animation

[frigid drum]

ye sec

let me draw

suppose i have a bone (blue) inside the eye, if i rotate the bone the eye will rotate around it

now if the eye moved up (shape keys for example)

the eye will dettach from the face, because of the offset from the bone and the mesh

i need to correct the bone, both position and length, after applying a shape key

@vast trellis

other places affected are legs, arms, hands and lips

[vast trellis]

hmm yeah I don't know, that is going to change the eye's pivot point

it might make sense to leave the eye out of the shape key and then translate the bone to move the eye into place

[frigid drum]

tough about that too, but that wont work with arms and legs

(cuz of the lengths)

[vast trellis]

you can rotate a bone around a different pivot (which involves translating and rotating), but if it is part of a chain like an arm or a leg and not a standalone thing like an eye I don't know

does a shape key apply before bone deformations or after? I guess there would be some order dependency too

(some combinations of transforms are associative not commutative)

[frigid drum]

tested, shape keys before then deformations later

thx for the help

(didnt fix yet if anyone got an idea)

[drifting oyster]

Just imported the default mannequin into Blender. Is the skeleton supposed to look like this..?

[stone geyser]

blender doesn't do fbx well

[winged valley]

That's not purely a .fbx problem, Blender only allows one axis down the bones so anything that uses a different method will look bad in Blender.

Then again it's good it looks like that so newbies don't start animating with a rig without controls. 😛

There's UE4Tools if you need a mannequin style rig, then just retarget.

[drifting oyster]

I just tried retargetting from Makehuman """""UE4-compatible""""" rig to UE4 rig

Compatible my ass

And what does a script that's supposed to fix all that do?

[winged valley]

Makehuman is not compatible, the orientations are off.

Maybe the bone names are correct, but that doesn't help much. 😛

[drifting oyster]

Fixed the default pose so it's a bit better now, but the lack of twist bones still breaks everything

[winged valley]

At least the bone names being correct means it's better than the rigify thing promoted on the blender livestreams.

[drifting oyster]

Okay, I can;t paste this image, hold on

Tbh all options for any character creator -> Unreal are equally... Sub-par, let's say.

[winged valley]

Yes, but you can use the rig that comes with the character creator to put the character in the mannequin pose (= equal to UE4Tools pose), then replace the rig with that. If the rig didn't have twist bones you would have to weight paint that but other than that it should work fine.

So you would move the bones in pose mode until it fits the rig (just compare the bones orientations), then apply the armature modifier.

[drifting oyster]

So, it means a slog of having to weight-paint all the bones?

[winged valley]

No, only the bones that didn't have vertex groups from the start.

I think the manuel bastioni addon will have retargeting inside Blender in the next version at least (or maybe already).

[drifting oyster]

so, basically:

1. Import Makehuman FBX
2. Create UE4 Tools rig
3. Parent Makehuman model to the new rig
4. Paint missing twist bones
   ?

[winged valley]

Yeah.

Well 2.5 move the bones to the right locations, apply the armature modifier. 😛

And 2.8 scale the UE4Tools bones (the whole hierarchy per bone so orientations don't get screwed up) if they don't fit.

[ruby crow]

When i import my animaten as a ftb 2 of the bones dont have there animaten imported, what would be coursing this? (im using blender

[misty dagger]

I have walking blendspace and idle animation, when my character stops he flicks and then starts idling

[delicate locust]

how do I get the "active" time in a transition, as shown here? https://puu.sh/ymv7i/1bc730ab53.png
I just want to enter a transition after X seconds elapsed

[delicate locust]

I'm using explicit time nodes, and checking current time or time remaining etc seems to be based on that value.

[spiral panther]

I've got a problem getting foot ik to work with my mesh, I'm using the advanced locomotion system and Blender. I've added ik bones to my rig but I think I'm missing a step, if I enable foot ik the joints twist up. The forum mentions "click on the correct IK_Foot joint, then add a point and orient constraint" Can anyone help? I'm unsure about this point and orient constraint bit, before I go back to it does anyone know anything about doing this stuff in Blender?

I'm not even sure what it should point and orient to..... the foot bone?

[ruby crow]

how do i stop unreal adding inbetweens to my 24fps animatchen?

[upbeat garnet]

is it possible to place an actor relative to two socket position?.

I placed the weapon on hand.. But on different animations the weapon get rotated , I asked it in ue4 answers https://answers.unrealengine.com/questions/726305/attach-an-actor-to-two-sockets.html

[spiral panther]

I've setup a post process animbp using a sub graph input, but with PIE running I'm not getting any flow out of it and the primary animbp stops working and character is stuck in ref pose, any ideas what I'm missing?

final animation pose was disconnected.... 🤕

[rocky brook]

Does anyone know if anim notifies can be missed when using Montage_JumpToSection if the time between the section line and the anim notify isn't large enough? I didn't think there was blending while using JumpToSection, so I wouldn't expect that to be an issue. But I'm running into a hard to reproduce bug that seems like it might be.

[delicate locust]

is there a way to simply make a montage take priority over another? so that if one starts playing after another is still playing, the old one doesn't blend out?

[dusk dove]

@Runetass#7939 this is a matter of your AnimBlueprint

you can put a Slot Node into another Slot Node

and/or blend them on different Bones

[crystal prawn]

Hey guys I'm actually having a similar problem. I feel like I'm doing something obviously wrong haha. I want to just trigerr this effect when his foot hits the ground. (dirt cloud) I would really appreciate it if you guys could point me in the right direction. Thank you!

[crystal prawn]

nevermind I got it haha. I was using a notify state, not a notify.

[spice holly]

kinda new to 3d modeling. is 3d coat or substance painter preferred for ue4?

[tawny lance]

Not really the best channel for that topic, but I do know that Substance has a plugin for UE4 so you can make changes in editor with that

[misty dagger]

hey im kind of a newbie here, just making sure: maya animation is compatible with unreal engine only if its single hierarchy right?

[crystal prawn]

@tawny lance Most studios have been using substance designer and painter for a significant amount of their work. At least the one I have been in touch with.

[crystal prawn]

ones*

[valid trout]

Hi all, in the bpanimation docs it says "You can also send animation directly to a specific bone in the Skeleton and all of its children. For instance, you can start with an animation in which the character is running, but then selectively apply a waving animation just to the right arm. The final result will be the character running and waving." would you accomplsh this using the "Layered blend per bone" node?

[obsidian path]

Ive got quite a complex animated rig inside of maya but when i try export as fbx with baked animation and import into Unreal it just turns into a ball with pretty much all the bones at zero, i think the problem is all the complex things effecting the rig i just need to get the skeleton animation from maya anyone else had this problem?

[sudden sedge]

I believe so

[ashen elbow]

Is there a workaround how I can use BBones from Blender in Unreal? I think I might need to replace them with actual bones, but is there a tool for that? ❤

[winged valley]

It's not possible and I don't think there's a tool to replace them either. However you could probably make a similar system to BBones using normal bones and constraints in Blender.

[ashen elbow]

well, the cool s<3t comes with using StretchTo

And if you are using 10 segments with a bone that is using StretchTo, you would need 30 bones to set that up

[winged valley]

I didn't say it would be easy. 😛

There's also spline IK, you could check that out.

[ashen elbow]

I didn't assume it would be easy, I was hoping for an addon, since the technology for bbones is known and someone with python knowledge... could do my work? ;P

Actually never used SplineIK, but it looks painful to get a smooth result

Will check it out!

[ashen elbow]

nvm, it actually has volume preservation

[winged valley]

Any Blender cheats won't work in UE4.

Unless you're exporting alembic.

[jolly escarp]

I'm using a Transform (Modify) Bone where it replaces the translation with 0,0,0 in component space, and then converts that back to local space.

This seems to work for robo recall (where I learned it/stole the assets from)

And it used to work in this project, but now it's causing my hand to be quite offset from 0,0,0 when used as a skeletal mesh

The Skeletal Mesh is zero'd out like the other components there, I have no idea what's going on 😦

[jolly escarp]

Even the old code/animation blueprints that I didn't touch are broken now. What on earth.

[dusk dove]

My Character Pawn has an Actor Component which I want to use in my AnimBP of the Character Mesh.
However, I get an access None when I try to access the Component in Initialize Animation....

[jolly escarp]

@dusk dove picture of BP?

[midnight crater]

anyone use the desktop version (1.3) of Fuse still? I.e. pre-adobe?

I can export OBJ and get it imported fine into UE4 but i'm obviously missing the skelenton... how can I address this?

nb: the desktop version of fuse no longer syncs with mixamo.. and the adobe version that DOES sync with mixamo no longer contains the mesh parts I'm using

[stiff thunder]

.obj doesn't support animation.

[midnight crater]

sure.. but you can export to FBX once the OBJ is imported by turning it into a static mesh and the exporting

assuming there may be a way to swap meshes with the existing TPS char or some nice hack

[stiff thunder]

you'd still need to rig the geo to an skeleton inside an 3dpackage. you cant just use an static mesh.

[native moss]

if i use expression editor in maya to drive controllers and then send rig to someone using maya LT will the rig still work

[carmine inlet]

anyone here can help me understand how to play an animation and drive it using a curve?

[tawny lance]

https://docs.unrealengine.com/latest/INT/Engine/Animation/AnimPose/index.html

https://docs.unrealengine.com/latest/INT/Engine/Animation/AnimPose/PoseBlenderNode/index.html

Pretty sure this is what you're looking for

[ebon portal]

anybody in here knows how to put the current animation time into a variable?

[ebon portal]

okay nevermind I found it

[reef bone]

Anyone here used the AnimDynamics node?

[native moss]

anyone here using maya LT? message me?

[soft sierra]

hello, guys. Is there any short answer why Mannequin's skeleton is facing Y rather than X in ref pose ?

[wicked belfry]

My weapon when viewed as a skeleton is fine

When I 'record' and save a blank animation and open it up,

It's dismantled like this

Why is that?

It is linked to the correct skeleton, etc.

[soft sierra]

root animation removal during recording ?

