4. Weapons Alignment (Pistol, Bow, Torch, etc)

Pistol

Right-Hand Placement

When the pistol overlay is first tested on the custom character, the pistol can appear in the wrong place, such as near the ground:

Pistol before alignment

The pistol uses the same general right-hand attachment idea as the rifle. Because the rifle socket was already aligned on hand_r, it is faster to duplicate that socket and rename it instead of starting from an empty socket.

Open the character skeleton:

/Content/Shenya2/Meshes/SK_Shenya_Skeleton

Then:

1. select the existing Rifle socket
2. copy the socket
3. select the hand_r bone
4. paste the socket
5. rename the pasted socket to Pistol

Copy and paste the Rifle socket

This works well because the pistol and rifle both attach to the right hand. The copied socket gives the pistol a useful starting transform, so you only need smaller adjustments afterward.

Test the pistol overlay in play mode and tune the Pistol socket until the pistol sits in the right hand.

Pistol after alignment

Two-Handed Left-Hand IK

The right-hand socket fixes the pistol attachment, but pistol two-handed mode also needs the support hand to move toward the pistol.

Before adding a grip target, the left hand can miss the pistol:

Pistol two-handed before left-hand IK

The setup is the same pattern used for the rifle:

1. duplicate the pistol overlay assets into project content
2. add a LeftHandGrip socket to the duplicated pistol skeleton
3. make RefreshOverlayObject use the duplicated pistol mesh
4. let the Animation Blueprint read LeftHandGrip from OverlaySkeletalMesh

Step 1: Duplicate the pistol assets

Copy the pistol skeletal mesh and skeleton from the ALS plugin content into your project content.

The plugin pistol mesh is:

/ALS/ALS/OverlayObjects/Pistol/SKM_Als_Pistol

Place the duplicated assets in:

/Content/ALS_Shenya/Overlay_Objects/Pistol

Duplicate pistol assets

Rename the duplicated assets:

Asset	Name
Pistol skeleton	SK_Als_Pistol_Shenya
Pistol skeletal mesh	SKM_Als_Pistol_Shenya

Then assign the duplicated mesh to the duplicated skeleton:

1. right-click SKM_Als_Pistol_Shenya
2. choose Skeleton > Assign Skeleton
3. choose SK_Als_Pistol_Shenya

Assign duplicated pistol skeleton

Step 2: Add LeftHandGrip to the duplicated pistol

Open:

/Content/ALS_Shenya/Overlay_Objects/Pistol/SK_Als_Pistol_Shenya

Create a socket named:

LeftHandGrip

In this setup, the socket is added under the pistol skeleton root.

Add pistol LeftHandGrip socket

The example LeftHandGrip socket values are:

(X=4.093821,Y=-3.950487,Z=-5.120588)
(Pitch=13.986715,Yaw=86.867213,Roll=-173.996744)

Treat these values as a reference, not a universal preset. Different pistol meshes and character proportions will need different values.

Step 3: Use the duplicated pistol in the character Blueprint

Open:

/Content/ALS_Shenya/B_Als_Shenya

Then open:

RefreshOverlayObject

The pistol one-handed and pistol two-handed branches both call AttachOverlayObject with:

SocketName: Pistol

Update the pistol overlay attachment so it uses your duplicated pistol mesh:

/Content/ALS_Shenya/Overlay_Objects/Pistol/SKM_Als_Pistol_Shenya

After this, the pistol overlay uses the duplicated pistol mesh that contains LeftHandGrip.

Test in pistol two-handed mode and tune the LeftHandGrip socket until the support hand lands correctly.

Pistol two-handed after left-hand IK

One-Handed IK Exclusion

Pistol one-handed and pistol two-handed both use the Pistol attachment socket and the same duplicated pistol mesh. That creates one extra problem: the duplicated pistol has a LeftHandGrip socket, but pistol one-handed mode should not pull the left hand toward it.

The Animation Blueprint should only enable the left-hand IK when:

• the overlay skeletal mesh has a LeftHandGrip socket
• the current overlay mode is not Als.OverlayMode.PistolOneHanded

Open:

/Content/Shenya2/Meshes/ABP_Shenya2

In the Event Graph, the condition for enabling IK should combine:

Does Socket Exist(OverlaySkeletalMesh, LeftHandGrip)

with:

OverlayMode != Als.OverlayMode.PistolOneHanded

Pistol one-handed overlay mode check

When the combined condition is true, update LeftHandGripABP and set LeftHandIKAlpha to 1.0.

