Fbx animation import only imports first animation on hotreload

Development Character & Animation
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1

When hotreloading an fbx file with animations it will override all imported animations with the first track in the fbx file.
I have to reimport the entire fbx everything i change something in an animaiton

2

Hi gidcheen -

Thank you for your report. We have assigned this issue to a member of our support staff, and they will begin investigation as soon as possible. If we are unable to reproduce the issue, or we need additional information, our staff member will comment here with additional questions. Otherwise, we will post an ‘Answer’ once we have logged the issue in our bug database or we have a solution for it.

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Thank you -

Eric Ketchum

3

Hey gidcheen,

Here are the steps that I used to recreate what you are experiencing.

1.) Created a cube inside of Maya
2.) Gave is a bounce and spin animation
3.) Exported them both separately as .fbx “bounce” “spin”
4.) Imported the bounce in with the option of mesh in the import options
5.) Imported spin in with skeletal mesh called but not static mesh
6.) Created a new animation montage
7.) Called both animations to the montage
8.) Added both animations to a timeline
9.) Added montage to Scene
10.) Played
11.) Went to Editor Preferences > Auto Reimport
12.) Clicked this that checkbox on
13.) Imported .fbx to my Content > Game > “Cube” made a new folder to minimize confusion
14.) Under the Directories to Monitor Tab under Auto Reimport under Element Zero I called my “Game” folder and in 1 I called /Game/Cube/
15.) Changed my spin animation slightly
16.) Went back to UE4
17.) Checked to see if the Skeletal mesh was overwritten

I did not experience the overriding of the .fbx and did not require re importing from my content folder.

See if any of my steps differ from yours and then if they do re create what you have done and make a list of exactly the steps you took.

I would recommend following the series as it goes through step by step how to set up an animation montage and how to call multiple animations.

Please let me know what you find out,

Thanks,

4

I use Motionbuilder 2014 to retarget Motioncapture files and i have them all in one file so that i have my settings on all clips.
Motionbuilder natively saves to fbx.
So there are several animations in one FBX file.
Is that something UE4 cant really handle?

If i save the file with motionbuilder UE4 hotreloads those changes and all animationclips are the first clip in the FBX file.

5

So,

Do you have any morph targets on this rig? If so there is some documentation on proper workflow for this on our wiki.

As far as I am aware the workflow suggested is to have each animation individually exported. The first animation is imported with a skeletal mesh as your base or rest animation. Next is to import the animations that reference your skeletal mesh used for your first animation and not to import that way.

I am also not sure that UE4 even supports native Motion Builder formatting.

A possible work around is to import that .fbx into another modeling program and part the animation out.

I have never attempted this before and not even sure if this will work.

Thanks,

6

I do have morph targets on he the mesh. What difference does this make?
The morph targets work as expected on all animations.
I will Probably start exporting every animation.
Its just a few clicks more and annoying.
UE4 should handle motionbuilder 2014 FBX. It is an autodesk application and the its format is soly FBX so it should be the standard for the FBX format.
Motionbuilder 2015 and 2016 dont work as they save and export as fbx 2015 and 2016 respectively.

Getting everything in another program like maya seems like a bit much work and quite annoying.

7

True,

However for edition purposes piecing these out seems like a logic step. For instance finger movement/facial expressions and the like and smaller subtitles are usually edited on the rig in other programs.

At this point I am moving this from Bug Reports to Using Unreal 4. Let me know if you experience any more difficulties.

Thanks