[peak thunder]

https://youtu.be/LpFafNm8_w8

does anyone know how to fix this?

when importing my animation from blender to UE4, i'm getting a bunch of random rotations

i've gone through and keyframed every single frame in blender to try and prevent it, but that doesn't seem to have fixed it.

is there like a "rotate to shortest path" for animation keyframes in UE4?

[wicked belfry]

any1 here?

I have an animation that lasts approx. 0.7 seconds

It looks fine inside the animation sequence itself

When I try to play the animation in-game

Only one bone is animated and it plays at half the speed or slower

It's as if the animation is cut short

I don't see the beginning of it play out at all

[ebon portal]

anybody encountered this yet? https://gyazo.com/f3d7dc2574688f2f4ec57a5a0162396e

[frigid drum]

@peak thunder tried messing with the curves? even if there is a keyframe at 0º and the next is 0º, if the curve is telling it to rotate it will rotate 360º when imported on UE4

its hard to see on the video but it looks like it rotates on that curve

[peak thunder]

@frigid drum i'm guessing it might be that one going from positive to negative? that's the barrel of the gun which is really weird.. it's not even rotating..

X_X

wait no, that's location Y for the barrel.. hmm

what is W Quaternion Rotation?

[frigid drum]

ah, quaternions, hard to explain :p

they all together make a rotation we would call X, Y and Z

Y quaternion rotation is not a rotation on Y axis

that would be Y euler rotation

[peak thunder]

i think i found the issue, or at least i can now replicate something similar to what i'm seeing in ue4 kind of.

[frigid drum]

cool

[peak thunder]

those 3 keyframes there were in the negative, but bringing them to positive makes it wonky

scratches head

[frigid drum]

yeah you cant know whats gonna happen when you move a quaternion

tbh i dont even know how they work exactly so i generally avoid changing curves

but i know that can happen: blender thinks you wanted to rotate to one side instead of another, and as UE4 interpolates the keyframes, it will interpolate as a full curve to the other side

now gotta lunch

cya

[peak thunder]

alright thanks for your help.

[frigid drum]

np

[misty dagger]

hey

[frigid drum]

can we change bone hierarchy at runtime? need to set add a skeletal mesh on top of the caracter, but i cant know beforehand what bone will be the parent, so i cant use master pose component

[ebon portal]

what exactly are you trying to do @frigid drum

[frigid drum]

@ebon portal i have weapons with limbs, custom animations, etc. and they can be both on left or right hand, so i cant just parent to the left hand for example

[ebon portal]

so you want to be able to have the weapon in the left or the right hand depending on the situation? @frigid drum

[frigid drum]

yep

[ebon portal]

normally you'd use sockets for that

you create the character model with all the bones for the skeleton

and have a seperate skeletal mesh imported, which will be your weapon with all the bones on the weapon

then you create a socket on each hand of the character and place the weapon in the desired hand by code or blueprinting

you can move and rotate the sockets too if necessary

@frigid drum

[frigid drum]

im doing that with static meshes, now im thinking on why did i think it wouldnt work with skeletal meshes 🤔

gonna try rn

[frigid drum]

well worked just fine :d

ty

[wicked belfry]

Still having a problem with animations not playing fully, being slowed down, or playing partially the beginning or end

In one example, I have a shotgun that reloads by inserting 5 shells into its slot before cocking

In-game, it inserts 2 shells, third one is half-assed and then it cocks slower than it needs to. It skips 2 shells and the play rate is all messed up

Anyone know what might be happening?

Some animations, the short ones, don't play in-game at all

[frigid drum]

are you using a state machine?

they got a blend time

[wicked belfry]

@frigid drum No, they are just regular animation sequences. I trigger them in BP manually. I also tried placing the animation sequences in my level and seeing how they play on Beginplay, but they are still all messed up.

How can the engine ignore certain bones and mess with my animation on some existing bones that do play? For example, the shotgun shells are all equal each time they are inserted

Yet the third one that is inserted only comes out halfway and goes back in

So the curve itself is messed up

Then the shotgun cocks early

It's like the engine isn't reading all of the animation and the parts that it does read, it plays incorrectly

When viewed in the animation editor itself, it plays perfectly

[native moss]

got an animated machine, if i have geo in the machine parented under a bone, can i still export to UE?

or do i need to bind eg piece of geo to the joint

with bind skin

[wicked belfry]

I don't think it'll work if it isn't skinned to your rig

When you import the animation, it'll use the bone data and that's it

So what you may have to do is re-parent it inside of UE4 to that bone

Same process

[native moss]

hmm

[wise spoke]

Hello, when does the Event Blueprint Post Evaluate Animation Fire exactly?

[gaunt hemlock]

Uhm I have a jumping attack - yet the middle animation might loop depending on "jump duration" - I guess composites cannot handle that looping and I have to do AnimMontage for that?

[dapper mountain]

@gaunt hemlock I think so. I think it would handle similar to a melee combo.

So if something is triggered in that given time set within the montage it will make it go into the next one.

[fallow heath]

what's the name for the subtle slo-mo effect after hitting?

hit lag, hit delay, or something else?

can't seem to find any tutorials with those keywords

[misty dagger]

I think it is hitlag

Or freeze frame

[fallow heath]

hmmm

[reef bone]

Hey guys, does anyone know, if I have a Rigidbody node in my animation, is there a way for me to reset the simulation?

I have a situation where a character launches forward and their ponytail goes out of control. I can blend out of the physics at that time with the alpha, but when I blend back in it blends to the crazy flailing around until it settles down.

I need a way to actually disable the simulation.

[misty dagger]

setSimulatePhysics on the corresponding bodies wont do it?

[reef bone]

I didn't try specific bodies, but I never turned on simulate physics on them in the first place since they're controlled by the RigidBody animation node.

[ashen elbow]

Is there a limit for animation curves? Somehow 1 of my curves is not working while playing, but it does work in every Viewport.

[cinder ocean]

how much should I pay someone to figure out how to correctly enable root motion on a skeleton?

[misty dagger]

$0 😛

What's the problem with your root motion?

[cinder ocean]

I ripped a skeleton with animations from a game, but the root motion is all messed up, when I enable it the character rotates in a weird way

[misty dagger]

Skeleton has a root bone at 0, 0, 0?

[cinder ocean]

yes

[misty dagger]

Animation plays fine in your 3d package?

[cinder ocean]

yeah

the way it should

[misty dagger]

When you preview the animation in UE4 and select the root bone, does the Local Rotation change?

The animation plays fine in UE4 preview as well right?

[cinder ocean]

it plays fine

about the rotation change im gonna open it to seee

the root bone must be at 0,0,0 on the first frame only right?

[misty dagger]

Not too sure. I think just the reference pose

Rotations seem fine?

[cinder ocean]

its opening, the file is 228MB lol

it changes

[misty dagger]

That's probably the problem

[cinder ocean]

every frame

[misty dagger]

Does it change in your 3D package as well?

I say "probably the problem" but I haven't seen the issue so can't say for sure

[cinder ocean]

yes also changes

[misty dagger]

Try zeroing out all the rotation and reimport into UE. Unless your root motion needs the animation

Anyway, gotta sleep. Good luck!

[cinder ocean]

thanks

good night

[hasty pivot]

@cinder ocean how did you rip animations?

[stiff thunder]

i strongly recommend to not posting/chatting anything related to ripping copyrighted work on this server. I'm positive the <@&213101288538374145> agree with me on this point hehe

[lofty marlin]

Yeah, rather stay quiet about that. I don't care if you have ripped assets in your work in progress project (and take them out before you release), however talking about "how to rip assets" doesn't belong here.

[hasty pivot]

ok but anyway ifve good a question about maya and unreal engine 4. I noticed that there is a tool named ART but i dont know if this plugin would fit with maya 2018. Hopefully get an answer soon

@lofty marlin

[midnight crater]

anyone worked with the anims from https://mocaponline.com before? can you recommend? mixed reviews regarding additional bones etc. and i'm looking at picking up the pro mobility pack during the sale?

[smoky relic]

hi all, is it possible to constrain a single axis in animation? eg I have a front flip anim that is throwing my character forward, but I just want the flip motion instead of it moving the model along the Y axis.

[brave urchin]

Hey all, I'm new to animation, and I keep getting this error when trying to import a skeletal mesh with a run animation:

FBXImport:Error: Error Mesh contains SM_Cloak_004 bone as root but animation doesn't contain the root track.
Import failed.

Anyone know what it means? I've found several different answers from several different sources talking about several different versions of UE4, but none of them have been the fix I'm needing.

Importing from blender*

[cinder ocean]

I have a file with a skeleton with some animations, but when I enable root motion on UE4 the character rotates weirdly, and it doesnt happen on 3DS Max. And when I reset rotation on all frames to 0,0,0 it doesnt work, because only one frame can have its rotation to 0,0,0 , the other ones change... How can I solve this problem?

[lethal peak]

hey folks. I've started trying out UE4's updated cloth sim stuff for the first time. I've come across something I don't quite understand though. The cloth appears to be hitting some kind of 'floor'

if anyone has any thoughts on why there is is an arbitary cloth floor, I would be super grateful!

[cinder ocean]

thats not for #animation

[lethal peak]

ah, okay, sorry if it's misplaced, which topic would you recommend?

[cinder ocean]

#blueprint and #legacy-physics would be the most appropriate

[lethal peak]

okay. I must, confess, I saw them under 'programming' and thought that wasn't quite right. I guess managing static mesh properties isn't really a good fit for any catagory. Thanks 😃

[cinder ocean]

yeah, clothing doesnt really fall into a specific section, but those would be best

[summer blade]

Hey animators, im looking for an animator for my game, im not that deep in animating and i dont know where i can find them in the WWW. Is there a special website you guys hang around, beside discord and UE Forums. Hopefully that wasnt to much offtopic.