When the combined condition is false, set LeftHandIKAlpha to 0.0.

This keeps pistol two-handed mode corrected while leaving pistol one-handed mode free to use its normal one-handed animation pose.

Bow

The bow is different from the rifle and pistol because its attachment side is the left hand.

Create a Bow socket on the character skeleton under:

hand_l

Create Bow socket

Test in play mode and adjust the socket until the bow sits in the left hand:

Bow test

Example Bow socket values from the character skeleton:

(X=6.970111,Y=-1.769488,Z=-0.657231)
(Pitch=26.755795,Yaw=97.255917,Roll=-164.225699)

Current bow limitations

The bow alignment shown here only covers the main bow attachment socket.

The following problems are still outside this guide:

• the right hand does not yet align perfectly with the string
• the right wrist can twist
• the right elbow may need a separate pole-vector adjustment

Those issues need a bow-specific hand/string setup. This page does not present a solution for that yet because the setup here only covers the main Bow socket alignment.

Torch

The torch overlay uses a static mesh instead of a skeletal mesh.

Create a Torch socket on the character skeleton under:

hand_l

Create Torch socket

Because the torch uses OverlayStaticMesh, make sure the static mesh attach path in AttachOverlayObject also attaches to the visible character mesh.

Open:

/Content/ALS_Shenya/B_Als_Shenya

Then open:

AttachOverlayObject

For the static mesh branch:

1. find the Set Static Mesh node that targets OverlayStaticMesh
2. find the following Attach Component To Component node
3. keep Target connected to OverlayStaticMesh
4. connect Parent to the visible character mesh component
5. keep Socket Name connected to ResultSocketName
6. keep location, rotation, and scale rules set to Snap to Target

Attach static overlay to visible character mesh

Test in play mode and adjust the Torch socket:

Torch test

Example Torch socket values from the character skeleton:

(X=6.970111,Y=-1.769488,Z=-0.657231)
(Pitch=0.000610,Yaw=127.245728,Roll=-162.519106)

Box, Barrel, and Binoculars

Box, barrel, and binoculars follow the same socket-alignment idea as the other static overlays.

Create or duplicate sockets on the character skeleton:

• duplicate the Torch socket as a starting point for Barrel, because both are left-hand-oriented overlays in this setup
• duplicate the Pistol socket as a starting point for Box and Binoculars, because both are right-hand-oriented overlays in this setup

Duplicate Barrel, Binoculars, and Box sockets

Then test each overlay in play mode and tune the socket transform.

Example socket values from the character skeleton:

Socket	Location	Rotation
Box	X=-7.890643, Y=29.628185, Z=3.236120	Pitch=1.018799, Yaw=82.250194, Roll=-62.371014
Binoculars	X=-12.565069, Y=12.195616, Z=5.031601	Pitch=22.577567, Yaw=127.458269, Roll=113.036738
Barrel	X=12.779593, Y=-23.594061, Z=16.111620	Pitch=11.576060, Yaw=126.704295, Roll=164.348389

Static Overlay Left-Hand IK Limitation

The current left-hand IK graph reads the grip target from:

OverlaySkeletalMesh

That works for skeletal overlay objects that contain a LeftHandGrip socket, such as the custom rifle and custom pistol.

Torch, box, barrel, and binoculars use:

OverlayStaticMesh

So with the current Animation Blueprint graph, those static overlays do not automatically provide a LeftHandGrip target to the Control Rig.

This does not mean static mesh overlays can never support extra hand targets. It only means this guide stops at socket alignment for those overlays because the current setup only reads LeftHandGrip from the skeletal overlay component.

To solve static-overlay left-hand correction later, the Animation Blueprint would need an additional path for reading a target from OverlayStaticMesh or another explicit target source.

Result

After this setup:

• pistol attaches to the visible character through the Pistol socket
• pistol two-handed mode can use the duplicated pistol’s LeftHandGrip socket
• pistol one-handed mode disables left-hand IK by checking OverlayMode
• bow attaches through the Bow socket on hand_l
• torch attaches through the static mesh path and the Torch socket
• box, barrel, and binoculars use their own character sockets
• static overlays are documented as socket-alignment-only for now, unless the Animation Blueprint is extended later