Play animation from the keyframed starting point instead of the default pose

I’m trying to create an animated FPS controller, in which I can holster and equip weapons (trying to make it work with one weapon first).

The problem is, that when I equip a holstered weapon, it plays the keyframe changes from the default pose instead of the animation’s keyframed starting point, resulting in the whole mesh falling apart.

It works for the firing/reloading/holstering animations, because they all start from the default pose, unlike the equipping animations.

I would like to have an elegant solution, where if I trigger an animation it will play from the animation’s keyframed starting point instead of the imported mesh’s default pose.

The setup in the video below should work by all logical means and I am clueless after trying to find a solution for many hours by now.

Video of the issue:

I managed to solve the issue by checking the Additive Reference Pose and setting the frame to the last frame of the problematic (in this case the Equip/EquipEmpty) animations.

image