[left kiln]

I need some help, my swat character is meant to use animations for walking left and backwards, but instead he just turns around

This is the blend space that shows he can do these anims

is it a button in the character blueprint? He's supposed to do animations for walking to the side and backwards, but instead he just turns in that direction and does the forward walking animation

[misty dagger]

guys, please

In older version in order to change the bone translation on a skeletal mesh, I had to rightclick on the bone name and set something so the translation will have effect

how can I change translation in newer version

in the animation

nevermind

I got it

[left kiln]

I still need help 😦

[native moss]

https://gyazo.com/c06f25ae43ee80d665a252dd5e7cf239

[misty dagger]

Take a picture of your Anim blueprint

@left kiln

[native moss]

i imported a max set of bones, for some reason this bone has no joint on the end? never seen that in max but i can't delete the bone...

@left kiln it must be in how the parameters are being set then right

in the animbp make sure blend space node is running at desired time, then next thing to check is value of parameters feeding into that blend space when character is meant to be wlaking sideways

[left kiln]

I’ll use the snipping tool, but I’ll do it later cause I’m going out

What part of the AnimBP do you want to me to take a pic of? The state machine and all its components?

[native moss]

do you understand how the animbp integrates with the blendspace?

like you need to see that blendspace node light up for it to be running

in the animgraph (in a state machine or w/e)

and then you need to affect the parameters that go into the blendspace probably using the animbp

[ruby swallow]

Is it possible to have a random animation in one part of the blendspace? or to parameterize it?

I want various idle anims, but same blendspace

in my idleToRun blend

hmm I see I can just have a select with a random int. I'll just have to duplicate the blend spaces and switch anims

apparently select is depreciated...
edit: use blend poses by int

[bleak flume]

Just add an animation blueprint with event tick and some values with branches so that it makes a random value and it gives a random animation

Ex: i have 10 idle animation
I make an integer ( maybe float i don't remember ) that sets the integer to a random number between 0-10 and add a DO ONCE when it finishes the animation it reset the DO ONCE.

[tawny lance]

There's also a Random Sequence Player node. I'm not sure how capable it is (just remember it's there), but you can adjust shuffle between a set selection of animations

[ebon stag]

I exported the UE4 Manequinn as FBX and i openned it in Blender and the bones are messed up ! , Please go easy on the explanation i am No Artist , Just a programmer 😃

[orchid kestrel]

That's blender for you,
Better off using maya for animation related things

[winged valley]

That's funny because Maya is the reason those bones look off in the first place, Blender doesn't allow orientations other than Z down the bone globally (meaning Z is the roll by default).

Anyway there's no point in having a mannequin rig in Blender like that anyway because you've got no control bones to animate with anyway.

If you just want to attach it to a character you can use that rig, it should still work. But for animating it's better to get a real rig like UE4Tools and retarget later (or replace the default mannequin skeleton).

[left kiln]

I realised that my swat character moves the same as the third person character because I used that and changed the skeletal mesh. Is there anything in the third person character that makes it turn the direction that it is moving?

[tawny lance]

That's in the character movement component. Orient Rotation to Movement

@left kiln

[dusk dove]

Protip: I use Add Movement Input with the Actor Forward Actor and interpolate the Actor Rotation towards the direction I want to go. A more "realistic" feel if you ask me.

[left kiln]

@tawny lance I already turned that off and for some reason it didn't work. He just did the same

[dusk dove]

but he is rotating the way he is moving

the problem is your camera

[left kiln]

but he has a side walking animation which is displayed in the blend space and it's not being used when i go left. Instead, he just does the forward walking animation but going to the right.

This is just to show he can do different animations

[dusk dove]

what you want is strafing

you don't want to orient towards the way he moves

is your Blendspace correctly used in your AnimGraph?

make sure to use the Velocity of your Pawn. Unrotate the Velocity with the "UnrotateVector" node (use your pawn Rotation for this) and plug it into your blendspace

[left kiln]

Do I connect it from "Get Velocity?"

I'm not on it right now, this is from memory

I'm trying to imagine

I'll do it tomorrow

[barren wing]

Hello, I know an experimented artist with 3ds max who want to move to maya, to animation purpose especially for the game industry (root bones,etc..) or maya tools more generally (facial rig, squash and strech).
Someone know a good courses ? She's using Maya 2018. Thanks in advance 😄

[smoky shell]

https://youtu.be/ZojvkA-V2nc

(13 sec video)

[lost tapir]

is there any way to use composite animation as montage? or create montage animation from composite?

oh, there I can add composite inside montage

[nocturne crown]

hey guys, im trying to learn unreal engine but im stucked at animation things. Tutorials on youtube about animations are simple. They are just about idle walk run. Is anyone know good examples about complicated animations? Tutorials, example content etc.

[orchid kestrel]

what sort of complicated animations do you want to know about?

[onyx briar]

Hey guys, I made an animation with ART v1 and while in Maya it seems to loop fine, there's a jitter between loops in engine. Any tips on how to diagnose the problem?

[nocturne crown]

@orchid kestrel I have a lot of animations. Like pistol walk run idle, rifle walk run idle, aim offsets, strafe animations etc @orchid kestrel but never seen any tutorials about it. maybe my bad but i havent seen

[orchid kestrel]

if you haven;t checked out it already, the ue4 documentation has everything you need;
https://docs.unrealengine.com/latest/INT/Engine/Animation/AnimHowTo/AimOffset/index.html

and @nocturne crown https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dtewkn8qIE0 for dealing with multiple weapons

[raw dew]

Is it possible to retarget common animations to a character with digitigrade legs? Or is there any extra work required other than just configuring the skeleton in the Retargeting Manager?

[orchid kestrel]

Can't see why not, results may not be top notch, but until you want to create a digitigrade skeleton and animations, it'll probably do for now

[raw dew]

cool, I'll check! Thanks

[round shale]

This has probably been asked 1000 times, but importing from mixamo results in my skeleton only animating in place. Seems to be locked at the pelvis

[smoky relic]

Is it possible to do any animation in the editor or does it have to 100% come from external imports?

[empty crypt]

hello, can I get some help?

I'm making a small Metroid level and I want my character to shoot energy-like bullets from her gun

what I want is the flash animation when she shoots, then the bullet that travels in a straight line, hits wall or opponents, and flashes on hit

can someone help me out?

I'm totally new on this part

please ping if reply

[empty crypt]

I have the firing animation ready btw

and not sure if this goes in any other channel but I will appreciate as much help as I can get

[karmic marsh]

@empty crypt you can get the flash by creating a particle system thats fired by anim notifiers inside your animation. for the bullet you have to make a projectile with tracing

[misty marlin]

How do I increase the length of this animation montage? Appending frames at the end does nothing :S

[empty crypt]

@karmic marsh hello, can you teach me how, please?

I literally don't know how to start

[wicked belfry]

I'm using a notifie for the first time to play a sound to animate to

But when I click play, it plays it and doesn't stop playing it no matter what I do

Until it finishes

It's going to be impossible to go through and animate based on the audio if I have to pause every time and wait for it to finish

What am I doing wrong?

[tawny lance]

@misty marlin Montage is a combination of animation assets so it's not likely you can increase the length of it by appending frames. Instead you'll need to append frames to the animation that you want to hang around longer in that montage

[misty marlin]

Thanks, I just copied the asset and replaced the animations with what I needed.

I remember watching a tutorial on that a while ago.

I should have just not been lazy and gone back to be honest.

But thanks!! 😃

[tawny lance]

@wicked belfry First, make sure you're using an notify (which plays the asset once) and not a notify state (which plays an asset on each tick over a set period). And if you ARE using a notify, know that they're designed to play the set asset in its entirety. That's just how it works

"It's going to be impossible to go through and animate based on the audio if I have to pause every time and wait for it to finish" Not sure what you mean by this. Shouldn't you set your animations and then use sound notifies based on what your animations are doing?

Not an animator so I could be wrong on that last part

@empty crypt Here's the documentation on animation notifies

https://docs.unrealengine.com/latest/INT/Engine/Animation/Sequences/Notifies/index.html

That'll show you how to use them for your animations. If you're looking for help on actually making the particles...well that's a whole different thing 😛

[empty crypt]

@tawny lance I don't even know how to use that for what I want. Like I said, I'm starting from zero here.

Let me rephrase my question better.

What I want is my character to shoot energy beams from her cannon by pressing a key. I already have the animation for when she's shooting, now I need an energy sphere to spawn from the muzzle, and travel in a straight line until it hits something.

The weapon is not a separate object, it's already attached to the character mesh

Preferably, I'd also want the muzzle to shoot some sparks or a flash right when the energy sphere shoots out, and when the bullet hits something it creates another spark, like a ripple if it hits a wall

[warm glade]

Can someone help me out? How to work with purchased characters? I got a character from a marketplace, it says rigged to Epic skeleton. After importing the chatacter, existing animations of cause are not accessible as skeleton files are not the same, eventhough the structure is. So, is retargeting animation blueprint is the only option? It will create a new set of animations and a new anim bp, but how to handle it if I need to change animation blueprint (add a new functionality), I will need to do that for all charaters's animation blueprints.
Is there any option to have a bunch of characters with the same animation BP and the same set of animations?

