player component plays the same morphs at runtime without an animation: play, blend to a value, play a full layer, blend in or clear a preset, stop with or without restoring, and get an event when a morph finishes. A Blueprint function library lists morph targets, sets many weights at once, captures and resets weights, evaluates easings and mirrors names.

One notify can run on a whole crowd at the same time: MorphCue keeps a separate state for every mesh playing the animation. On UE 5.8 a cue can follow the animation's own time, so it respects play rate and editor scrubbing. The MorphCue.Debug console variable prints every weight written.

MorphCue is part of the Alpha XP collection for Unreal Engine 4.27 and 5.8. Every feature is exposed to Blueprints and C++, it ships with styled HTML documentation, and it is compiled and verified warning-free against clean UE 4.27 and UE 5.8 projects.

Key features

• Morph Cue notify state for animation sequences, montages and composites
• Any number of morph layers per notify, each with its own values, easing and timing
• Playback A, A to B, B to A and A to B to A
• Ten easing functions (Linear, Sine, Quad, Cubic, Expo, Smooth Step) plus a custom
• Loops and per-layer windows inside the notify
• Blend modes: Override, Additive and Multiply against the starting weight
• End actions: keep final value, restore previous value or reset to zero, also on
• Morph Cue Preset data assets for expressions, visemes and body shapes
• Modular characters: drive attached meshes or every mesh on the actor, with a component
• Random end offset and random delay for natural variation
• Left/right mirroring of morph names with configurable token pairs
• Morph Cue Player component with play, blend, preset, stop and a finished event
• Searchable morph picker in the details panel with free typing and unknown-name
• Animation Time source that follows play rate and scrubbing (UE 5.8)
• Correct on many characters at once (state per mesh)
• Blueprint function library and C++ evaluation helpers
• MorphCue.Debug console variable

Blueprint & C++ API

The API is organised into these entry points:

Callable runs when executed · Pure no exec pin, returns a value

Events & delegates

Bind these in Blueprint (drag off the object → Bind Event) or with AddDynamic in C++.

Options & enums

Compatibility

One ready-made build per engine version is included in the download — copy the one that matches your project.

Technical details

What's in the download

Quick start

1. Unzip the download and pick the build that matches your engine (4.27 · 5.8).
2. Copy the MorphCue folder into your project's Plugins/ folder (create it if needed).
3. Open the project, enable MorphCue under Edit › Plugins and restart the editor.
4. Right-click in any Blueprint graph and search MorphCue — or include the public headers from C++.
5. Package for your target platform (Windows, macOS).

Good to know