[karmic marsh]

@empty crypt here are some guides that should get you going
anim notifiers in general
https://docs.unrealengine.com/latest/INT/Engine/Animation/Sequences/Notifies/
anim notifiers in use for example with trails
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5HkghxEIXiU
projectile
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IYbGEkMTT1U

[empty crypt]

Thanks, will check it out

I followed a tutorial for a megaman buster-like effect, which is what I'm looking for, but now the camera is all messed up and it's not shooting

Can you help me find how to fix this? I'll show you what I got

[empty crypt]

so I have this character with a component called Projectile Spawn Location, located at the tip of her cannon (I need to figure out a way how to stick it to the tip because the animation moves a lot, maybe using a socket), this character has a socket on the tip of her cannon but I don't know how to use it yet

I already have a particle system and a bullet set like this, so particle wise it's fine

I also have a camera shake BP which I use when she charges her beam, it shakes the screen to show how strong her beam is

now as for the BP of my character:

https://i.imgur.com/KWOdZ8m.png

https://i.imgur.com/L2cKsGK.png

https://i.imgur.com/fxscSnr.png

the charge beam one goes to this direction ^

and this one

@karmic marsh that's how my BP is structured, but it doesn't work as expected

I followed this tutorial https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L3CoWUHS5TE

my level is a side scroller type but when I use this BP the player is now a camera that moves around very fast in first person

[karmic marsh]

for the attachment go for "attachtocomponent" node and in there u can declare a socket name, then ur object will be fit to that socket in animations

[empty crypt]

yes, I have it set with the socket I created

the name of it is BeamSource, and it's attached to the tip of her gun

[karmic marsh]

ok looks really good for now, can you tell me exactly what doesnt work? that helps to narrow down the problem

[empty crypt]

yes

my level is a side scroller one, and my character is supposed to spawn in one of these platforms, she's already animated and used to work before:
https://i.imgur.com/YHvQIzb.png

so she's supposed to move around and shoot the particle to be the beam (I haven't set the state machine for her shooting animation yet but that's another point)

so when I set this BP structure, it no longer spawns my character in side scroller, but instead spawns a camera in first person mode right where my character is supposed to be

my guess is that it's actually spawning the "ProjectileSpawnLocation" component instead of her

because of this

but I'm not sure

[karmic marsh]

if it is a spawning problem check if you have more than 1 player start, or that it is positioned and set up correctly, also check your gamemode override settings

maybe you have a different character pawn set

[empty crypt]

ok one min

this is how my game mode looks like

one thing I noticed is that I cannot set my character mesh as the starting point, but instead I use the capsule called "NetworkPlayerStart" and that's where my player starts

I just copy and pasted the original game mode from SideScrollerCharacter and edited it to fit my character

that one spawns where you set the character mesh, but this one doesn't show the mesh, just the spawning point

it spawned my character properly before though

this is where my character is supposed to spawn

[karmic marsh]

there should also be a normal player start with out the network
are you also starting the correct play mode? because there is one that starts from ur current viewort camera. or do you mean that when u start it sets you into a first person camera from your character?

[empty crypt]

the latter

it starts where my network player start is in a first person view

I found the player start without the network, how should I set it to have my character in it?

and also set as the new player start location

[karmic marsh]

it automatically takes the pawn that you have set in gamemode, just place it in your level where you want to start
if that doesnt work:
check in your world settings if you have override stuff enabled
or
select your player pawn and enable autposess

[empty crypt]

ok, it seems to work now

I can spawn on my level, just gotta fix my particle system with the correct axis

the player start capsule reads Bad Size though

but it spawns all right

so how can I fix the projectile direction?

it shoots on the X axis but is supposed to shoot on Y (back and front)

[karmic marsh]

can you show me a screenshot from where/how u shoot your projectile?

[empty crypt]

one min

yes

@karmic marsh it's supposed to shoot on the Y axis (green arrows), but it's shooting on the X axis (yellow arrow)

also, I still can't figure out how to set my character show in the player start capsule (before playing the level)

I can only see the capsule

[karmic marsh]

i meant inside the blueprint sorry 😄 a screenshot of the function you made

probably there is some roatation or vector you have to set

[empty crypt]

https://i.imgur.com/VA93G9q.png this one

as a note, the mesh reference down below was SideViewCamera before editing

but it still does the same

[karmic marsh]

just swap the forward vetor for the right vector

if u want to change direction by 180degrees then just negate the vector

[empty crypt]

ok

yeah it works now

now how can I make it so my character mesh appears in this capsule?

such as the default side scroller character does

I noticed now my level blueprint is empty

aren't I supposed to have a get player controller or something in it?

I don't really know how that works

[karmic marsh]

if you dont want to do anything special i think its best to just place your player blueprint/pawn inside the level and enable autposess

[empty crypt]

where's the autopossess option?

[empty crypt]

@karmic marsh hello, you still around?

[karmic marsh]

sorry mate, im also working, give me one minute

[empty crypt]

yeah don't worry, take your time

[empty crypt]

apologies for interrupting your work

ok so yours is a VR Pawn, but mine is not VR; is it supposed to be a Side Scroller Pawn and if so, where to find it?

[karmic marsh]

the settings i circled are standard pawn settings, shouldnt matter if sidescroll, 3rd person or vr

select ur pawn in the level and youll find it

[empty crypt]

I found it now, thanks let me test it

ok it works now, and also fixed the beam spawn position, just had to change a reference to mesh and add the socket name to it

can you help me out on setting state machines for the shooting animations, please?

https://i.imgur.com/7VE9twv.png
I have an animation for Shooting Front which should play when I press the X key, but I don't know how to set the conditions

I also have Shooting Up and Shooting Diagonal, and those should be activated with X + W and X + W + D, respectively

https://i.imgur.com/mNxyyjt.png
https://i.imgur.com/6aGFUgn.png
https://i.imgur.com/SjB3OB9.png

these ones

additionally, she's supposed to freeze in position when she's shooting

and can move again when you press a directional key

[empty crypt]

@karmic marsh sorry for the ping, are you still available?

[karmic marsh]

sorry mate i dont have much time at the moment.
for state machines there are a lot of tutorials out there

for the dependencies u have to figure out yourself

[empty crypt]

okay, thanks

[misty dagger]

Any must have tutorials for rigging and animating 3rd person characters in Maya for UE4? Have found this one for animating: https://www.thegnomonworkshop.com/tutorials/creating-game-ready-animations-for-production , but rigging seems pretty hard to find. Lots of cartoon characters but not many pro ones other than a James Taylor tutorial.

[rigid coyote]

How do I animate morph targets in sequencer?

Seems like something that'd be obvious

but I can't find any info about it online

I animated the morph targets in an external program then imported them

but it only keeps track of skeletal animation

the morph targets are ignored

[misty dagger]

Is there any animators here?

Like good ones

[empty crypt]

I can do some very basic maya animation

but I need a lot of practice

what do you need?

@misty dagger

[barren bone]

hi i'm trying to set up some characters. i need different meshes for all 4 but i need the same animations redirected or something other all 4, i have the work flow im working with attached. if any one can spear some time to tell what to do? i did look online but every thing just distorts the mesh

[trail granite]

How do you blend aim off set with firing montage? Currently I have two slots. default and upper. Montage is set on upper and on montage play it ignores the aimoffset.

[trail granite]

ok this cache method is working fine http://prntscr.com/hh8czn

[frozen stag]

I have to ask, have there been changes made that would effect the way skeletal meshes are imported?
On the latest unreal engine version, when I try to reimport older skeletal meshes I have made, they all break.
Being way smaller then they should be and being rotated 90*

I used blender to create these assets

[manic patrol]

hey guys
im in the retargeting manager
and i cant find any skeletal assets
why is that?

[bitter citrus]

Anyone else having your mesh turn giant and weird when you apply an additive animation?

Nvm. Refreshing all the things fixed it.

[tawny lance]

@manic patrol If I'm understanding you correctly, when retargeting by default only compatible skeletons (ie, sharing the same rig) will appear as options for retargeting. There's an option (I think it's called Show Only Compatible Skeletons) that you can disable and it should show all the skeletons. Be warned that you may not get the desired result though if they're not compatible

https://docs.unrealengine.com/latest/INT/Engine/Animation/RetargetingDifferentSkeletons/

[ashen elbow]

is there an animation node that mirrors my animation or do I have to mirror my animation in my 3D software and change them manually in the animations graph?

[empty crypt]

I need help on setting a state machine and blend space for shooting animations triggered by multiple keys, can someone help me please?

please ping

[wise spoke]

Hi guys, How do I Trully desactivate the twist on TwoBoneIK?
I tried to uncheck AllowTwist checkbox, but it still want to twist.
I want to do that because I want to place my character's hand on a table. As the hand is flat on the table and doesn't rotate, the twist shouldn't take place.

[sudden sedge]

can't you only filter for yaw rotation instead of any rotation?

[kindred quarry]

Not sure if this is the proper channel, but im trying to convert some animations from the ShooterGame first person mesh to the default FirstPerson mesh in the example project, and the animation is not playing even if I uncheck remap reference assets and convert spaces to new skeleton.

i have the humanoid rigs on both the skeletons, but it's still using it's t pose when the animation is playing, is there a certain setting i have to click on the shootergame's first person mesh?

[sharp carbon]

hi... i cannot seem to consistently import animations from blender into UE4... it's a combination of blender's and unreal's discrepancy with regards to scale/units, the FBX export settings in blender (i think)

i have the following process in place (that sometimes works, sometimes doesn't)... can anyone comment?

1 - Set scene units to metric and 0.01 scale
2 - Model and rig (including weight-painting)
3 - Scale rig up by 100 in object mode (only need to scale the rig, the mesh will follow if the mesh is correctly parented to the rig)
4 - Apply transform (CTRL + A) on location, rotation and scale
5 - Change scene units to 1(?)
6 - Create animation actions (with Active Keying Set: LocRotScale)
7 - Scale rig down (by 100)
8 - Apply transform (as step 4)
9 - Export FBX

normal meshes... no problem... but, anything with animations (specifically armatures/bones/rigging)... it's just one problem after another...

can anyone help?

[empty crypt]

not sure if this might help but when I import animations from Maya, I don't include the character mesh in the exported file

when importing character+rig, select the mesh+skeleton, then export

when import only animations from the same character, only select the skeleton and export

it will ask you which skeleton do you want to attach the animation to, then you select the appropiate skeleton for your character

[steel lotus]

left arm

I've retargeted the longsword animations from the marketplace onto the free character from infinity blade. the problem you can see above is that the left arm doesn't hold the end of the sword. do you have pointers for me on what I need to do differently?

[empty crypt]

@steel lotus hi, have you added a socket for the sword?

[bitter pendant]

1Does anybody know anything about motion capture animation? I want to scout out peoples' rates.

[steel lotus]

@empty crypt hey, the image was made in persona with an added slot for the weapon. I've added the sword as a preview

[empty crypt]

is the slot in the left hand joint? did you relocate the weapon so it fits in the hand?

how does it look in skeleton view?

[steel lotus]

in default skeleton which comes with the pack there is only the right hand joint

I've added the soket at the same bone

but added a rotation of +90 deg because the weapon pointed in the wrong direction. otherwise everything seemed to be fine

[empty crypt]

I think I misunderstood your question then, I thought you meant the character was supposed to hold the sword with the right hand but it's actually the right, and the left is used to grab the tip

[steel lotus]

yes exactly

hmm maybe my retarget pose wasn't the same... I think I'll try to re-retarget it 😄

[empty crypt]

is this the animation from the mannequin?

[steel lotus]

I think so, at least it works with the epic skeleton

[empty crypt]

I never had this issue since the animations I import I make them from Maya so I know how to make it hold something;
maybe try to readjust the right_arm and right_hand joints?

just need to rotate them a few degress, not sure if will work because I never tried

[steel lotus]

I'll try it out. Thanks 😃

[empty crypt]

np, lemme know if it worked

[sharp carbon]

@empty crypt thanks, i'll try that

[empty crypt]

np, lemme know if it worked

[sharp carbon]

@empty crypt will do!

[winged valley]

@sharp carbon You only need steps 1-4, then 6 and 9.

And that's only if you started with some model that was built in the wrong scale.

If you're modeling/rigging from the beginning starting in scene unit scale 0.01 metric you don't need to do anything special, just export at 1 scale like usual.

[sharp carbon]

@winged valley i got it to work... although, i did it slightly different this time...

i did the modeling, rigging, weight-painting and animating in scene unit scale 1 metric

and just before exporting, i selected the root bone in pose mode and scaled by 100

that gave me the desired result in unreal engine... the mesh was the right size

the animations were the right size... it all worked!

[winged valley]

It's a weird workaround though, better to just work in 0.01 metric all of the time.

Also you could check the physics asset if it looks right.

[gaunt hemlock]

What was the new "anim dynamics" node called since 4.15 (?) ?

nvm found - it is called RigidBody

[pale silo]

anyone here motion builder?

Just wondering if there's a way to prevent the root node from rotating 90 degrees when merging an animation via FBX.

it was working fine, it would keep my root stationary regardless of what I imported, then suddenly it started jumping 90 degrees on import.

[upbeat garnet]

Hi guys.

I used FABRIK to align hand of the character to weapon. On moving to some specific locations on the map, vertical offset is produced..

https://www.reddit.com/r/unrealengine/comments/7h8zha/fabrik_offsetting/

here is the question I've asked yesterday about. I haven't got any answers..

hoping somebody can help

[reef bone]

Anyone here had a fun error where a montage gets corrupted for the editor but plays nicely in-game still?

Just trying to open it up locks everything up

[main ferry]

Anyone know how to get root motion by manually moving the root bone?

I have root motion mode set to "Root Motion from Everything". But when I use the Transform (Modify) Bone node in the anim BP, and I manually move the root bone, this does not produce root motion.

Instead I see the entire character skeleton move around. But the capsule remains in place

So it appears that root motion from everything doesn't actually mean everything

[dusk dove]

RootMotion can only be extracted from single Animations, not an AnimGraph

[zenith pebble]

Hello.. I'm being given two skeletal meshes with animations, both have a head and face with eyes and lips, and the second is just the face (same as the first) but with different animations/blendshapes. I'm trying to take the animations from the second face and apply it to the face in the first mesh. I was going to try making montages of the face, but I can't really retarget the face to the mesh with the body and the face. Is there a different way to do this, or any suggestions? Thanks

[winged valley]

Copy Pose from Mesh.

[native moss]

so you'dhttps://gyazo.com/6a1aaa3d1b3c3bdbb515c322c3df962e have something collecting the

sorry not sure what that text was in buffer, ièm wondering how to drive the ankle here in Maya LT from 2 points

normally in maya ièd use expression editor but dont have in Maya LT

[final cliff]

I'm trying to spawn a ragdoll with the same position of the main character so that the player can continue to play and respawn while there's still a body on the floor, but spawning this new mesh results in him being in T pose when he ragdolls, is there a way to set all the bones to be the same as another skeletal?

[bitter pendant]

If I were to, say, offer cheap motion capture services, who would be interested?

I need to know what prices people want

I've seen as low as $200 for 4 seconds, or $500 + 15/second

And to me, that's really high for someobody who's a hobbyist or indie developer.

[misty dagger]

200 for 4 seconds is cheap? 🤔

[cinder ocean]

How do I make animations blend without using animation blueprint?

[timid summit]

Hey, anyone here know how to retarget an animation from Mixamo to the UE4_Mannequin

I have been at it all day, but no luck. I used https://github.com/enziop/mixamo_converter to create the root node, but then I cant seem to be able to retarget correctly, everything is in order hierachy wise and name wise but

[jolly steppe]

When i imported an animated character into UE4 yesterday and tried to play the animation in the editor, everything seemed to be fine exept the mesh for the character didnt show. Anyone know why

[jolly steppe]

Well I sort of fixed it by applying root motion, but now only parts, if anything, of the animation show, like the characters hands moving but not their bodys

[fading yacht]

Alright so I downloaded some animations from Mixamo and imported them into Unreal. They worked perfectly fine. I imported the same animations into Blender to edit them a little bit (I just rotated one of the bones a little - an arm), and imported them back into UE4. Now they're sideways. https://gyazo.com/fa68f7fc785fed40dcfe2c2dcc0a12aa

I tried changing the import rotation when I imported it, but it didn't make any difference.

[timid summit]

if its a little thing, you can edit the animation per socket within UE

[fading yacht]

Afraid it isn't :\

[winged valley]

You probably need to export it from UE4 instead into Blender.

[fading yacht]

Is there any way to adjust a bone's rotation in an animation in UE4?

So basically if I want to use an animation but just rotate an arm to raise it a little bit across the entire animation or something

I mean, I see that you can do that in the preview if you open up the animation asset, but can you save it like that?

NVM, apparently you can just hit the Apply button. Awesome

..and suddenly the Apply button is greyed out? Okay

NVM, just had to add a keyframe. Topkek.

[stoic remnant]

anyone in here good with maya?

[valid trout]

Hi, i'm wanting to implement rag doll on a character that takes advantage of the newer immediate mode physics as shown here: https://youtu.be/FwDT2b-8x9c?t=16m42s

In broad terms what would I need to setup in the animation blueprint to do this properly? Do I also need to do somethings to the character such as disable it's collision capsule?

[valid trout]

Woo, i found this great video tutorial series From @vital sun that I think will answer all my questions! (thanks Jonas!) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dAOZi7rVuFA&ab_channel=JonasMølgaard

[vital sun]

@valid trout hehe you're most welcome mate

buut, actually i didn't use that technique as they showed in the 4.16 video, since it wasn't available at the time i made my videos

[valid trout]

yeah but I think it answers most of what I needed to fill in the gaps

[vital sun]

i will cross my fingers for ya... how are things going btw? cooking up some good stuff?

[valid trout]

i took a bit of a break for a few months (got hooked on playing Everquest for some nostalgia) but I'm back full force now 😃

[midnight crater]

Q: will this work? export the ue4 manequin to blender and then merge the rig with my .obj imported character mesh. weight paint the skin and then export the whole thing back into UE4. apply marketplace animations

..or easier just manually rig it in blender (suggested rig?) and import to UE4 and retarget?

[valid trout]

I would think that would work.

If I wasn't so awful at vertex weight painting I would try it myself

[midnight crater]

hah.. yea, as long as a relationship is created between the verts and the bones then all should be good i reckon

[sudden sedge]

@midnight crater exporting the UE4 mannequin to blender and scaling your model to fit that is the best course of action

[lofty bear]

Trying to make a custom Vive motion controller model and animation. The hand and Vive model have to be one mesh. Can anyone tell me how I stop the finger movements deforming the vive controller part of the mesh?

[valid trout]

@lofty bear I'm more of a programmer dabbling in animation but don't you just have to make sure that you paint all the "controller" verticies' weights to have zero influence by any bone but the root (or one up from root) and that bone should have be fully weighted against all verticies that make up the controller.

[lofty bear]

@valid trout I'm dabbling in everything so have no idea 😃 I will look into what you've suggested though, so cheers

[valid trout]

@lofty bear when I made a flail type weapon I seem to remember in maya you had to disable some auto weight balancing feature so that I could weigh each sub mesh (just simple cylinders in my case) to exactly one bone. https://i.imgur.com/wg5yXxW.jpg

[lofty bear]

@valid trout I've just thrown in a couple more bones down the controller part of the mesh and its seemed to have worked. I'll probably re-rig the hand properly at some point

[midnight crater]

@sudden sedge thanks for the confirmation.. about to try now. strangely, the first video i've come across for this is from epic (livestream) showing blender and rigify as the workflow. msg me if you have any other tips! thanks

[urban spear]

Can anyone tell me where this is located: https://answers.unrealengine.com/storage/attachments/190230-notanim.jpg

They say it's in the skeletal mesh component but i can't find it

Disregard my question, it has been solved

[stoic remnant]

man i swear to god, ue4 is constantly importing my meshes as bones and its annoying af

[late kiln]

So when I assign a skeletal mesh to a new skeleton, the virtual bones ive added to the skeleton do not transfer to the new mesh, but are still showing within the mesh's skeleton view window. Obviously I need the virtual bones from the skeleton to be present in all meshes using it, any idea how to get them to transfer?

Nevermind I had to restart the editor for them to update apparently

[valid trout]

@urban spear does that option just ensure animation is playing even if the mesh is culled due to being offscreen?

[urban spear]

yes

@valid trout I needed to enable it due to the bones not updating on the server (dedicated)

[urban spear]

Hey guys, does anyone know how to make this work how i want? When i put this animation in the aim offset, it looks different. Animation: https://gyazo.com/5a9cb39efb1ed6c0933efebaa44032f1, Aim Offset: https://gyazo.com/f010ef06e6ac94366102a16b5e781a96

This is how i position the hands for different guns without having to reanimate all animations. Give me a heads up if you have a better idea of how to do this also 😃

[valid trout]

@urban spear You can add some nodes in your animbp that will place your characters hands at specific spots (e.g. holding a gun) and it automatically animates your character's arms using IK to accomidate where his hands are. Would that help you? https://docs.unrealengine.com/latest/INT/Engine/Animation/NodeReference/SkeletalControls/HandIKRetargeting/index.html

the talk about it a bit in this video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vZW8mxlQJEk&t=968s&ab_channel=UnrealEngine

[vast trellis]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w047Dbo-fGQ

[urban spear]

@valid trout, i plan to do that, although, for example when the player is running, would i be able to incorporate movement in his hands using this method or would they be static?

[urban spear]

Is there a way i can do ik add to existing?

[remote summit]

Okay, i ahve looked long and hard and still have no clear answer on this

Lets say i want to have 5 different types of idle animation

each for a different state, do i create 5 idle states that link t the rest of the animation state options?

do i use a montage to accomplish this?

what is the best method for choosing when to use what version of the idle?

[winged valley]

You at least don't do it in 5 states, either use random sequence player or blend poses by int or something.

[remote summit]

well it cant be random

when i hold 1 hand item i dont wnat a 2 hand idle

or vis versa

what if i am tired, and i have a different animation for tired in all those states?

this is where i get lost 😛 complexity

the simple stuff is, indeed, simple

[midnight crater]

anyone see this happen before?

UE4 manequin t-pose imported to blender.. attempting to skin a replacement mesh to it

as i weight paint i get a weird rotation occuring

[grave eagle]

you might want to turn all bones off till you finish weight painting

[limpid basin]

Hello together,
I'm programmer, but no 3d artist myself. I'm currently reading a bit about animation retargeting and wondering if retargeting is really a good choice to get great results. Or if its always the better choice to create the model based on the same skeleton as the animations? Because if I understood correctly, there will be always some slight difference between the original models movement/animation and the one of the retargeted model. Or am I wrong?
Would be happy about some hints to get more on the ideal path regarding that :)
Thanks in advance

[sudden sedge]

If you have an actual animator, it's best to create a unique skeleton for the model with all your needs

then make animations accordingly

if it's something common like a human, you can make most of your humans share the same skeleton

retargetting usually requires cleanup, but it's great if you have really tall or really short characters and want to reuse animations

fps animations aren't too insanely hard to make though

functional ones anyways

@limpid basin

[limpid basin]

Thanks for your reply @sudden sedge
do you maybe have a link with tutorials on retargeting cleanup for me? So I can have a look at it 👌

alright, found something! thanks anyways for your immediate answer 👍

[sudden sedge]

It's a lot of manual tweaking either in unreal, or a modelling package

[harsh grotto]

Creating an anim can get very confusing, the one shown is very basic one that I put together, but it will grow over time, when I add other states, I dont suppose there is an option where you can collapse ceratin areas to simply things, like a function in normal blueprints

[nocturne vapor]

@harsh grotto You can create a State Machine within a State, if that can help.

For your Prone2Crouch and vice versa etc.. you could reduce that to a single state using a Blend Pose By Bool and have the 2 opposite anims connected to that and the bool would be your IsProne

[harsh grotto]

@nocturne vapor yeah will mess around with the blend pose by bool, but you can only have a true or false pose, if I remember right

[nocturne vapor]

correct, which would work for your case. if you want to blend between more anims you can use Blend by Enum or something similar

[misty dagger]

anyonw know why my sequencer wont render my cinematic camera and keeps making a new camera everytime i try to render

[harsh grotto]

Thats true @nocturne vapor

[gloomy flax]

Hey Guys I have made a robotic arm and used a joint based movement in Maya and I want to import it in Unreal. Are there any extra steps i need to take ? Also I tried to export it using Export to Unreal menu but it just takes ages to import 😦 There are many tutorials but they are kind of like for organic objects rather than mechanical one.

[obsidian kayak]

Could anyone please slightly help me out with anim blueprint?
I'm trying to set up my character so it uses blend space for walking (lower body) but different aiming animation for upper body. I need that to stabilize my gun while walking.

If I'm aiming (ironsights in true fps view) I want to split my animation so I can get rid of gun offset when walking left and right and when I'm not aiming then Just use default walk animation.

Here's what I set up

And here's layered blend setup

Thank you for any help

[molten stump]

Hi guys, I've got all my animations for my wildlife. I'm wondering if there any tutorials on how to make the animals roam / be aware of surroundings with sound etc

[weak beacon]

@molten stump that question would fit perfectly in #gameplay-ai 👍

[molten stump]

true lol woops

[sharp cedar]

hey gents have an issue when i try to retarget my character to the ue4 mannequin. my character ends up being stretched but when i try to increase size the character blows way out of proportions

is there something im missing

[earnest pond]

hey everyone, I tried to create "fake leap hands" for other clients which I animate with the values of the original leap motion, transferred over the network. So I created an animation blueprint with the skeleton of the hands as base and applied my logic there. But now the original leap motion hands are completely broken. It's like my new animation blueprint is now being used by the leap motion, is that possible?

ye seems like I have overriden the original one... I just want to have another instance of it that a placed actor in the scene does use with MY logic

[main ferry]

Anyone here using maya for animation?

If so how did you get the Artv1 tools working in maya?

[gloomy flax]

I haven't used it but you need to copy a script from UE\Engine\Extras\Maya_AnimationRiggingTools to maya's script folder

[main ferry]

I have it working now thanks.

[proper perch]

Hey Guys, I'm going to start learning Animations in UE4 (using Blender) can any1 suggest me a good up to date tutorial that I can follow ?!

[humble lantern]

Hey guys, I'm trying to create a newspaper that you can flip pages with by grabbing the end, in VR.
I am just not sure what the best approach would be to do something like this..
I was thinking just to use a plane and add a bone to it and then possibly use the physx cloth thingy to make it wiggle around, but is that just a noob talking or am I on to something here?

Any input would be awesome 😃

[gloomy flax]

I don't have much idea but you can use unreals cloth physics and make it a bit stiff that might do the trick

[tawny lance]

Just provide some steps to reproduce the issue

[elder wadi]

have you guys seen problems where your character model rotates 360 degrees to get from animation A to animation B? Is the only way to fix that to rotate the character model outside of Unreal?

I just figured it would take the shortest path rotation with an absolute value rotation, but it has to spin all the way around to blend sometimes

[misty dagger]

I had something similar a while back. If you're using Maya, go into the Graph Editor, select your keys and do Curves>Euler Filter. That might work

[elder wadi]

@misty dagger Was that to me? I'm using Blender. I'm also a total animation noob, but I'll give that a Google.

[misty dagger]

Yeah woops forgot to tag you. Dunno the equivalent in blender

[elder wadi]

thanks, appreciate the response

[elder wadi]

I bought the animations. I've only been modifying them in Blender when they're off-center or rotated the wrong way by X degrees

[neat compass]

What would be a good place to buy basic animations? I know about the starter pack on the ue4 marketplace but I was wondering if anyone here knew of some good sites.

[proper perch]

I just found out that if you're using blender to bring Animations to UE4, you might run into Scale issues where your skeletal mesh is ok but animations are way too small. Instead of messing with Unit Scales and etc, Just rename "Armature" to something else and then All the Anims will import with correct scale to UE4.

[winged valley]

And you will have a screwed up skeleton which doesn't have root motion on the root bone.

Changing unit scale to 0.01 metric is the proper way to fix this and will allow animating root motion in pose mode.

And even more important it will allow you to share skeletons between different meshes if you want to do that.

Also when using Copy Pose to Mesh for attaching rigs to different bones in your rig like armor, hair and so on.

[delicate locust]

Animation showoff: https://imgur.com/gallery/Ex2NC

[ocean wharf]

Hi, could someone explain me how should I prepare the wheels of the vehicle for animation in UE4. I want to build a completely arcade game with no simulation (not using Epic's vehicle setup BP), so the wheel rotation should be influenced by the accelerator and brake buttons only. The idea is to have a single bone per wheel, multiply its rotation by the accelerator input, but I cannot find the right nodes or techniques in UE4.

[blissful lodge]

The UE4 camera's are frustrating to deal with.

If I rotate one too much it does a 360 in the other direction.

[trail matrix]

hello, I'm new to the community I have a question about le physique or skin, which is the most recommended for animations, I'm using the mixamo beep with its tranformation tool in 3ds max

[summer blade]

Maybe the best animation i ever saw! Made my day FFS
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V5zsln8Mba8

1 Bullet is in hahahahahaha

omfg

😄

[delicate locust]

hah, clever

[merry rampart]

hey animation peeps

I have a general question with regards to animation workflow (using blender)

which is: do you generally start by 'blocking out' the poses throughout the entire timeline

and only then messing with animation curves?

like, is it very very important to have the general poses throughout the whole animation before messing with curves?

[hasty pivot]

hey guys ive got a serious problem: Ive buyed two packs the dynamic combat system and the oriental sword animation set both are good now ive tried to implement my oriental animations to my combat system the problem is everytime when i try to retarget my montage the combat skeleton wont show up in the skeleton picker tab anyone has expierenced this before?

[winged valley]

@merry rampart Yes, messing with curves is for polish only.

But with the master build there's a new f-curve smoothing (aka interpolation) that makes things look smooth anyway.

[hasty pivot]

@winged valley have you expierenced my bug?

[winged valley]

No.

Did you set up a preview asset? You open the skeletal mesh and there's a thing to the top right.

[hasty pivot]

no i havent i think

Would it fix it when i have a third skeleton so like i add the two packages and then i would implement them into my third character? @winged valley

[winged valley]

?

Wait, it doesn't show up in the list at all?

Then it's just not set as a humanoid rig in the retarget manager.

[hasty pivot]

ok that will be the issue thanks!

btw how can i create a humanoid rig?

@winged valley

[winged valley]

https://docs.unrealengine.com/latest/INT/Engine/Animation/RetargetingDifferentSkeletons/

[hasty pivot]

they are both rigged to the epic skeleton

@winged valley

[winged valley]

No because if they did they would show up in the list.

Well maybe they are but yours isn't.

[hasty pivot]

Ok

[hasty pivot]

@winged valley now some bone got messed up

[hasty pivot]

Anyone kows why my bones are messed up?

(Its just the rotation)

[onyx briar]

I'm sure this is a dumb question, but it's my first time working with montages. I've got a montage set up and playing, but the animation doesn't look quite right, like it's been damped or something. Any idea what might be causing it?

The animation looks fine if I don't play it as a montage.

Nevermind, I figured it out: the montage was really short and the default blend time was long enough that it never fully blended it.

[spare garden]

Guys, so I’ve been using Blender for a while to make characters, objects, etc, but recently I’ve been interested in Cinema 4D, and I’m wondering if I should try out Cinema 4D. Should I?

[granite sky]

If u want to make animation you should try Maya.

[delicate locust]

what do you feel is lacking in Blender?

[granite sky]

Well its not used in production i think

[delicate locust]

yes it is 🤔

[pastel spindle]

Guys

I tried to retarget the sequence's Trooper

But somewhy this is the result

Already checked multiple times, and the retarget rigs look fine (xpect the IK)

any ideas?

So if I try to manually rotate he arm, spine etc, then its fine

The retarget poses are the same

[stoic remnant]

If i have multi slot groups say on a tank or something, i cna control each slot group seperately right?

[stoic remnant]

anyone around i need some advice

[prisma gulch]

Is there anyone here who rigs with Maya and is familiar with the Node Editor? I am looking for a way to control the Show/Hide function of custom attributes in the Node Editor. But I can't find a way to access attributes of attributes in the Node Editor. Is that even possible?

[stoic remnant]

erm im not sure

what ver are u on?

if i remember correctly there is two advance view modes for nodes and attributes

its been awhile tho

[prisma gulch]

i'm on Maya 2018

[stoic remnant]

hmm fuck i cant remember

im sure theres like two advance graph sorta views

for stuff like that

but im sure u can expose custom attributes

but not sure if u can carry it to node editor

[worldly pebble]

I need some help.. xD I'd really like for the hand rotation to not be connected to the ik. I made sure that I constrained my control just to the joint but it still seems to be effecting the ik. Something may be wrong with my ik.. I have it parented underneath my hand control. Something a tutorial I watched had me do. Is that wrong? I think that may be my problem. Any help is appreciated ❤ in the mean time I'll be attempting to figure it out on my own haha (:

https://gyazo.com/078e787d059abeaf83c65cd43b38a02b

https://gyazo.com/b1e2c7339c7731f657fea3e736da606d

[worldly pebble]

nvm I figured it out! ^_^

[pastel spindle]

Guys is there a way to know which AnimState is running?

[fading yacht]

So I've got a Blendspace set up, how do I determine the direction in the anim BP?

[tawny lance]

@pastel spindle Sorry that you have to ask everywhere but I don't think there's a way to do that I'm afraid

[pastel spindle]

@tawny lance I am busted haha

😄

Its alright now, just added some notify

[tawny lance]

Notifies are magic! 😄

[pastel spindle]

Exectly! D:

😄

[tawny lance]

@fading yacht You need to get the values from the owner actor, so set it up in the Event Graph in the AnimBP. You'll need to do some communication between the AnimBP and the actor BP.

https://docs.unrealengine.com/latest/INT/Engine/Animation/AnimHowTo/BlendSpace/index.html

This gives some ideas on how to do that

[remote summit]

https://twitter.com/Riuthamus/status/942030954133995520

Sean Forbes (@Riuthamus)

Added aimOffset animations today. Going to make for some very cool stuff! #gamedev #gameart #screenshotsaturday #ue4 #indiedev #3D #Animations https://t.co/q7t3EkRfxU

▶ Play video

Twitter

I love UE4!!! ❤

[stoic remnant]

Anyone got a good understanding of islating areas / animation layers

[modern kite]

So I posted this in the forums yesterday, but I'm gonna post this here too to get some extra input.

I'm having some issues trying to import one of the characters' animations into the game, but I'm having some strange troubles with it for some reason. When I import just the normal model, and it's skeletal mesh, it's fine. It's at the right angle and size. But when I go to import the animations for this model, using the exact same skeletal mesh, not only does it appear at a weird angle, but the model is super small for some reason. So small, that I actually thought it flat out wasn't there at first. XD What could I be doing wrong?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0WmxPskyqQM

Video of the issue.

[misty dagger]

How to attach mesh to a pawn

not skeletal

[sick knoll]

@modern kite there's multiple reasons, but the animations are not the correct scale..

one simple fix is to re-import the animations and set the scale in the import dialog

but really you should investigate and fix this upon export

[modern kite]

The static model/skeleton and the animations are the same size though.

How's the unanimated model fine, but the animation isn't?

[sick knoll]

from where/how do you export the mesh and animations ?

[modern kite]

I use Blender 3D

https://gyazo.com/1e4f5c2af7a202b03bc0cf857bf34776

[sick knoll]

could be apply transform that's causing this

applying on the mesh but not the animations or something

[modern kite]

Let me try that then.

Nope. Still does it.

[sick knoll]

if you scaled the mesh/armature in anyway that could be causing issues to .. ctrl+a and apply scale

try a fresh file, make a cone, export with defaults from blender.. check how that imports to unreal, add a couple of bones, animate and export with defaults and see if there's any difference

[dapper trench]

Yeah, that's really your best bet. When it comes to animations and skeletons. You need to import and check it with every step of the way to learn what breaks it

every program is different

[modern kite]

That's alot of steps just to fix one thing. 😛

Especially when I know the same animation and model works normally in Unity.

[sick knoll]

yeah but blender and fbx is weird sometimes

[dapper trench]

that's why animators are hard to find, and those who know what they're doing don't typically answer this group! It's honestly just one pain in the ass at all times

I've had to rip open my rigs a few hundred times when I was first learning just to get things to import

[sick knoll]

oh, i thought that was just me having a hard time 😃

[dapper trench]

nope. I use Maya, and I've been animating since UT2k4

it's always been a pain

don't get me wrong, I'm not an expert or a great animator by any means. But I've figured most systems out with enough persistence. Animations is not something I've ever felt comfortable dealing with still, there is just so many htings that go wrong

like I was saying in Lounge, for Maya if you use Component Mode to rotate your joint orientation you break it, if you rotate the joint itself, you break it. You have to use the specific Joint Orientation attribute to get it to work

adding constraints breaks it

[modern kite]

I'm gonna try the scaling method. How do I do that?

[sick knoll]

i blender you do ctrl+a to apply transform to an object

but when you import an fbx to unreal you have the option to scale / translate / rotate

[misty dagger]

Can I scale a mesh in unreal editor and save it as for example scaled bigger?

[sick knoll]

you just need to figure the right rotation and scale for the animation fbx

[misty dagger]

or do i have to put it to blender first

[modern kite]

I found it. Okay, looks like scaling it doesn't screw up the animation any, which is good.

Just gotta mess around with the numbers a bit.

https://streamable.com/t92o7

SUCCESS

Only other problem, is he's not doing the facial expressions I animated.

[dapper trench]

@misty dagger You can scale whatever you need in the editor withouting needing to transfer it to Blender

all components have a scale setting if nothing else

[misty dagger]

orly?

no i mean can i save it as a mesh

that is big

or fbx

that keeps the scale

[dapper trench]

you can either change the import settings to scale it upon import, or create a blueprint and scale the component, you can scale the specific actor VIA properties menu, you can scale a static mesh and export it from your scene via the File -> Export Selected button

[misty dagger]

ty

I just want to scale it in editor and save it

unreal engine editor

but i guess i have to export

[modern kite]

https://streamable.com/ynm4k

Think I got it as close as I can get it.

[winged valley]

@modern kite You're using the wrong unit scale in Blender for UE4, it needs to be set at 0.01 metric, then apply transforms (and rescale the animations too). Technically it's a UE4 bug but they use Maya and stuff internally so it probably won't get fixed.

[modern kite]

@winged valley I'm pretty sure I found a work around, but you mind walking me through how to do the method you explained? 😛

[winged valley]

Sure (millionth time) first you set the unit scale to 0.01 metric.

Everything will turn really small, so you fix clipping settings if needed, then scale the rig up 100 times. Then apply object transform selecting scale (ctrl+a maybe? with default keys) for the rig and the mesh.

Then you need to scale up the animations too because all location keyframes will be 100 times too small, to do that go to the graph editor, click the magnifying glass and type "location", then select all curves and scale by 100, press Y to constrain to the y axis (meaning scaling only vertically) and confirm.

Then do that for every animation, kind of a pain I guess.

That will allow you to export at 1 scale and import at 1 scale so no weird workarounds.

[modern kite]

I scale up JUST the rig?

In Blender?

[topaz gulch]

Anyone tried building their own mocap suit usinig arduino/raspberry with for example MPU-9250 or used suits like Rokoko? 😛

[winged valley]

Mike Erwin (previously Blender Foundation, now at Epic) started working on a GLTF importer so hopefully in the future we can just use that instead with Blender default settings and have everything work fine.

You scale the rig and the mesh will get scaled too if it's parented to the rig (which it should be).

[modern kite]

Right.

[winged valley]

I guess you can select both now but in previous Blender versions you could end up scaling the mesh double, that's probably fixed now but I'm still used to this way. 😛

[modern kite]

Sorry, I'm still kinda a noob at this. XD How do I know when I've scaled it up to 100?

[winged valley]

You can press N to open the N panel in the 3d view if it's not open already, then in Transform you should see 100/100/100 in Scale.

But you can just type 100 and it will get scaled by 100.

😛

[sick knoll]

make sure to 'ctrl+a > apply scale' after you scale an object

[winged valley]

You should have 0/0/0 in location, 0/0/0 in rotation and 1/1/1 in scale.

(after everything's done)

[modern kite]

Would I have to do this for each frame of animation though?

Since it saves that sorta thing as well?

[sick knoll]

on a premade animation i guess you need to correct it

but if you start animating from this point out you'll be fine

[winged valley]

No just whole animations at a time.

I don't know what happens if you have scale keyframes, but you could just delete those if you want to have 1 scale anyway.

And yeah you would only have to fix animations you had already done in the wrong scale, from now on it's normal after you fixed the scale stuff.

Also it's a good idea to save a scene with 0.01 metric as your startup .blend so you don't forget to change it.

[modern kite]

Okay, well, I got the scaling up part done atleast. Everything's looking normal so far. 😛

https://gyazo.com/1134c64375dafcdcfd9cc54ed2c8886c

So now I'm on this.

[winged valley]

If you only keyed rotation you don't need to do it, rotation doesn't change after changing scene scale.

You only need to rescale animations using IK targets and stuff when you're actually keying location.

[modern kite]

Ahh. Okay.

Alright. So I set unit scale to 0.1.

I scaled the whole rig to 100.

I applied scale using Ctrl+A.

[winged valley]

You set unit scale to 0.01. 😛

[modern kite]

That too. 😛

It matches up with the screenshot you showed, so I assume I did it right. 😛

So? Now do I export the animation?

[winged valley]

You export everything, probably need to update the skeleton too.

[modern kite]

Aight. I'll check back here in a few minutes for the results. 😛

Awesome! That seemed to do the trick! Thanks guys. 😃

Now I have a sort of second part to my question. How come the facial expressions don't animate in UE4?

[winged valley]

Because you screwed up somehow. 😛

[modern kite]

Gee. Thanks. 😛

[winged valley]

Do you mean morph targets?

[modern kite]

Yeh.

Or Blend Shapes as Blender calls them.

[winged valley]

(shape keys)

[modern kite]

That. 😛

[winged valley]

You need to tick Import Morph Targets or whatever when importing the skeletal mesh, then make sure they don't have any weird characters like dots or whatever in the names.

[dapper trench]

Blend shapes/Morph Targets don't play automatically.

[winged valley]

Oh yeah, you need to export the mesh too when exporting the animation.

Becaue the morph target animation is really on the mesh, doesn't have anything to do with the rig.

[dapper trench]

if you animated it traditionally, using bones/skeletons/joints and it's apart of the rig, then somthing broke

[winged valley]

For sure, if you're using drivers it should work automatically.

[dapper trench]

but you have to import each blend shape separately, one at a time I believe, inside the Skeletal Mesh editor of that specific mesh, and then apply the blend shapes VIA an AnimBlueprint I think

[winged valley]

Not really, they will just get imported as curves in the animation sequence.

[modern kite]

https://gyazo.com/79edaa74d303ea6ef0641d19b3c2484b

Well there they are right there.

[winged valley]

And you can move them around and see the effect on your mesh?

[modern kite]

Hmmm....No. Nothing's happening when I move the slider.

[winged valley]

Even when you double click the mesh and move the morph targets there?

And do you have any curves for the morph target in your animation?

[modern kite]

Well double clicking the mesh just starts selecting random bones in him.

[winged valley]

I mean just opening it, you can click the Mesh tab in Persona too.

You should have Morph Targets in the top right.

[modern kite]

I.....Sorry. I literally just picked this engine back up yesterday, so I'm not sure what's what yet. XD

How do I open the thing in Persona?

[winged valley]

Persona is the mesh/skeleton viewer thing, it should have Skeleton, Mesh, Animation etc tabs in the top right.

[modern kite]

Yup! I see those.

And in the Mesh tab, I should be seeing my morph targets to the right?

[winged valley]

I think so.

Morph target preview.

[modern kite]

Yep! I don't see them! 😛

There's a Morph Target tab, but no Morph Targets.

[winged valley]

o_O

Did you check Import Morph Targets when importing the new mesh now?

[modern kite]

I didn't even see that option.

Like, at all.

And I've reimported this exact same model and animation quite a few times. 😛

https://gyazo.com/ee07a0560e74871acba7b2911c8ea343

THIS is interesting though. They even appear in this little graph in the animation tab.

[winged valley]

Yeah that looks right, you just don't have the morph targets on your mesh for some reason.

[modern kite]

How odd....

[winged valley]

You need to click the arrows to expand the options when importing the mesh.

[modern kite]

Face Palms

I found it...... XD

https://streamable.com/40y66

Now he's beautiful. 😛

[misty dagger]

noice

[misty dagger]

Could you guys help out, if you don't mind?

I'm trying to blend my upper body interaction animation with locomotion

But I can't quite figure out how to only take the upper body animation to blend with the locomotion

Like, I assume there's some sort of "blend under hierarchy" or something?

nvm, figured it out!

[terse bone]

If I have some SkeletalMesh "FPS Arms" and it animates differently depending on which weapon is equipped

what is the typical way of doing that?

different AnimBP's? different state machines driving by some variable?

1 state machine with different animations selected based on something?

change the animation BP depending on which weapon is equipped?

[simple karma]

Anyone know if you can and if so any tut information. How to record your players movement with sequencer and make something that can be played back.

For instance, if say I wanted an animating asset of how to jump up on boxes. And it would just loop it in a level

[pastel spindle]

Guys

I tried to retarget the Anim Start Pack to Unreal_Mannequin

But somewhy the mesh is splitting up

[stone umbra]

Could I maybe get some help? I'm trying to export an animation from Blender then import it into UE4 but somewhere along the line the scaling fucks up and when I import the animation it's really small

[sick knoll]

you can change scale when you import the mesh and animations

that's the easy fix

probably off by a factor of 100 or 10.. if your not doing stuff in inches 😃

.. my workflow with blender is to leave everything of default

i dont change working units to cm or m.. just leave it to default blender units

1unit = 1m

[stone umbra]

I'm using metric, and I've tried scaling it up by 100 and 10, and it still didn't work

[sick knoll]

with default export setting it imports correctly

[stone umbra]

When exporting*

[sick knoll]

there's also a apply transformations and a scale factor in the fbx settings when you export

play with that

[stone umbra]

That's what I've been using to scale

[sick knoll]

it also matters when you change to metric.. if you already have a mesh and change the units to metric if messes up your scale

best to change units on a blank file

[stone umbra]

I always start out changing the units to 0.01 and setting it as metric

The mesh is already in 0.01 and metric, so that shouldnt be the issue

[sick knoll]

sometimes you have to apply transforms to the mesh (ctrl+a)

[stone umbra]

What do transforms do?

[sick knoll]

if you press n to pull out the side pannel

there's position, rotation, scale

if you scale your object x2 the scale will read 2.0

after you apply it the scale will be 1.0

[stone umbra]

ooooh so the export scale should be the exact same as the scale on the N menu?

[sick knoll]

no

bellow the besic transforms in the N side pannel, you have also dimensions

check that to see if you model is correct size in blender

[stone umbra]

x=52.6cm

[sick knoll]

i'm guessing your scale export setting should be 100

[stone umbra]

y=1.67cm

z=1.62m

No my scale export setting is at 1

[sick knoll]

yeah, set it to 100.0 when you export the mesh

[stone umbra]

Ok

[sick knoll]

i'm guessing here.. since i just use default blender units which is the same as setting it to metric meters

[stone umbra]

let me try that real quick

nope

[sick knoll]

do a new file.. the default cube is 2m.. export it and check if it's 200cm in unreal

dont change units..

then do file/append and add your model to this new file

scale it in relation to default cube, export and check

[stone umbra]

this is what it looks like

@sick knoll

[sick knoll]

if you open the mesh inside the unreals mesh editor (just double click in content browser)

you should se it's size

looks right but just to be sure

[stone umbra]

yeah

200x200x200

@sick knoll

[sick knoll]

have you tried appending your model to the new file ?

[stone umbra]

No, but I can try it give me one sec

[sick knoll]

file / append .. navigate to your original .blend

go into objects folder, select your mesh

[stone umbra]

So should I export it like this?

Seems a little big

[sick knoll]

yeah it's way too big now

press s 0.01 .. ctrl+a and select scale then export

[stone umbra]

ok

When I do that it just isn' tthere anymore

[sick knoll]

after scaling ? or after ctrl+a?

[stone umbra]

After scaling

[sick knoll]

press , on keypad to focus

might be inside the default cube

or send me the .blend file and i'll check

[stone umbra]

Nvm found it

[winged valley]

@BattleHawk Did you solve it?

[late kiln]

Anyone else not able to delete virtual bones without the editor crashing?

Been an issue of mine since 4.14

[terse bone]

When should one use a StateMachine and when should someone use an Anim Montage??

[late kiln]

@terse bone StateMachines are good for blending between many different animation states within a pretty nice and intuitive graph system, where-as Animation Montages are animations that are able to be played on the skeletal mesh when you call any of the 'Play Anim Montage', 'Montage Play' 'Play Slot Animation' or 'Play Slot Animation as Dynamic Montage' nodes, which are more-so used for animation-type events like reloads, melees, opening doors, etc. Note that you can play any animation sequence as a montage (See 'Play Slot Animation as Dynamic Montage'). When you play an animation montage, it plays inside something called a 'Slot'. You have to place a slot node in your animation blueprint to specify where in your graph the montage will play. For instance, if your player is running around, and he wants to reload, you wouldn't want the reload animation to play completely over everything else, so you'd want to make the reload montage play only on the player's upper body while the legs are still running around. You'd for instance have a slot called 'UpperBody', and use a 'Layered Blend Per-Bone' node to blend your upper body slot and the rest of your animation blueprint together somewhere along the spine. That way you'd see your movement animations playing on your player's legs, and your montage (when you call it) play only on his upper body

[terse bone]

@late kiln awesome info thanks. Helped clarify when it is best to use each.

[late kiln]

@terse bone No problem, good luck!

[terse bone]

I guess the use is kind of in the name... State Machine being useful for blending between persistent "States"

Montages for one off things

the "one off" things often have to blend with the other stuff

like State of Running

but you're reloading at same time with upper body

I'm more of a cpp guy...Animation setups is a new realm for me to learn

[late kiln]

@terse bone Yeah people tend to struggle with montages at first simply due to the fact that the name 'Montage' is misleading from what its most commonly used for haha. While you can mash up multiple animations into a single montage and play them back by specifying which 'section' the animation is attached to inside the montage, that purpose is secondary to its primary use for being able to quickly/easily force animations to play within your animation blueprints from other blueprints in my opinion

[terse bone]

So where would you trigger the montage to play from? Ideally I want to keep the animation stuff and my code separate

ie I don't want to call Play Montage from my Weapon Handler Component

would prefer it to all be handled from the Animation Blueprint much like a State Machine